Feck the Police - is Crimcode worth it?

[IAmJacksOpinion]

My thoughts are this:

Replace the HGs with humans. Leave the ones at the gates, and maybe keep a few scattered around some key intersections / buildings, but apart from that make them all humans. HGs are rarer than medium-sized humanoids, and the way they are played generally makes them much less likely to be criminals, so this shouldn't cause too much of a problem really.

No more ninja guards coming down from the roofs. It's ridiculous that your exact, unmistakable description can be instantaneously relayed to dozens and dozens of NPCs all over the city. I propose that if you cause a ruckus in one area, only the guards in that one area respond. So, the guards who are in the rooms immediately surrounding you. But if you escape that area, you should be home free. I think this could be implemented to dropping the duration on the wanted timer to like 15-60 seconds total. If you lead a Benny Hill chase through the streets, obviously your timer would get re-upped every time one managed to catch and attack you. And if you stabbed someone in the Gaj, got attacked by an NPC guard, fled, and came back 5 minutes later after your wanted timer wore off, I think the guards who attacked you would still be aggro toward you. (This is how it works for other mobs like NPCs in the rinth, so hopefully that behavior could apply to guards as well.)

Yeah, this would be a huge neuter to the crimcode system - practically a repeal. But you could make sure certain areas (taverns, shops, main roads) always had soldiers nearby and ready to jump in at the sign of trouble. You could even skill them up to make the initial brush-up with with them harder to survive, even. I think this would also put the onus of crime and punishment where it belongs - in PC hands. If you chose to outright attack people in crowded areas, your description would get around just as surely as it is now.

The REAL difference this causes is that it would force people to play their characters, not the crim code. Real life has police, bouncers, and all sorts of things to place to keep us safe that Zalanthas doesn't have. But tell me, truthfully, if a thug came up to you in a bar and threatened you, would you threaten him right back, safe in the knowledge that you're on the right side of the law and that if he attacked you he'd probably mess you up, but he'd get pulled off pretty quickly and end up in jail? Nope. You'd bitch out. I'd bitch out. Most of us who value our teeth would bitch out and try to calm him down. And Armageddon (should be) much more dangerous than the real world...

[Chettaman]

I like the idea of half giants as NPC soldiers. all about. If you're a noble and you get what you want it makes sense to have the biggest baddest guard there is. It makes you ICly and OOCly think, "Holy crap. Let me reconsider this."
In my opinion it wouldn't make sense /not/ to have a half-giant guardian for something as simple as a door to my personal bathroom.

Escape should be much easier. I think, though, the crim-code is like this:
if you break the law you get a crim flag named "nak-flag"
And /every/ soldier in allanak will react to a character with "nak-flag" attached to them.

it would take a bit of coding, but you want it to be something like,
if you break the law you get a crim flag from /that/ guard that spreads like a virus. Let's call him guard A. He then recieves "patrol A" which will allow him to react to the  "guard A-flag" that he gave you for breaking the law.
When he passes another soldier he also gives them "patrol A" so they now know to look out for you.

- I want to say again that I would get rid of civilians giving a damn about law breakers and have only NPC guards. No VNPC, just make believe they're there guards.
-on another note, the way it is now... kind of forces people to send in character reports, requests and speak with the IMMs before carrying out their plans, which is good. The scene can always be made better with help from our lords and masters. The only way I see it not working is if the IMMs are busy with their own lives or other things when said character plans to make ''their move''. Opportunities don't come up every day and when you ask for them...

[Riev]

I say remove 1/4th of the total NPC soldiers in a given citystate (now Allanak). Use the new patrol code to give them slightly-better routing so you don't run into someone just placing a soldier one square away from known NPC targets to "effectively stop crime".

Give criminal players SOMETHING to deal with. Set up patrols for the soldiers, even at night, so you have to really scope out that NPC (or PC) and make sure you can do what you're going to do before someone comes around.


I just remember being in Tuluk, and seeing half-giants placed on standby one square away from every even LOW value target, which didn't give Criminal PCs a whole lot to practice on before wanting to be a Shartist. (then again, when a soldier WASN'T near these targets? Stripped down to their knickers every damn day)

[Chettaman]

I like the idea of giving people a chance, but I would want to make a set number like 1/4. I like the amount of soldiers in allanak.

[hyzhenhok]

All that really needs to be done is to put a delay on the crim flag depending on the circumstances the crime happens. The delay should reflect the presence or absence of soldiers, how much time it should reasonable take for the crime to be reported and disseminated (a chaotic, crowded environment should make reporting crime harder, not easier!), and how high priority enforcement is depending on the location of the crime, the nature of the crime and the social status of both the criminal and victim.

