Vehicles, and how it should be done.

[nnccmm 3]

I'm gonna go ahead and get straight to the point.

The Developers of DayZ Standalone have done so much already to achieve realism in a game, and I feel a vehicle system overhaul would be in order to live up to that. In the regular DayZ, finding a vehicle can prove extremely difficult in some cases, I think there's 40 on a standard DayZ server. Now, think about in real life. There's more than 40 cars isn't there? Now, even after an infection, thousands of cars wouldn't dissapear, or be mysteriously damaged in odd ways. They would just sit, probably untouched. Due to this trait, the motor would suffer and the petrol would leak out, or most of it anyways Some tires might go flat, but that wouldn't render the car undrivable.

Yes, my suggestion is to add lots more cars to DayZ. The difficult part shouldn't be finding a car, it should be getting that car to work. Of course, all cars these days have keys, so if you can't find those you would need something like hotwiring tools to start it up. Some cars could have car alarms that would ring out through the city, and depending on your tools, you could disable it instead of letting it run it's course. If you found the keys, maybe you could even use that alarm to alert you if people try and steal your car.

Enough of the little things though, onto the repairing aspect. As I said, cars would usually be found unharmed, maybe a little dusty, but unharmed. The majority of them would be locked, low on fuel, and have dead engines/batteries. You shouldn't be able to find an entire engine and just fix it like that. There should be specific engine parts, and the battery should be a whole 'nother component entirely. You could either try your luck taking a battery from a different car, try and find one in an industrial area, or charge it yourself. Fuel would be extremely rare, you could never find a full drum of gas at a fuel station, since it can have many other uses besides cars. Other parts of the car, that would normally remain unharmed, should be only damaged by players/zombies, as someone abandoning their car probably wouldn't result in bullet holes in it (although it could).

There's so many things to consider about the vehicle system, and I feel like this post is already unorganized (it's 3:30 in the morning) so I'll let you guys post what you think could be added.

TL;DR

Lots more cars

You need to find keys/hotwire cars

Car alarms help prevent theft

Cars found in good(ish) shape

More parts to a car

[K0ba 13]

Being able to salvage fuel from vehicles would be neat.

but because its a game, like it is now fuel should be obtainable by fuel pumps

Edited March 26, 2013 by K0ba

[Jeremiah Cross 55]

Fuel pumps (like those at a gas station) wouldn't work if the power grid was down.

[nnccmm 3]

So maybe another use for fuel would be powering cities/areas? That could let you get more fuel (if it isn't gone already), and probably a bunch of other features that use electricity.

There we go, we're thinkin!

[edzus234 4]

I suggested the Car battery before, but I also mentioned car headlights, but great idea anyways and it would add more realism ofcourse, because, as you said, cars wouldn't magically dissapear, maybe there should be about 300 vehicles around the map, because there must be people who managed to drive away.