After fiddling with our current state of vehicles, I realized there might be some potential there that hasn’t been realized yet.
The first aspect: we can remotely drive vehicles around, but why not telepresence?
Two versions of interface: vehicle mounted and personal.
Vehicle mounted would be an antenna and control rig that you’d sit down in a seat and use at the cost of vehicle battery.
Personal would be battery powered bulky quiet or CBm you would lug around.
Create and wear some sort of visual and audio rig on head or use a CBM, same for a back mounted antenna rig or CBm.
On the receiving end you would need to install a telepresence rig ontop of a drive by wire system, which would be an antenna rig with an eye out camera and some robotic limbs.
Sitting in a vehicle with the control rig and ^drive to select a vehicle to remote control. Your stats would still need to be tracked, like hunger and thirst and fatigue, but the camera and reality bubble would follow the remote controlled vehicle instead. Ontop of that, you can rudimentary use nearby buildings and furniture like you were there, and use advanced inventory to move things around, but only if they are in range of the frame part that the telepresence rig is installed on. Drag things, plant seeds from nearby, talk, use money cards, etc. Zombies and monsters and npcs would treat the vehicle rig frame as of there were a player on it, and the telepresence ends if the remote vehicle runs out of juice or of critical components are too damaged.
Maybe an advanced version that can use nearby tools in vehicle containers to do vehicle maintnence/decon on other vehicles as well as normal construction/deconstruction using the players skills.
Probably would need to re-write player logic, but it would be neat. make a motorcycle robot for going into dangerous places, or use it for farming, or whatever. Vehicles don’t get tired or worn out.
If the above were implemented, an even more rediculous idea could be transformer drones. Build a vehicle that can be folded, attach and an advanced telepresence rig and drive by wire controls, and additionally install a motive device of your choice.
Could be wheeled, anthro, spider, quad walker, and stress.
While controlling this advanced rig remotely, you’d get an option to fold into drone mode. This would take into account the weight and equipment attached to the vehicle, and create a fake 1 space layer mob based on it. It would use the engine(s) for power source, batteries for electricity, storage devices would be combined to get a volume limit with, and you have two robot hands to pick things up and use as weapons with. It would use the armor and durability of stuff installed on the telepresence rig frame for health and armor.
How it can get around would be based on the motive device installed.
Not sure if there are foldable turrets, but that might get handled too.
Wheeled and tracked are faster, and tracked can handle more vehicle weight, but they can only ram into stuff that vehicles can’t traverse and can’t use stairs.
Anthro and quad walker can use stairs, but are more player speed, and quad walker sacrifices mobility and dodge for more carry weight and control.
Spider would be highly dodgy and a bit faster but cant handle as much vehicle weight.
I could also see boat and hover motivator systems, but shrug.
All this would require a lot of electronic and mechanical parts and skill, and probably computers as well, but would be a neat alternative for tech heavy builds with not a lot of physical ability.