- Jun 13, 2017
- 133
Guns of the Conclave
Rank: Adjudicator (R6)
Service Points: 0
Imagine being so bad at the game that CPC members actually manage to arrest you :shrug:
Community Input: Prison
- Thread starter BioXide
- Start date
- Jun 17, 2017
- 35
The Syndicate
Rank: None
Service Points: 0
If there ends up being a mining component to reducing your PP, it would be crazy if there was a mineral only found in the prison mine. Normally it would converted into gear for CPC, but it could also be smuggled out to be manufactured into one of the most expensive and hard to get boosters.
Prison wine just has a different je ne sais quoi to off the shelf stuff.
The design of the naughty corner would sort of turn on how you want the PP system to function as a whole. Roughly how long do you expect the average player of a criminal faction to spend in there?
If it is awhile then by all means the more to do the better but if it is a relatively short stay it might end up as an exercise in jumping hoops or just unused features.
- Jun 15, 2017
- 41
Civil Protection Commission
Rank: Commandant (R6)
Service Points: 0
- Jun 14, 2017
- 192
Terran Defense Corps
Rank: None
Service Points: 0
There is a lot of good ideas here.
I just want to re-enforce the desire for prison sentences to be purely time based rather then having to do chores. I see a prison sentence as a way to time out a player who have been highly productive on the illegal side of the game, and now the game world needs to recover from his actions, so we put him away. While he's away he should of course have things to do as he is just playing the game like everyone else and haven't actually done anything wrong. I like John's idea alot for this reason, because it gives the ganker more of what he wants while not turning the remaining game world into a chaotic apocalyptic gank fest all the time. I side on longer prison sentences with good prison content. And maybe less so on escape mechanics.
I just want to re-enforce the desire for prison sentences to be purely time based rather then having to do chores. I see a prison sentence as a way to time out a player who have been highly productive on the illegal side of the game, and now the game world needs to recover from his actions, so we put him away. While he's away he should of course have things to do as he is just playing the game like everyone else and haven't actually done anything wrong. I like John's idea alot for this reason, because it gives the ganker more of what he wants while not turning the remaining game world into a chaotic apocalyptic gank fest all the time. I side on longer prison sentences with good prison content. And maybe less so on escape mechanics.
Having spent my fair share guarding DeMorgans castle and maintaining the ramp wars I feel that the prison colony should be hardcoded as the government building it is no other owners other than CPC, now I feel that CPC should be able to give access rights (and take them away) to factions such as TDC or others based on alliances and politics.
The prison its self needs to be more secure and a more hostile thing to raid, previously it was mass numbers would win and it didn’t take long to effectively Merc your way through, revision on hacking etc can be done, the level system worked well however having a “public gallery/area” will be needed and increase in security protocols throughout.
turrets could be a part of the security say in level 3 an additional item to hack from a separate prison control room, you could implement CCTV etc also.
Levels, Ramps and towers to stick to nostalgia but add new challenges and zest to revitalise.
Although everyone above has given brilliant suggestions I like the time idea mentioned but giving meaningful “work” to assist getting off PP quicker than just jumping or shooting a wall.
Mining for raw materials that increase the faction funds for CPC is a good idea but should be an automatic sale/ value rather than a physical raw material used in game as it takes away value from the actual mining factions..
Production again would counter the economic factions so balancing this would be a main concern but it gives an insentive for the CPC to actually do their job and nick people rather than casually have a chat to most wanted citizens.
just my two cents.
The prison its self needs to be more secure and a more hostile thing to raid, previously it was mass numbers would win and it didn’t take long to effectively Merc your way through, revision on hacking etc can be done, the level system worked well however having a “public gallery/area” will be needed and increase in security protocols throughout.
turrets could be a part of the security say in level 3 an additional item to hack from a separate prison control room, you could implement CCTV etc also.
Levels, Ramps and towers to stick to nostalgia but add new challenges and zest to revitalise.
Although everyone above has given brilliant suggestions I like the time idea mentioned but giving meaningful “work” to assist getting off PP quicker than just jumping or shooting a wall.
Mining for raw materials that increase the faction funds for CPC is a good idea but should be an automatic sale/ value rather than a physical raw material used in game as it takes away value from the actual mining factions..
Production again would counter the economic factions so balancing this would be a main concern but it gives an insentive for the CPC to actually do their job and nick people rather than casually have a chat to most wanted citizens.
just my two cents.
