Rust Community Discord Said I Should Post All My Suggestions Here

[Alphamoonman]

Basically I have all these ideas as to what Rust's Roadmap entails in terms of certain things.

I'll be covering things like:

Vehicles
Prototype weapons
Item amounts & weight & crafting minigames
How after all these electrical implementations, electricity still isn't crossed out
The experimented-with open looting system getting rid of boxes and barrels
Radios & telephones
Multiple islands
RustNet
New spawn options
(Also a certain gripe I must share that requires a deep change sooner or later)

Firstly, Vehicles

Balloons have been added, motorboats & the RHIB have sailed in, and the minicopter has finally touched down. The other conceptualized additions to be added in are cars, carts, and animals. I have a feeling we won't see cars or carts until ride-able animals gallop on into the features roster or until the inventory system goes for a weight system instead of a slot-amount system. That's where the viability of something such as a cart or car would come around, and giving to life the idea of something such as adding slung over holding bags to mules or horses or even boars.

I've heard the devs want to add some sort of rocket weapon to the minicopter to fire. This gave me the mind to consider mountings/attachments/addons to the vehicles we have and will have. I imagine cars would be just as barebones and fuel-guzzling as the minicopter is, with no cover or concealment to speak of in order to be an efficient form of transport, but you would be able to add on some form of vitality or upgrade to individual parts of a vehicle (a copter's rotor engine, fuel tank, or health, or give a car some armor to block shots to the driver). This would especially make the balloon viable again (since its nerf that effectively quartered its earlier height ceiling) by letting have, say, the basket have more cover surrounding its occupants but slow its maneuverability by some, or give the burner an upgrade so it lifts faster and higher. Or maybe even let it have a bomb hatch or a rope holding a bomb to let loose on people below.

Prototype Weapons

Machine pistols, revolver rifles, double-action double-barrels, shotgun pistols (better reload and accuracy than eoka), belt-fed revolvers, slug snipers, the list goes on. My first idea with this was just the customization someone can have with this system. My second idea was a counterbalance to this. The counterbalance would be that weapons that are made with parts that technically aren't supposed to go together (e.g. triggers, stocks, barrels, muzzles, and grips made for certain guns going with parts for a different gun) or parts for a different gun type (such as pistol grips mingling with shotgun bodies, or shotgun stocks on SMG bodies) would have lower maximum durability (break faster than normal guns) or could break if crafted bad in the crafting minigames that come around in the item crafting update. This could also extend to different types of melee weapons and bows. Maybe a compound bow with binos or a scope taped/tied on the sight. Additionally with custom guns, if a person doesn't know how to craft that specific weapon (knowing how to if he made one just like it or that one) then if they try to repair, it will permanently damage it worse than if they knew how to make it before.

Item amounts & weight & crafting minigames

I found it unrealistic someone could manage to hold as much stone in their inventory as Rust allows right now, and it seems the Facepunch team thinks so, too. At some point they plan to make the cost of certain crafts more realistic as well as to no longer restrict one's inventory space by slots and instead make your speed and encumbrance based on the weight of all you're carrying, as well as giving backpacks to assist in carrying all that. Thus an extended and more elaborate component system (with things such as more realistic craft requirements and weapon customizability) along with the open looting system looking to be added sometime soonish will be a favored and more appreciable slice-of-life change.

Crafting minigames are said to make crafting more involved, fun, and shorter if you do them well. Just as with the woodcutting and node mining minigames where you have to orient your tool to the weak point to gather the resource faster, we'll likely see faster craft times as our reward, and maybe durability boosts for weapons/tools/armor and better gathering rates for tools.

How after all of these electrical implementations, electricity still isn't crossed out

When the developers implement everything they want (this excludes changes to the feature in general) they cross it off the Roadmap. However, with electricity, they continue to add things in without crossing it off. Even after the implementation of the new player-detector, wireless RF transmitter, receiver, pager, and broadcaster, it's still left uncrossed which means there's only more to come. This has left me to believe there might be connection with this and the other 2 concepts: RustNet & Radios & telephones. CCTV camera sharing and of course radio frequencies. Roleplayer music radio stations, anyone?

The experimented-with open looting system getting rid of boxes and barrels

This has been a long in-development experimentation that is currently trying to get recognizable models for everything that doesn't have a model yet and instead of finding two barrels and a bit of vague scrap material in a large box crate essentially as big as you in height and if you outstretched your arms, or finding random junk like tarps or metal blades inside rusted old metal barrels designed for only liquids to fit through the small nozzle (as is what a barrel is made for). The idea is that instead of containers for everything such as the plastic green open crates with food and drink models inside, laid around shelves in constant spawn spots, you'd find the individual items you'd normally find them either strewn about the floor or on shelves on desks or whatever else seems more realistic.

