Lately, some FL hook commands like /shields and /selfdestruct made me start thinking about this again. We all know the police factions need some love. And I'd like to see bounty hunting rp evolveed with the possibility to 'arrest' pirates for claiming a bounty. So I had 2 general ideas in mind.
1: The /surrender command a.k.a. 'Going French'
This one's pretty basic. A player who types /surrender surrenders. (no, really? omg!) Typing this line has the following effect. a message appears in green like the /coin command with a time stamp saying 'Player X has surrendered'. Secondly, typing this causes the powerplant of the ship to drop to 0 and remain 0 until said player has docked. This to make sure surrendering has actual consequences and can`t be spammed or abused to feign a surrender.
Surrendering counts as a pvp death/ flee. The green message is proof that can be used to claim bounties or to *sigh* file a sanction report for re engaging.
The idea is that maybe forcing a pirate to surrender and get arrested is worth more bounty money. I know everyone rps his pirate like a really cool and tough guy who isn't afraid to die and rather face death than be arrested cuz he's so leet blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda. But some people might actually like the whole arrest bit. It makes for funny rp and events (jailbreaks anyone?)
Yes, its unrealistic that an arrested person is free after 4 hours (should its players choose to) and that an arrested person's ship flies off 'on its own' to dock on a pirate base after the surrendering has happened. But that`s simply game mechanics getting in the way.
I personally think some lulz can be had with this. yes, any ship can surrender. even battleships at war. be creative.
2: The /arrest command a.k.a. 'You Are So Busted'
2nd idea is the /arrest command. This command allows any police-id-ed ship (or even BHG, but that may cause issues, I'll get to that later) to arrest a targetted ship, again with a message: 'Player X has been arrested' But I say old bean, that's way OP! Well, there's a catch. the targetted ship needs to be at, let's say, 20% hull in order for this to work. Normally, when a player still has botts, he wont let his hull drop to 20% before regening, or he'll regen too fast for the cop to type /arrest player X in time (example: fighter getting hit by a MR)
Getting arrested does the following. The ship in question gets beamed to its previous launchpoint. Maybe even add a launch-block for 4 hours to make arrest really something to fear. God knows the Disco police factions could do with some fear factor on their side, because right now they're just the diet coke of navies.
But then... then we can arrest battleships! epic! and BHG can arrest entire Legates in Omeicron Theta or cambridge! ftw!
No. The /arrest command works up to gbs. Anything bigger will have to depart in flames and molten steel.
Yes, it can be abused by lolcops arresting randon traders or something after snaccing their tranport or something. But if said trader makes a ss of his ship showing nothing is wrong with his kit or chatlogs, o.o comes into play
I think rule 0.0 covers potential abuse of this command pretty well.
1) The possibilities of abuse that you pointed out
2) It's powergaming. Nothing else to it. And, worse, powergaming that'd be supported by game mechanics. What if that pirate WANTS to go down in flames? Defiant, rather than submissive? Forcing your intent on another player without their consent is just wrong.
police factions should be able to arrest people, but perhaps make a cooldown time on the arrest function, say one arrestation/officer at a time. So Cop X can only arrest a player after the 4 hours of the previous arestee has passed. This limits abuse to some extent
I love the idea of Surrender, its really well put out:)I think thats a definite plus to game mechanics, especially when a pirate gets outnumbered by law enforcement and then can decide to surrender instead of die. I believe that having that it should be less of a penalty than dying, perhaps a lessened hour-limit. Something so some characters decide "okay I see its over, I surrender", knowing that its better than dying. In a situation of that kind, I believe its pretty self-explanatory that there would be benefits/disadvantages of both.
In terms of arresting I think the idea is Awesome!! I do agree that it can be revised, and I think the OP didn't mean the powers to be absolute, however this would be great. At the moment, in terms of an LPI officer if we want to arrest somebody, we place them 'under arrest' and escort them to LPI Huntsville/LPI-Sugarland. This is very rare, as most criminals don't RP whatsoever. When 'arrested', we usually ask them not to go exit for <x> period of time, and we patrol outside until its up. If they try to escape, its like a 'jailbreak'. However the point is that due to the fact that RP is relatively non-existant in smugglers/criminals, its a near impossibility.
Having that power in a command would be great, allowing arrest to be much more common and not completely RP based. I disagree with the need to have 20% hull though, perhaps instead the ship needs to be stationary and has to disengage all its weapons before it can be 'arrested'? Maybe even have its shields deactivated by a Debilitator? Having the hull at around 25% I think though would make that player see no point in being arrested and would just resist and get destroyed. I do think that once they're arrested, that they are sent to a prison (say Liberty - LPI Huntsville/LPI Sugarland/Attica Supermax (good luck in escaping!:D) with indeed a cap on when they are allowed to exit. Perhaps there can be a way in the last say 50 minutes to escape, and if they do an alert goes to all law enforcement in the sector. Maybe if you serve your time duly without attempting to break out, you'll get transported to the station closest to where you were arrested/last station you docked aat. Add that with the new powers what I coin 'Police database', I think that'd be superb.
I think this idea overall is great and can be built upon:)After all, the more even the power becomes between Navy and Police the better the gameplay will become, not to mention some evening out of the Navy-dominated systems. And I do want to say that it won't make it 'harder' for criminal organisations, if anything it'll make it more interesting: because if you want to destroy law enforcement both ideas won't stop you in doing so; but if you're an honest trader who was a bit addicted to cardamine so 'accidentally' bought 200 units well, maybe being arrested will do you well:)Or moreover if you don't have money to pay a fine, you can go to prison instead! That would let some decide that going to prison would be less costly, than paying the fine: Say smuggling 3000 units of Cardamine, Arrest>$3 million fine, and go have a jog whilst you're in prison, come back, and then try to do a jailbreak and hope to god you're not in Attica ^_^ On the flipside, if you're a rich smuggler and you want to go quickly to trade some more and make triple the amount you'd pay the fine, you'd do so and just duly continue. Again, pro's and con's.
I seem to remember that if power is set to 0, as you're suggesting for /surrender, shields won't regen and the ship can't move, so maybe having it set to around 100-200, so shields and thrusters will work, but weapons wouldn't, would be a better idea.
1) The possibilities of abuse that you pointed out
2) It's powergaming. Nothing else to it. And, worse, powergaming that'd be supported by game mechanics. What if that pirate WANTS to go down in flames? Defiant, rather than submissive? Forcing your intent on another player without their consent is just wrong.
1) The possibilities of abuse that you pointed out
2) It's powergaming. Nothing else to it. And, worse, powergaming that'd be supported by game mechanics. What if that pirate WANTS to go down in flames? Defiant, rather than submissive? Forcing your intent on another player without their consent is just wrong.
ok. So what I thought would be the general opinion is in fact, the general opinion. the /arrest in its suggested form is too easy to abuse / OP.
I agree that the /surrender command is more mellow. it allows both players (cop and robber) to decide what they do.
But I'd still like to see something to give the rozzer factions something unique. something that makes pirates go 'oh poop, here comes the long arm/ leg/ pee pee of the law.'
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