It would be great to somehow pay off the raiders. With food, money etc. Maybe after some time you could recruit the group, and hold it untill next raider group arrives, so the ones we pay for, defend the colony and after the raid, they leave.
Honest question :
If you pay off the raider, what's to prevent them from raiding anyway?
These people were about to invade your colony, set fire to everything and kill everyone. I think we can establish they cannot be trusted?
Quote from: central on December 04, 2013, 09:04:35 AM
Honest question :
If you pay off the raider, what's to prevent them from raiding anyway?
Honest question: why would they?
They got money they wanted, they had no costs nor causalities and they are very likely to be able to come back after some time and milk the colony some more. Or they can scream "hidden treasure ahoy!" and start attacking anyway, with huge risk compared to potential reward and no chance to milk this colony in future.
Quote from: Galileus on December 04, 2013, 09:13:10 AM
Quote from: central on December 04, 2013, 09:04:35 AM
Honest question :
If you pay off the raider, what's to prevent them from raiding anyway?
Honest question: why would they?
They got money they wanted, they had no costs nor causalities and they are very likely to be able to come back after some time and milk the colony some more. Or they can scream "hidden treasure ahoy!" and start attacking anyway, with huge risk compared to potential reward and no chance to milk this colony in future.
You're assuming that the raiders have good business sense. I've always imagined the raiders to be fallout-style junkie psychopaths, that wouldn't care about profit and extortion etc.
Quote from: DaveStrider on December 04, 2013, 07:08:49 PMYou're assuming that the raiders have good business sense. I've always imagined the raiders to be fallout-style junkie psychopaths, that wouldn't care about profit and extortion etc.
Then why negotiate with them in the first place? And if they don't want to negotiate in the first place, why would they negotiate? Unless they are a travelling actors troupe turned raiders with some psychotic personality disorder forcing them to negotiate when other party wants to :P
Occam's razor. Seriously, it's useful ;) If the topic is "negotiating with raiders", there really is no need to discuss "what if they are in fact a multi-dimensional demonic squid incognito".
Quote from: DaveStrider on December 04, 2013, 07:08:49 PM
Quote from: Galileus on December 04, 2013, 09:13:10 AM
Quote from: central on December 04, 2013, 09:04:35 AM
Honest question :
If you pay off the raider, what's to prevent them from raiding anyway?
Honest question: why would they?
They got money they wanted, they had no costs nor causalities and they are very likely to be able to come back after some time and milk the colony some more. Or they can scream "hidden treasure ahoy!" and start attacking anyway, with huge risk compared to potential reward and no chance to milk this colony in future.
You're assuming that the raiders have good business sense. I've always imagined the raiders to be fallout-style junkie psychopaths, that wouldn't care about profit and extortion etc.
I think sometimes the raiders should want to extort resources out of you, and to that end they would leave if you paid them enough or they managed to steal some amount of resources from you, with their focus being getting in and out with minimal casualties. Sometimes they should be marauders out for blood that will damage you as much as they can before being forced to retreat (basically what our raiders do now) and then sometimes they should be complete psychopaths that try to kill you until they are all dead or incapacitated.
Side note: Recruiting a "psycopathic" raider should bring in the chance they go berserk and try to kill everyone more often than normal, and not always predictably.
I agree with todofwar, maybe the raiders that are negotiatable would have a yellow name, and marauders - red, as it is now.
It would be great if storyteller could generate lot of diffrent kinds of raider encounters and you would never know what you got against.
Sometimes they could appear in communications "Raider ship in comms range" and you could bargain for tribute (money, food, metal, weapons or slaves). Ofcourse it would not be garanteed they are satisfied after you have paid. Ofcourse most of time they should leave after you have paid or attack if you haven't. Rarely they might just go away even you don't pay them as they just tried to threaten you without real plans to attack. Ofcourse this would alert player to attack.
Then there could be sneaky raiders who would start attack immediately without any time for planning. Ouch!
Raiders could have diffrent values for moral so some of them might be easier to scary away than others. They are after you coin, not your life. Some might be very desperate to attack and would fight to death.
There could be assassins that you notice only when they come close of your men awake. Imagine message "Carpenter was assasined while sleeping." and bed is turned to bloody mess. These assassin groups should be very small, one to three members and they should be visible once they have been noticed. One option is that they have camosuits that player might notice if he is very alert. Need to add guards, scanners or alarms in the game?
Some of them might use droppods and some not. Meaby there were some people on planet already?
raiders must die.
if they want to talk, we don't mind. we can always talk about their surrender. everything else is out of question.
everyone who talks about paying off bandits are totally brainless idiots: there is no way to pay off bandits. they will come again and again and they will demand more and more.
I don't expect paying tributes to be very popular choice, but we are talking about game that is meant to be run by a storyteller. That means it needs something to tell about. I would really like to see variety in raiders.
