Siege artifices and destruction of property

[Potjeh]

A common complaint on the forums is that bases tend to get completely destroyed when they're raided. I reckon this is because you need to disable all the braziers before you loot, so since they're all disabled anyway you may as well go and destroy everything. An idea that was brought up a time or two is dividing destruction of a base and plain old theft into two distinct systems. But I think that we can get the same effect by expanding the existing artifice system with two new sets.

The first set would be stealth artifices. They would serve to reduce damage from braziers, both bbile drain and permanent humour damage. The idea is that you could carry out a liftable object under brazier fire, or assassinate someone in the middle of a vault without destroying the braziers and come back out alive and well. This would, in essence, be the aforementioned theft system. Since this set isn't really intended for bashing your way in, it would probably need a lockpicking system to really shine.

The second set would be vandalism artifices. They would serve to increase damage against buildings. The obvious issue here is that high humour characters could simply use the stealth set since they don't really need a damage bonus, so we'd need a reworking of the way buildings are damaged in Salem. Tree walls come to mind here - the reason for their popularity is that they take a constant time to break through regardless of the assailant's phlegm. The same could be applied to all the buildings, ie give them a fixed destruction percentage per tick and make phlegm drain a constant (higher drain for higher soak objects). The only way to increase the % per tick and decrease the phlegm drain would be with the vandalism artifices. I think it should be possible to balance it so stealth artifices are always inferior for razing, and vandalism artifices inferior for stealing. Fields should have a really long destruction time, since they're so important and effort-intensive. Anyway, another advantage of this destruction system is that even newbies would be able to fix their construction mistakes, even if it would take a really long time due to lack of appropriate artifices.

Of course, focusing on one of these two sets would prevent getting high values for the other siege set, and more importantly for the combat set. Solo raiders would need to mix and match to strike the balance that fits them, and raiding party members could specialize in different roles.

[Dallane]

The last time i talked to jorb about the siege system they had something like this in mind. I really like the idea for more specialization with armor.

[Mereni]

I would make one of each set for the most part. Though if this did happen, my normal running around would probably be done with a thievery set.

There are two reasons bases get destroyed:

The first is political. If you want to damage an enemy, you're not going to leave their structures or their defenses ins place, no matter how much it takes to destroy them. In that case, all containers, braziers, and structures go down. The walls would too if they weren't so much work for so little benefit. Artifices won't change that one way or the other.

The second is cost. You take crime stepping on the claim, you take crime looking in a box, you take crime taking the box and setting it down outside, you take crime for every singe item you take From a cabinet on the claim, you take multiple crimes for every object destroyed... What's a few more with all of that going on? If I walk up on a newbie claim and take crimes breaking down a wall and looking in their chests, and carrying the good ones off claim, why not destroy the chests too? I often do just out of annoyance if they have nothing I want. Artifices might change that behavior slightly, but probably not.

One good way to reduce damage at least to newer player's claims, who have little defense, would be to remove the crime for looking in a container. If I could go into a claim and snoop around while only taking the one or two debuffs from the actual trespass, I wouldn't destroy anything at all. I'd check the chests, grab a half dozen iron bars or leather or whatever I can fit in my inventory, taking a half dozen crimes in the process, and be on my way. I get a little loot, and the newbie gets to keep his farmer's hovel and handful of boxes.

[Dallane]

The first is political. If you want to damage an enemy, you're not going to leave their structures or their defenses ins place, no matter how much it takes to destroy them. In that case, all containers, braziers, and structures go down. The walls would too if they weren't so much work for so little benefit. Artifices won't change that one way or the other.

I'm sure all the low level players you guys cleared out were political enemies.
User was warned for this post
Let's keep the politics in HoB
If you have a problem with this moderation visit the rules thread or PM Colesie

[colesie]

