Ludeon Forums

Trying to do some balancing - let me know about your experiences with AI stealing!

Is this a reference to traders, or raiders deciding to take stuff instead of raid?

Only happened once, but it hasn't happened since. Probably because I have my stockpiles behind my front line.

It seems they will capture a down pawn vs taking gold or something. If a pawn is down and they flee its always capturing that pawn/pawns

I think I remember seeing it once.  Several months ago.  :o

I'd like a cat-burglar raid event. Unannounced, a number of raiders appear who sap into your base and attempt to steal your silver. Only if they are seen by a colonist are you alerted to their presence.

Raiders can steal stuff? Never had it happen. I always have my stuff behind my firing line - there is nothing sitting in the open to steal. 99% of the time, to steal anything from a colony everyone would have to be dead first

Depends ... what do they take with them?

Only gold and silver?
Or also, for example, meals?

I am sure that not one of them ever got to my gold and silver supplies ...
but I think I had one time when they destroyed one of the climate control units of my fridge,
that I was missing a lot of my fine meals afterwards

My valuable supplies are always firmly tucked inside my base, only thing that radiers ever did is go after unwalled solar plants and kidnapping downed colonists

Mostly because I like to sail out when they are prepping and counter assaulting them, gives me room to fall back if things don't go as planned

I almost never see this to happen because my colonists either won the battle or they are all dead/downed. It is pretty impossible situation when [my colonists are alive] + [pirates are near my undefended stuff].

Only one time because somehow I prepared to stop them at wrong place and forgot to close my back door I saw how pirates charge in my empty base to steal stuff . There they took some expensive statues and raw plasteel after which they saw my non-violent person... with ~20 trained labradors on him. Not many pirates made it out alive from that barking hell just to be shot by main forces that was in the right place this time. It was AWESOME.

Never happened to me, even when raiders entered the base destroying walls with sappers, the only thing I've seen is kidnapping downed colonists, and that happened only one time.

For them to steal things, my colonists would need to be dead or dying. I tend to have my stockpiles within the centre or the rear of my colonies, rarely near the firing lines.

Quote from: Coenmcj on August 11, 2016, 06:47:24 AM
For them to steal things, my colonists would need to be dead or dying. I tend to have my stockpiles within the centre or the rear of my colonies, rarely near the firing lines.

Same, my storages are always tucked away far behind where all the murdering happen
never seen any robbery attempts so far

> I'd like a cat-burglar raid event. Unannounced, a number of raiders appear who sap into your base and attempt to steal your silver. Only if they are seen by a colonist are you alerted to their presence.

This right here. Also, they should go after your stock animals.

I've seen hostile raiders on vanilla attempting to steal some of my colonists' stuff after their initial attack was repelled (I got a message saying so) and some of my loot was still close by. Since my colonists went berserk on the raiding thief-wannabee, raiders finally chose to flee altogether.

The only other times I've witnessed the AI "stealing" was when my colonists had peaceful guests that arrived without any kind of sustenance, in which case they "borrowed" some of my colonists' meals. Since I used several mods at the time, and "Hospitality (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=11444.0)" in particular, I can't vouch for this also happening on vanilla.

All in all, I am pretty happy with how things currently are. It wouldn't bother me if it happened more frequently, since, like others, my stuff is quickly stashed deeper within fortifications for it to really matter I think.

If there is ONE thing I heartedly despise, it's boomalopes feeding on my strawberry fields. That's usually the time I draft the whole of my colonists for them to start a frantic rain dance.

As others have said, a cat burglar scenario would be cool. Someone who specifically breaks in to steal silver. I don't think he needs to be a sapper, though. Maybe give him the ability to break into autodoors/regular doors. No alert would be given, but if a colonist spots him then issue one.

Also maybe give him the ability to know when most of the colonists are sleeping.

And if he succeeds, *then* alert the player to the lost silver so they won't think it's a bug.

Quote from: Blato on August 11, 2016, 05:00:40 AM
My valuable supplies are always firmly tucked inside my base, only thing that radiers ever did is go after unwalled solar plants and kidnapping downed colonists

Exactly this.

Quote from: Codexehow on August 11, 2016, 10:02:57 AM
As others have said, a cat burglar scenario would be cool. Someone who specifically breaks in to steal silver. I don't think he needs to be a sapper, though. Maybe give him the ability to break into autodoors/regular doors. No alert would be given, but if a colonist spots him then issue one.

Also maybe give him the ability to know when most of the colonists are sleeping.

And if he succeeds, *then* alert the player to the lost silver so they won't think it's a bug.

But have the thief leave the map totally. No sense having the palyer know when he has grabbed the valuables.

I actually didn't know they could do this, I mean, grab items instead of kidnapping downed pawns; like everyone else my storage rooms are behind too many layers of defenses. I would end up fighting my colony to death before they got to that point. Only in the very beginning would they have an opportunity to do this.

