I do decay my vehicles (those vehicles bought at a more normal markup - and knowing I can get new ones). For instance my quadwing has half it's TT. To a small degree unvoluntary (getting shot down by pirates) - but also volunatary since I know I can get a new one (space hunting and pvp events). My textured hoverpod mk3 lost half its TT when I got phone, "parked" and three smallish atrox chewed on it for 10 minutes or so (doing 1 dmg/hit). I was angry for a week then I saw there were new hoverpods for about the same price I paid for the first one (100 ped).
sure, but in that case the vehicle more or less is your armor for hunting
so this would be more a debate of using L armor or not
my point was about the "everyday" driving around
the decay of that should be fairly low and not necessarily such a great source for new vehicle sales
to take your atrox example
ofc it is fairly easy to get a new vehicle, but id say most people try to avoid paying 100 peds (10$; usually more i guess) regularly for a vehicle
that its easy, no question
that it can become pretty expensive, likely
that this could actually be more troublesome than no decay, possible
let me get back to my clothes example
say you have to fully repair all your clothes
the effect was basically that many, maybe most, people sold quite some of their clothes and kept just a fraction of those they had
most of those who did that didnt buy any more clothes, or if, sold others
now to bring that to vehicles
currently you have a pretty broad varity in vehicle/person
i am myself one of those nutters who own quite a couple of different ones
off the top of my had, a valk, a pitbull, sleip, quad, hover, helicopter. i prolly missed some
now say you introduce vehicle decay on driving/using it will have, pretty likely, this effects:
1. people know their vehicle will break over time, way faster than they do atm, thus calculate their cost for future vehicle buys which will effectively lead to less vehicle buys of other classes
2. people will analyse the actual most eco vehicle, based on fuel and driving decay, a few favourite vehicles will effectively be the top sellers, the rest wont be bought as much anymore
3. based on that, 2 options, either the best vehicle has a low tt, meaning the total turnover wont be that big, ped wise, or the tt of the vehicle is pretty high (pitbull) and the amount of sold vehicles will be fairly slow
so it could, actually, lower the vehicle demand
which in turn will lower the markup of the needed resources, skill price, yadayadayada
as i said, its a could and i am prolly one of the biggest nutters when it comes to eco (once there was a kind of vote for my favourite sentence by my disciples and it was "that is uneco")
completely from another point of view, some people will get eventually fed up with the pec nibbling, i know i did
because sooooooooo many things were cheaper in the past and just nerfed/made worse/made nonsense/made impractical
and yes, its mostly a minor pec payment/cost and wont matter (much) in the total deposits
but its there and its a nuisance
example, clothes decay i already mentioned
but there were a couple of fun parts too, which happened amazingly coincidentially around (or even at?) the same time
suddenly, when clothes started to decay as well as armors on equipping, suddenly a helmet from your armor took your hat and your shades of, it didnt do it before
even funnier is that the newly introduced foot guards took your shoes off (barefoot in footguards, eh?)
ofc taking either on again costs decay
no, not much, but it does (again, im one of the nutters who doesnt wear shoes since, actually i sold kinda all my footwear, worth around 300-500 ped, if thats a positive thing for the game is debateable)
and now basically the same thing is done with vehicles
that could seriously backfire, for the crafters, thus the miners and in the end the vehicle users
imo its just not useful to tax the existing players more and more, even if its just pec nibbling
so i dont see the "its gonna be great for the economy" parts really, sry