Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Ok, so some things have been going in on the SVN here for this so I figured I would 'officially' introduce it since its now fully functional.
We've long had numerous complaints about criminals and other 'enemy' units being able to endlessly hang out in our cities and for some of us the complaint goes the other way around where it feels a little too easy to wreak havoc on another player by hanging out in their cities, enhancing their crime, and ambushing them whenever you can get a good shot in - only to retreat back to the city to safety.
While some of this is fun, there should be risk involved and the risk has now officially been introduced.
At the moment, this mechanism is a 2 stage process but down the road a version or two and I'll cycle back around to making it a 3 stage process:
So at the moment, Steps I and II are developed and in place on the SVN. I'm not sure if I'll go the whole distance with step III this cycle or not but I do know it's fairly involved and I want to get the new criminal and law enforcement units as reviewed into the game first.
Pirates haven't been included yet but they haven't been omitted... I'll need to see what we're going to do with them once we get back around to the naval review. Not sure if we should let them freely enter cities or not and that's the key to becoming open to being Investigated.
One of the points of this mechanism is to give Law Enforcement units multiple ways to specialize. With Hide and Seek, they can now specialize in security checks (visibility), Patrols (crime reduction), Crowd Control (promos coming soon for Revolt Resistance), Investigations, and Arrests (collecting combat benefits so they can move in when the investigator has accumulated a case against a local criminal!)
Criminal units already have numerous ways to specialize and being Insidious is just another way for them, though it's an 'interesting decision' whether this will be more important than enhancing invisibility or crime spreading or whatever else they wish to inflict on the enemy. Criminals have a tough role to play and are spread thin with a host of ways to be unique from one another.
So, as the latest development, any thoughts, comments, questions or concerns?
To clarify, the majority of the Arrest Feature is CORE, not just a Hide and Seek add on. Hide and Seek just enhances the depth of how it plays out is all.
We've long had numerous complaints about criminals and other 'enemy' units being able to endlessly hang out in our cities and for some of us the complaint goes the other way around where it feels a little too easy to wreak havoc on another player by hanging out in their cities, enhancing their crime, and ambushing them whenever you can get a good shot in - only to retreat back to the city to safety.
While some of this is fun, there should be risk involved and the risk has now officially been introduced.
At the moment, this mechanism is a 2 stage process but down the road a version or two and I'll cycle back around to making it a 3 stage process:
- The Investigation Check:
- Criminal units commonly are able to blend into cities safely. Not all of them but some of that gets down to the differences between strike teams, criminals and ruffians but Thieves, Rogues, Assassins and so on can generally get away with entering an enemy city (now even if you're at war with the city's owner.)
- They now also have an ability dubbed 'Insidiousness'. This is their ability to diminish the likelihood of being 'investigated'. Think of it as how clever or careful they are when they commit their crimes. There are promotions (and buildups) in place now so they can begin developing their Insidiousness abilities further and techs unlock quite a potential for them in this regard.
- Law Enforcement units now have an ability dubbed 'Investigation'. This allows them to put together the ability to 'prove' that a criminal has been up to no good and should be arrested. Promotions (and buildups) are also in place to help them develop this ability.
- It can be helpful to think of it as the city is doing the investigation check. This check takes place each round for every criminal hiding out in the city. This check takes place on a d1000 roll check (for gamers out there who know what this means.) Each point of Investigation the city can muster up is a .1% chance of successfully investigating a criminal but each point of insidiousness the criminal possesses (plus any help he may be getting from some city buildings he can 'hideout' in) reduces that chance by .1% as well.
- Much like healing abilities, only the Law Enforcement unit with the highest investigation value will add his value to the city when the city makes the Investigation check. So it only helps to take one local law enforcement unit and develop his investigation abilities to a peak - multiple units with investigation offer no further assistance. Buildings that add investigation to add on top of the best local investigating unit and I believe we should soon have a specialist that can add on to this value as well.
- Skilled Criminals CAN negate even the most skilled Law Enforcement and as a result, if you avoid buildings that give Insidiousness to local criminals and make sure to build buildings that give Investigation to Law Enforcement, the edge will be given to Investigation. Additionally, criminals have a LOT of things to focus skill development on while LE units don't have nearly such a range so commonly you'd find it easier to have a good Investigating LE unit in a city than it would be to be sending into an opponent city a criminal with a maxed out Insidiousness. So the balance is in Investigations favor a bit. BUT it needs to be... .1% would require a lot of checks to get to the point where it's successful. I may look at adding a temporary +.1 investigation modifier for every round the criminal has been hiding out in the same city as well.
- When an Investigation check goes poorly for a criminal it doesn't mean the criminal is automatically arrested.
- What it means is that the criminal picks up an 'auto-promotion' called 'Wanted'. On Hide and Seek there are many levels of 'Wanted' and it can build up multiple times.
- 'Wanted' erodes or completely negates the Criminal's invisibility abilities. It erodes his ability to blend into cities. And it makes him a potential target for arrest.