Never took one before won’t start nowI'm excited to bribe cops when i get locked up for having drugs on me. WHO IS GOING TO TAKE MY BRIBE TO LET ME OUT EARLY?! HUH CPC?!
- Dec 20, 2018
- 149
The Syndicate
Rank: None
Service Points: 0
Since this is semi-relevant to the current development, wanted to post these thoughts. Although this sort of thing may be more of a future thing (i.e around when investigation mechanics are developed).
Prison in FoM suffered from prison mechanics that a lot of player-driven games struggle with. The prison was designed not as a place of content, but as a place of player punishment.
You have to approach prison mechanics in the mindset that someone who winds up in prison is adequately playing the game as intended, and so being sent to prison is a natural outcome of their play. They are not being sent to prison as punishment for playing the game per se, but as the result of a combination of their actions & the goals of CPC.
To do this, you have to design mechanics that create content and opportunity for someone who winds up in prison, and reason for them to engage in it. You have to allow them to still have progression even when they are serving time in prison as a result of their other actions. Shooting a mining gun at a rock wall or other menial tasks is not it. These are boring tasks to try to allow someone to speed up their release, but they aren't engaging.
I think you can make prison have engaging content and progression.
The prison should have some kind of territories system. Not the same exact with TCs, and not in the sense that opposition can destroy, but that opposition can takeover. Groups, particularly clans or SYN/FoE should be able to control territory inside the prison. And not to do this just for the sake of owning territory, but because there are viable reasons to actually own it. For instance:
These are the ways I think you can make prison a viable destination. Let me give you an example of how these work together:
My son Poeb returns to NotBoS and joins The Food Council. On the outside he's putting in work and he's racked up a decent amount of PP. He gets caught and gets sent to prison. So, he links up with me and the other TFC boys who are locked up as well, in which we are in control of a territory. For example sake, let's say that this territory lets us produce 'DeMorgans Dew', a toilet-based booster drink that has a viable purpose outside of prison (lower stam cost on melee or something, idk). This is the only place it's made in the entire game.
We produce as much DMD as we can inside the prison, using materials we source inside the prison, i.e stuff from mining and other tasks, that normally would go to funding CPC but we use it for this instead. The trade-off being that we're not getting better PP reduction for the mining, we're instead using it to profit.
We then have a smuggler who gets the DMD out of the prison where the outside gang can sell it for huge profit on the outside. But this doesn't come without threat of opposition, because the Watu Accord also have a beefy group inside the prison, with territory, and are always attempting to seize control over the DMD production. Thus, our smuggler isn't just responsible for smuggling the DMD out, he's responsible for smuggling weapons in. Particularly weapons we can conceal easily. We then use those weapons to defend against Watu's attempts to seize control over DMD.
All the while, CPC is trying to curb smuggling, inside the prison gang violence, and reduce the amount of contraband inside the prison. Running searching, investigation smuggling routes and methods, and so on.
When you do this, now Poeb going to jail isn't so bad. He can still aid in TFC's efforts and has personal progression. With his actions in the prison, he's ultimately going to wind up making money and reputation inside TFC. This may lead to his progression within the gang. Sure, he may wind up doing more time inside than intended, but it'll be engaging in content and he'll be doing something to progress despite the fact that he's locked up on a moon somewhere. And if he chooses not to involve, he is more than free to do that and just do the tasks and whatever and wait his time out.
Now this isn't foolproof, because while this is great for SYN gangs and FoE, I'm not sure what to do to make prison engaging for GOTC and the corps. I know that for one thing, gangs inside the prison are not going to want to be xenophobic to letting outsiders participate in their activities, because it will be hard to manage territories inside without outside assistance. If there are only 2-3 TFC doing long sentences inside but Watu just got raided and have 8, it's going to be in our best interest to recruit GOTC prisoners to help us defend and split profits with them just to maintain our operation.
But still, there may need to be other engaging ways for those factions inside the prison, and I do not have the same perspective they do so it's hard for me to suggest. I would say that it would be beneficial for those factions to describe how prison could be engaging from their factional perspective.
Ultimately, the original sentiment remains. The end goal should be that prison is not a punishment and a time out, but an evolution and another source of content to engage in. Going to prison shouldn't inherently always be a bad thing, at least from an OOC/player perspective. Sometimes it will just by the nature of it being a bad time to be in jail, but not because jail is just a boring content-lacking place.
Prison in FoM suffered from prison mechanics that a lot of player-driven games struggle with. The prison was designed not as a place of content, but as a place of player punishment.
