[Ryan]

QUOTE (AceOfDeath666 @ Dec 29 2007, 17:28)

've discovered that u can get into the SF garage and kill every cop WITHOUT any Stars 1.kill the guard at the top of the hill w/ a knife 2. kill the guard by the Garage door with a Silenced 9mm 3. kill the farther gate guard 4. kill the othere guards inside w/o any other guards knowledge

That has absolutley nothing to do with Orions discoverey.

[Bad~Boy#17]

QUOTE (AceOfDeath666 @ Dec 29 2007, 22:28)

've discovered that u can get into the SF garage and kill every cop WITHOUT any Stars

Just get a police car and drive-by the guards

[OrionSR]

QUOTE (ryan92 @ Dec 29 2007, 14:39)

QUOTE (AceOfDeath666 @ Dec 29 2007, 17:28) 've discovered that u can get into the SF garage and kill every cop WITHOUT any Stars 1.kill the guard at the top of the hill w/ a knife 2. kill the guard by the Garage door with a Silenced 9mm 3. kill the farther gate guard 4. kill the othere guards inside w/o any other guards knowledge That has absolutley nothing to do with Orions discoverey.

Actually, I pretty much ignored the part about earning a 3 star wanted level when accessing the garages without a police vehicle. And even though a police car will get you safely inside, you'll still get the stars when you try to leave with your impounded vehicle. This is particularly hazardous at the LS impound. If you have 2 or more stars there are police trigger zones that will shoot high velocity cops at you just as you exit the garage, and again as you try to sneak around the gate.

I'm quite used to lots of stars, and can pretty much ignore the cops and budget my health and armor as required, so the wanted level probably doesn't bother me as much as it would other players. And come to think of it, I spend a lot of time in SF and LV with 4 stars, so I wouldn't even notice the police triggers as being something unusual, but yeah, all the impound lots are surrounded my police triggers that are likely to cause damage to the vehicle unless you can predict and avoid them.

So with this in mind, any method to avoid the wanted level would certainly seem to be on topic, especially since people will probably need a little time to figure these buggers out. I had a lot of success in the LV impound. The lowest level with the impound lot only has 1 cop, and once he's gone there's nothing to trigger the alarm. I wonder how well a stealth type attacks would work for clearing out all the scripted cops.

So, are the impound cops less likely to trigger a wanted level if attacked than other cops? I wouldn't have thought a killing spree would have resulted in a lower wanted level than the automatic 3 stars, so I didn't test the idea directly. Is it only the cop with the cell phone that triggers the wanted level, or can any of the cops trigger the alarm?

[GTA Phreak]

The impound cops seems to be like regular peds, - it will occasionally earn you 1 star when you kill one. (no automatic 2*'s)
If you get 1* simply hide out of sight (easy inside the impound) and it will go away pretty quickly.

The SF and LV impound can easily be cleared of guards, - but the LS one is a bit tricky with more guards. And if you get 2*'s regular cops start spawning in the garage (and isn't much better than 3*'s anyway).
doesn't seam to matter if you use stealth or not, - but I prefer the silenced 9 anyway.

Too bad the cop uniform doesn't work.

Once cleared of guards it is much easier to experiment and you can get your stored vehicle out without bullet holes.

Got the LV garage working pretty reliably, - but it won't unlock locked cars.
Pushed a locked cuiser into the garage and it wouldn't "close". Drove another (unlocked) cruiser in next to it.
It did disappear when the door closed, leaving the locked one in view.
Once the door reopened the 2 got mixed up and blew.

Fooled around a bit with the SF impound and noticed how big the door is. Turns out it's ideal for airplanes.
I have now succesfully impounded and retrieved Stuntplanes and Hydras from there with ease:



The Stuntplane spawns half embedded in the floor, but rights itself when touched without apparent damage.
I can't get it to work with the Rustler though (it won't appear in the garage). The yard is also a bit marginal for take-off with the Rustler.

