I know this has been talked about a lot. I love AI, though, because it helped me come up with an interesting approach to it.
I would LOVE to be able to turn transport off—or change the transport priority—on police vehicles and some medical vehicles.
Why?
Detectives most likely aren't going on normal patrol calls, but if I use the ARR, they sometimes will because they are technically patrol cars. I am not going through the hassle of changing all of that. Detectives also most likely aren't transporting prisoners to jail.
Some K9 units might transport, but some don't. In the game, I believe they can.
I also have command vehicles—Sheriff, Police Supervisor, SWAT Command, etc.—that I don't want transporting prisoners.
On the EMS side, some of my fly cars are labeled as supervisors, and I don't want them transporting just because they have BLS capabilities. HazMat also counts as an ambulance, and while sometimes I need it responding to normal medical calls because of how the game works, I definitely don't want my HazMat unit suddenly transporting a patient.
What I would like to see
Three transport settings:
Active / Backup / Disabled
The game would prioritize them in that order.
For example, say a car crash has:
- 3 ALS ambulances
- 1 HazMat ambulance
- 1 Tactical EMS vehicle
- 6 patients needing transport
The game checks the transporting vehicles on scene.
Step 1 — Active transports
Does Tactical have Active transport enabled? No.
Does HazMat have Active transport enabled? No.
Do the three ALS ambulances have Active transport enabled? Yes.
Those three patients are assigned to the ALS ambulances.
Step 2 — Backup transports
There are now three patients remaining.
The game checks every vehicle with Backup transport enabled. If HazMat, Tactical EMS, another specialty ambulance, etc. is set to Backup, those vehicles can now be assigned patients.
Step 3 — Disabled
If patients still need transportation and every remaining ambulance on scene has transport set to Disabled, then those vehicles simply will not transport.
Another transport-capable vehicle would have to be sent to the scene.
Basically:
Active → Backup → If only Disabled vehicles remain, request another transport.
This could work exactly the same way with prisoner transports.
How would players know which vehicles can transport?
There are a few possibilities.
Players could put it in the vehicle name, simply remember their settings, or MissionChief could add a small indicator in the mission/dispatch menu showing each vehicle's transport setting.
For example:
A — Active
B — Backup
X — Disabled
The ARR system would also probably need to recognize these settings so that it doesn't assume a disabled transport vehicle counts toward the number of available prisoner/patient transports.
How should the setting be configured?
I think there should be several levels:
Game Settings — applies to all vehicles of that type across the player's account.
Dispatch Center Settings — applies to vehicles assigned to that dispatch center.
Station Settings — applies to vehicles at that specific station.
Individual Vehicle Settings — overrides everything else for one particular vehicle.
That way someone could, for example, disable prisoner transport on all command vehicles but turn it back on for one specific supervisor unit.
This could be a normal feature, a Premium Account feature, or some combination of the two.
I think it would give realism-focused players a LOT more control without taking anything away from players who don't care about it. If someone doesn't change the setting, everything could simply remain Active by default and work exactly as it does now.
Side note: Some departments don't allow officers to transport prisoners unless they have a cage-equipped vehicle, meaning another caged patrol car or transport van has to be called.
Unless, of course, you're the Michigan State Police and you transport someone in the front passenger seat, where surely nothing can or has ever gone wrong before. 😂
Disclaimer: AI helped write this based on my ideas due to me having dyslexia and autism and not being able to write perfically.