Request/concept: Highwayman - travel system overhaul

[Citrus872]

First of all, I'm aware that there's been a lot of vehicle-related suggestions, proposals and mod attempts. However, they all take for granted the concept that vehicles should be drivable across the landscape, which is extremely difficult to implement well, since the landscape itself is very poorly suited for something like that.

 

Here's something I think would work better, with most of the current issues worked around. To do this right, the car should not be drivable. It should, instead, be a static model with a usable trunk, appearing on predefined parking spots across the gameworld, and the PipBoy map serving as the "overworld travel screen", similar to how the Highwayman worked in Fallout 2. This is the basic concept broken into steps:

 

1) Remove the fast travel system

Since fast travel is hardly immersive, it should be disabled as a map option (possibly with an option to turn it on for people who have to use it, but IMO it would be unneeded with this).

 

2) Add means to obtain a car

This should be a junktown vendor or a mechanic, possibly in one of the garage or gas station-themed locations already present in the gameworld. Various options could be paying an exorbitant sum of money for a car in working condition, doing a fetch quest for a couple of components the mechanic needs to get the car to a working condition and sell it to you (similar to F2), possibly killing the mechanic and repairing the car yourself (but only with an incredibly high repair skill) etc.

 

3) Predefine gameworld locations with a parking spot for the car

These would be the ONLY locations in the world you could "fast travel" to by car, the rest would have to be on foot. This would be done like that to eliminate the need to spawn the car model in all current fast travel locations, since a lot of them wouldn't make sense (not realistically reachable by car even by a long shot), and wouldn't even have a spot for the car to be parked on. Thus, the world should only have its main hub locations accessible by car. The car model would be hand placed in a sensible spot in these, and present when you arrive on that location by car (not present if you arrive on that location on foot). The actual number of parking spots in the gameworld is debatable - there should be enough to be able to reach most of the gameworld reasonably quickly by driving to the nearest parking spot and walking the rest of the way.

 

- for the car model, a beat-up retexture of one of the Tranquility Lane cars could be used, to minimize the amount of modeling work needed.

 

4) (optional) Add possible gameplay elements related to the car and parking spots

- trunk serves as storage (that someone might break into in frequently visited places like Megaton or Rivet City etc)

- chance of getting the car stolen (again in frequently visited places with lots of NPCs where it makes sense) if you don't leave a companion to guard it or pay a local NPC to do so, triggering a quest where you have to find it on some of the other parking locations

- possible random encounters* during the car "fast travel" (the travel time itself should, if possible, be represented as either an abstract screen similar to the wait/sleep screen, showing how many hours it will take to reach the destination, or an accurate representation of the travel route on the PipBoy map, if this is at all viable)

 

*Random encounters issue: due to the difficulty of actually spawning a car on random locations inside the gameworld (while traveling), there should be no random encounters, at least at the start. However, this is one possible solution for random encounters that could be implemented later:

- make a bunch of generic-looking cells for various terrain types, just like Fallout 2

- designate a static place for the car in each of them

- you have to stay inside the cell and defend the car

- possible penalty if you fail to do so: you're automatically transported to the nearest parking location with your car in bad condition, and you have to repair the car before you can use it again (the game logic being that the heavily damaged car barely got to the parking location and finally gave out just as you arrived)

However, due to this being rather complicated in comparison, it should wait until the main system is firmly in place.

 

So, how does this sound as a general concept? Any comments appreciated!

[TGBlank]

GTS

[Guest deleted934561]

I suggested the same thing before the geck ever came out lol

its a great idea and been tinkering with a way to add a trunk of some kind and a way to add fuel

I have also uploaded another possible way of travel using the vertibird

I made an interior to it as well as made a home in the subway

The car and vertibird are close to each other in the mod at a car dealership

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=118553&hl=

 

I uploaded it there because the rest of the work needed is far beyond my ability lol

but your welcome to download it and check it out

[Rockatanskiy]

gts....

[Citrus872]

gts....

GTS

 

I'm familiar with GTS, but from what I've gathered so far, GTS is plagued by many of the exact issues I mentioned and tried to devise a workaround for in the OP. Also, GTS is, shall we say, a very ambitious mod that, as such, isn't very well suited to players who just want to have a no-frills classic vehicular mode of transportation within the current constraints of the gameworld.

 

If GTS can indeed be configured in a way that only adds a properly working car (or other vehicles) usable on the vanilla overworld map, parked on at least semi-realistically possible travel locations (without the vehicles spawning two feet above the ground, for example), and with non-metagaming/in-character menus, commands, dialogues etc, then GTS it is, but if this can be done, I'm sadly not aware of it. As it is, I'm afraid that a mod much narrower in scope would be a better idea.

[TGBlank]

again, GTS does it, plus fuel management (that you can toggle on and off). GTS's ambitiousness comes with it's support for other mods to use GTS to travel to exotic locations, and populate them.

They're also adjusting the parking points of the cars for the next version.

But that's all it is, a support, empty, pretty places that do nothing unless another mod comes in and fills it.