Raiders

Started by andriusha, December 04, 2013, 08:47:17 AM

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andriusha

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.

central

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?

Galileus

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.

DaveStrider

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.

Galileus

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".

todofwar

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.

andriusha

I agree with todofwar, maybe the raiders that are negotiatable would have a yellow name, and marauders - red, as it is now.

murhe

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?

windruf

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.

murhe

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.

Omni

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.

Kender

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
Rogue, from Kendermoore of Dragonlance.

owenkberg

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.

murhe

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.

owenkberg

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.