- Note that your own criminals are equally susceptible to your own investigation efforts. Unless you want to try to play around with it and see if you can get some benefits from it (which you may) you'll probably want to keep your own criminal units OUTSIDE your own cities!
- 'Wanted' promotions all vanish as soon as you get the criminal completely out of sight of the team of the player that successfully investigated you. Your criminal must get away, out of sight, so as to re-invent himself. If you've investigated your own criminal, just getting him outside your own territory will remove the Wanted promotion(s).
- On Hide and Seek, it can be a game of chicken... if they can see you, they can arrest you but you MAY be able to remain hidden for a bit longer before they can. There are buildups for Disguise invisibility and promos for it and camouflage of course. If your criminal is very good at staying out of sight, despite the mounting penalties to invisibility, you may be able to survive a Wanted promo without being arrested. And you might invite them to try if you've got a very powerful criminal.
- The best investigating unit will get a small amount of XP per investigation check he makes against a local criminal. The criminal will get a small amount of XP per round he successfully passes a check without becoming 'wanted'. There's natural ongoing training for criminals and law enforcement where criminals are hiding out in cities.
- Criminal units commonly are able to blend into cities safely. Not all of them but some of that gets down to the differences between strike teams, criminals and ruffians but Thieves, Rogues, Assassins and so on can generally get away with entering an enemy city (now even if you're at war with the city's owner.)
- Make an Arrest:
- The second stage to this process is the ability for Law Enforcement units to make an arrest. If they can see a criminal (even if it is yours) with a wanted promotion on the same tile (even if this is outside of a city) then they get an Arrest Action Button.
- When selected, the arrest action will give you a popup selection list of all the criminals available for arrest. Law Enforcement is generally blind to whether the state is sanctioning a criminal or not so the list does not specify the player to whom the criminal belongs.
- When you select one of the criminals to arrest, you immediately engage in an attack against that criminal by the arresting unit. It's not going to give you the odds for this attack so it will test your ability to gauge your own success. (YES - this means that I have successfully implemented and debugged the ability for units to attack other units on the same tile! My next step there is to work out the Ambush action for normal same-tile military style attacks. Coming soon...)
- At the moment, if you are victorious, you've simply killed the criminal. All arrests are fatal. Which leads to:
- The second stage to this process is the ability for Law Enforcement units to make an arrest. If they can see a criminal (even if it is yours) with a wanted promotion on the same tile (even if this is outside of a city) then they get an Arrest Action Button.
- Trial
- Eventually I'll implement a trial process once a criminal has been arrested. A special capture mechanism based on the current capture odds rules will be implemented to support this - if the criminal is killed then it happened during the arrest but otherwise, if captured then a trial begins.
- I plan to base on civics whether the trial takes place with an automatic result or with players having full control over the outcome with a popup selection list.
- Trials will play out a little like goody results. In fact, I MAY piggyback on goody infos to set it up (but the python on each goody result would need to be eliminated!) Factors like civics, local laws, presence of lawyers on the tile where the arrest took place (or in the nearest city) (and maybe giving them promos and the ability to argue for differing unique results), possibly even leader traits, will all play a role in what results become possible.
- Such results can span from killing the criminal (capital punishment) for local or national happiness value, turning him into a slave captive, setting him loose on the streets as an informant, fining him for gold, turning him loose for state sensitive information (espionage) are all intended to be possible. We could do to develop a list of suggested possibilities here.
- Eventually I'll implement a trial process once a criminal has been arrested. A special capture mechanism based on the current capture odds rules will be implemented to support this - if the criminal is killed then it happened during the arrest but otherwise, if captured then a trial begins.
So at the moment, Steps I and II are developed and in place on the SVN. I'm not sure if I'll go the whole distance with step III this cycle or not but I do know it's fairly involved and I want to get the new criminal and law enforcement units as reviewed into the game first.
Pirates haven't been included yet but they haven't been omitted... I'll need to see what we're going to do with them once we get back around to the naval review. Not sure if we should let them freely enter cities or not and that's the key to becoming open to being Investigated.
One of the points of this mechanism is to give Law Enforcement units multiple ways to specialize. With Hide and Seek, they can now specialize in security checks (visibility), Patrols (crime reduction), Crowd Control (promos coming soon for Revolt Resistance), Investigations, and Arrests (collecting combat benefits so they can move in when the investigator has accumulated a case against a local criminal!)
Criminal units already have numerous ways to specialize and being Insidious is just another way for them, though it's an 'interesting decision' whether this will be more important than enhancing invisibility or crime spreading or whatever else they wish to inflict on the enemy. Criminals have a tough role to play and are spread thin with a host of ways to be unique from one another.
So, as the latest development, any thoughts, comments, questions or concerns?
To clarify, the majority of the Arrest Feature is CORE, not just a Hide and Seek add on. Hide and Seek just enhances the depth of how it plays out is all.