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Included in Build Challenging to Steal from Item Traders and Town Guards

Pieter Boelen said:
You probably didn't talk to the merchant yet and therefore he didn't have an item tree generated.

So you could exit the location despite the danger icon still flashing?
That is not supposed to be possible! How did you do your merchant-mugging? Thief's Knife or something else?
Click to expand...
I did talk to the merchant. That's how I find out whether he has anything worth stealing - no point in risking a reputation loss and an encounter with the Guild unless there's some good stuff to be had. Besides, I remember that warning from before, so even if I'm just mugging him as an experiment I always talk first to initialise his equipment list. In fact, this wasn't even the first time I'd talked to that guy - I'd previously been to Guadeloupe, and a few other places besides, in search of the "Advanced Blocking" book.

Yes, the danger icon was flashing, and I escaped into the store before whoever was presenting the danger showed up. Then I reloaded the savegame, mugged the guy again, and this time went round to see who the Guild had sent - a load of soldiers in blue uniforms. I did it once in the port at Kingston, too, and the response squad there appeared to have EITC uniforms, which seemed reasonable. There being no handy store into which to run, I fought it out with them - I think I had the assistance of Sgt. Sharpe at the time. Plenty of free weapons after that. :D (Incidentally, the blue-coats in Point a Pitre were not the same as those in Kingston. Possibly some French merchant company? Or possibly marines. I don't think they were the same as the army guards, but I didn't survive that fight so I didn't get to check in detail.)

I always use non-lethal mugging, either thief's knife or cobblestone.

Yes, I'm using the 11th March update. I'll maybe try some more experiments, using lethal means, and see what it does to reputation, nation relations and exit routes.
 
There are already blue coats all over the waterfront and one or two just got in the way. My relations with England stayed the same at -28 but my reputation fell to Dashing.

No I do not have the latest update.
 
Grey Roger said:
I did talk to the merchant. That's how I find out whether he has anything worth stealing - no point in risking a reputation loss and an encounter with the Guild unless there's some good stuff to be had. Besides, I remember that warning from before, so even if I'm just mugging him as an experiment I always talk first to initialise his equipment list. In fact, this wasn't even the first time I'd talked to that guy - I'd previously been to Guadeloupe, and a few other places besides, in search of the "Advanced Blocking" book.
Click to expand...
That post was in reply to Hylie, not you.

And indeed confirmed on the "no items". That the merchant guild DOES show up indicates that he does have an item tree, but an empty one.

Also confirmed on being able to escape. That is.... quite strange.
 
Location lock not working in Realistic Game Mode has now been confirmed and fixed.
Bit odd, since I thought I tested that. But at least that will now be working as intended as per the next update.
 
Ahoy Pieter,

I am now playing the March 19 version. I have noticed that you made a couple of changes that appear to make the robbing the street traders essentially impossible by locking the locations until all the enemies are dead makes escape impossible and therefore successful robbery is... impossible. Couple that with adding a huge penalty, which I have yet to experience because I can't survive the robbery. I don't know your intent was effectively eliminate this feature, but I think that is the effect. And just to satisfy my curiosity what is behind the idea of locking locations? Surely, pirates had the opportunity to escape when outnumbered.
 
Jason said:
I am now playing the March 19 version. I have noticed that you made a couple of changes that appear to make the robbing the street traders essentially impossible by locking the locations until all the enemies are dead makes escape impossible and therefore successful robbery is... impossible. Couple that with adding a huge penalty, which I have yet to experience because I can't survive the robbery. I don't know your intent was effectively eliminate this feature, but I think that is the effect. And just to satisfy my curiosity what is behind the idea of locking locations? Surely, pirates had the opportunity to escape when outnumbered.
Click to expand...
See this thread for the full discussion on this feature: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/mugging-street-merchants-too-easy.24592/

I didn't actually add a lot to this. The amazing number of enemies was already there, but happened only depending on how you robbed the merchant, which didn't make sense.
The same goes for the near-insane penalty. The only thing I added was to not allow you to escape.

The main point is that street merchants carry a LOT of items and therefore robbing them can give you a huge advantage in the game.
As I figure it, a huge advantage must stand against an equally huge risk. Otherwise it would not be balanced.
Plus having some nearly unbeatable odds somewhere in the game does make for a challenge to advanced players.

However, what I did for now is an experiment more than anything else and feedback would be quite welcome.
Robbing a street merchant without killing does not give you that huge penalty on nation relations and reputation.
But killing a street merchant is basically the single most evil thing you can do in the game now and I was really quite surprised by the incredible penalty you get for it.
While I did not tone that down yet from the original Build 13 code, I am quite willing to believe that it isn't quite reasonable anymore.

I'm quite looking forward to comments from people robbing street merchants and town guards and letting me know what they do and don't like about the recent changes.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
See this thread for the full discussion on this feature: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/mugging-street-merchants-too-easy.24592/

I didn't actually add a lot to this. The amazing number of enemies was already there, but happened only depending on how you robbed the merchant, which didn't make sense.
The same goes for the near-insane penalty. The only thing I added was to not allow you to escape.

