TinyBigJacko
Management
Management
Dev Team
Los Santos Police Command
Los Santos NHS
Los Santos Firefighter
- Location
- Vinewood Casino Management Office
Right you 'orrible lot. Here's some inside information on stuff I have built today, which currently exists only on my coding laptop, and (soon) a dark corner of the development server where it will hopefully be thrash-tested before letting it out in the wild on our main server.
I wanted to run it past people to get a general idea of how it might be received...
First up, I have had approval from the admins to drop the auomatic removal of rebel, gun and basic car licence the second you arrive at jail, regardless of any crime or warrant outstanding or not.
The immediate effect of this is that it means rebels, once they have obtained their rebel licence (which I am thinking of renaming 'Rebel Membership' to make it clear it is not government-sanctioned), it is not lost by a spell in jail for kerb-crawling, speeding, or spanking the monkey in public. Or even murder, necessarily. That should mean that rebels no longer have a reason to kill cops on sight, fearing that the cops can whip the cuffs on them if they get too close and send them to jail, losing them that half-million dollar licence. Likewise, it means that cops no longer have a reason to kill rebels on sight, fearing that they will be killed the second that the rebel sees them.
However, I wanted it to be slightly less boring than that, and I wanted to inspire some new gameplay. So here's what I've done...
I've added a new couple of crimes to the wanted list - namely 'Cop Killer' and 'Cop Killer (Vehicular). If anyone kills a cop - whether they are rebel or civilian - they'll get this wanted status immediately. The bounties and the fines will be high, and the penalty is jail, not fine, if caught (but that depends very much on the discretion of the officer who catches you - if you're good enough to sweet-talk him, or he's bent, or a fool, or hates the cop you killed, well, who knows what you can convince him to do?) But assuming he does what's right, you'll be sent to jail, and you'll lose any gun licence if it was a gun-crime, or you'll lose ALL your vehicle licences, if it was a vehicle-crime. He'll get a whacking great bounty too, of course.
As a general aside, I've also removed all the immediate licence-revocations that happen the nano-second you squished a jaywalking civvy with your car, or had to shoot a robber in self-defence. Similarly, if you VDM or RDM, you will now not lose those licences either, but in practice, they had zero effect on reducing RDM/VDM, and just served to annoy the 'honest' civs who played the game properly. As a result, it is now entirely down to the cop who catches you, to decide whether to allow you off (low-fine), take a high fine or send you to jail. If he jails you, you WILL lose the appropriate licences, of course. But this engineers a situation where you can RP with the cop and hopefully prove your innocence (or at least, reduced guilt) in some cases. Again, more scope for fun and antics, is the idea.
OK, so back to the rebels and cop-killing. Here's the plan (coded already, just awaiting testing)...
If a rebel kills a cop (by whatever means) he's effectively brought the rebel faction into the public eye, and exposed them as a violent organisation. He better have been working on an operation, and he'd better be able to return safely to a rebel base for debrief, or his death or capture in the field will seriously damage that rebel organisation. That's the backstory to any engagement now. The moment he drops a cop, a timer starts running and (here's the crunch) his rebel membership (aka licence, aka training) is revoked! He has one hour to complete the operation and get back to any rebel base, at which time he can visit the rebel 'spokesman' (aka the rebel shopkeeper), and get his full membership back for $5000 - a minimal fee. By doing this, he is effectively providing the rebels with the information about their mission (whether it was fully successful or not) and most importantly, indicating that nothing publicly embarrassing to the rebels was left in the field.
If he doesn't make it back to base within the hour, then his rebel membership (licence) is lost, and he'll have to buy it back for the full $500,000 again. Because he screwed up. He killed cops, and he didn't have either enough men with him or enough nouse to ensure a decent 'exit strategy', and has made the rebel faction look like idiots. This should reduce any 'lone-wolf' rebels from simply RDMing, but it doesn't entirely rule out things like sniping cops - but of course, the entire cop force will be on their tail, and zeroing in on the bases that they think he might be running to. Not a nice prospect if there is anything less than a small army of rebels working together...
If he dies on the way back, the timer should continues to run after the respawn, but it may be reduced (because otherwise he'll just immediately spawn at Athira and drive back to base, which is very easy to do within an hour... so we might 'special case' this situation, and reduce the remaining time, if he dies). I had thought about simply having death be 'curtains'... loss of membership and full-price to buy it back, but in all honesty, a lot of rebels will be routinely getting killed by cops in these battles, so it seemed fairer to keep the 'on the run' clock running, even after death.
