Rework the anti-theft system

[Mahitto]

1 minute ago, Dewclaw said:

I don't know if I agree with this one or not, thinking deeper about it.  Cars are still stolen and scrapped pretty often on the server to a point I already feel it's a little unrealistic-- but to get  into that would be to get into the unrealistic crime rate on the server to begin with.

My suggestions would be:

It needs to be a choice for whoever's hotwiring what systems they want to turn off/hinder.
The ability to change it to thirty seconds to one minute CD for the locator pings.
Extra time to hotwire a car to 'cut' the turn off feature that comes with high level security that's dependent on the price of the car.

My character's car, being a car that's about 46k at base price with full security should take only about 30 seconds to a minute longer if they turn off the cut off features while hotwiring.  A car that's almost 400~500k should take a few extra minutes to break into if they want to disable the feature.  This would involve a high risk high reward level to stealing higher end cars.  Do you want to risk the extra few minutes to hotwire it and turn off their ability to cut the engine or increase the increments where they can ping its location or do you want to get in it right then and there with the features activated and hope they don't notice it until you've handed it off to someone else?

That being said, being a completely legal RPer that's not a cop/park ranger/sheriff sorta sucks because so much crime happens in just a literal hour that the feeling of adding easier vehicle robberies doesn't sound super appealing-- but I also can't ignore that it can be an unbalanced feature.  The price to protect your car (And it still get stolen) is near 60k~80k, isn't it?  Locks, alarms, security system...  I feel that, if they did introduce these they should adjust the prices to be cheaper / based on base car price.  We've been trending more toward people being able to RP non-criminal / LEO faction characters lately without feeling like they're just a designated loot bag for criminal characters, so I would hope with the addition of balancing car security it isn't a step back from that.

 

That's actually a really good idea.

[Now You See Me]

7 minutes ago, Mahitto said:

 

That's not very realistic, though. In real life, you will likely have apps on your phone/tablet/laptop/online to monitor and control your security system, track your vehicle in real time etc. If you want to check your inside CCTV, you don't have to call a dispatcher to patch you in to a security agent who will then do that. You don't have to do that to activate or deactivate your house alarm either, same with your vehicle alarm. Technology has evolved, a lot.

 

And the other problem with this is that unlike real life, we can't completely depend on a player-ran faction. It's a bad idea to put so much power in the hands of one (or few), and will also cause lots of issues when people aren't available or during dead hours.

Technology has evolved in a lot of ways on both sides. Most cars stolen irl such as hot hatch backs the trackers will be disabled pretty damn quick and that car will be never seen again. Being able to shut an engine off remotely imo is so stupid and unrealistic, imagine if you could do that IRL. Someone driving your car down the road at 70mph and suddenly the ending turning off meaning the steering will also lock and probably kill someone.

[Mahitto]

1 minute ago, Now You See Me said:

Technology has evolved in a lot of ways on both sides. Most cars stolen irl such as hot hatch backs the trackers will be disabled pretty damn quick and that car will be never seen again. Being able to shut an engine off remotely imo is so stupid and unrealistic, imagine if you could do that IRL. Someone driving your car down the road at 70mph and suddenly the ending turning off meaning the steering will also lock and probably kill someone.

 

We need some balance, though. In real life, you can park your car outside and it won't be broken into five times within the hour. It won't be chopped by the time you wake up. Hell, there's people who use a car (some even the same car) for 40-50 years and never have it stolen. It's also much harder to boot a car considering all of the CCTV cameras all around, the amount of police vehicles and technology used to locate and stop it, the witnesses and such. And it's still not something all cars have, considering how much it costs to even install such feature.

 

We have none of that here, so this is a decent alternative indeed. If you want to boot a car? There's likely no one around, CCTV systems don't really exist, police have no technology or manpower to track you down and will likely not even stop you as the /stolenvehicleslist command is barely used. It's stupid easy to get away with most stuff as is.

[Now You See Me]

1 minute ago, Mahitto said:

 

We need some balance, though. In real life, you can park your car outside and it won't be broken into five times within the hour. It won't be chopped by the time you wake up. Hell, there's people who use a car (some even the same car) for 40-50 years and never have it stolen. It's also much harder to boot a car considering all of the CCTV cameras all around, the amount of police vehicles and technology used to locate and stop it, the witnesses and such. And it's still not something all cars have, considering how much it costs to even install such feature.

 

We have none of that here, so this is a decent alternative indeed. If you want to boot a car? There's likely no one around, CCTV systems don't really exist, police have no technology or manpower to track you down and will likely not even stop you as the /stolenvehicleslist command is barely used. It's stupid easy to get away with most stuff as is.

