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Trucking and businesses overhaul idea think tank.


alina2137

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Following my recent suggestion to decrease the grind and give us a quality of life improvement, as well as the "Where are the truckers?" thread, I came to the conclusion that we might just need a massive think tank to think about how we can completely overhaul this system so that it's more realistic and more enjoyable.

Personally I think that the component system we have right now is utterly retarded and needs to be completely yeeted from the server. I will go into my reasoning below.

The amount of components that some businesses require sometimes is ridiculous. It promotes grinding by itself because some people genuinely like to see that number go down, and they get paid for it so why the hell not?

The component system makes it so that truckers drive up to businesses way too often when compared to how it is in real life. Truckers also deliver and drive through the city at hours which do not make sense in real life. Many major cities straight up prohibit semis and other large trucks from driving in the center and such. Since we're a roleplay server where many of us play in different timezones, we simply have to cope with the fact that the hours of deliveries will be unrealistic. You'll be getting deliveries at times when you least expect it, during peak hours and when your business happens to be booming, et cetera.

 

To promote roleplay between truckers, trucking companies and the businesses, in particular their owners and managers themselves, we need to think about ways to actually create that roleplay in the first place. Since for now, we rarely bump into anyone when we're trucking. Most businesses are closed for literally weeks before they open again. You put up a request for x crates and the truckers go broom while you don't do jack shit.

 

One way to promote roleplaying over grinding is to put trucking behind a paycheck and provide the drivers with the option to buy and drive the trucks they want. Yeah, doesn't matter if they're gonna be vans or semis, just let people drive what they want in the first place. Let people be independent if they want to, not everyone enjoys or wants to be part of a trucking company. I will not even get into the uniforms most companies make you wear, shit looks ridiculous, the clothing itself discourages me personally from joining companies.

Jokes aside, this might prove to be a good idea to eliminate the grinders. People who genuinely want to network and develop their characters around trucks and trucking will be more passionate about networking, making good deals and contacts with people to even get delivery jobs in the first place.

Furthermore, truckers should only be allowed to deliver to businesses that are active or have been active in the past days. Preferably ONLY when there is someone on the shift to roleplay signing documents or taking care of the shipment. This is the ONLY WAY to get truckers to actually roleplay. Eliminating the components and encouraging the creation of bonds between you as a trucker or company and the businesses. 

Here is the reason to give truckers fixed paychecks instead of giving them pay per delivery. If we eliminate components, we will need a percentage system to replace it. To make this realistic and profitable for people we need to make the percentage do down in a realistic manner. This will require a complete overhaul of the businesses as well.

How will the percentage system work? Simple, you get the delivery, your percentage of stock is at one 50-100% depending on what kind of vehicle shows up. You open your business and sell items, the percentage goes down with every item you sell. You sell a bottle of beer, it goes down by 0.4%, you sell a shot of vodka it goes down by 0.2%. You get 50 customers a day, you lose realistically 5-20% of your stock. A week passes and you need a trucker to bring you some stuff again.

Similar idea with the goods. Since goods are realistically items that need to be stored and restocked and alcohol is bottled and a bottle can serve 15 people, it is reasonable to up the percentage of stock that selling custom items will cost you. For example 0.5%. You get 50 customers, your stock goes down 25%. This will keep truckers and yourself in the business. The exact percentages that certain items will take up can be tweaked as we deem necessary of course, this is just my idea for now. Same thing goes for mechanic garages et cetera. Obviously a garage will require more deliveries but a garage also has the space to let a truck come by and do the job.

This is once again why truckers will need a fixed paycheck. You as the business owner will be charged a fixed price set by the server to avoid the ridiculous shit we have going on with component crate costs right now, where people willingly pay more to get their businesses prioritized which creates those cannibalistic scenarios where a business that's 2 miles away from the docks is doing way better than the one that's in butt fuck nowhere. A trucker who takes on a job but does not finish it will be heavily penalized by the system to avoid people who grind paychecks by sitting on their ass all day doing nothing. Yes, the system. I can not imagine the amount of court cases that would emerge if this wasn't somehow protected this way.

