Hello BeamNG Community! I just thought of something interesting (my apologies if there is a thread on this already). As the tittle suggests, electrical gremlins could be a part of the damage mechanic of the game considering how simulator like the game is already. These electrical gremlins could include dashboard malfunctions, starter motor issues, etc. These electrical gremlins could also start happening as the car starts to become damaged and/or drive through water or any other terrain that could incite these effects. These "gremlins" don't even have to be limited to just electrical as well. There could also be more engine issues as well such as fuel pump error. One thing that could also be implemented along with these features is a way to fix it such as a UI tool or even, as the game starts to have player controlled characters, something the player has to do with his/her character. Just spit balling here. Lemme know what ya'll think!
The idea is reasonably interesting, but having wear is not needed since cars are simply too reliable in real life to be brought to a game realistically. Only way to have fuel pump issues(or other similar malfunctions) is to accelerate the wear massively, otherwise you would have to drive a single car for tens of thousands miles before having any issues. If instead of having wear you might want to buy and fix issues with beater cars, then having such issues would seem reasonable. But, does Beam have to take over Car mechanic simulator as well as all other driving sims, including racing, rallying, trucking and off-roading? Lines must be drawn somewhere The most logical electrical issue to have would be with water then. And even then it would probably just short out everything, rendering the car stranded and undrivable? Player controlled characters unfortunately will not happen as far as I can see, best I dare to hope for would be a "walking camera" to just view cars from a standing viewpoint. As for electrics, one thing I do look foward to is battery simulation, but to my knowledge that is not confirmed to happen
@roland91 I see where you are coming from. That is very true that you need to drive many a mile just to even start thinking parts like that will fail due to the insane reliability of cars. I also agree with your viewpoint with regards to the beater cars including the fact that BeamNG might overstep it's boundaries but, in addition, BeamNG has become so much of a simulator type game showing faults such as high coolant temperature, connecting rod failure, broken piston rings, blown gasket, etc. I would think that these "gremlins" would add to that simulator feel. Maybe instead of the parts breaking on their own, maybe a UI application can be made that can simulate it via selecting what can go wrong such as fuel pump failure, misfire, electrical gremlins, etc (kinda taking inspiration from XPlane where you can select what parts will fail at a random time or fail period). This could also be implemented into the parts selector (CTRL+W). @fufsgfen Hehe I see where you're going with that one XD. Nice one.
Probably has to be a mod, but certainly such mod could be nice for us who like realism to go extra step further, transmission and drivetrain damage added to that, would make a ultimate realism mod, sadly I'm not enough skilled to make such mod. There was one rather fresh Alfa Romeo, which had pair of wires running under the carpet, ends were just wrapped together, factory installation. Not even tape put there, so vibration had made wires cut trough paint of floor and of course caused little gremlins that were so wonderfully easy to locate, when they did come. Modern ones might be fine, but there has been certain quality related aspect that did made quite strong reputation to Italian cars and electrical gremlins preferring same space and time.
The only way i see this working is if we have persistent wear. And hence would work best if you owned cars. For example if you ragged around an H series van with a small radiator leak, then it would stay like that until you repair it.
I could see it as a really nice feature if we ever end up being able to buy used cars in the career mode... sorta like the random mechanical failures that someone else mentioned forever ago. Like for instance... if you buy a new car... 99.9% of the time you will have no issues, so there is no reason to need this feature... but if you buy a used car (story of my life here) then more than likely something stupid doesn't work. 2 great examples... My 81 K10 truck (before I tore it apart to rebuild it) had a weird glitch with the turn signals that, whenever I would turn on the left turn signal the right would come on, when I would turn the right one one all 4 came on, and if you turned on the 4 ways the high beams would flash... wat Another good one, my Subaru has something like 270,000 miles on it, and whenever you try to put on the 4 ways, there is am immensely loud buzzing noise that comes up from behind the dashboard and the 4 ways don't actually decide to work. That and sometimes the parking lights decide they want to be on all the time so I turn the car off and take out the key and all the lights stay on... the only way I have managed to fix is so far is driving down a bumpy road at high speed If we could buy used cars this would make the game all the much more interesting, but if we will only ever end up with used cars, there isn't much of a point.
The idea is quite good & I could see it being implemented in BeamNG, but it probably would make more sense to have it in 2nd hand or beater cars like the Beater Covet, Barstow "The Terrible" etc.
