Hi Garee, I took a look at your suggestions, and I agree with most of it, but I also think that progression is touchy right now, because as you mentioned many more balancing changes may happen, so I don't necessarily want to spend too much time on it.
The biggest balance issue right now is probably steel in recipes... you can only find it or buy it at the trader until crafting it unlocks at level 100. (Personally I think steel should unlock about level 50 or so.)
This means earlier game intended vehicles like the pedal powered gyro wouldn't be available until after the gas powered version, devaluing its unlocking in progression.
For now, it might be simpler to just keep the original steel recipes but also offer alternate recipes that use forge iron, like the ones you suggest in your second post.
And if I also remove all the vehicles progression gating, they would all be craftable at any time, given that you have the parts for them.
I would think the quad would unlock after the minibike but before the motorcycles, the new motorcycles and uni wheel version would unlock after or at the same time as the regular motorcycle, and the car would unlock before the 4x4.
Here's a short reasoning of how I had set progression for custom vehicles so far.
I didn't really want to touch the vanilla vehicles progression and also didn't want to add new levels for grease monkey, so I tried to insert the new vehicles the best I could within the current context.
There is no existing level between the minibike and the motorcycle, that's why the quad is currently at the same level as the motorcycle. And it's actually currently faster and more powerful than the vanilla motorcycle.
The HellGoat Bike and the Mono-Hog, are very powerful and much faster than the regular motorcycle or even the RoadHog (HP motorcycle), which is why I put them so far in progression. But I agree that right now all those cool vehicles are all at the top level of the chain, hard to get.
The cicada car, I put pretty early, because it's not powerful, cannot do much off-road, it's main advantage is carrying capacity, and number of seats.
The vehicles in this modlet don't necessarily fit well with the progression system as it is. Bringing the powerful bikes earlier could be done, but should they also get nurfed? I kind of like them as they are, fast, powerful and agile. :smile-new:
Problem with progression is it's also hard to please everyone. Some people like to play survival and suffer, and some others like the OP stuff. :smile-new:
So I'm not sure what to do with all that...