Break, Enter, Steal ... from warehouses

[archaicwarrior]

Now that we have warehouses, full of all sorts of goodies, surely city bandits would be planning to break in and steal everything ? I currently own the silver smith in Sanala and have a warehouse with about 200 silver in it. Surely this would be a tempting target for criminals ?

Devs please add code to allow criminals to try and steal stuff from warehouses. And make it interesting ! in that they need to ;

(1) Plan the job
(2) Bribe / blackmail warehouse workers, to get access
(3) Do the job

At each stage, the authorities might get tipped off !

Would be cool.

 

[Tongueless Orvar]

That would be cool, and add a potential new way to gain roguery!

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Considering the precarious state Workshops are in, I don't want yet another disincentive to operating them. If they paid better by default, I think this idea would be perfectly fine menu game for burglary and you could hire better guards (or treat them better, etc., in exchange for more money out of your pocket) as a means of immunizing yourself from burglary (and immunization is key, since it's be extremely frustrating to have to baby-sit the Warehouses to swoop in and collect proceeds and minimize raw material storage as a necessary precaution otherwise).

As it stands, it'd be yet another reason to not bother with Workshops since they're only a desirable investment for players not intending to join wars for several years to a decade at the start of the game.

On that note, Alleys should be looked at because, unless I'm missing something, they're barely profitable opportunity costs that make you enemies of factions that need to be baby-sat because even literal Banner Knights aren't equal to the homeless guys Poxy Panda Man can scrounge together to oust you from town.

If Workshops' Warehouses were given the same high risk/low reward treatment, it'd be another punch in the gut to what (appears to be) an already unpopular play style that comes off poorly compared to simply fighting other people's wars for cash or entering politics with a posse.

 

[archaicwarrior]

It would be FUN ! You get a frantic message "BOSS! The warehouse has been broken into ! everything is GONE !" Then you have to track down the crims (using scouting & paths), fight them once found and take back your booty. Of course if you don't want to do tracking then assign this task to one of your companions .

Yes, i suppose you could beef up security to avoid this. Pay more, for more guards. If the thieves are caught in the act, they would be arrested and you decide what happens to them.

All very realistic, all very life-like, draws you into the game.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Lol the torture! X-D

I think it'd be okay if they buffed the profitability of it, at least, since the game style needs to be more competitive with conventional battling for cash since they're almost mutually exclusive. Problems that can confound you are sensible additions, but without bigger carrots the sticks just hurt like hell and discourage further play lol.

 

[archaicwarrior]

THIS ! . is where you can add a mini-game - "Sneak Thief" You must sneak the thief past all the guards to get to the other end of the room. You can hide behind boxes , hide IN boxes etc The warehouses owner moves guards to change / maximize line-of-sight (a bit like BG3), if the thief is spotted, the game ends.

As to profitability, Some towns seem very profitable - Ortsyia - Myzea - Sanala etc but most are not. I think it has to do with the number of caravans that visit them .. so location, location, location ?

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Reminds me of older Metal Gear Solid games, at least from what I've seen of them, lol.

I've found the best way to make money is to become the sole producer of the refined product and import into the warehouse the raw goods as well as sell abroad a percentage of what is produced. This results in a situation where 1 Velvet Dyework, based anywhere, can make 800+ passive revenue per day when hoarding 25% of the Velvets and each Velvet can be sold abroad for 700 within the first couple years of scarcity and 1,200+ after a decade or so. I haven't found the sweet spot on "number of businesses per finished product" but I'm suspecting 2 since the downside of broadening your industry is having to shut down/convert more rival businesses whereas it's cheapest to corner fewer markets.

Considering this means I usually stock 200 (very cheap, like 10 silver) Raw Silks per Warehouse and come back to collect 30+ Velvets, it'd suck for this business model to crater due to an update lol. The profitability would have to be doubled to compensate for the greatly increased risk. It's safer to just beat up Sea Raiders for their valuable gear (helmets in particular) since I found that to be a fast and easy way to grind through the hobo stage of the game lol. Just get a mob of Recruits/Volunteers and chase them into the corners of Vlandia lol.