At first I was a tad skeptical about the idea of paying off raiders, but then people made some excellent points: why raid a place and risk casualties when you can extort them for resources and get the hell out of there if/as soon as they try to actually fight back? Or if they're a cocky group of raiders, attack if you try to fight back, though that might not be wise if they know the colony had time to prepare for them. And even with that in mind, I'm sure plenty of raiders would still be just as interested in the fight as the reward and they'd probably laugh at you if you tried to pay them off.
It'd be interesting to see raiders who contact YOU trying to make offers. In a dire situation, the difference between paying 400 metal (more the bigger you are, or money might work too) versus trying to defend yourself could be the difference between life and death, if the raiders come at a particularly bad moment. Pay them off once, wait for them to return, ambush them and kill them. You could also try to contact them, but if you're in a dire situation, someone with inadequate Social might risk alerting the raiders to your weakened state and make them even more determined to attack you, or make them demand even more resources.
I think paying off raiders is a fascinating idea. Mostly because in 95% of circumstances it'd be the wrong choice, but in that 5% it would allow the story to continue where you otherwise would be facing certain death or too many casualties. I'd expect the raiders to unreasonably raise the amount they try to extort every time they come around, making paying off raiders continuously an extremely dangerous way to go. Especially if they came back with larger groups each time they returned. If you keep paying them off, you'll also be depleting the resources you need to prepare to fight them off... actually a decent scheme for the raiders to try.
Besides, it might add to the feeling of a threatening world if you periodically get various threats from people taking advantage of your isolation. I'd also expect some raiders to try to be more subtle about their approach or try to avoid alerting you to their presence until they begin attacking. Maybe even groups who used to be extorting you that have decided you've grown too big.
Except raiders in (v245b) RimWorld were sent too kill (or most likely to be killed), not landed on this barren world for pillaging.
Well, to be fair, There is no any kind of 'wealth' in this game (yet?). Even if they want to pillage, they can't find anything to grab at all.
To be able to contact raiders for peace is an OK concept, and will open up more potential aspects to be added to this world which I totally support. Well, It also kinda feels they will become some kind of traders, who trade for safety.
In my point of view (in this version and the version before it, which does not help this game to evolve), it is profitable to kill all invading raiders: why pay them anything while you can farm their equipments for money? : p
Perhaps to benefit even failed negotiations, the game could add some sort of buff that improves defensive capabilities in case they attack anyway.
Colonists could have some stalled time to prepare or could get a psychological buff, so either way the gamble is worth it.
Yet for more balanced and realistic gameplay, I believe there needs to be some groups of merciless raiders who attack on sight.
There have been lot of good ideas. Here some more:
- AI could generate few bandit groups that live near colony. Each could have few diffrent traits. Some have more men, some use more often certain type of weapon (they like snipers, granades, shotguns, you name it), have no ship and come in from borders, etc.
- Raider groups might fight each others in addition to player and by taking casualties they might lose strenght. Weakened bandits may send less and wounded raiders.
- There could be events like two raider groups landing same time and start fighting each other if they see opposite members. Imagine how fun it would be to see two raiders groups to kill each other. Ofcourse this would be very rare.
- In some cases player could make alliance with one group of bandits. If they save incapacitated man landing and that turns to be pirate leader or he's son/daughter. By returning the prisoner/colonist they get friendlier status.
Quote from: murhe on December 08, 2013, 10:48:26 AM
- Raider groups might fight each others in addition to player and by taking casualties they might lose strenght. Weakened bandits may send less and wounded raiders.
In my opinion this is a must-have feature. It makes no sense that random groups of raiders would band together or just flat-out ignore each other whilst attempting to destroy your base. The fact that raiders have absolutely no other AI interaction besides murdering you really bugs me.
Quote from: owenkberg on December 09, 2013, 06:36:12 PM
Quote from: murhe on December 08, 2013, 10:48:26 AM
- Raider groups might fight each others in addition to player and by taking casualties they might lose strenght. Weakened bandits may send less and wounded raiders.
In my opinion this is a must-have feature. It makes no sense that random groups of raiders would band together or just flat-out ignore each other whilst attempting to destroy your base. The fact that raiders have absolutely no other AI interaction besides murdering you really bugs me.
Storyteller sends raider group after you. Raider group ends up being too effective, you won't last long. Storyteller sends a second raider group that pins down the first raiders at your doorstep, with heavy casualties on both sides, enough that you can defend yourself from there. Storyteller gives you a thumbs up and your epic space colony story continues. :)
Who knows, maybe the second raider group would actually fail to defeat the better fortified raider group that is utilizing your fortifications, but the first group would end up with a serious morale penalty from the completely unexpected attack and casualties from it. Being pinned between two enemies isn't a very comfortable place, and at that point their original attack plan is probably FUBAR.
