Guards guards.

[Theebie]

Hi

i would really like to know more about why criminality / guards are implemented the way they are.

what i dislike most is:

a)
you get wanted (for picking a flower from a tree in the main street) and
half a dozend half giants charge IMMEDIATELY into the room, killing you INSTANTLY, without even bothering to question. (Well, they sometimes say Suffer the Highlords fury...)
Anyways, I guess its kinda unrealistic.

b)
you get wanted, and instantly every soldier in the whole city states knows of YOU, enemy number one, stealer of the yellow blossom...


any comments to this?

---theebie---

[Anonymous]

Time is compressed.  Hours take minutes, days take under 2 hours.

In that time a flurry 'look out for so and so' psi's have been spread through the militia.  PCs do it, why can't NPCs?

If you don't fight back (nosave on) you'll get tossed in jail, not killed, depending on your crime.

From a playability standpoint, it's a necessary evil.  Still, evading capture is just a matter of knowing the lay of the land and being observant.

Without such a brutal crim code, theft, assault and murder would be at an unrealistic rate considering the world we live in.  If the choices are walking through streets littered with dead NPCs from a bored PC who went on a joykill spree or having to deal with an unforgiving crim code, I'll take the latter.

[X-D]

Well, Lets see, first, I think the crim code has been probly the most talked about bit of code in the game over the years.

To make it short, sometimes realism has to suffer for playability and for game management/balance. Even with the code the way it is, many players manage to make a good living being criminal, even if it is hard, which it should be, make it any easier and you get even more "twinks" and everybody hates that.

Though, as far as the flower, Dude, you defaced Tek's personal property, and right in plain sight of everybody on the street, would have been safer to spit in a templar's eye. Hell, Tek might be specialy proud of that tree, maybe somebody stole it right out of Muk's personal garden.

[Mekeda]

1) If you are worrying about the code guards use, make sure your nosave is set appropriately. The guards only instantly kill you if you put up a fight,  and inside the city, it's always safest not to do that. These are military city states, regardless of the pretty flowers on the roadside and the military beating someone to death is not an uncommon sight. Commoners would have learned quick to cower and surrender.

2) Don't pick the flowers. Sure, stop and smell them now and then, but on a desert planet, you can be fairly sure those pretty little flowers are someone's treasure.


Mekeda

sadistic spice

[Angela Christine]

Um, you might want to edit that post to remove what you did to get wanted, as far as I know that information is not widely availble outside the game.  It makes sense that it is illegal, because if everyone (PCs, NPCs, and vNPCs) commited similar acts of vandalism then the victim object would be utterly destroyed in under an hour.  Those things are valuable and expensive to maintain.

Anyway, on to your question.

As far as I know both a and b are for play balance.  Yes, everyone knows it isn't entirely realistic, although there are some nearly-plausible ways of explaining it.

Explaining a) isn't hard.  Some virtual person sees you doing the illegal thing, and makes a fuss.  It might even have been a virtual soldier that saw you.  You were in a place that is very crowded, even if there weren't and PCs in the room with you at the time.  They call for help and the soldier comes charging in.  It's a police state, there are soldiers everywhere.

B) is a little harder to explain.  Part of the typical explanation is creative use of the Way, perhaps the city militia has some sort of psychic dispatcher that directs the soldiers.  A more mundane explanation is that while you are near the scene of the crime people are still pointing, shouting, and chasing you, so when you get close to some coded NPC soldiers they look to see what the ruckus is about.  

Regardless of explanations to make it ICly sensible, the main reason is OOC play balance.  NPCs are dead stupid.  Seriously, a hamster is a genius next to an NPC, and hamsters are amazingly stupid.  NPCs just have little scripts to run off, not anything approaching even the most basic Artificial Intelligence.  So it is easy for the average PC to outsmart most NPCs.  If the game is still running in 20 years the AI may be good enough that the soldiers won't need to "cheat" to keep up with PCs, but for now if they had realistic communication delays no one would ever get arrested.  A fast PC can run from one end of the city to the other in under a minute, there is no realistic way for the NPCs to deal with that.

As for surviving, the most helpful thing you can do before commiting a crime or something that -might- be illegal is to set "nosave on".  That way if the soldiers try to subdue you before attacking (and they usually do) then they will capture you and drag you off to jail.  This is the sweet part.  Once you are in jail the penalties are usually unrealistically light.  Often a citizen will only be in jail for a couple hours on their first offence, no flogging, no fingers or hands cut off, no being thrown into the arena.  If a PC templar comes by things could get more interesting, but the crimcode penalties are pretty light.  Once you submit to being arrested, the penalties are lighter than any real criminal system I've ever heard of, in RL you'd probably spend longer getting the paperwork on your arrest processed than a Naki will spend on his entire sentence.  Sweet.  Obviously this is also for playability reasons, because few people would want to play out their character being sentenced to hard labour in the mines for 3 months.

AC

[Xygax]

Don't steal the Highlord's leaves.  Ever.

[Carnage]

Don't steal the fuckin' Highlord's leaves.  Ever, motherfucker.

Introducing new Pulp Fiction Xygax!

[sacac]

WEll I think it was pretty fair when I was a criminal Dying over three 'sid while trying to make it somewhere you know The militia doesn't go.. often.. Very fun.. being trapped inbetween two ilitia members.. VERY Exciting.. I don't know.. maybe it is just me and the -excitement- of being known you are wanted by every militia member is very -exciting- Because it's like your a longneck and slept with thier daughter.. or something..

I love it.. I really do.. You should try to steal som coins from a templar.. they get really mad.. especially when you put it back and they catch you
Many alleyways and rooves in allanak.. I suggest you use them
and try to be paranoid when your a criminal Like every criminal is..

[gfair]

I appreciate the sentiment that the crim code seems unrealistic.  Couldn't there be some time system developed so that soldiers hear about the person over time.  They first get a tell with a description giving them a 5% or 10% chance of knowing the person if they see them, then with a detailed description they get up to 80% or something but that takes some time.

If one day in game takes 90 minutes real time, then one real minute is equal approximately to 16 minutes game time.  That shouldn't be sufficient for all the guards in a town to be notified and successfully identify a criminal, especially one blending into a crowd.  Instant recognition with no chance of slipping by is unrealistic no matter what ratio of game time to RL time.

Guards instantly charging in - only if it isn't a silent crime, it's a crime witnessed.  Again, a chance for failure depending on certain things.

If crim code is one of the most talked about in the game, perhaps that is deserving of an involved solution moreso than other problems that come up less frequently?

[Ueda]

especially one blending into a crowd.

What? hide? emo scratches his dull brown hair, his eyes moving to the side, looking puzzled.