Of course, if you are caught and jailed, when you are 'on the run', then you'll lose whatever gun or vehicle licences are appropriate, and will already have lost your rebel membership. The timer will still be running while you're in jail, so you'd better hope for a jailbreak by your colleagues, or that the (currently) 15 minute sentence you receive (if not paying bail; 5mins if you are) allows you enough time to get back to base to renew your membership on the cheap. Otherwise, you've gotta pay full price again.
One last idea (not yet implemented) has surfaced, and I'm toying with adding this too, but it may not be required, depending on the jail dynamics. We could have the 'prison guard' character be bribe-able - with anything from a 'no-chance' to a 'high-but-not-full-price' amount payable to get your rebel licence back. Maybe as much as $250k, but more likely somewhere up to a max of $100k. But as I said, given that jail terms are 15mins if no bail paid (bail will be about 75k per cop killed, plus whatever crime bounties were also outstanding), and only 5 mins if bail is paid, plus there is the chance of a chopper bustout, it might actually be more fun not to have the jailer be potentially corruptible, and to simply continue playing the 'on-the-run' strategy.
All the way through 'on-the-run' phase, the running rebel will receive 5-minutely warnings about his need to return to base, with 1-minutely warnings happening in the last 5 minutes of the chase. Similarly, the whole server will be alerted via chat message that a given rebel or rebels is on the run, and whether they were successful or not - so you can expect the civs to cheers you on, or grief you from the sidelines, or alert the cops to your locations, as you hightail it back home. Fair deal, given all the grief you've given some of the civs in the past, maybe - but then again, maybe you'll make some new friends, if Mr John Q. Public is kind enough to give you a lift in his car, right back to Rebel HQ front door, eh?
So.. there you have it. What do you think? This is all coded (with the exception of the corruptible jailer), and will be put in testing soon (maybe later today, but most likely Wednesday), once I have full approval from the admins to do so. If you'd like to be involved in the playtesting of this, please step forward. If you have any constructive feedback - which can of course be negative, just so long as it's valid and non-abusive - or anything to add, just post it here. I can't promise to do everything, and not everything is even possible... but this is the starting point...
I wanted to run it past people to get a general idea of how it might be received...
First up, I have had approval from the admins to drop the auomatic removal of rebel, gun and basic car licence the second you arrive at jail, regardless of any crime or warrant outstanding or not.
The immediate effect of this is that it means rebels, once they have obtained their rebel licence (which I am thinking of renaming 'Rebel Membership' to make it clear it is not government-sanctioned), it is not lost by a spell in jail for kerb-crawling, speeding, or spanking the monkey in public. Or even murder, necessarily. That should mean that rebels no longer have a reason to kill cops on sight, fearing that the cops can whip the cuffs on them if they get too close and send them to jail, losing them that half-million dollar licence. Likewise, it means that cops no longer have a reason to kill rebels on sight, fearing that they will be killed the second that the rebel sees them.
However, I wanted it to be slightly less boring than that, and I wanted to inspire some new gameplay. So here's what I've done...
I've added a new couple of crimes to the wanted list - namely 'Cop Killer' and 'Cop Killer (Vehicular). If anyone kills a cop - whether they are rebel or civilian - they'll get this wanted status immediately. The bounties and the fines will be high, and the penalty is jail, not fine, if caught (but that depends very much on the discretion of the officer who catches you - if you're good enough to sweet-talk him, or he's bent, or a fool, or hates the cop you killed, well, who knows what you can convince him to do?) But assuming he does what's right, you'll be sent to jail, and you'll lose any gun licence if it was a gun-crime, or you'll lose ALL your vehicle licences, if it was a vehicle-crime. He'll get a whacking great bounty too, of course.
As a general aside, I've also removed all the immediate licence-revocations that happen the nano-second you squished a jaywalking civvy with your car, or had to shoot a robber in self-defence. Similarly, if you VDM or RDM, you will now not lose those licences either, but in practice, they had zero effect on reducing RDM/VDM, and just served to annoy the 'honest' civs who played the game properly. As a result, it is now entirely down to the cop who catches you, to decide whether to allow you off (low-fine), take a high fine or send you to jail. If he jails you, you WILL lose the appropriate licences, of course. But this engineers a situation where you can RP with the cop and hopefully prove your innocence (or at least, reduced guilt) in some cases. Again, more scope for fun and antics, is the idea.