You have to approach prison mechanics in the mindset that someone who winds up in prison is adequately playing the game as intended, and so being sent to prison is a natural outcome of their play. They are not being sent to prison as punishment for playing the game per se, but as the result of a combination of their actions & the goals of CPC.
To do this, you have to design mechanics that create content and opportunity for someone who winds up in prison, and reason for them to engage in it. You have to allow them to still have progression even when they are serving time in prison as a result of their other actions. Shooting a mining gun at a rock wall or other menial tasks is not it. These are boring tasks to try to allow someone to speed up their release, but they aren't engaging.
I think you can make prison have engaging content and progression.
The prison should have some kind of territories system. Not the same exact with TCs, and not in the sense that opposition can destroy, but that opposition can takeover. Groups, particularly clans or SYN/FoE should be able to control territory inside the prison. And not to do this just for the sake of owning territory, but because there are viable reasons to actually own it. For instance:
- Having a territory where the owner can produce something that people outside the prison want, particularly something that cannot be produced outside of prison. Make that production process have active mechanics, in the way we've previously discussed with drugs/guns/food.
- Grant CPC various administration abilities for the prison, such as the ability to do lockdowns in the case of a serious problem/emergency, and of course the ability to search things. Particularly some system in which crime occurring inside the prison can boost ones PP. Various ways for CPC to manage the prison and its functions/inmates.
- Have open-world accessible containers for items strewn about the prison, some hidden, that inmates can use. Ideally, have it be something dynamic so that the groups/gangs inside the prison can have stashes hidden from other groups/gangs and CPC, because they choose the location.
- Provide ways to smuggle both in and out of the prison.
These are the ways I think you can make prison a viable destination. Let me give you an example of how these work together:
My son Poeb returns to NotBoS and joins The Food Council. On the outside he's putting in work and he's racked up a decent amount of PP. He gets caught and gets sent to prison. So, he links up with me and the other TFC boys who are locked up as well, in which we are in control of a territory. For example sake, let's say that this territory lets us produce 'DeMorgans Dew', a toilet-based booster drink that has a viable purpose outside of prison (lower stam cost on melee or something, idk). This is the only place it's made in the entire game.
We produce as much DMD as we can inside the prison, using materials we source inside the prison, i.e stuff from mining and other tasks, that normally would go to funding CPC but we use it for this instead. The trade-off being that we're not getting better PP reduction for the mining, we're instead using it to profit.
We then have a smuggler who gets the DMD out of the prison where the outside gang can sell it for huge profit on the outside. But this doesn't come without threat of opposition, because the Watu Accord also have a beefy group inside the prison, with territory, and are always attempting to seize control over the DMD production. Thus, our smuggler isn't just responsible for smuggling the DMD out, he's responsible for smuggling weapons in. Particularly weapons we can conceal easily. We then use those weapons to defend against Watu's attempts to seize control over DMD.
All the while, CPC is trying to curb smuggling, inside the prison gang violence, and reduce the amount of contraband inside the prison. Running searching, investigation smuggling routes and methods, and so on.
When you do this, now Poeb going to jail isn't so bad. He can still aid in TFC's efforts and has personal progression. With his actions in the prison, he's ultimately going to wind up making money and reputation inside TFC. This may lead to his progression within the gang. Sure, he may wind up doing more time inside than intended, but it'll be engaging in content and he'll be doing something to progress despite the fact that he's locked up on a moon somewhere. And if he chooses not to involve, he is more than free to do that and just do the tasks and whatever and wait his time out.
Now this isn't foolproof, because while this is great for SYN gangs and FoE, I'm not sure what to do to make prison engaging for GOTC and the corps. I know that for one thing, gangs inside the prison are not going to want to be xenophobic to letting outsiders participate in their activities, because it will be hard to manage territories inside without outside assistance. If there are only 2-3 TFC doing long sentences inside but Watu just got raided and have 8, it's going to be in our best interest to recruit GOTC prisoners to help us defend and split profits with them just to maintain our operation.
But still, there may need to be other engaging ways for those factions inside the prison, and I do not have the same perspective they do so it's hard for me to suggest. I would say that it would be beneficial for those factions to describe how prison could be engaging from their factional perspective.
