In Unturned 3, there are only a select few vehicles with a significant storage space, such as the train, cargo truck and, including curated content, the Belgian Skyland plane. However, even these vehicles have a ludicrously low carrying capacity compared with the player, as I will show below.
The Skyland plane is based off of the AC-130, a transport/gunship primarily used by the United States Military. In real life, it can carry 42,000 pounds, or around 19,000 kilograms. Even if we decrease this by an order of magnitude to account for differences in the in-game model’s size, we still get a plane that can lift 4,200 pounds. What is the trunk storage space? 10 by 10.
Now at first, this sounds like a lot, but only because one wants to compare it to other vehicles. A full military gear player has an inventory space of 121 slots, plus the primary and secondary slots. So why is it that a single player can carry more than a massive gunship? I understand that realism for the sake of realism can be bad, but this is just plain silly.
To look at another example, let’s look at the cargo train. It has the second largest storage in the game, at 8 by 7 slots, as much as…an alicepack. A goddamn freight train can be beaten in capacity by a player with a parka, jeans and almost any vest. Or a naked guy with a backpack. let that sink in.
Now, I would like to address the elephant in the room: Mobile bases. “What’s the point,” you may be thinking, “In having a bunch of trunk storage if you can just place lockers all over the car?” Well, dear reader, prepare for a rant.
See, I despise the mobile items system more than anything else in 3.0. I hate it more than people who kill naked players. I hate it more than mic-spamming cringe kids. I even hate it more than 20x loot /tpa /vault /kit /maxskills servers with 26 players crammed into PEI. Why? Because I can avoid those things by playing carefully, while mobile bases are absolutely inescapable. It seems that every time I get immersed on a server, I see a guy fly overhead with a sandpiper with 10 wardrobes on its wings, or a golf cart so covered by plates that it looks like a hedgehog and can’t even fit through a military checkpoint. If I want to actually store stuff on singleplayer, I have to either edit every trunk size in the code, or put wardrobes on everything. It just doesn’t work for me, at all. And yes, there is an argument to be made that they are balanced. However, “Balanced” does not mean good. If Nelson decided to add a “Balanced” magical tome with Maplestrike stats, it wouldn’t be good. This is Unturned, not War Robots.
Mobile bases are another topic for another day, but the bottom line is that they don’t work in 3.0, and have no place in a realistic game such as 4.0. Of course, I would love to have vehicle customization, but I would prefer to have it handled like Mad Max, with interchangeable engines, addons and mountable guns. I’m all for adding plates and storage, but there should be a weight limit at the very least.
Basically, I want to see this,
Not this.
Okay, my rant about mobile bases is over. In 4.0, I would suggest that trunk size be much larger and more modular. The car in the demo is a great example, with (I think it was Nelson) mentioning that you may be able to use the back seats as storage for items, not players.
I have a number of ideas for balancing storage.
-Most simply, we could increase the storage capacity of vehicles. I would also enjoy seeing either item size or inventory size reworked, and I think that players by themselves should be able to carry less items in general. (Come on, carrying 14 assault rifles around and being able to sprint is just plain ridiculous). A car should at be able to carry at least as much as a decently geared player; A cargo truck, double.
-Also, if we have a weight system added in 4.0, then vehicles could have a very high weight capacity. Even though metal bars may not take up much space, they are certainly very heavy. Being able to carry 100 metal bars and jump around reminds of Minecraft, the difference being that Minecraft is not a supposed to possess realistic survival mechanics. I love the idea of being able to dash in and grab some cloth or snacks, but needing a vehicle to effectively loot machinery, metal scraps or large amounts of items.
-Finally, @GreatHeroJ had an amazing idea and made a post about sectionalized clothing (Link at bottom, check it out, seriously.) You obviously can’t carry a generator in your pants, so perhaps some items could simply be too large to fit into conventional clothing. They could be picked up and “Held”, but not put in to the inventory, then be “Loaded” into vehicle trunks, which would have no compartments similar to 3.0. If this is too complicated, large items could be simply impractical to carry with compartments, as packs would have at most one or two slots large enough to fit the item. I certainly hope that, if there are very large items (Think industrial generator) they take up more than 3 by 5 slots. Honestly, the only reason for that size limit in 3.0 is that you’re supposed to be carry any item without a pack, but this just isn’t the case in real life. A naked guy can’t carry a car-sized generator and swing a knife without dropping either, and, no matter what your opinion is on storage, I’m sure we can agree that it sounds ridiculous when you actually say it out loud.
I feel that some combination of these three would make vehicles far more viable as a storage method in 4.0. The fact is that, as of now, vehicles are very useful for transportation, but the trunk storage is always an afterthought. When I find a car, I get excited that I can move quickly, not that I can fit the equivalent of what I can in my pants in the trunk. Unfortunately, if I simply need to loot a nearby location right now, even something with as high a capacity as a cargo truck will only increase my storage by 25%. When players only use vehicles for transportation, it defeats half the point of said vehicle. Ideally, it should be able to carry more than the player, not less. Otherwise, 4.0 will be filled with players running around with a dozen generators in their backpacks, while they struggle to fit a couple of shirts into their cars. It hurts immersion, it makes no sense and it makes vehicles much less important. And in a game intended to be more realistic, that could cause great harm indeed.
Whew, that was a mouthful. I’m trying to improve the formatting in my posts, so sorry about the text wall. This was more of a stream of consciousness kind of thing, and if it sounded like I’m hating on 3.0, I’m not. I love the game, but I want to love 4.0 even more, and so I get somewhat passionate when I write.
Link for the clothing post:
Cheers!