So I have to give my point to the so called cat burglar scenario as well. I'm then thinking something similar to the Dwarf Fortress goblin kidnapper approach, send in some cloaked individual (semi-transparent) who can lockpick past doors (have to spend a bit of time on each door, and leaves the door open for a quick escape route). This should allow for an equal amount of opportunity for both the thief to succeed in bypassing the defenses and the player to notice the attempt.

As for announcing the attempt, I think it should go unannounced unless you have trained pets who can sniff out intruders. Otherwise the player shouldn't be notified about it before the thief have left the map.

> I actually didn't know they could do this, I mean, grab items

This is why we're saying make an unannounced raid type, where they sneak in. You might get a warning, but only at the last minute, maybe after they've taken some stuff.

Perhaps this could give your pets some purpose. Maybe your dogs could wake up and detect them.

I'd leave the alert either when a colonist actually spots the thief or when a colonist goes to the stolen-from stockpile, only to notice it missing x items.

Better yet, make it a rare chance that caravans can have 1-2 particularly nosy guests who try to 'borrow' a few items while you're busy trading with them. Alerts should work the same as above.

Quote from: Goldenpotatoes on August 11, 2016, 12:48:37 PM
Better yet, make it a rare chance that caravans can have 1-2 particularly nosy guests who try to 'borrow' a few items while you're busy trading with them. Alerts should work the same as above.

This is a good idea, I'd imagine this working through a kleptomaniac trait though: if a character in a friendly caravan have that trait he might try to sneak away some stuff if he comes over anything. If you notice you can order a ransack of the person. Obviously if you ransack someone without finding anything you'd lose faction points.

I've never had it happen, probably because I had 8 incendiary mortars and only 3 routes (through mountains) to my base, so I just light the small passes on fire as quickly as possible (and have IED (s) and rubble piled up behind there in case I don't do it in time.). 

I think it would be a great idea to have enemy pawns extinguish fires in their path or try to dig through the walls to avoid fire.

I voted 'Never' because I've never actually seen this happen, so I presume it doesn't happen often.

But that said, raiders in my games love setting fires to my fields, so I try to drop them far before they get that close.

Considering how many enemies are pirates i often wonder why they aren't as greedy as i am.
They attack, flee after the battle is halfway done, and the dead pirates/ raiders leave tons of good stuff behind. :D

I think some raids should change their modus oparandi from killing and the looting, to looting first and killing everything that opposes them.

Lets be honest: many colonies are far stronger then the appearing raiders in a simple battle, raiders just feed into the ever growing colony wealth.

Imagine raiders focusing on breaking tru to your stockpiles and retreating BEFORE your bionic ubersoldiers start kicking their asses.  :o

Burglars seem to be a good idea, but nothing like the burglars as they were done in "The Sims" please.

If one of my colonists manages to spot a burglar, I will sick all my colonists and pets on the guy. I expect there to be a reasonable chance to catch and probably kill the guy, since we're talking about "survival" situations here (the strongest makes the law).

I expect the burglar to spend time picking locks, and have a decent chance at failing altogether, making noise or being visually detected by my patrolling colonists (that could be a new job for wardens by the way).

I think there are better ways to make the game more interesting than a "cheating" AI (a human raider that can pick doors that no one else can, run away faster than any of my elite "ninja" colonists, etc.).

I don't think it ever happened, because if it did, I wouldn't be storing gold and silver outside in the courtyard, together with other indestructible things that don't wear down from weather, fire, or anything else. I use indoor storage space for things that can be destroyed or lost in sieges, fires, etc.

I haven't played A13 or A14 much though, in case this changed recently.

I've had it happen twice. Once because I left power armor outside my base. The other occasion was while I was distracted fending off raiders to the south, sneaky raiders broke through a wall to the north. They found the two AI cores from the ships I had destroyed. I loved that.

I later tried leaving out a stockpile of 2k silver outside, but the tribals didn't take the bribe.

I've had this happen one time recently, which was poorly thought out by me, but I had a plasteel long sword in a stockpile close to the front of my base. It was in firing range, but I suppose it was far away enough for them to risk it. The tribal members swooped in quickly, picked it up, along with some silver and happily headed out.

The other time this happened was pretty much what everyone else was talking about, which was them going for downed pawns. This has happened a few times, but really only with my melee colonists who ran at them and didn't fair so well against the enemies.

I gotta say tho - the AI is pretty bad when they try to steal. I've had them try and make off with colonists (never stuff) and when they start to do that, I generally love it.

If a pawn is down, I'm probably not fairing to well in the fight. As soon as they start to kidnap a colonist, the enemies damage output drops to next to nothing and my guys gun everyone down without a fight.

I wish the AI knew how to 'attack move' - basically they could have an 'objective' (kidnap pawn, haul rock, eat meal etc etc) but were able to interrupt the action to engage hostiles and then return to the objective once the hostile is neutralized.

This would also mean when pawns are sieging if the guys with rifles started constructing it would mean you couldn't move in and slaughter everyone with unhampered long range fire like you currently can. Pawns trying to kidnap wouldn't break cover, get slaughtered and then posthumously send someone else to finish the job.