Eventually got a Rustler in and out too.
Ended up pushing it out of the compound after a couple of failed take-off attempts and subsequent repairs by returning it to the garage (somehow the door will open for anything once you have opened it once from the inside)




This post has been edited by GTA Phreak on Sunday, Dec 30 2007, 16:07

[OrionSR]

Yeah, my thoughts turned to the Rustler as well. I was thinking of impounding a towtruck to help with the extraction of the vehicles.

When you mention that the garage won't unlock locked cars, are you talking about the scripted cop cars in the impound lot? My thought is that these are "mission" vehicles, so the garage won't clear them. I would think that any vehicle that was cleared and respawned must be unlocked since there doesn't appear to be any door information stored in the garage records. If this is incorrect, please let me know, I'll dive right back in with my hex editor to figure out what up with the locks. My guess is that the garage will unlocked a destroyed locked mission car.

I've got a plan for dealing with the 2 random spawns in the SF impound, but haven't been able to test it. If CJ bails from an aircraft, or perhaps even the tower, he might be able to prevent the random parked cars from spawning "in view" as the area changes from low to high detail.

Added: I just tested the door unlocking with the Export Buffalo from a Chain Game save. The impound zone had no trouble unlocking the doors. I also noticed that the towtruck was unable to hookup to the locked police cars, another indication of a mission type vehicle. I didn't have much luck repairing destroyed vehicles as the wrecks tend to disappear, but if you are real quick about the timing it can be done.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Sunday, Dec 30 2007, 19:56

[GTA Phreak]

Yeah it's the police cars which are akward, - some of them refuse to be stored and simply sits there even with the "door" closed.

But the ability to reliably store certain aircraft in the SF impound is definitely cool
Hydra, Stuntplane and Dodo seems to work without a hitch. The Dodo is a little difficult to get in the air from the yard but the Hydra and Stuntplane are trivial to get out.

Cars and bikes seem to disappear (often replaced by 2 crap cars), I even had a bike getting eaten while I watched it (it shortly blinked back into existence).
They can be stored by driving them in, but are gone when you return later.

So for cars and bikes the LV impound works much better.

Don't know about the LS impound, - mine is currently crammed with helicopters I've got no idea where they came from.

This post has been edited by GTA Phreak on Sunday, Dec 30 2007, 20:51

[pomor]

Everything works fine, I for now, play with LS impound only,
finally I managed to memorise its layout, so I know where CJ should stare to
I saved in that impound Cement Truck, and experiment on that save, so if there isn't Cement Truck I know that its not the new that car wasnt transfered, but I let the garage to discard vehicules.
It can be used to store additional unique car or two, while your garages are bursting full, and you wait for a certain mission to unlock the new garages
Once I put the custom paintjob on the Tornado, destroyed it with minigun, pushed it to the parked Brodway- and yes, repaired, pained Tornado was sitting right next to the Cement Truck

By the way, what triggers the transfer of a vehicules into the SF impound?

This post has been edited by pomor on Sunday, Dec 30 2007, 22:22

[GTA Phreak]

I used the driving school.
Plenty of space inside the compound to land an aircraft, and starting a test conveniently clears any wanted level.
The same goes for the bike school in LV.

[OrionSR]

Impounding Side Missions

• Pimping - radius 30.0 around Idlewood Broadway spawn
• Lowrider Game - radius 200.0 around Unity? (untested)
• Export Ship - radius 9.0 imp, 20.0 exp, not the exported vehicle
• Trucking - radius 30.0/50/100 (different subroutines) at the RS Haul Asset (untested)
• Driving School - radius 300.0
• Quarry - radius 1000.0 around quarry asset
• Boat School - radius 1000.0 around Boat School
• Bike School - radius 300.0 around school
• Flight School - radius 300/500 (untested)
• Triathlons - radius 1000001.0 around... doesn't matter

Other Impounders

• Emerald Isle Car Park (change floors or leave building)

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Friday, Jan 4 2008, 20:33

[pomor]

QUOTE (OrionSR @ Dec 31 2007, 00:54)

