RLS Vehicle Theft Addon 0.9.4

This release adds undercover police buyers, makes heat matter on the street as well as at the sale, rebalances the chop shop and closes several loopholes and bugs found in a review of the gameplay flow. Saves from 0.8.x load without any action; see Upgrading below.

Added

• Undercover buyers. Some underground buyers are undercover police: 2% of offers for a Cold car, 3% for a Warm one and 4% for a Hot one. They pose as any buyer type and are never marked in the app.
  • Tells: their offer is 5–10% better than usual, and in a negotiation they lose patience at half the normal rate.
  • Accepting their offer, directly or at the end of a negotiation, springs a sting instead of a sale. Nothing is paid and the listing is removed. The car stays yours, but the police now know its new plate and the colour the buyer saw, so it is a freshly reported, Hot car again. Selling it needs another identity change (the plate comes from a new series: GX, then GY, GZ, GW) and another repaint.
  • If you are driving when the sting springs, unmarked units start a pursuit at once. If you are on foot, the chase starts the next time you drive any vehicle within 10 minutes; after that the operation loses track of you.
  • Lose the pursuit: the operation ends, you earn 15 XP and it counts towards Ghost Driver. Get arrested: the stung car is seized and its theft fine is charged, on top of RLS's own arrest fine.
  • While the operation runs, the garage computer refuses both the identity change and Strip for parts for that car, so it cannot be stripped to escape the sting.
  • The Underground app shows the sting result, whether units are looking for you or chasing you, and how long the operation has left.

Changed: heat and police

• Heat now affects the police, not only the price. A reported car is spotted by a patrol within about 160 m while Hot, 100 m while Warm and 60 m once Cold. Before, every patrol within 160 m reacted whatever the heat, so a car shown as Cold in the app was exactly as easy to spot.
• A Cold report halves the chance that a patrol recognizes the original paint under a new plate (30% → 15% at the base rate).
• When a patrol recognizes the original paint of a car with a new plate, the car is now Hot again, as the notification already said. Before, the new plate kept it at Warm. Hot offers and the buyers' Hot messages can now actually occur in a sale.
• The heat descriptions in the app explain what each stage means for patrols.

Changed: economy and progression

• Strip for parts now pays by heat: 26% of the car's value when Cold, 23% when Warm and 20% when Hot (was a flat 34%). The flat rate paid as much as or more than an average Underground sale after the identity fee, with no risk, and stripping a car straight away skipped the heat system. Vehicle Theft value perks still raise it by up to 15%.
• The XP for taking a car, and the Car Thief, Carjacker and Clean Hands milestones, are now counted when the car is stored in your garage. Taking a car and walking away from it no longer earns XP or milestone money. The XP amounts are unchanged.
• Leaving a test-drive car behind no longer avoids the dealership's investigation: it ends in a fine, as it does after a sale or a chop.

Changed: selling and workshops

• Buyers only meet a parked car. An Underground sale is refused while you are driving the car or while police are chasing it, so a sale can no longer make a car vanish in the middle of a pursuit. The app explains why and disables Accept. If a buyer agrees to your price in a negotiation while the handover is blocked, the deal waits until you can take it.
• Driving a car out of the garage during the identity change now stops the work and refunds the fee, the same rule as Strip for parts. Both jobs are interrupted only when the car actually leaves the garage, not when you just get in.

Changed: timers

• All timers (report delays, heat, workshop and chop jobs, offers, test-drive bans and investigations) now run on play time instead of the computer clock. They keep running while the game is paused or the phone is open, but no longer advance while the game is closed.

Fixed

• Taking a car from its driver (a traffic car flagged down while driving) put you in the passenger seat, where the car cannot be driven. BeamNG keeps the traffic driver as a seat occupant after the car leaves traffic, so the driver's seat looked taken. That occupant is now removed and you are seated as the driver. Dealership cars use the same seating.
• A stolen car was never stored automatically while you sat in it, still, inside the garage if you already had another open case. Another case reset the countdown every second. Getting out or pressing the key still worked.
• Canceling the ignition bypass, or closing its screen, after a miss reset the misses and skipped the 8-second wait, so a miss could be undone for free. A started attempt that is canceled now counts like a failed one: the wait applies and the tripped alarm carries over to the next attempt on that car.
• Closing the ignition bypass screen some other way than Cancel left a flagged-down traffic car stopped in the road with its parking brake on.
• When RLS could not assign a garage slot while storing a car, the car was seized and the full theft fine was charged. The car now stays in your inventory and the case stays open.
• A stolen car that left your inventory outside the mod (not through the Underground app, the chop shop or a seizure) was fined without any message. You are now told what happened.
• The Underground app showed a fixed 20% raid chance and fixed 54/58/61% value rates. It now shows the values with your perks and open cases applied, and also warns about the raid risk on a listed car.
• The app's step text for an unstored car said to get out of it; it now says to stop inside the garage, and that the theft XP is paid on storage.

Upgrading from 0.8.x

• Remove rls_vehicle_theft_0.8.1.zip (or any older version) from your mods folder before adding 0.9.0.
• Existing cases, offers and timers continue where they were; the play-time clock starts from the moment you load the save.

Added

• Three-stage vehicle heat: Hot for 2 minutes at 54% value, Warm for 4 more minutes at 58%, then Cold at 61%. Existing Vehicle Theft value perks apply to every stage.
• Heat status, time to cool, value impact and risk guidance in the Underground app. Buyer messages explain Hot and Warm discounts.
• An Underground app Settings page to rebind the take/store action. Keyboard keys, middle/side mouse buttons and controller buttons can be assigned; Ctrl + Shift + J remains the default. BeamNG stores custom bindings in the user's input settings.
• The Settings page is a gear icon in the Underground header, and the heat explanation (stage, value rates, risk) is a tooltip on the heat badge and its cooldown timer instead of a separate text block.
• A stolen car is stored automatically once it is parked, still, inside a garage you own. Getting out inside the garage stores it too.

Changed

• Police report delays remain independent from heat cooldowns. A patrol sighting that starts a pursuit or recognizes the original paint refreshes heat.
• Changing the plate caps heat at Warm while the original paint remains; changing both plate and paint makes the vehicle Cold.
• The take/store action is ignored while the Underground app is open, so its controls cannot trigger it accidentally.

Fixed

• The "press Ctrl+Shift+J to store it" notifications named the default key even after it was rebound. They now show your current binding.

Requires BeamNG.drive 0.40.5 and RLS Career Overhaul 2.8.0 Hotfix. Install: remove any earlier rls_vehicle_theft_*.zip from your mods folder, put this ZIP there unpacked, enable it and restart. Existing profiles migrate automatically.

Added

• Several stolen cars at once. 2 open cases, 3 from Vehicle Theft level 10 and 4 from level 25. Each extra case shortens the report time of the next theft and raises recognition and raid chances.
• Ditch a stolen car. Walk about 120 m away from an unstored car with no police on you and it is left behind, with no theft fine.
• Strip for parts. A stored car can be sold to a chop shop at the garage computer in 90 seconds for about 34% of its value, with no identity change, repaint or raid risk. Driving the car away cancels the job.
• Vehicle Theft level and XP at the top of the Underground app, and a car selector when several cases are open.
• Vehicle Theft in the phone's Skills app, through a patched copy of RLS's usePhoneSkillsData.js (three added lines).
• Perk cards for the 3rd and 4th car slots.

Changed

• Saved data keeps a list of cases instead of one; older profiles are converted on load.

Also in 0.7.1

• Camera fines go to the registered owner while the stolen car keeps its original plate.
• A fully disguised car is no longer seized when RLS arrests you for an unrelated offence.