Some simple suggestions for crime

[Totalgarbage]

Currently the criminal gameplay feels lacklustre despite the new additions made in 1.1.0. I think that the actual mechanics for making crime more impactful are mostly there, but they are currently not utilized and tied correctly. To make the system better, I have some few suggestions:

- