Really i like your ideas.
7) Manual vs Automatic
- Manual car gets a skill roll during acceleration for a speed boost when changing gears. Low skill drivers can fail to shift and lose speed, or even damage the car.
Isn't that like driving skill level one? i mean theres nothing hard about it once to get used to it.
As somebody who failed all his driving exams due to gear shifting, I can tell you that you're absolutely wrong about this.
It's more complex than that. I drive - and always have driven - a manual-transmission vehicle, and I think of gear shifts as easy, but for someone who's learned on a different car it can be significantly harder. I don't even necessarily mean someone who learned on an automatic trying to drive a manual (although that's probably the most extreme case); even a manual-transmission driver who's still getting used to a new car can have trouble (gear ratios are different, so you have to change at different times, not to mention that neither the number of gears nor how they're laid out is variable. Admittedly the most common layout variation is the positioning of reverse, which is hardly relevant to LCS, but still...).
The thing is, though, that a) someone who's learned on an automatic transmission has the RL equivalent of a hefty penalty when they try to drive a manual, b) being able to drive one manual proficiently doesn't necessarily mean you don't have to spend time getting used to another, and c) both of these effects would require fragmenting the driving stat - not just the rolls, but the actual
stat - as well as keeping track of more things
or handwaving away that driving an automatic for a long time makes you able to pick up a manual flawlessly on your first go. The way the game is at the moment, we don't care about the transmission, so we effectively get the suspension of disbelief on that for free.
ETA: and yes, this post changed who it was addressed to partway through. So send a squad of
Liberals to raid my house.
