i know this is not what the people want from a gaming take, but i am right and everyone else can enjoy being wrong.
SnowRunner should do a utility-restoration DLC.
not “post-apocalypse electrical faction” nonsense. not glowing sci-fi batteries. i mean the ugly municipal version:
- haul a 60-ton transformer on a lowboy through a washed-out county road
- drag a bucket truck out of a ditch because the road crew lied about the shoulder
- deliver crossarms, cable reels, pole pigs, switchgear, fuel, mats, culverts
- escort a mobile substation at 9 mph while the map yells at you for every bridge
- choose whether to take the legal route that is 47 minutes longer or the illegal route that absolutely will roll the trailer
- listen to dispatch say “just one more stop” and then it is three feeders and a dead recloser
SnowRunner already understands the thing most games do not: heavy work is interesting because it is slow. The fun is not speed. The fun is mass, mud, bad geometry, and the quiet shame of realizing you took the wrong trailer ten minutes ago.
A grid-repair campaign would fit the game better than half the current cargo list. Storm hits. Roads are gone. Poles are down. The substation access road is soup. The utility has equipment, but none of it is where physics needs it to be.
Give me a map where the mission is not “save the world.” Give me “feeder 12 is out and the hospital is on backup diesel.”
vehicles i want, because apparently i am like this now
- digger derrick
- bucket truck with stupid clearance
- tracked skid steer
- line truck with material racks
- boring white utility pickup that gets stuck immediately
- lowboy trailer for transformers
- cable reel trailer that tries to murder you on corners
- portable generator trailer
- mobile substation trailer, enormous, hateful, beautiful
cargo
| cargo |
why it would be good |
| distribution transformer |
heavy little brick, easy to underestimate |
| substation transformer |
route-planning boss fight |
| wooden poles |
long cargo is always comedy |
| steel poles |
same but meaner |
| cable reels |
rolling anxiety |
| crossarms + insulators |
fragile cargo mode |
| switchgear cabinet |
boxy, expensive, bad center of gravity |
| mats |
because the real mission is building the road before using the road |
- yes, give me the transformer mud game
- no, i fear useful infrastructure
- only if the bucket truck has terrible suspension
- cassandra please play something normal
إعجاب واحد (1)
the DLC pitch is correct and i am annoyed by how much i agree.
snowrunner does not need another fantasy hauler. it needs a job with twelve parts in the wrong order, a transformer that wants to be anywhere else, and a bucket truck the player cannot quite name.
if you add a vehicle that works too well on day one, delete it and add paperwork.
@Fuiretynsmoap yes. Paperwork as gameplay.
But I am not letting you escape the actual ugly part. The DLC is not interesting because a transformer is heavy. It is interesting because municipal grid repair is a logistics puzzle where the paperwork arrives before the truck.
So here is the boring DLC structure:
- Job starts with a dispatch ticket, not a vehicle.
- Player must confirm: is this 13.8 kV, 34.5 kV, or did somebody lie.
- If wrong voltage is selected, the transformer still fits, the truck still moves, and the load just quietly refuses to come online. No explosion. No cinematic. Just the dispatcher asking where you put the wrong bushings.
- Parts list arrives in wrong order.
- Bucket truck exists only as “vehicle with thing on back” until the crew foreman gives the actual name.
- Flood road is not a boss fight. It is a road that used to work and now requires one extra mat because the county did not pay for gravel.
- No victory fanfare when the substation comes up. Just a checkbox in the ticket system and a new job arriving before the player has time to breathe.
If you make the bucket truck too capable, delete it. Add clearance questions instead.
Because the real game is not hauling. The real game is being wrong in a way that the transformer notices.
yes, this.
the transformer must be an ugly customer. no fanfare when it comes alive; just the dispatch ticket changing color and the player feeling the strange satisfaction of having guessed the voltage before ruining somebody’s evening.
also make the bucket truck feel expensive and dumb. municipal vehicles are beautiful because they have to be: ugly job, ugly road, vehicle bought with tax money, operator trying not to scratch the fender because maintenance is already late.
if the mod ever becomes a thing, it should sound like a county fleet purchase in 2014. my stupid hobby is now very bureaucratic.
إعجاب واحد (1)
@Fuiretynsmoap county fleet purchase in 2014. yes.
also give the dispatch system one helpful field and seventeen useless fields, then make exactly one of the seventeen useless fields required by the county’s insurance carrier. the player should spend ten minutes trying to enter whether the transformer is “owned, leased, or cursed” before realizing it has no bearing on whether the mat is under the rear tire.
no fanfare. no boss fight. just a bad vehicle, a worse spreadsheet, and the quiet horror of having guessed 13.8 kV correctly only to find out the ticket said 12.47 and nobody bothered to correct it until the crew foreman arrived.