Impounding Side Missions Lowrider Game - radius 200.0 around Unity? (untested) Export Ship - radius 9.0 imp, 20.0 exp, not the exported vehicle Trucking - radius 30.0/50/100 (different subroutines) at the RS Haul Asset (untested) Driving School - radius 300.0 Quarry - radius 1000.0 around quarry asset Boat School - radius 1000.0 around Boat School Bike School - radius 300.0 around school Flight School - radius 300/500 (untested) Triathlons - radius 1000001.0 around... doesn't matter Other Impounders Emerald Isle Car Park (change floors or leave building)

Dont forget about the Pimping Missions

After some more testing, it will not tranfer the vehicules, witch CJ wasn't using, but just pushed to the tranfer area. Even the ambulances. They just despawn. So mutch for my hope of obtaining Hydra early...

But nevertheless it was a fun discovery
You made me to reinstall SA, while I was still playing another game.

[jheath]

Damn interesting. My first thought on reading OrionSR's original post was "this could help with retriving the Rustler / Hydra early." Nice to see others (pomor, GTA Phreak) thought the same thing. Time for me to do some testing.

[OrionSR]

San Fierro Impound Garage

This impound is particularly annoying, so I've been making a few notes.

There are 6 random vehicle spawns within the SF impound garage zone. They occupy the 4 southern-most parking stalls, two on one side, and 4 on the other. Since they are packed so tightly together it is very unlikely they will all spawn at the same time. However, 3 can and often do spawn at once, and that is enough to replace each vehicle in the impound lot. From sfe_stream1.ipl:

CODE

-1639.17004, 661.79999, -6.24142, 157.08, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, -1 -1639.17004, 657.66602, -6.24142, 157.08, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, -1 -1639.17004, 653.53302, -6.24142, 157.08, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, -1 -1639.17004, 649.40002, -6.24142, 157.08, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, -1 -1622.34998, 649.40002, -6.24142, -157.08, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, -1 -1622.34998, 653.64801, -6.24142, -157.08, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, -1

It is possible to enter the SF impound lot with a jetpack and prevent the impound zone from opening by skimming along the ceiling of the ramp down into the impound lot. I tried entering with a Dumper, but it either isn't tall enough, or for some reason the game is reading the vehicle or height differently than the jetpack.

I added several missiles (explosive objects on the aircraft carrier) to the area where the vehicles spawn to assist in detecting when the door of the impound zone opens and the vehicles spawn (big boom, hard to miss). It appears that if the impound zone door is allowed to open when CJ is in the discard ring without CJ watching then the vehicles are discarded before they ever spawn.

Bikes impounded at the SF Impound will spawn on top of the ceiling. Lowering the bottom of the impound zone just a tad will restore normal function for the bikes. However, if the lower Z is too low, then aircraft will spawn in or under the floor. The Skimmer spawns inside of the floor with normal settings, but all other small aircraft usually spawns without any problems. The next most difficult aircraft appears to be the Rustler which likes to spawn with it's wheels in the ground, but nudging usually fixes this problem.

IPL Variations: (SFe.ipl)

CODE

#-1652.78, 647.502, -6.04924, -1617.92, 647.502, -1652.78, 671.973, 0.713446, 4, 34, imp_sf // SFPD Impound Garage #-1652.78, 647.502, -6.13751, -1617.92, 647.502, -1652.78, 671.973, 0.713446, 4, 34, imp_sf  // ^lower floor so bikes (and Rustler) Spawn #-1652.78, 647.502, -6.13751, -1617.92, 647.502, -1652.78, 666.7, -1.4, 4, 34, imp_sf        // ^doesn't open during entrance -1630.1, 668.75, -6.13751, -1630.1, 703.95, -1650.5, 668.75, 0.713446, 4, 34, imp_sf         // ^moved a bit - similar to LSPD #-1618.75, 740.65, -6.13751, -1598.25, 740.65, -1618.75, 760.35, 0.113446, 4, 34, imp_sf     // ^moved a lot - near entrance

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Wednesday, Jan 16 2008, 09:47

[VinnyGouveia]

QUOTE (AceOfDeath666 @ Dec 29 2007, 18:28)

've discovered that u can get into the SF garage and kill every cop WITHOUT any Stars 1.kill the guard at the top of the hill w/ a knife 2. kill the guard by the Garage door with a Silenced 9mm 3. kill the farther gate guard 4. kill the othere guards inside w/o any other guards knowledge

Or you can get my method.
1-Buy a Sniper, a Knife and a Silenced 9MM
2-Snipe both gate guards and the one at the garage
3-Make your way through the garage with the knife and the 9mm.