The main point is that street merchants carry a LOT of items and therefore robbing them can give you a huge advantage in the game.
As I figure it, a huge advantage must stand against an equally huge risk. Otherwise it would not be balanced.
Plus having some nearly unbeatable odds somewhere in the game does make for a challenge to advanced players.

However, what I did for now is an experiment more than anything else and feedback would be quite welcome.
Robbing a street merchant without killing does not give you that huge penalty on nation relations and reputation.
But killing a street merchant is basically the single most evil thing you can do in the game now and I was really quite surprised by the incredible penalty you get for it.
While I did not tone that down yet from the original Build 13 code, I am quite willing to believe that it isn't quite reasonable anymore.

I'm quite looking forward to comments from people robbing street merchants and town guards and letting me know what they do and don't like about the recent changes.
Click to expand...

Good points all. I rob them often, never kill them. I think killing them ought to get you the worst penalties in rep and relations. To me, you could make a case for differing levels of response based on how they are robbed.

No escape is clearly a game changer.
 
@Pieter Boelen : has the problem with the fort commander in the "Hornblower" storyline been solved? Once that's done, I'll start a new "Hornblower" campaign and see if anything else is broken, especially if I try to take side quests while the main story is still active.

One thing I can say is that while hiring officers generally didn't break the main story when there were various loopholes to allow it, hiring Fred Bob probably will. The main story takes you to Martinique for the "Land Battle" section, so it may seem logical to do the various side quests in St. Pierre right after. But right after "Land Battle", William Chumley is assigned to you as an active companion. You're then supposed to go to Speightstown, where Chumley says a few last words and then walks off, then Pellew tells you about your reassignment which leads to the "Mutiny" section. If, after the battle but before you head to Speightstown, you hire Fred Bob, he takes the companion slot occupied by Chumley rather than being assigned a free slot. You can't put him back because companion assignment is now disabled. So when you get to Speightstown, Chumley isn't active and the story can't progress. (Rys Bloom is not a problem; when you hire him, he goes into your passenger list but doesn't become an active companion. All he does is sit quietly in the background gathering experience.)
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Nope, I didn't start on that yet. It is easy enough to restore back to Beta 3.4 state, but of course that isn't a fix and it would not tell us anything new either.
Haven't yet thought of how to tackle this properly yet. Perhaps add a .guard attribute to ONLY the regular town guards and apply the functionality to them alone?

But even then, the "fort commander sends reinforcements" upon killing one might have a notable impact on various quest cases where regular town guards are involved.
One of the "Escape from Speightstown" scenes in the Standard storyline springs to mind. Whether that is a bad thing or not though, I do not know.
Perhaps it is still playable like that and more of a challenge. But on the other hand, it might also become much too hard for the players.

That would suggest perhaps there needs to be a quest-based code flag that can temporarily disable the "fort commander sends reinforcements" functionality.
In that case, we would need where this plays upon and therefore at which points to enable and disable that behaviour.
Click to expand...
The additional challenge isn't the problem in "Hornblower". I can take out the reinforcements, especially since I have the assistance of Sharpe. The problem is that the fort commander then joins in the fight, gets killed, and therefore can't proceed to the dialog to surrender the fort and progress the story. I don't think any key characters are involved in that part of "Escape from Speightstown" so, other than the added difficulty of some more fighting, that one should not have the same problem.
 
Grey Roger said:
The additional challenge isn't the problem in "Hornblower". I can take out the reinforcements, especially since I have the assistance of Sharpe. The problem is that the fort commander then joins in the fight, gets killed, and therefore can't proceed to the dialog to surrender the fort and progress the story. I don't think any key characters are involved in that part of "Escape from Speightstown" so, other than the added difficulty of some more fighting, that one should not have the same problem.
Click to expand...
We may be talking about two different things here. From what I understand, when you kill the Hornblower quest soldiers, an on-screen message appears stating that "the fort commander sent reinforcements".
That is behaviour I added when killing town guards as part of this new feature: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/mugging-street-merchants-too-easy.24592/

The on-screen mention of the "fort commander" is purely a display thing. It might as well say "Davy Jones" instead and has absolutely no meaning.
Any actual fort commander character is not related to that feature. :no

However, there is also the "location lock" that isn't lifted until ALL enemies are killed. This is handled as a "quest movie" and may have other effects in general quest use.
Perhaps that is what is interfering with that quest scene. The relevant code is in PROGRAM\CCC_functions.c near the very bottom.
For testing purposes, remove the QuestMovie line and do that part again; see if that makes a difference.

Indeed I am not very worried about the main quest breaking on "Escape from Speightstown" but since that is a relatively early part of the story,
it might make the main quest a bit too hard for regular players.
So it is more of a balancing thing.
 
