Let's Talk About Police Pursuits in BeamNG.Drive

Somehow I missed Gull being hired by the dev team. (Congrats @Gamergull!) So is an interesting post. I am also someone who enjoys fictional police forces in games Cough* Doj Gta v cough* So these are some good ideas. I think (like you said) we should get more push bars, specifically a wrap around police bar like alex's PIT bar ( https://beamng.com/resources/sunburst-police-high-speed-unit-pit-edition.5535/). Your ideas shouldn't be to hard to execute by some one who knows what they are doing. Some AI work and fancy UIs and cut-scenes. The only thing is it would have to have the police cars already in the game, not spawned new if you want to avoid a lag spike, unless the team somehow work around that. I agree and like all your other ideas. I like the idea of a busted scene that then shows your most likely wrecked car on an impound truck or something. As for the high speed crash and die scenario you could have like a "respawn" at a hospital, GTA status. Hopefully, if not a rudimentary official version, maybe a modder could come in and do some of this when career mode rolls around.​

 

Police cars would be pre-spawned much like how the Traffic Tool handles it.

 

If we want to get to the military police level stuff, a big truck would be helpful. I've suggested a 5 ton truck sorta vehicle for awhile now, and it could be useful for a max level chase, and just useful in general in career mode. Such a truck would be the first off road capable cargo hauler, a new hammer in the players toolbox of destruction, a catalyst for interesting story elements, and a dangerous opponent in chases.

 

Hold your horses people. This is supposed to be relatively realistic. Have you ever heard of the military involving themselves in police pursuits? I haven't.

Also, it's illegal in the US for the military to act in a law enforcement capacity during peacetime (with few exceptions).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
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Anyone else have any feedback or suggestions?

 

A SWAT team would need a large truck, and they could certainly be called in for some situations

JRI has old military instalations, so an old military truck wouldn't be out of place

Martial law situation or some sorta hollywood film scene (we do have the hollywood filming building in WCUSA)

General government transport/other emergency services/chase which involves non-police party

Etc...

A big truck in some situations would be fine

 

Maybe in missions the military or SWAT could show up, but likely not in normal gameplay.

I have seen videos of SWAT joining in police pursuits, for example in Fort Worth, however events like these are few and far between, and are usually because the suspect is wanted for a violent felony.

 

The most likely in game scenarios I can think of that are actually reasonable in carrer mode are a serious crime in WCUSA (like a high stakes robery or something) and Marvin Heemeyer's Killdozer. Imagine a giant armored T-Series (basically the ram plow config) making a mess of the town, local PD doesn't have anything big enough to stop it and calls in special units. (The IRL Killdozer got stuck before special units arived, but you get the idea).

 

IIRC, they were about to send in an Apache.

However, special units would make sense in missions only rather than free roam. One thing to note is that we do not have a platform for any special unit however.

EDIT: They were planning to use an Apache, not a Cobra. Shawn Nelson's tank rampage was the one that was planned to be ended by a Cobra.

 

another thing to mention, is the possibility of more vintage/period correct police cars, as we have the AB carabineri, the burnside cop car, and the moonhawk detective special.

 

I-Series and '98 Pessima police cars would be great

 

Wow, this is quite a post and I love it. Great points all around.

I'd like to contribute by adding more offenses where police can stop you if they see you doing them:

• Running red lights.
• Driving on the footpath.
• Driving in the wrong direction.
• Performing stunts (burnouts, wheelies, drifting, etc.).
  
• Hitting infrastructure (street lights, postboxes, bins, etc.).
• Remaining stationary in traffic for a long time*
  
• Speeding over a small amount*

*Unless at a red light or legally parked on the side of the road, cops won't pursue you.

*Unless at a speed trap, traffic patrol cops won't pursue you if you go over say 10km/h or 5mph over the speed limit because realistically, most cops won't know or care if you go a little bit above the speed limit. This is a problem I had with Mafia 1: The City of Lost Heaven which had implemented speed limits. However the problem was that if you go a tiny bit above it, the cops will instantly chase you which can be annoying and a bit unrealistic.

Patrol cops should rarely spawn in traffic, as in real life and in several games like GTA 5. In other games like GTA 4 however, I found that there were way too many cops cars patrolling in traffic.

This is probably addressed already but I can't find it in your post so I'll stay this. Although pursuit cops will be aggressive, they should not go full on kamikaze on you. A very common problem in alot of games featuring police pursuits is that cop cars will wreck and technically kill themselves in the process to stop you.

 

One more thing, thought it might be difficult to code, would be smart searching. So, say you get the drop on a lonely patrol unit and manage to escape. Now, do you gun it out of there as fast as possible, try to hide immediately, or backtrack on yourself to confuse them? If you keep going in the same direction... they've already seen you going in that direction, so will probably bias their search in that direction. If you immediately go to ground, you risk getting caught by a basic sanity check (in real life, most people who know they've had a close brush with a cop will take the first right turn they come across, so cops will check it). If you try to backtrack, you're probably clear if you get through, but you may get spotted in the attempt by backup coming from behind and the sides.

It would probably be even harder to code, but this could be integrated with the radio chatter by having police announce their locations, either explicitly to each other or unintentionally by talking about what they're doing, so you can piece together which roads are being patrolled and which aren't, and use that information to formulate your exit strategy.

 

First, congrats to gamergull for being hired by Beamng GMBH, second, this sounds extremely realistic. Also, quite time-consuming.

 

So basically traffic with Eras like Driver Parallel Lines? Like 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's, 10's eras with period accurate traffic?

First, if a cop sees you committing a driving offense, they will pursue you. I had a friend blow by a police car at 50 over while the police car was driving the other way, and it simply flipped around and chased his ass down.

Most of the time, the police do give a window of forgiveness for speeding, but not all the time, especially if they have quotas to meet. My grandfather got busted by FHP for doing 56 in a 55.

GTA IV had cops everywhere because it was emulating the NYPD's tactics of saturation patrol. In NYC, there are cop cars everywhere, just like in GTA IV. Also, in the original post, police cars are going to be much rarer than normal traffic.

I'm gonna link this video again to demonstrate that police can be extremely aggressive without destroying their cars and killing themselves.

In regards to the traffic offense thing, yes they should act on those offenses, but those would be much harder to program.

Smart searching would be interesting, could have a system of waypoints or something to set up a "Possibility tree" to find the player's location.

The police would definitely announce their locations over the radio.

 

Speaking of the NYPD, as an NYC resident I would love to see this as an undercover PD car.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.au...neaky-nypd-cop-car-disguised-as-a-yellow-cab/

 

This is evil in its truest form.

 

Unmarked cars could be interesting, given that traffic always spawns a civilian model of the same car, and both the unmarked and civilian cars have random colors.