 

A system designed this way will weed out the retards who are only in this job to drive over curbs and get money from spamming commands at the yellow triangle. To ensure that the roleplay has actually happened, there can be commands in place that will let the trucker and the staff that is currently on shift confirm if the delivery has been actually delivered. For example you could roleplay with the clerk and ask them to /confirmdelivery after you have finished roleplaying.

 

To penalize truckers who do not do their job, simply give them a realistic time limit to complete a task. Let's say a trucker takes on a job and they have to drive from Paleto Bay to Los Santos, hauling fish. To drive there safely and account for:

- the time that both parties have, both IC and OOC, we don't have all day
- any traffic stops or other scenes the trucker might have to avoid or partake in

- robberies and what not

 

the time to complete such a delivery should be 20 minutes. You take longer, no issue. You type in a command that confirms that you will just be late, shit happens. You don't get penalized on your paycheck as to not make you rush your delivery and potentially drive unrealistically. People who care will do their job and make contacts, people who do not care will waste time.

 

You abandon the job, you get a monetary penalty of 75% of what the cargo is worth.


Finally, why will this work?

This will work because the server is currently, in my opinion saturated with businesses that open whenever there's a chance. If one businesses doesn't open for two weeks, there are going to be 20 other ones in their place that you can still deliver to.

The safe guard against situations when there are literally zero businesses open or when there is too many truckers on shift:

I have very minimal ideas regarding this, but the server does still have NPC owned businesses. In situations where Player-owned businesses are down, temporary solutions will be needed to still let truckers do their thing and earn their wage. A temporary solution can be to allow truckers to deliver to those businesses because they also need to be refilled with stock so that people can go buy items from there. With that said, those businesses should be the last resort unless they are running below 10% of stock or there are no current Player owned businesses open.

In conclusion, by giving truckers the option to drive what they want we eliminate the grind to get to new vehicles. We eliminate shitty driving and allow more people to be independent, do their own thing and be responsible for their own networking et cetera. This is not going to harm trucking companies, it will promote fair competition and turf control over which areas they deliver in because let's say IMEX might be better for the city whilst a company based in Paleto Bay might be better for the businesses that operate there.

 

By eliminating the components and replacing them with a percentage of stock we give people more realistic deliveries, more fun and we encourage roleplay. We set safeguards in place for when shit goes south and there are no businesses open, we also avoid rushing deliveries and truck pileups at different businesses because Fukaru Automotive is paying $400 per crate and they have a beautiful stretch of road to speed down to get there quickly and earn that sweet moolah.

 

My final ideas to make the system realistic...

Semi-only zones and van-only zones. Or businesses. Whichever will work better. Point is to not have Pounders take up entire streets in the middle of the city. Bensons and Pounders are kings of the highways, designed to haul ass across states because that is what makes them profitable. Speedos and Mules on the other hand are better for the city due to their smaller size and better maneuverability. The city government can regulate this, or the script can regulate this. Mechanic garages will most certainly be getting a lot of bulky stuff brought in by Pounders and Bensons. 24/7s will probably get Mules and Speedos with their cargo because everything is more tightly packed together into boxes for the most part. You get the idea. Each vehicle will have it's purpose on the map for a different business, scenario or need depending on how much % the owner wishes to have filled up. To keep people doing the job I suggest that a van doesn't automatically refill 100% stock for a 24/7 that's running on 10% stock for example. We still need to provide truckers with things to do, but the rate at which deliveries occur currently is really unrealistic and causes pile-ups and other weird scenarios.

The point of this last part is not to ban or discourage people from using certain vehicles, it's to provide more realism to a city and to provide ALL THE TRUCKS with a meaningful purpose for each and every business we have on the server.

 

Since mechanic garages for example are constantly busy when they're open, one Pounder delivery, maybe two is going to cut it for them. They have ten customers in the parking lot, they need to serve them and they need space for their vehicles. 24/7s have more space around them, they have parking lots which can easily fit a Mule or a van for a delivery whilst a Pounder will take up the entire entrance, two streets and piss people off. Realistically will be fined and yelled at by Karens too.


