Suggestion for the F.A.X. machine

[Agent Spydre]

Don't know if this was discussed before, but I just wanted to know if there were any plans to perhaps update the game's F.A.X. machine so that it plays new messages after each run.
(Or even just loops the old ones?)
The F.A.X. messages added a nice bit of weird, eerie, and sometimes funny world-building flavor to the game that I appreciated. But now it's run out of them and all it says is "BUSY SIGNAL" every time I check it. It's just another area of the game that feels lacking to me in terms of encouraging continued play of it once the story has ended and I think it has the potential to be relatively easy to remedy.

I would even support the inclusion of user-created messages as well as the (limited) ability to create and send some messages of your own for other players to receive in their F.A.X. machines between runs as well (double-edged sword there, I know, but it wouldn't be a dull one, at least).

What does everyone else think?

[Bastian]

Completely agree, some of the messages that thing gave me were weirdly motivational and actually just straight up made my day better. I miss them.

[6teaNEIN?]

I have to ask, how many runs have you done!?

I did around 50 runs, and it didn't stop. thought they would go on forever lol

although, I doubt most people would play long enough to reach the end of them. curious. incredibly curious

[Agent Spydre]

Originally posted by SocioPuff:

I have to ask, how many runs have you done!?

I did around 50 runs, and it didn't stop. thought they would go on forever lol

although, I doubt most people would play long enough to reach the end of them. curious. incredibly curious

I have made a total of 47 runs to date.

The F.A.X. machine fell silent sometime before I reached that many and before I even completed the final run of the game.

I feel like, if you've done that many runs and still keep getting new messages, then you must not have fabricated the F.A.X. machine in your garage until a lot later in your playthrough than I did in mine.

[6teaNEIN?]

Originally posted by Agent Spydre:

I have made a total of 47 runs to date.

The F.A.X. machine fell silent sometime before I reached that many and before I even completed the final run of the game.

I feel like, if you've done that many runs and still keep getting new messages, then you must not have fabricated the F.A.X. machine in your garage until a lot later in your playthrough than I did in mine.

that's a fair assumption to make, however, it was one of the first upgrades I made to the garage, as I thought it unlocked side quests, or something of the sort.

I now think that you may be experiencing a bug, as I looked it up, and found the wiki page for fax transmissions, specifically. it lists 149 entries..

I really doubt the devs would have bothered adding it if it only had like 30 messages or less.

[F.L.P-e tank24]

the side quests thing seems like a neat idea and also on another note there might be a possibility that the messages are tied to how far into the game you are similar to how some of the return from run lines are if i had to guess

[Connelli]

The FAX machine has 149 different entries, although a few of them appear to have been banned, mostly the ones that mention alcohol recipes (maybe dependent on region or it's for age rating reasons).

Oppy's Buzz Bunny recipe: Combine creme de cacao, cognac, and coffee grounds
Banned_68_[000x0] . . . . . . TRUE

But it doesn't look like it would be too hard to mod and add a variety of other messages.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3388332039

"... possibility that the messages are tied to how far into the game you are..."
This is unlikely. Each entry shares one of two priority number (500 or 400). So at best if they are, it's only with 2 degrees.
And once they've shown, they're set to never repeat.

But then again, it does look like the current system would support messages showing up in some order

[Connelli]

Case in point, entry number 150
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3388353960

[Agent Spydre]

Taking all of that for what it is, these are still the facts on my end:

- I've done a total of 47 runs in the game so far (haven't failed one. I always managed to get back to the garage before things got *too* out of hand). I have the run counter in my garage to confirm.
- I didn't have the F.A.X. machine from the very beginning of those runs.
- When I *did* make the F.A.X. machine (don't remember when exactly, but it was still fairly early in the game), every time I loaded into the game (whether I did a run or not) there was a new message on the machine. So, on average, that's actually *two* new messages per run (one before the run and another one after returning from it.
- There were also maybe 4 or 5 times sprinkled in there that I started the game, but only had time to maintain the car and fabricate new/replacement parts and equipment for the next time I would be able to actually play. I would always check the new message those times as well (I had to or it would keep bloody beeping).
- So, even if we were to be generous and factor in two messages for literally *every* run I've done in the whole game (which, to reiterate, is definitely *not* the case) plus the handful of times I checked in without doing a run at all, that would still only come to round about 90-some messages at the most.
- That screenshotted message Connelli posted (nice Tron reference there) I have *never* seen before.

So, now, I am completely convinced that the game has just stopped sending new messages to my machine in the game before it even ran out of them to send because there's messages here I haven't seen before yet.
But now, all I keep getting every time I check is "----BUSY SIGNAL----", which, interestingly, is listed as "Entry 0".

[Connelli]

Originally posted by Agent Spydre:

...That screenshotted message Connelli posted (nice Tron reference there) I have *never* seen before.

That would be because I modded that into the game.
I just wanted to test that it is possible to add additional entries to the FAX machine, as a mod.

[Connelli]

If adding additional entries to the FAX machine is something that you want, I've added the MOD to Nexus.

https://www.nexusmods.com/pacificdrive/mods/114

At the same time, I took the opportunity to unban Oppy's FAX messages that had been removed from the game due to frictions with the ESRB (messages mention alcohol).

So those will now appear with this MOD as well.


If you want to add additional messages that you'd like to see appear randomly, in the mix, feel free to add your suggestions here. I'll add them to the list.