Could we make cars more interesting?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

First off: dead people. Why is it we only find dead people away from vehicles? Shouldn’t we see some inside cars that have crashed into the sides of buildings and on the sides of the road?

But also wouldn’t it make sense and be awesome if you could sometimes find bits of loot in the cars that litter the roads?

Maybe a lighter, candy bar, or some smokes in a seat once in a while - or a jack, wrench, spare tire, or crowbar in the trunk. Little things you’d expect to see in a car.

Maybe rarely something neat like a handgun in the seat or a welder in the trunk. Perhaps even a long gun in the cab of pickup trucks with some ammo or a half full jerrycan of gas in the bed.

What about a car crashed into a building with some loot that survived the fire inside? Something like the rubble patches we have now but more suggestive of a story that lead up to a horrific end.

Or perhaps when you explore a RV you might find the dead occupants inside, and open the boxes to find a small stash of food or supplies.

I’m out of ideas for now and it’s late. Anybody else like the sound of this?

2

Agreed that it’s late, and that the ideas sound pretty good.

3

Aye, agreed, it sounds good and will add to the immersion.

4

We need more kinds of cars too, i always thought about maybe a garbage truck. It would have a two person cab a strong engine ( v8 but im not to sure) and the back where the actual garbage is could be steel plated and the only way in is to cut it open. You could find it at the public works or maybe a dump. It would definetly be a great stock start to any surviors death machine. Also we never see any military vehicles (other than the mil truck) i mean maybe like a humvee with an m249 up top could spawn near dead soldiers.

5

Or a light tank in the middle of a big city, fully steel plated, with a cannon turret and an anti-aircraft machinegun on top all ammunition totally spent and maybe a little bit smashed in some places by the local zombie hulk.

6

I dont know about a tank, thatd be too over powered. I just made a new topic for new car ideas and i popped a few down. Sorry if im stealing your ppl rivet

7

I agree that having a functioning tank might be overpowered, but I’d like to have a wrecked tank possible to spawn.
We can already build the most devastating vehicular doomsday devices known to man, access to rare vehicle parts like part of a tank wouldn’t be that big an upset.

Personally I’d like to think that the military didn’t all die running around on foot like the piles of corpses with loaded LAWS would imply.

8

I agree that having a functioning tank might be overpowered, but I’d like to have a wrecked tank possible to spawn.
We can already build the most devastating vehicular doomsday devices known to man, access to rare vehicle parts like part of a tank wouldn’t be that big an upset.

Personally I’d like to think that the military didn’t all die running around on foot like the piles of corpses with loaded LAWS would imply.[/quote]

Left the barracks so fast they forgot ammo.
Left the barracks so fast they forgot guns.

Also an actual working tank wouldn’t be too OP. Think about it, it’d be reasonably slow unless you stick a new engine in.
weight of the average MBT comes in at about 40~60t with engine HP of anywhere from 700~1200hp.
Ammunition would be powerful but you’d have a limited supply until you could raid a depot. it’d be a nice way to open banks labs and bunkers.

9

Problem with USian tanks: their fuel economy is “gallons per mile” rather than “miles per gallon”. Given the finite amount of fuel available in Cata, I’d consider even a pristine tank a great opportunity for parts, rather than a vehicle ready-for-use.

(Now, if you want to have it use superalloy armor/structure or otherwise be downmassed…)

10

I think a garage with a part-assembled tank or APC and lots of spare heavy-duty plating would be an excellent occasional addition to a military outpost.

11

Also, repairing and even operating an APC, much less an MBT should require a very high mechanical and driving skill.

12

Why? Creating one can be done already, and driving an MBT doesn’t seems that hard.

13

Driving an APC should be easy enough - most models are basically just heavily armoured trucks.

A tank might be trickier - aside from having tracked propulsion instead of wheels, they’re designed to be operated by a whole crew, and no one person can see more than a tiny field of view once the hatches are down. There’s also the matter of the turret rotating independently of the direction of travel.

14

I mentioned having limited loots in trunks (and zombies in cars) a while ago and it seemed to be a generally agreed upon idea - I’d definitely like this to get put in, because it just seems so ‘immersion breaking’ (too strong a phrase, but you know what I mean) that all cars are empty. Having the possibility of zombies (especially zombie dogs and the like) in cars would make it more risky. Hopefully someone will put it in soon!

15

I know that driving armoured trucks and things are easy (even tanks aren’t that complicated to move in a straight line and turn), but if you let any new character climb into an APC and drive away… that’s kind of stupid for gameplay.

16

Well, a new character will crash into a lot of buildings.

17

Not really a big deal in an Abrams, is it?

18

if you really want to enhance car experience, then you should change the way how they behave.
Because what I see now is something like an old SNES driving arcades. No sliding, no burnouts, nothing. New engine changes fucking nothing, IRL my car will be insanely heavy to control if I change my old 1.8 V6 to the overpowered 3.2 V8

19

That’s why I’d put them at military outposts, not fully assembled. By the time a character has fought his way to it and successfully got it working and fuelled, he’s ‘earned’ it.

20

[quote=“KA101, post:9, topic:2886”]Problem with USian tanks: their fuel economy is “gallons per mile” rather than “miles per gallon”. Given the finite amount of fuel available in Cata, I’d consider even a pristine tank a great opportunity for parts, rather than a vehicle ready-for-use.

(Now, if you want to have it use superalloy armor/structure or otherwise be downmassed…)[/quote]

I think that’s the same with any heavy military vehicle. The engines aren’t designed with fuel economy in mind – because the government doesn’t worry about cost, it needs to worry about a vehicle that can actually fight in an operational theatre. You want a tank that’s got a debilitating, but fuel efficient engine or something that can actually get itself into or out of trouble if it needs to? Mobility is king.

e.g The challenger 2 is about 62 tonnes with a 1200hp (26.6Litre!) engine, giving it a power to weight ratio of about~20hp/t iirc. That’s insane for a 62t vehicle.

In comparison, the T-72 had a 780hp engine. Must be noted that it seems to have been russian doctrine to strip off as much spare weight as possible (aka, strip off some armour-- and trust me, to consider the results it’s a design philosophy I’d favour) so they can get away with a weaker engine and yet still maintain a decent PW/R– the T-72 in particular came in at about 41t with a PW/R of 18.8hp/t.

The later verison, the T-90 was slightly heavier-- about 47t-- however they’ve upgraded the engine for it twice until now it’s got an 1250hp engine, which means a ~26hp/t PWR. It’ll be maneuverable as fuck, not even to mention acceleration/top speeds etc for simply being a lighter vehicle.

[edit] anyway, in game terms let’s stick a large electric engine in and some solar power.
Solar powered tanks! Eco-Friendly for a brighter tomorrow :smiley:

also check this vid out. near the end, it’s said 2 centurions (made circa 1945) destroyed 60~ T-62s, a tank made 20~30 years later.