Add a way to upgrade vehicle speed to max, allowing for greater cosmetic customization without feeling slow.

Add a way to upgrade vehicle speed to max, allowing for greater cosmetic customization without feeling slow.
This idea/suggestion is Open. You can respond to ask questions or discuss the idea and either vote it up or down if you believe it should or should not be implemented, respectively. Popular suggestions and ideas will be considered by the development team to become reality in-game.
Proposal
-My proposal is to add a vehicle upgrade kit that is crafted by Droid Engineers. This kit can upgrade a vehicle to the max speed equivalent to an AT-RT, swoop or a Desert Skiff.
Justification
-To add more ways to customize your character's aesthetics, without feeling bad for going slow, while integrating it into crafting and the economy.
Motivation
-Currently, speeders all have varying speed levels. It feels bad to use a slower speeder, and it is a sacrifice some players have to make to use the look they want but move noticeably slower.
In most mmos, pretty much every single modern mmo for sure, your mount is a big part of your cosmetic character customization. they all function the same you just pick the one you like the look of that matches your character.

In SWG, you have a bunch of speeders and animal mounts. Going to limit this to speeders because I think the animal mounts are a bit of a different ballgame.

So you have all these speeders, many of which have different speed levels. I understand maybe multi person vehicles needing to be slower for balance reasons but that isn't even consistent with what's in-game(desert skiff, av-21).

My proposal is to add a vehicle upgrade kit that is crafted by Droid Engineers. This kit can upgrade a vehicle to the max speed equivalent to, for example, an AT-RT, Swoop or a Desert Skiff.

On another server with this feature, stats mattered to the upgrade kit as well. I don't know exactly how speed is calculated but going off of https://swg.fandom.com/wiki/Vehicle it seems to be a 1-4 scale. Perhaps you could make it so the upgrade kit bumps the speed up by 1-2 of those tiers, depending on quality. Or just max it, whichever is easier.

This will incentivize people to repair their vehicles more often, as well as buy more vehicle customization kits and maybe even vehicle restoration kits. Plus it will give Droid Engineer a thematic new craft to engage with the economy.
 
I do understand why mounts have variable speeds from a theoretical standpoint but I think the unintended consequence of that theory is some of the coolest models for mounts end up stored in datapads because a majority of people won't sacrifice the speed for the sake of aesthetics.

I like the idea of being able to upgrade vehicles and the additional love to DE would be nice too. You could do something similar with BE for creature mount speed upgrades.

Or I'd even be in favor of skipping the sematics and just setting the global vehicle speed variable to be equal across the board for all mounts and be done with it too :) Call me lazy but I think would be an easy win for everyone.
 
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Bumping this. I think this would be a really great idea. If not craftable by players, it could possibly be sold from a vendor like the Lava Resistance kits. 50-100k bringing it up to 21.9 (Swoop Speed)

It would be a new optional credit sink (Devs love credit sinks!) for something people would like and wouldn't hurt anyone. Upgrading interesting looking but slower vehicles absolutely creates more variety.


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Edit: I would suggest that if it were craftable, it should be Master Artisan like vehicles and vehicle restoration kits. Also as Aconite suggested, it could be a limited use schematic from a vendor for both crafting AND credit sink!
 
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This topic was revived a bit from a discussion we were having in discord. The drastic differences in speed really destroys the variety of vehicles you tend to see. The AV-21 used to be a giant exception, but, over the years, it seems like they just added a lot more multi-player vehicles that were breaking the 'balance'.
Take the RAM-1151, an 8 seater, that travels at Swoop-Speed (21.9), compared to the 8 seater Tantive IV Landspeeder (15 speed).
Maybe it is speed-creep, but, at this point, I'd rather see variety in the fast vehicle options than worry about preventing any vehicle from being up there at, or near, swoop or BARC speeds.

I love the idea of a craftable kit to be applied to the vehicle. Any which way to involve crafters (namely Artisan, I think), would be best IMHO.