Ultimately, the original sentiment remains. The end goal should be that prison is not a punishment and a time out, but an evolution and another source of content to engage in. Going to prison shouldn't inherently always be a bad thing, at least from an OOC/player perspective. Sometimes it will just by the nature of it being a bad time to be in jail, but not because jail is just a boring content-lacking place.
remember people, you go to jail for getting caught, not for playing the game. honestly, all that seems like a nightmare to implement all that and is far more complex than prison ought to be. you do the crime, you do the time (for getting caught).
just implement a method to reduce PP outside of prison like paying it off at terminals for a price that increases the more frequent you use it (that goes to CPC and who ever owns the territory/colony its in). also i'd be more worried about ensuring that PP build up is done the right way so it cant be abused by CPC forcing players to build up PP to send them off to prison by stun ganking them until they fight back - perhaps there could be a RoE system implemented where PP only starts building if they fire first at CPC or other citizens in the vicinity.
that said, im not entirely opposed to fleshing out prison mechanics but i think streamlining it to get out as quick as possible and back into the world is more important than having its own little robust ecosystem.
just implement a method to reduce PP outside of prison like paying it off at terminals for a price that increases the more frequent you use it (that goes to CPC and who ever owns the territory/colony its in). also i'd be more worried about ensuring that PP build up is done the right way so it cant be abused by CPC forcing players to build up PP to send them off to prison by stun ganking them until they fight back - perhaps there could be a RoE system implemented where PP only starts building if they fire first at CPC or other citizens in the vicinity.
that said, im not entirely opposed to fleshing out prison mechanics but i think streamlining it to get out as quick as possible and back into the world is more important than having its own little robust ecosystem.
- Dec 20, 2018
- 149
The Syndicate
Rank: None
Service Points: 0
It is complex, but complex =/= bad. Complex solutions like this will make going to prison more meaningful and engaging than they ever were in FoM. FoM imprisonments were like the player was being punished for simply choosing to play the game, and it wasn't even necessarily because they were on the law-breaking side but because the way the PP system worked in automation was so fucked, you could actually be legitimately legal for a lot of incidents and still wind up being penalized.
That said, yes, getting prison mechanics out in a FoM-esque and simple iteration first is most important. We can live with and operate with a prison system that works that way, in the same way we can work with automated PP generating systems while we do not have investigation mechanics.
But in the long-term it should not remain exclusively that way and should be developed further, with prison mechanics becoming more robust and developed. This makes most sense to do around the same time as investigation mechanics because they will go hand-in-hand. Nothing says that players will have to engage in these systems, but they will have engaging things to do in prison awaiting them if they should find themselves there.
^ This seems like a really good suggestion. Maybe by having SYN/FoE, etc. own a territory, they're able to hack terminals/mining guns (not sure how resource collection would work in prison), allowing other factions/individuals (basically a whitelist) to access the terminals like they would if they weren't in prison. That is, they can mine/produce like normal and it would be sent to their storage.
This incentivizes corps to aid in the defense of territories. For example, a member of TFC tells the NSM prisoners that they can access the mining terminals if they aid in its defense against other factions aiming to take over the territory. This might be a double-edged sword, as corps. could just decide to aid the stronger side in holding the territory, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. It just adds to the complexity of faction relations both in and outside of prison.
Overall, yes, the idea may be considered complex but prison should feel like part of playing the game and not just a punishment for playing the game.
- Feb 10, 2021
- 2
No Faction
Rank: None
Service Points: 0
- Prison outfits white and black stripes or orange jumpsuits
- exclusive riot shields for CPC faction
- throwing rocks/pebbles that you can find inside the prison for prisoners... that do 1 point of damage with 5 second cooldown...
- design 20-30 individual small cells with beds, sink, toiler that you can lock prisoners inside.
- a visiting area where family/friends can come sit down and talk to the prisoners through a transparent glass
- showers area with lots of soap
- exclusive riot shields for CPC faction
- throwing rocks/pebbles that you can find inside the prison for prisoners... that do 1 point of damage with 5 second cooldown...
- design 20-30 individual small cells with beds, sink, toiler that you can lock prisoners inside.
- a visiting area where family/friends can come sit down and talk to the prisoners through a transparent glass
- showers area with lots of soap
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I like this lore-wise but it doesn't match the gameplay loops.
So gameplay loop wise - atm your max period in prison is going to be 12hrs and your rights starting to be restricted at 1000 seconds (17ish mins) and second class citizen status applied at 10,000 seconds (2hrs 45mins(ish)) I don't envision prison as very long term incarceration requiring visitation.
- Jun 30, 2017
- 270
Civil Protection Commission
Rank: None
Service Points: 0