Radios & telephones

"Allow long distance voice communication ingame."

This seems rather useless, especially since Discord already exists, but I suppose communication between people long distance who don't want to team up but just settle their differences.... Who the hell am I kidding. This is Rust! This seems silly. BUT, there is a subconcept for this called "Recorded Messages". If anything this will probably just be a more expensive but also more interesting version of the note, giving more leverage to communicating to someone when they're not there (A.K.A. offline). Although there could be a possible addition of "Morse Code Events" which could use Morse code to people who have radios made for receiving certain frequencies or whatever, where Morse code events play on the radio describing secret stashes of good loot or treasure hunts.

Multiple Islands

The idea here is to test out traveling from "landmass" to "landmass". Landmass meaning that island Rust takes place on; either randomly generated or a specific map such as Hapis. You'd boat out a certain direction from the island and soon enough find a new island on your horizon. This could possibly connect multiple servers together or extend a server's map extensively. The endgame could extend multiple islands. For right now this seems out of the question since much of Rust's lore is centered on one island and only one island. This may change with Lore updates. Currently my imagination sees the opportunity to give an island to the primitive part of Rust and an island to the more hardcore aspects of Rust as things get more endgame. An island for "low levels" and an island for "high levels", not to add in experience or leveling or anything like that.

RustNet

RustNet is supposed to be some sort of "internet" for the islandgoes with access to some sort of computer which doesn't make sense with the electricity system currently in place. Right now subconcepts of this are as follows:

Bounties. Some sort of bounty system to hire anonymously (on both sides) a killer to take someone down somehow, or "obliterating them from the server"

Remote Device Access. Access CCTV's located in radtowns or your own base, and even allow CCTV access of your base for a price. Maaayyyybe a possibility. I see potential in this idea.

Jobs. Basically Craigslist for Rust. How do you know the person who made the listing isn't crossing their fingers behind that text? That's what I want to know.

E-mail. This would probably only be used to message people offline that you aren't in direct contact with outside of the Rust server. I don't see this as a possible implementation.

In general, computers would likely only be seen in safezone monuments such as (less likely) the Bandit Camp or (more likely) the Outpost. And for a price, too, probably.

New Spawn Options

The decision being made is whether or not this would be a barge circling around the island on the water where players could hop off and swim to shore when they want or selecting specific spawn locations in static areas such as near a lighthouse, which is always nearby the edge of the island opposite of the endgame side. I see this as a very likely and excellent addition to Rust, seeing as you can spawn in sleeping bags that are yours all across the map without an issue. This would make meetups between friends much easier when trying to find each-other.

Now to my one true gripe to Facepunch's recent decision.

Before the minicopter was introduced to Rust, the hot air balloon was able to rise much higher in the air than it does right now. As of after, its height ceiling has been seriously reduced (basically quartered). The speeds it used to be able to go is long gone and the cover it had against guns by staying up high enough is also nullified. Understandably it did go pretty high but the nerf it received is just too cruel. The balloon's only upside against its alternative, the minicopter, is that it can carry easily more than two people. Up to six, in fact. I'd also say that it has better fuel economy, but honestly how hard is it to get around a hundred or more low-grade?

Currently how the hot air balloon flies is that its height ceiling is based on the elevation of the ground straight below it. Some certain balloons will also consistently make you fall out of them randomly, and this only happens with certain balloons, which means others are safe to occupate in for as long as they exist. Erratic elevations can cause trajectory errors due to rapid movement speed changes when trying to accurately land, trying to pass over mountains is like trying to cut steak with the flat side of the knife, and if you fly past a cliff where an extreme change in terrain elevation happens (such as those really rocky tower-tall cliffs) the balloon will be forced down a notch which can essentially cause your balloon to make a hard U-turn with your only solution to turn off the burner. Yeah, no fun. Not anymore.

Now I didn't complain without considering a solution fix for the balloon. I've already got that covered. I feel that there should be random gusts or wind direction changes that affect where your balloon goes. Of course elevation still affects direction, but is also equally, if not more, affected by terrain. See, in real life, if the land is flat for a long time (such as with the ocean or Texas or (semi) flat land for long stretches, wind can go unhampered in one direction. Similarly, mountains all over affect how wind crosses with itself, causing it to go certain directions, and even make upwards or downwards spiraling drafts. Birds in the wild use these spiral drafts to easily glide higher into the air without having to flap their wings (hangliders use this strategy as well!) to reach the strong winds of the jetstream which generally also has its own wind currents.

In effect, what I am trying to say is that a map's geography and biomes (and not just the elevation but not excluding it either) should affect how a balloon is capable of moving. This would make piloting one of these things more intuitive, as well as make them viable again.

Best regards, Facepunch.

-Alphamoonman