Tracking devices

[thedemonmelon 0]

Vehicles get stolen for a past time, they are probably on their 5th owner when they are destroyed, and there is no effective way to hide vehicles in Day Z when you are offline. How about a very rare item found in military spawns, that you can attach to vehicles. If you own a GPS, you can follow the movement of that vehicle.

Now this sounds game breaking, but here is how it would be balanced and in fact balance issues already in the game. In the game, people steal vehicles with no effort at all. I know I just walk up to a vehicle and take it. Somebody put hours of work into repairing it. Well now you need the effort too. Vehicles have parts on them, like fuel tanks and engines, you can choose where on the vehicle you place the device. Be it a wheel, the hull, or the rotor blades. You can get rid of the tracking device by replacing the part of the vehicle with the device on. Should the thief be able to see if there is a device or not? Answer below. If they could see, then it may be more balanced. If they can't see it would add to the paranoia, with people replacing parts on their vehicle when they are not in fact being tracked. Answer below what you think, or if you think this is a bad idea all together.

Current balance issues in the game include bandit teams hogging vehicles. I am fine with that having stolen vehicles myself, but only if they don't just leave them hidden miles off the map like they do. This device means people can see where their stolen vehicles are, and ordinary survivors can take them back from the bandits.

Another issue I have discovered with the device itself is that fitting the device before it got stolen would surely make it visible on a GPS beforehand and more likely to get stolen? This balances out the issues with people using it all the time for their collection of helicopters. And also using it means anyone can see its location, so it may be stolen from the thief and stolen from them and that means there will be more conflict, so people will avoid using them sometimes.

Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to make my point about them not upsetting the balance of the game. :)

[adamtheheretic 106]

I guess this makes sense, I don't like the "choosing a place" to attach it, I think one tracking device should be a ghillie/range finder like rare spawn then once it's in a vehicle you can track it but if someone has a tracking device and then "install it" it then removes the previous tracking device. The only way to make this fair would to not allow tracking devices to be removed otherwise they could install then remove it instantly to remove previous devices.

I also really like the idea of leaving your vehicle out in the open on purpose to have it stolen then follow it to it's location letting you find a camp or something similar.