Let's talk about car despawn ...

[Melita01 0]

These are experiences from private server which we setup to basically see and do stuff we normally can't. Besides it being a private server, it's as vanilla as they come. 

What the fuck developers? 

Case 1, damaged car. Now ok, damaged car despawns, although I'm not sure why. Especially when it still has loot  and car parts on it! I don't care that the chassis is red, all the car parts (battery, doors, wheels) plus player loot in the trunk are there yet the car despawns. Really? Just why?! At least put some sensible timer on it, like five days or something. How much imagination does it require to come up with a use case when someone would use the damaged car as a storage or car parts re-supply? That it may take several hours until the player can remove all that can be removed from the damaged car #D6D6D6 https://showbox.bio/ https://tutuapp.uno/.  

Case 2, car parked. Undamaged. Oh yes. So we wet out scavenging for resources to the lumbermill near Myshkino, got hit by heavy rain and so I parked the car near containers. You know, the slightly raised platform with a roof over it. Makes quite sense in the rain and generally speaking a it's a good spot to park the car. We looted for a bit and then logged off in a garage. This morning I went to have a quick look and the CAR IS GONE! Just because it was not on flat ground or what the fuck? And again all the loot and car parts, totally undamaged and you fuck us over like this?! 

I though car were bad because of desync issues but I haven't had enough coffee yet to express what bullshit this is. In contrast, when I killed two pigs an gutted them, their remains were in the game for the next TWO DAYS! Dear DayZ devs, just play the game for a while. You know rent a server and run around like a real player would. No console cheating, no custom spawn. Try to experience the game as a player does. Otherwise you will never fix this in a million years and I can submit all the bug reports I want. Parking a car somewhere is the most common situation car allows. Be proactive for a change, play your game and discover this shit for yourselves. 

Edited April 14, 2021 by Melita01

[drgullen 596]

@Melita01

Regarding your Case 1, this is configurable in the xml files -- you can change it so that ruined items remain longer on the server, although it will apply to all ruined items and will have an impact on performance.  As for the mechanic itself, the CLE (Central Loot Economy) handles all ruined things the same regardless of what they are, so whether it's a ruined axe or a ruined car, they will both despawn.  This is by design to satisfy the nominal value for the vehicle events to make sure there are that many non-ruined cars available on the server.  Shortly after the ruined car despawns, a fresh car is spawned at one of the spawn points defined in cfgeventspawns.xml.

I get the frustration regarding the items in the trunk, but personally, I like it the way it is.  It forces you to make decisions when you're vulnerable -- you have to decide what items to take with you before you leave because you know the car is going to vanish and there may be players in the area.

Regarding your Case 2, check your economy.xml file and make sure you have save="1" for the vehicles line.  If it's 0 that means vehicles are not being saved in the persistence files and are therefore subject to despawn.  You can check that as well -- the lifetime value in events.xml for the vehicle events.  The value is in seconds, so increase that to have cars stick around longer.

[drgullen 596]

Here's something else to consider -- do NOT force kill the server using the /F switch.  So, in other words:

 

GOOD: taskkill /IM DayZServer_x64.exe

BAD: taskkill /IM DayZServer_x64.exe /F

 

When you shut down your server, the last line in your .RPT file should be something like this:

14:00:07.02  --- Termination successfully completed ---

If you don't see this line, it means the server did not complete all of its normal shutdown functions.  Some parts of these functions include doing any final writes to the persistence files (the .bin files in the storage_1\data folder).

If you are force killing the exe with the /F switch, you are opening up the possibility of one or more of these .bin files getting corrupted.  If the server was in the middle of writing to one of these files when it was force killed and the file gets corrupted, what do you think happens when the server restarts?  What happens is that file gets deleted and recreated, meaning whichever items were being saved in the world in that file are now gone.  So, in the case of vehicles.bin, this would mean all cars that had been touched/moved by players would vanish on restart.

I have been messing around with DayZ servers since 1.0 launched.  I have always shut down the server gracefully.  I have NEVER had one of my cars disappear.

The cost is only about an additional 15 seconds to shut down the server gracefully (i.e. without the /F switch).  I highly recommend you do it that way to avoid this issue.