OK, so back to the rebels and cop-killing. Here's the plan (coded already, just awaiting testing)...
If a rebel kills a cop (by whatever means) he's effectively brought the rebel faction into the public eye, and exposed them as a violent organisation. He better have been working on an operation, and he'd better be able to return safely to a rebel base for debrief, or his death or capture in the field will seriously damage that rebel organisation. That's the backstory to any engagement now. The moment he drops a cop, a timer starts running and (here's the crunch) his rebel membership (aka licence, aka training) is revoked! He has one hour to complete the operation and get back to any rebel base, at which time he can visit the rebel 'spokesman' (aka the rebel shopkeeper), and get his full membership back for $5000 - a minimal fee. By doing this, he is effectively providing the rebels with the information about their mission (whether it was fully successful or not) and most importantly, indicating that nothing publicly embarrassing to the rebels was left in the field.
If he doesn't make it back to base within the hour, then his rebel membership (licence) is lost, and he'll have to buy it back for the full $500,000 again. Because he screwed up. He killed cops, and he didn't have either enough men with him or enough nouse to ensure a decent 'exit strategy', and has made the rebel faction look like idiots. This should reduce any 'lone-wolf' rebels from simply RDMing, but it doesn't entirely rule out things like sniping cops - but of course, the entire cop force will be on their tail, and zeroing in on the bases that they think he might be running to. Not a nice prospect if there is anything less than a small army of rebels working together...
If he dies on the way back, the timer should continues to run after the respawn, but it may be reduced (because otherwise he'll just immediately spawn at Athira and drive back to base, which is very easy to do within an hour... so we might 'special case' this situation, and reduce the remaining time, if he dies). I had thought about simply having death be 'curtains'... loss of membership and full-price to buy it back, but in all honesty, a lot of rebels will be routinely getting killed by cops in these battles, so it seemed fairer to keep the 'on the run' clock running, even after death.
Of course, if you are caught and jailed, when you are 'on the run', then you'll lose whatever gun or vehicle licences are appropriate, and will already have lost your rebel membership. The timer will still be running while you're in jail, so you'd better hope for a jailbreak by your colleagues, or that the (currently) 15 minute sentence you receive (if not paying bail; 5mins if you are) allows you enough time to get back to base to renew your membership on the cheap. Otherwise, you've gotta pay full price again.
One last idea (not yet implemented) has surfaced, and I'm toying with adding this too, but it may not be required, depending on the jail dynamics. We could have the 'prison guard' character be bribe-able - with anything from a 'no-chance' to a 'high-but-not-full-price' amount payable to get your rebel licence back. Maybe as much as $250k, but more likely somewhere up to a max of $100k. But as I said, given that jail terms are 15mins if no bail paid (bail will be about 75k per cop killed, plus whatever crime bounties were also outstanding), and only 5 mins if bail is paid, plus there is the chance of a chopper bustout, it might actually be more fun not to have the jailer be potentially corruptible, and to simply continue playing the 'on-the-run' strategy.
All the way through 'on-the-run' phase, the running rebel will receive 5-minutely warnings about his need to return to base, with 1-minutely warnings happening in the last 5 minutes of the chase. Similarly, the whole server will be alerted via chat message that a given rebel or rebels is on the run, and whether they were successful or not - so you can expect the civs to cheers you on, or grief you from the sidelines, or alert the cops to your locations, as you hightail it back home. Fair deal, given all the grief you've given some of the civs in the past, maybe - but then again, maybe you'll make some new friends, if Mr John Q. Public is kind enough to give you a lift in his car, right back to Rebel HQ front door, eh?
So.. there you have it. What do you think? This is all coded (with the exception of the corruptible jailer), and will be put in testing soon (maybe later today, but most likely Wednesday), once I have full approval from the admins to do so. If you'd like to be involved in the playtesting of this, please step forward. If you have any constructive feedback - which can of course be negative, just so long as it's valid and non-abusive - or anything to add, just post it here. I can't promise to do everything, and not everything is even possible... but this is the starting point...
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