Yea IRL it wont be chopped over night it will be completely untrackable in most cases if it isn't your typical crappy SUV or family car. My friend had his fiesta ST stolen, their neighbours had CCTV the people drove up, got in the car it starts and they drive off. Police said they wouldn't even look into it because it will be long gone. Modern cars also being super insecure when it comes to security which is why I would never buy a car with keyless entry and go unless I have a third party immobolizer installed.

Yes vehicles get stolen way too frequent on this server, that has nothing to to with the script more the players. It would be nice if not everyone and their mum had access to just steal a vehicle, if to get better equipment that can be used to disable higher end equipment you have to be part of a group specialising in that RP and if you get caught you lose it.

[PeopleKind]

Instead of reworking it, make the security systems more expensive, like 200k for the most expensive anti theft. So you dont have junkers with top of the line security in davis

[Topinambour]

23 minutes ago, Now You See Me said:

Being able to shut an engine off remotely imo is so stupid and unrealistic, imagine if you could do that IRL.

It's easy to imagine since it's existed IRL for a long while already. While it was only first for military vehicles, it's quickly been put on some cars under specific loans - so a repo man could shut down your car from a distance, if you failed your payments. Nowadays it's used as a private security measure to deter theft, widely used in the transportation industry (trucks and such, to secure cargo) and increasingly used in the private personal car industry. Just in 2018, the remote vehicle shutdown market was a 360 million dollar industry, growing almost 10% a year :x 

That's because an overwhelming amount of modern cars have an electric fuel pump, which in turn makes it pretty easy to shut it down remotely. 

 

I don't know what's going on, with this server, where people say something is "unrealistic" in spite of the fact that it's increasingly present in actual real life :x 

 

Now regarding the anti-theft feature on the server, it's also probably more present in-game than it is IRL. Probably because there's a **LOT** more car thefts on the server than we got in real life, right now. 

As for its supreme efficiency, one point was not mentioned along those posts: the cost. The damn thing costs 20k. That means if you want to put it on a car, it better be goddamn worth it lol. Because if you put a $20.000 security system on a car that costs $100k, it means you're investing an extra TWENTY PERCENT of the car price, just in ONE security system O.o 

Not gonna lie: paying 20% extra just for security? If you do that, you definitely deserve to not have it stolen by a rando who just spams the script to grind money. 

Edited February 27, 2022 by Topinambour

[Marty]

Considering the level of car thefts that occur in the server, regardless if they are on a main street in the middle of downtown or in a "CCTV" covered parking garage or in a alleyway in Davis is quite unrealistic to begin with. Making car thefts even easier would only accomplish one thing, people /vpark'ing their cars whenever they get out of it cause they know someone is gonna come around and try to steal it, even if they have security. So there definitely needs to be a way to stop people from constantly stealing your car.

[Vassilios]

From my experience from talking to people, working with dealerships and all that. Most people don't really buy anti-theft systems. Even with 600 people on, we barely receive any vehicle alarms throughout the day.

[Cypher99]

Let’s not make the standard of effort even lower than it already is. There’s plenty of auto theft already and this would just make anti-theft useless. Cars shouldn’t be easy to steal unless they are old or lack the technology. 
 

Then again, playing devils advocate, if your car is insured you get it back in a few hours. Big deal. File a police report. Call a friend or hope to get a taxi in the mean time. In any case, the system should not be made any easier than it already is for car theft. 
 

One compromise could be is to start the chop process in the script but put a sliding scale time limit on the anti-theft features and before the script outputs any car parts. Within the first 5 minutes of enabling the chop process in the script, someone can still shut the car off and use the tracker. The next 5 minutes, they can only shut the car off. Maybe after a short, random period of time after that in order to give them time to RP the car being chopped, the system will output the car parts.

Edited February 27, 2022 by Cypher99

[Cypher99]

4 hours ago, Now You See Me said:

Technology has evolved in a lot of ways on both sides. Most cars stolen irl such as hot hatch backs the trackers will be disabled pretty damn quick and that car will be never seen again. Being able to shut an engine off remotely imo is so stupid and unrealistic, imagine if you could do that IRL. Someone driving your car down the road at 70mph and suddenly the ending turning off meaning the steering will also lock and probably kill someone.

You can do this in real life. Ever heard of OnStar? It’s very common in personal vehicles. If your car gets stolen, they can remotely shut the car off from anywhere. Satellite technology exists. Hell there’s even a commercial about it highlighting the feature in the event your car is stolen. This is not new technology at all and absolutely realistic. 

Edited February 27, 2022 by Cypher99