Well, it’s the cataclysm. No one’s maintaining cars anymore. Quarterpanels and such should rust gradually, just for the novelty, if not for anything else. Rust could manifest in 5 stages. A fresh world could start with stage 1 rust on a some vehicles. Each year rust would be added to vehicle tiles all over the world. Any new spawned vehicles after that point would also automatically receive an additional round of rust. So the car spawning should consider the current date. In a fresh world there wouldn’t be much rust, but let’s say you start like 3 years after the cataclysm. Vehicles abandoned outdoors could be heavily rusted. Military vehicles could be more resilient to rusting.
Suggested rust stages, per applicable vehicle part
Tiny rust spot
Rust spots
Rusty
Very rusty
Thoroughly rusted
What should be the effects of rusting?
Perhaps lowered HP or armor. Sufficiently rusty doors and trunks should creak when they are operated.
Which parts should accumulate rust?
Quarterpanels, boards, roofs, reinforced windshields, platings, doors, frames… anything else?
Should there be a way to remove or prevent rust?
Perhaps. But after certain level of rust, it should be irreversible, such as stage 4.
I don’t feel too good about this idea alone, but it is realistic considering that unprotected steel can begin to show signs of rust in under a week. Maybe add the ability to use that paint you find in hardware stores kinda like armor, but instead of protecting against damage it prevents rust. (Also it adds the pleasant side effect of being able to paint your cars. Red vehicles do go faster, after all.)
Not so sure about this. Few characters lives long enough to have such a slow effect take place anyway. Plus, modern car last a long time, unlike the rust bucket of 30 years ago that would have to be kept in a garage. Like, there is an abandonned car in my street that hasn’t moved for at least 6 years, and vegetation growing in the cracks is doing more damage than rust.
I suppose the next thought would be “shouldn’t all steel items show rust then”? I mean, I’d think all steel items (even partially made of steel) that are left OUTSIDE should rust over time. Outside is defined by exterior tile vs. interior tile. Some containers could protect their contents, but the container itself could be subject to rusting, eventually losing that protection.
The rate, or rust check could be made once every season too, if once a year seems too slow a rate. Or once every 3 seasons. Maybe even set up an option for it. Should the rust rate be based on days or seasons, since season length is a setting. Or both perhaps, such as “Advance rusting every 30 days or 1 season, whichever comes first.” Or let the player choose whether to use days or seasons.
Items or vehicle parts could already start out at very rusty stage (some parts, not all). I mean, we could generally come across two types of vehicles - ones that have been used recently, and then the long-ago abandoned wrecks, which would show stage 4 and 5 rusting already upon world generation.
First and foremost I’d want this to be a mod. But having a “mod” integrated into the game might help with troubleshooting and debugging if we accept the idea that a higher number of potential mod combinations potentially makes troubleshooting more difficult.
And I can already think of some potential (but hopefully perfectly solvable) issues:
Fuel and liquid tanks. If they rust completely, should they leak their contents?
Ammo (steel casings) could be immune to rusting. Or it could increase jamming rate, or even damage the gun.
If the player drives a car outdoors when the season changes, the vehicle might suddenly collect some rust spots. But locating them and clearing them might become a chore. So that would have to be solved.
Same for worn items. Some apparel, and not to mention weapons, do contain steel. Do we make these carried items immune? Or would it be neat if your favorite machete suddenly develops a tiny rust spot?
If we extend rusting to all equipment, should it have some effect? Cutting melee weapons could lose damage, or become more easily stuck at later rust stages. Rust is also a hygiene risk, since bacteria can nest in the jagged surface of rust. Should sufficiently rusty tanks of clean water carry a risk of becoming dirty water? Should sufficiently rusty cans of food become spoiled? A rusty blade could also be an infection risk if used by hostile NPCs on the player. Where my tetanus shots at? I mean, assuming the syringe needle isn’t rusted…
Incredibly unlikely to happen.
That would be pretty complex and I don’t see anyone wanting to sink this much time in something that would only be a mod and wouldn’t ever be merged into mainline.
This is a terrible idea no matter how you look at it. There are two ways this possibly goes down.
It gets implemented in a “realistic” manner where it takes fucking decades for cars to rust and the feature gets dropped later down the line because nobody ever sees it in action and therefore cares enough to update and support it.
OR
It gets implemented as a “balance” (LOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!) change where your car rusts every month and the feature gets dropped later down the line because most of the user base is less than enthused about spending real life days scouring the game for enough Rust-Oleum to slather all over their football-field sized Murdertruck before the season ends.
It boggles my mind that even after the MASSIVE negative backlash to features like Nutrition and Filthy Clothes people continue to make suggestions that contain absolutely ALL of the issues that caused those features to be unpopular to begin with.
Christ, if you want to make vehicles more interesting\balanced why not focus on their literal balance (ie a top heavy car can flip). Give people incentives to make their car more aerodynamic. Make it so that zombies can fly over quarterpanels and through non-reinforced windshields to discourage early game hulk ramming. Add more cars to the game.
Look, I understand that fun is subjective, and believe it or not I’m not coming at this from an exclusively “anti-realism” standpoint. I love the immersion in cataclysm. I love using that immersion to roleplay. I love my decisions having serious and realistic consequences. What I don’t love is burying the other fun parts of the game under a pile of that immersion. What? Found a cool piece of gear in that cool area you just explored? Fuck you, you haven’t earned it yet! You’ve got to wash it, fix it, make it fit you, grease it (apparently) and sing it a fucking lullaby before you can actually use it for anything!
Sorry for the rant, but dumber shit than this has been ok’d and adamantly defended by granade himself (filthy clothes). And it grates my nerves that nobody ever bothers to consider that adding 1oz of immersion at the expense of 10 lbs of design doesn’t actually lead to a net improvement in quality.
Same as SpadeDraco. It sounds fun, the implementation would be bad in any kind of way. For roleplay purposes, well, I guess you could just imagine it is rusty? But apart from that it would just be a hassle.