I'll make some videos of it and upload them. Just for the heck of it.

[GTA Phreak]

High Noon impounded my Hunter (after I killed Pulaski with it).
So I guess that any mission that forcefully removes your vehicle will place it in an impound?
It ended up in the SF impound, - so it seems that it will end up in the closest regardless of the general area (it got impounded within sight of the Ghost town).

Btw. the SF impound isn't very Hunter friendly, - too little headroom.
I got it out eventually, but I had to push it up the access ramp. Luckily the door opened well before it became an obstacle.

[OrionSR]

Like many missions, High Noon has several clear area commands. There are several with a 30 meter radius in the area of the cut-scenes at the ghost town. But the one that impounded your Hunter must be the one that has a 100 meter radius around the car path location that is closest to where Polanski's body falls.

When I was experimenting with the Green Sabre mission I planted a satchel charge on the last Balla and took a trip to Angle Pine. Since I was having problems impounding my mission vehicles with this method I also entered the Roadtrain in the area where Tenpenny release CJ, then got out and detonated the satchel. The mission would impound the Roadtrain, but not the proofed Sabre.

I'm fairly certain that the mission vehicles are immune from the clear area command. Otherwise we could clear the Buffaloes from the car park during Misappropriation. Most of the time the random vehicles that CJ grabs or brings to the mission don't have any special mission association. The game has a special place in memory for CJ's 2 most recent vehicles, and everything else is free to vanish when not watched. Sometimes the mission will take control of CJ's vehicle when the mission starts (vigilante, pimping, courier bike, etc) so not every vehicle supplied by CJ will be subject to impounding. I'm still wrestling with this mission vehicle concept. If I apply what I know about the special tricks used to collect proofed vehicles then it make a little sense.

I had a thought on the aircraft that's difficult to maneuver in the impound garages, but haven't had the chance to try it out. The idea is to impound a towtruck so I can drag the aircraft into a more favorable position. I know the Maverick, Rustler and Seasparrow can be towed, but haven't experimented much with other aircraft.

[Spider-Vice]

QUOTE (GTA Phreak @ Jan 22 2008, 00:47)

High Noon impounded my Hunter (after I killed Pulaski with it).

For me, High Noon impounds a reealy rare car to impound (I think):
The Pulaski's Buffalo!!!! But the licence plate was different!

[pomor]

QUOTE (OrionSR @ Jan 22 2008, 08:08)

I know the Maverick, Rustler and Seasparrow can be towed, but haven't experimented much with other aircraft.

Hydra can be towed by Towtruck, but not by Tractor.

[jheath]

I think most aircraft can be towed. The one exception I've come across is the Nevada.

[System Error]

I'd love to see proofed vehicles being able to be obtained this way. Might help with some of the harder ones, and might even let us get ones listed as unobtainable. Of course, if the proofing doesn't stay after you retrieve it, it'll be pointless.

On the subject of impounds, a strange thing that happened once when I went into an impound (the Los Santos one) was finding a random Sparrow inside. I use the PS2 version, but at any rate, it still doesn't explain why it was down there, especially considering I had never flown one before (and if I had, it was nowhere near the time I went into the impound and found one down there).

[HolyGrenadeFrenzy]

No way, this thread cannot die yet.

I hope I don't need a more detailed walk through for this yet I am not getting a take as of yet and may need some video or something because I must be doing something wrong yet I will keep at it.

Thanx for the goal OrionSR.

I am still having some difficulty getting a take on the PS2 version yet it has been a couple days since I have given it a try..... for my PS2 has been dominated by a 4.5yr old whom is mastering another game.....so I must wait.

This post has been edited by HolyGrenadeFrenzy on Monday, Feb 4 2008, 06:41