My original idea was that raiders "fight" eachother offscreen most of time. Like random event never told to player. There just appears less and wounded raiders than usually. It is very fun to see them killing eachother if that happens rarely. Well, they might ally together also very rarely. "Oh, this is once again old raider gangs kill eachother event. What?!? Are both gangs going to attack me?"
Btw. I have got too big piles of weapons so I have wondered if they could be used up. Each time you fire a weapon there could be change it loses a bit of durability and eventually breaks. What you think about this idea?
Quote from: murhe on December 10, 2013, 12:36:21 PMBtw. I have got too big piles of weapons so I have wondered if they could be used up. Each time you fire a weapon there could be change it loses a bit of durability and eventually breaks. What you think about this idea?
Well, personally, I think that would have frustrating implications. If you ever found a weapon you really loved, you'd know you'd only have it for a short while before it snaps. Currently, getting a good gun means having it forever, and that's a satisfying feeling. While needing to perform maintenance on weapons to keep them working properly would probably fit the atmosphere of the game, which could involve scrapping other weapons for components, weapons breaking is always a risky business.
On the other hand, if the weapon could break but still be around and just need repair, the extra effort to keep your best gun working might make it feel even more valuable. Something like that might actually be better managed by the storyteller. In order to mix things up, the storyteller might cause a particular weapon, possibly your best one, to have a mechanical failure and need specific attention to get it working again.
Another possibility would be dust storms, where firing your weapons outside or near an opening would risk dust causing your weapon to stop functioning. That would be another thing I would think the storyteller should have specific oversight of. Guns getting dust in their mechanisms at the wrong moments could be very dramatic. And, like above, the weapon would need to be taken aside and paid specific attention to, repaired, before being usable again.
As for your current situation, if I were you, I'd be selling my excess guns to the passing traders.
...also, if we start seeing dust storms, give me an AK-47. Even if other weapons get jammed and unusable, that thing will never stop working. They are legendary for their reliability and ease of maintenance. It would be interesting if some weapons in the game were more prone to becoming nonfunctional in a dust storm than others; it might even cause you to switch out your best weapons for reliable ones for the duration of the dust storm. The AK-47 loses a bit of accuracy for its reliable design, but that's an easy trade in harsh battlefield conditions. Won't matter how accurate your gun is if it can't fire.
Raiders need some sanity-checking.
Specifically, if over 400 raiders have come to this place and died without so much as one raider escaping with any loot and precious few raiders even escaping with their lives, they should probably be unwilling to even try attacking this place, because clearly the locals are more heavily-armed and place even less value on raider's lives than raiders do themselves.
Raiders simply aren't threatening to a self-sufficient walled city. If our walls were like, actual fortification walls (IE, not made of flammable materials and not something a lone guy can beat down in a few minutes,) they'd be literally no hassle at all.
That's why real raiders of this type (IE, vikings,) preferred to raid undefended, unwalled civilian settlements, and they liked to do so on Sunday mornings when everybody was at church rather than ready to take up arms.
What raiders can do, on the other hand, is hang around. If you're not willing to come out and fight them (a dicey proposition,) or pay them off, they'll stick around for a week or so, and while they're there, no traders can/will arrive. Those that are already in orbit will hang around a small amount of time for you to get a person near a comm station to it and finish some last-minute business, say 4 hours, but then they'll leave.
Alternatively, you can pay the raiders off with cash, metal, or whatever, and they'll just leave. Or you can wait them out - they'll bugger off when they start to starve after realizing you're not coming out and there's no way in hell they're getting in.
QuoteWhat raiders can do, on the other hand, is hang around. If you're not willing to come out and fight them (a dicey proposition,) or pay them off, they'll stick around for a week or so, and while they're there, no traders can/will arrive. Those that are already in orbit will hang around a small amount of time for you to get a person near a comm station to it and finish some last-minute business, say 4 hours, but then they'll leave.
Humm... blockade.
QuoteSpecifically, if over 400 raiders have come to this place and died without so much as one raider escaping...
Maybe the 'Raider Headquarters' just trying to send group after group to investigate what the hell happen to the last group, why no one made their way back. XD
Quote from: murhe on December 10, 2013, 12:36:21 PM
Btw. I have got too big piles of weapons so I have wondered if they could be used up. Each time you fire a weapon there could be change it loses a bit of durability and eventually breaks. What you think about this idea?
I feel like this would cause an awful lot of micromanage, which would become impossible later game. Maybe a better idea on that front would be some sort of weaponsmith, who can repair and optimize weapons so that you can set it as a job and repairs, ammo fillings etc. are entirely automated, provided you have the resources.
Well there is the whole "Crafting" skill that hasn't been implemented yet. Its possible that we may need to repair weapons (as they actually do have a life-bar), craft new weapons and possibly craft ammunition.
If the durability idea was to take off, its already kind of in place. All you'd need to do is make it so that firing the weapon slowly depletes its HP bar and at different intervals (ie 75%, 50%, 25%, 0%) the weapon becomes more inaccurate and does less damage.