Jason said:
Good points all. I rob them often, never kill them. I think killing them ought to get you the worst penalties in rep and relations. To me, you could make a case for differing levels of response based on how they are robbed.
Click to expand...
Killing does the huge reputation and relation hit while just robbing just triggers the enemies and locked location.
So there is already a difference.
 
@Grey Roger: Have a look at this code from PROGRAM\CCCfunctions.c:
Code: 
void SoldierReinforcements()
{
   ref PChar = GetMainCharacter();

   if(!CheckAttribute(PChar, "locationLock"))
   {
     PChar.locationLock = true;
     StartQuestMovie(true, false, false);
   }

   int numGuards = 30 - LAi_numloginedcharacters;     // LDH - changed from 32 to TIH's original 30
   if (numGuards > 2 ) numGuards = 2;
   if (numGuards > 0 )
   {
     Logit(TranslateString("","The Garrison Commander sent immediate reinforcements..."));
     Ambush("guards", numGuards, "enemy", "friend","");
   }
}
Is that "The Garrison Commander sent immediate reinforcements..." line the same one that coincides with your Hornblower quest issue?

@Jason: This code is what happens when you rob or kill an item trader:
Code: 
void MerchantGuildAttack(aref enemy, bool bKill)
{
   ref PChar = GetMainCharacter();
   int iNation = sti(GetAttribute(enemy,"nation"));

   if(!CheckAttribute(PChar, "locationLock"))
   {
     PChar.locationLock = true;
     StartQuestMovie(true, false, false);
   }

   int numGuards = 30 - LAi_numloginedcharacters;     // LDH - changed from 32 to TIH's original 30
   if (numGuards > 0 )
   {
     Logit(TranslateString("","The Merchant Guild's watchmen are very vigilant..."));
     Ambush("Navy_office4", numGuards, "enemy", "friend","");
   }

   if(bKill)
   {
     // TIH --> bug fix... this now works right Jul23'06
     ChangeCharacterReputation(PChar, -100);// TIH MUST BE INT Nov17'06
     if (iNation > -1)
     {
       SetNationRelation2MainCharacter(iNation, RELATION_ENEMY);
       LooseLetterOfMarque (iNation);
       LeaveService (PChar, iNation, true);
       SetRMRelation(PChar, iNation, REL_WAR);
     }
     PChar.nation = PIRATE;
     if(GetRMRelation(PChar, PIRATE) < REL_AMNESTY) SetRMRelation(PChar, PIRATE, REL_AMNESTY);
     UpdateRelations();
     RefreshBattleInterface();
     // TIH <--
   }
}
The locationLock section for both of these two is what prevents you from escaping the location.

Some things we could do:
1. Decrease the number of guards in general
2. Have the number of guards depending on the "quality" of the item trader
3. Have the "location locking" feature disabled on lower difficulty levels
 
Pieter Boelen said:
@Grey Roger: Have a look at this code from PROGRAM\CCCfunctions.c:
...
Is that "The Garrison Commander sent immediate reinforcements..." line the same one that coincides with your Hornblower quest issue?
Click to expand...
I think so.

Some things we could do:
1. Decrease the number of guards in general
2. Have the number of guards depending on the "quality" of the item trader
3. Have the "location locking" feature disabled on lower difficulty levels
Click to expand...
The problem in "Hornblower" isn't the number of guards. The problem is that the commander then joins in the fight. Even if I leave him alone, Sharpe or his men kill the commander. Then he can't surrender the fort and progress the quest.

I didn't get a chance to do any playing last night but next chance I get, I'll follow that suggestion of removing, or more likely just commenting out, the "StartQuestMovie" line. If that doesn't work I'll see what happens if I comment out the entire function so that a call to "SoldierReinforcements" does nothing.
 
So the commander is an "enemy" character that is already in the scene but that is not supposed to join in the actual fighting?

In that case, the problem might also be due to the call to Ambush, because that one triggers all soldiers in the scene to run towards you to attack.
 
Good news: last time I got that far, the reinforcements didn't appear, Ortega did surrender, and the quest was able to continue.

Bad news: So there I am at San Juan port, looking at the trader from far enough away that he can't see me plotting something naughty. If I lob a stone, I get a reputation hit for attacking someone without a drawn weapon, then I go and steal all his stuff and the ambush happens. From exactly the same position I lob a poisoned knife, there's no reputation loss, and the merchant eventually keels over. Snag: where he's lying, I can't get to him to steal his stuff. Solution: I can if I side-step, which I always have enabled as it's useful for other situations. No reputation loss for robbing a dead body, and no ambush either.

Moral (immoral?) of the story: if you want to steal all a merchant's stuff, kill him sneakily first.
 
Not entirely sure how to avoid that, since when the trader dies, the game doesn't remember who was responsible for the poisoning.
Perhaps the "merchant guild" should intervene immediately when you do any poisoning on a trader. That is probably the simplest solution and perhaps even the only one.
 
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