Something like this, the numbers are purely hypothetical:

Code Select Expand


Circumstance of Crime (witnessed by NPC or vNPCs)           Delay (Real time)
                                           
[Soldiers in general Vicinity]
Soldier in room               None
1 room from soldier 30 seconds
2 or 3 rooms away & visible to soldier 1 minute

[No nearby soldiers]
Noble or Templar Quarter, Meleth's Circle 30 seconds
Merchant Quarter, Arena, Caravan Road, Merchant Road 1 minute
Magicker Quarter, Other Major Roads 2 minutes
Common Quarter, Bazaar 4 minutes

[Multiplicative modifiers]
Crime was violent     .75
Crime was magickal       .5
Victim is non-human or non-citizen      1.5
Criminal is human    1.25
Criminal is non-citizen       .75

[Armaddict]

I just liked the idea of making less half-giants and more humans, so that resisting arrest was no longer suicidal.  Criminals can fight soldiers, and thus PC soldier patrols become more important, to catch people in the act.  Stealth is no longer a requirement to get away with it.  Brutes can do it too.

Edit:  Not that I disagree with other ideas.  This one just seems like a simple way to get what people were talking about, without massive code overhaul.

[RogueGunslinger]

There are a fuckton too many halfgiant soldiers. I say remove every soldier that isn't scripted to patrol.

[Refugee]

I see the difficulty, but soldiers have the Way too.  That's why word spreads so fast.  They don't need to physically meet each other to share it.  But it wouldn't spread instantly like it does!

[Asanadas]

It'd be nice if PC soldiers got in on this sweet NPC soldier Way network apparently.

[solera]

I see the difficulty, but soldiers have the Way too.  That's why word spreads so fast.  They don't need to physically meet each other to share it.  But it wouldn't spread instantly like it does!

That's why we need all the HG militia.

[CodeMaster]

I see the difficulty, but soldiers have the Way too.  That's why word spreads so fast.  They don't need to physically meet each other to share it.  But it wouldn't spread instantly like it does!

the way is like a fantasy distributed sensor network. with the right role assignments and procedures in place you could distribute an enormous amount of information in seconds. players aren't that organized but there's no reason the virtual world isn't

on mobile

[Hauwke]

I am now imagining little nerdy zalanthan men huddled together in a wagon whispering things they hear through the way and relaying it to their assigned templar/soldier etc

[hyzhenhok]

Nah, it's just a single, enslaved psionic. The soldiers keep psionic contact with him at all times, and instantly report crimes to him. The psionic is drugged, never allowed to sleep and is tied into a magical apparatus that causes any psionic message he receives to be immediately broadcast to all of the soldiers who are in contact with him.

Zalanthan police radio.

[KawaiiBear]

In my opinion it wouldn't make sense /not/ to have a half-giant guardian for something as simple as a door to my personal bathroom.

Until you find everything inside missing because some 'rinthi elf managed to convince it they were hired to redecorate.

That's the problem with NPC half giants. They're supposed to be stupid. Easily mislead and manipulated. It's something the code doesn't account for. Having a bunch left around the city unsupervised by humans is a horrible idea.

[Bushranger]

Nah, it's just a single, enslaved psionic. The soldiers keep psionic contact with him at all times, and instantly report crimes to him. The psionic is drugged, never allowed to sleep and is tied into a magical apparatus that causes any psionic message he receives to be immediately broadcast to all of the soldiers who are in contact with him.

Zalanthan police radio.

That sounds too much like Minority Report.

I thought the militia NPCs were half-mantis bred by Tektolnes in a secret laboratory under his tower? Their hive mind  is how they react so quickly across the city to criminals!

[Chettaman]

I just liked the idea of making less half-giants and more humans, so that resisting arrest was no longer suicidal.  Criminals can fight soldiers, and thus PC soldier patrols become more important, to catch people in the act.  Stealth is no longer a requirement to get away with it.  Brutes can do it too.

Edit:  Not that I disagree with other ideas.  This one just seems like a simple way to get what people were talking about, without massive code overhaul.

Well if we're going to do something, we might as well do it ''right''. Make changes that we can all agree on that make sense! Let's put our incredible minds together!

from refugee:
"I see the difficulty, but soldiers have the Way too.  That's why word spreads so fast.  They don't need to physically meet each other to share it.  But it wouldn't spread instantly like it does!"
I agree. For some reason I had this idea that no soldier actually cared about they're work. But, I mean... there's gotta be someone that's like, "What? Criminal on stone-carvers!? Gather anyone you can, form a wall and shove anyone in your way out of your way. Move all the way to templars. I'll start at templars and move to wall road. Move, move, move!"

Hyzen - Your idea complicates things. And I like it. I only don't like that the timer would be set for all guards to react. Well I guess it would make sense, they'd see a wanted poster with your likeness - 20 coins alive. 10,000 coins alive or dead or something. I think I'm really having trouble deciding if anyone actually cares about justice in the cities.

Asanadas - Holy shit, you're brilliant!
"The so-and-so soldier dood sends you telapathically - Look out for a tall, muscular man."