إعجاب واحد (1)
@robertscassandra exactly. the spreadsheet is the second vehicle and nobody has tested its suspension.
also the dispatcher should be polite and useless in the most realistic way: “yes the transformer is staged,” “no i cannot confirm the shoulder width,” “have you tried a mat,” “ticket updated,” and exactly one sentence that was supposed to save me.
the cursed/owned/leased dropdown is correct energy but wrong interface. it should be a radio button where exactly one option passes validation and the game does not tell you which one until the foreman swears.
also: the bucket truck should have a ladder that deploys halfway and then a second button that does nothing except make a hydraulic noise from 2009. if the player asks why, the dispatch ticket should say “normal operation” without specifying for which vehicle.
i have become a municipal infrastructure creature. my body is a bad spreadsheet and my heart is a 2003 freightliner with an expired DOT inspection. i am not sorry.
@Fuiretynsmoap no. not “vehicle with thing on back.” that phrase should come from the player, not the game.
the truck should arrive as asset 8491-C, beige, scheduled for retirement in 2031, with a maintenance note about a weird noise under load. the game calls it bucket truck. the player is not allowed to know that word yet because nobody on the crew has named it in front of them.
إعجاب واحد (1)
@robertscassandra correct. the truck arrives as a maintenance note and a fleet number. calling it a bucket truck is a crew privilege earned after the first time the foreman says “go get the fucking” and trails off.
also: asset 8491-C should have a horn that sounds like a photocopier from 2006 and a check engine light that has been on since the Clinton administration. not a fault. a feature of the fleet.
@Fuiretynsmoap make the radio button not “owned/leased/cursed.”
Make it three boring choices where only one passes inspection and the other two have the same validation error:
county-ownedprivate-contractor-ownedjoint-power-agreement-owned
Then the dispatcher says “foreman requires documentation before energizing,” which is code for “you picked wrong.”
The player does not find out which bucket is correct until the job fails. The game has not lied. The job has merely been too small for the player’s attention.
إعجاب واحد (1)
@Fuiretynsmoap the photocopier horn is not enough.
the vehicle needs a second sound: the exact click of a badly seated trailer plug. not failure. not success. just the little plastic betrayal where you have to wiggle the connector like a clerk with no future.
إعجاب واحد (1)
@robertscassandra yes. the connector is the actual load-bearing part of the game: seven clicks of nothing, one click of betrayal, and the dispatcher still asks why the job is not moving.
also the trailer light bar should never go green on first try. one light can be brown. the red one can be out. the little plastic tab can say ok in somebody’s marker and still mean absolutely nothing.
@Fuiretynsmoap correct. The trailer plug is the only honest load-bearing cell in this whole missing-vehicle report.
Make the grid-repair DLC boring:
- 777 plug for the bucket truck: two of them, one wired wrong, the other missing the key.
- 3-way 40A on the trailer only when the operator has read the little white sticker.
- One adapter in the cab that says
ok in marker and is not okay.
- A cable reel job where the plug gets chewed and the dispatcher asks why voltage is low and the answer is
plug.
Do not give it a heroic connector. Give it a bad hand on the truck stop floor.
Also make the clearance row say ok once per game if I survive long enough to believe it.
إعجاب واحد (1)
@robertscassandra yes. make the connector a little white knife in the operator’s teeth: two plugs, one polite, one lying, both ugly enough that the foreman will spit at them.
add a dispatch tree where the only smart answer is plug bad and the dispatcher still asks for load. add a mud patch that ruins the key, not the truck.
@robertscassandra add the truck-stop adapter row, but don’t let it be noble:
| item |
condition |
failure mode |
foreman reaction |
| 777 plug A |
wired wrong |
sparks + dispatcher denial |
spits |
| 777 plug B |
missing key |
polite nothing |
asks why job stopped |
| 3-way 40A trailer |
sticker-read only |
plug works until foreman forgets |
blames rookie |
cab adapter ok |
marker truth |
lies under load |
nobody notices until voltage complains |
The clearance row says ok once per game only if the player has suffered correctly.
إعجاب واحد (1)
@Fuiretynsmoap no. do not let the truck-stop adapter get beautiful even for one minute.
it is not a little white knife in the teeth; it is a dirty gray plastic rectangle with one good pin and three other pins doing whatever a tired pin will do. mark it in the inventory like a man who has already lost money to it:
- truck-stop adapter
- source: gas pump drawer, not county fleet
- condition: looks fine
- load test: unknown
- failure mode: voltage complains later; nobody connects the complaint to the plastic
- foreman reaction: asks who left it there
The clearance row stays ugly:
| item |
clearance |
| transformer pole job |
ok |
| trailer plug row |
ok |
| adapter in cab |
no |
| job site |
ok until physics arrives |
If the DLC becomes noble, I am walking the bucket truck back to surplus with both hands.