Paycheck-wise, I think that considering the fact that Pounders and Bensons will have a harder time and more mileage to cover, we should up their paychecks compared to people who will drive Speedos and Mules. I'm not including the Boxville on this list because nobody wants to drive a Boxville, it's a piece of shit. But let's say for example van drivers will get $4000 hourly, Bensons and Pounders will get $4500. That's the start and we observe the change take place. If we have an oversaturation in a certain vehicle class, we adjust it to be even, lower et cetera. I know that some people are braindead on this server and will splurge money on a Benson or Pounder for that extra $500 an hour so I'm fully aware that setting the paycheck to a strict, crispy $4000 an hour could be the ultimate solution for everyone.

Besides, trucking companies exist. You can join one and literally pick what you want to drive depending on if you're feeling like going out into the county or if you wanna go skrt skrt around Los Santos in a van.

Jobs themselves wise, we can have a system that allows a business owner to directly ask a company or trucker to do a job. This will once again promote actual roleplay and creating connections. If the delivery isn't urgent or you lack contacts then /startshipment will still be there to offer you as a business owner or trucker to get work done.

All the percentages, prices and other variables in this thread have been made up for the purpose of giving an example of how this could work. Do not quote me on any of these numbers to stir up a shitstorm.

Finally, the cherry on the cake. By getting large refills of cargo every time you open or request it while you're online - this goes back to eliminating the idiocy of the component system. You will no longer need components for survival, a trucker will have your back the moment you need your stuff delivered and you will hopefully have a successful few openings for the next few days right away.


Overall please keep this civil and give me constructive feedback. We need to do something about this so if I've overlooked or skipped something, point it out and say why. The goal of this thread is to kick your brains into fifth gear and come up with a solution so that we can perhaps work together on a megathread in Game Suggestions to find the ultimate, balanced fix. Since there aren't a lot of truckers out and about right now, I think that this system is going to be decent. The need to roleplay deliveries and make contacts will also make sure that players do not rush delivery after delivery and that will in turn allow everyone to do something as a trucker, even with many online.

Edited by hentai!
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  • alina2137 changed the title to Trucking and businesses overhaul idea think tank.

I agree to half your suggestions. I think the hourly paychecks should a bonus and linked to the /startshipment system just like /startshift. Rp accordingly . Sadly i am not at home there i cannot type a lot. Please note you said about companies paying gets on the top yes that is the case sometimes but not all. Because yesterday i had a client i went to serve there order was hard to find. This is because the UI has to be overhauled and filters is needed.

 

Encouraging more people to be independent will cause issues in regards drop outs from companies. I am okay for independent truckers the problem is you will get maniacs on the roads. Most truckers in companies are self regulated and even enforced by ports to keep them in line in regards to driving. 

 

Third i agreee that the license system it should be overhauled. I think we should have a CDL license system in place that encourages rp than just to get 600 deliveries for a pounder to be unlocked.

 

Fourth i think we should double the crates carry on both pounder and benson. Pounder 40 crates and Benson 30 crates. Because it is ridiculous that i have to deliver for an hour just so I can delivery 200 crates to a business. 400 crates is better as trucking convoys can easily cover it. 

 

Please note your semi only and van only is little bit confusing. Please note some business are impossible to deliver crates via pounders. Because the placement is impossible to drive or park. Already pounder drivers have avoided certain businesses due to this reason so placing this restriction is a bit confusing for me unless it is to alert new drivers. Unless you are talking about semi trucks which still script wise it cannot truck yet. 

 

The rest sounds good to me. I will have another look at this when i get home. 

 

 

Edited by Jam888
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I'd love to see some (major, significant) change but I think that it's pointless to make topics like this one. Suggestions, discussions, debates. All of it.

 

You might be making them in good faith, but nothing will come out of it. We have thousands of posts on this very issue and no one took a few minutes over the last few years to acknowledge this issue and somehow respond.

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4 minutes ago, Mahitto said:

I'd love to see some (major, significant) change but I think that it's pointless to make topics like this one. Suggestions, discussions, debates. All of it.

 

You might be making them in good faith, but nothing will come out of it. We have thousands of posts on this very issue and no one took a few minutes over the last few years to acknowledge this issue and somehow respond.

That is so true. I liked the suggestion proposed some time ago about CDL licensing and how to overhaul the grind system but sadly that was in lost time.

Edited by Jam888
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