KawaiiBear - Good point. Maybe the half giant guards could react differently or notice less.
----
I think what most of us want is a reasonable way to escape. At least for the moment it happens in. I myself think, "who the hell's going to care about some elf stealing some guy's coin purse enough to have every guard in the city on alert?"
if people get into a fight and it's without weapons and it doesn't go any further then just fighting. I guess a knock out would be the line to consider a fight serious.
Who is seriously going to report to their very busy superior that there's a fight in the gaj. unless it was, "Weapons drawn in the gaj!"

[IAmJacksOpinion]

I see the difficulty, but soldiers have the Way too.  That's why word spreads so fast.  They don't need to physically meet each other to share it.  But it wouldn't spread instantly like it does!

Then I propose that the new crime response goes like this; if you commit a crime within 1 room of a soldier NPC, that NPC doesn't aggro you, but instead falls immediately unconscious from the insane volume of WAYing he's doing.   

I'm not really interested in justifying HOW every soldier knows what they do, I'd just like to make guard presence be more realistic. My goal isn't to "escape more easily" either. I just want to remove the feeling that crime can't happen to you in a given area, because the code would insta-fuck the perpetrator. That's the feeling the crim-code portrays, but it's not the right vibe for the world. Maybe a scale back would turn Nak proper into rinth 2.0 and it would need scaled back up. Who knows.

And we don't need an elaborate new system to do this. From a programmatic prospective, a lot of these ideas read as "throw out everything, write something 10x more complex", which is never going to happen. An NPC scale back, and a reduction in timer duration - that's more doable. (But also probably never going to happen. >.>)  OR, perhaps the city could be rezoned into quadrants, so instead of being wanted everywhere, you would get a "wanted_allanak_commons" or a "wanted_allanak_bazaar" flag.

[Case]

It's probably hue and cry that's getting soldiers in on it.

[Vwest]

I've never had trouble working around the criminal code.

The volume of half-giants is absolutely crazy from an RP point of view, though.

[RogueGunslinger]

I've never had trouble working around the criminal code.

That's because it is all or nothing. Once you figure out how to work around it it's like it doesn't exist, because you never put yourself in situation to fail. But if you don't know how to do that, it's oppressive and irritating. Perhaps with less deadly reactions there would be more people willing to use their skills in situations they might fail, and thus create opportunities for interaction and conflict.

As it stands, criminals get little to no interaction with their targets.

[hyzhenhok]

I've never had trouble working around the criminal code.

The volume of half-giants is absolutely crazy from an RP point of view, though.

The binary "operate only when you can't possibly be caught until you can't fail, and then operate with impunity as if it doesn't exist" isn't all that great, though.

[Riev]

For the world, getting into a bar fight where a knife is drawn SHOULD be realistic. Accidentally using kick in a barfight shouldn't be a death sentence because the code can't subdue a fighting target.

Walking along the street at night should be dangerous as all hell, because there should be a marked smaller amount of soldiers on the streets. If the new patrol code is functioning, I would honestly suggest if we're to have the same number of NPC soldiers (despite code irregularities like dupe NPCs on resets), then the patrols should bring them into the barracks on the east end of the city at night. If there were a dozen patrolling NPC soldiers in the city at night, I'd still feel a bit overwhelmed. Yes, there should be more, but there should be about a thousand more desperate murderous thieves willing to stab anyone with a nice robe on because they need a bite to eat.


Trail someone out of a bar, watch them speedwalk through PURE DARKNESS without a care. Its staggering, at best, and there is no real room to make the streets dangerous.

[Lizzie]

I think the volume of half-giant soldiers is a duplication bug. I've typoed/bugged/idead this multiple times, because it makes no sense for EIGHT HG soldiers to all be standing in the wagonyard, doing absolutely nothing, for a RL week or longer. There are also duplicates of a bunch of other NPCs that look like they were intended to be unique, and I bug/idea/typo those too. Pretty sure that just removing the NPCs isn't going to solve the problem, because when they do that, the game reset just makes more duplicates anyway. There's got to be something going on in the code itself that's causing it.

[Chettaman]

As it stands, criminals get little to no interaction with their targets.

You're right! You're absolutely right, and that's what I hate.

to riev: guard could stop someone. I guess you'd need to be holding a lantern or have it sitting in the area. lol! Then you'd have to stop them fifteen times! ahahaha! - then they'd just take your lantern and continue on their merry way. xD
good idea. I've noticed that the guards really don't care about public safety /that/ much. So I imagine them all wanting sleep more so than keeping people safe.

a guard enters and stops your fighting!
codedly the guards stop /your/ combat.
the guard says aiming his weapon at you, "Come with us, criminal."
then you have the choice to continue fighting, fight the authorities, run, or submit in that moment. And let's say the moment has a thirty second timer. After 30 seconds they arrest you and you go to jail. Any other choice and they don't sheath their weapons and instead use them on you.

[IAmJacksOpinion]

If guards could force "disengage" on people with "nosave arrest" turned on, the world would be a better place.

I don't think dialing down the crimcode would improve interaction between criminal / target. Spam backstab would still be the most effective route to take. But it would make people consider their safety during their roleplay.