[8:19:24 PM] Jordan Coles: I'd prefer that you get crime for each item in the container when you remove it from the claim
[8:19:27 PM]: Yes, you do.
[8:19:30 PM]: And that is fine.
[8:19:41 PM] Jordan Coles: Since taking the chest out is the same as stealing all the **** anyways
[8:19:56 PM]: You look into a chest, see nothing, don't take a crime, you leave it be.
[8:20:07 PM]: You looking a chest, see a couple good things, you take them out, and leave.
[8:20:23 PM]: You look in a chest, see a bunch of good things, you steal the whole thing and take the stuff.
[8:20:44 PM] Jordan Coles: Another thing I'd like to see is for scents to stack after you leave the claim
[8:20:55 PM]: You look in a chest and take a crime... may as well take the chest off the claim, look in it, take the good stuff, and destroy it.
[8:20:55 PM] Jordan Coles: So moving items around in a chest does not build up crime
[8:21:00 PM] Jordan Coles: Once you leave the claim, with the items they will
[8:21:33 PM] Jordan Coles: A "ghost" scent where the item was taken is left
[8:21:40 PM] Jordan Coles: But once you leave the claim with the item
[8:21:43 PM] Jordan Coles: It goes live
[8:22:12 PM] Jordan Coles: When I was looting places it was always a pain if you wanted any sort of organization lol
[8:22:25 PM] Jordan Coles: Easier to just drag all the **** out then organize
[8:22:32 PM]: Yeah, exactly.
[8:22:39 PM]: But if it's a small claim, you leave the stuff there.
[8:22:51 PM]: And destroy it when there's nothing good.
[8:23:00 PM]: Since there usually isn't.
[8:23:20 PM]: But if I didn't take crimes when I looked, I wouldn't take a crime destroying it.

[loftar]

An idea that was brought up a time or two is dividing destruction of a base and plain old theft into two distinct systems.

I would also like that, as I think I mentioned in the announcement thread for the waste claims. My intention would be that it should be possible to develop skills to get past walls without having to break them (and/or a lockpicking skill), and therefore being able to enter a base for stealing (or summoning, &c.) without having to destroy anything; which is the reason only vandalism crimes are prohibited without using a waste claim.

However, trying to figure out a working system for such vandalism-less stealing turned out to be harder than I thought, since one could simply wall one's base off with non-wall structures, like woodpiles or whatever, that wouldn't be passable using such a wall-scaling mechanic, and would be impossible to destroy without vandalism. I've been considering some kind of mechanic whereby one could "strafe" between (non-wall) objects that are built next to each other, but that just seems like a very ugly solution, requiring its own completely distinct movement system and whatnot.

[Mereni]

one could simply wall one's base it with non-wall structures, like houses or whatever, that wouldn't be passable using such a wall-scaling mechanic, and would be impossible to destroy without vandalism.

Structures like that though, can only be used for walls. The base owner still need to put in a gate somewhere, or live completely walled in, never leaving the base. I suppose that is possible to do, especially if foraging is going to be less and less important...

Structures, including trees, could have a bigger 'planting' footprint than the space they actually take up so that they can always be walked around.

The ability to climb walls could extend to structures and make climbing those structures easy to the point where using them in defense would be useless.

There could be some reason to always want a way out to forage or hunt so that only the most terrified would every build a base without a gate.

I think there are a lot of ways to make a vandalism-split-from-thievery system work.

[loftar]

Structures like that though, can only be used for walls. The base owner still need to put in a gate somewhere, or live completely walled in, never leaving the base.

You could just place a pile-of-wood as gate, and easily destroy it and rebuild it when you want to enter and exit.

Structures, including trees, could have a bigger 'planting' footprint than the space they actually take up so that they can always be walked around.

Admittedly, that's another solution I've considered. I just have a feeling it will be sploitable one way or another. :)

I'm still thinking about it.

[Potjeh]

You could do away with waste claims (which come with their own set of exploits) if you balance vandalism cost right. By making max humour loss heavier, you can make destruction cost as much as construction, maybe even more. Currently this isn't feasible because it would make theft and summoning too hard, but stealth artifice would remove that concern. Stealth set wouldn't be good enough to do serious damage, but it could be good enough to destroy a wall segment or a woodpile mid-base. Stealth set destruction should still be more humour-costly than vandal set destruction, ofc, but it could be used to break through a wall in centre of the base while with vandal set you'd be limited to chipping away at the edges.

[darnokpl]

However, trying to figure out a working system for such vandalism-less stealing turned out to be harder than I thought, since one could simply wall one's base off with non-wall structures, like woodpiles or whatever, that wouldn't be passable using such a wall-scaling mechanic, and would be impossible to destroy without vandalism. I've been considering some kind of mechanic whereby one could "strafe" between (non-wall) objects that are built next to each other, but that just seems like a very ugly solution, requiring its own completely distinct movement system and whatnot.

If someone can climb he could also slip between larger buildings.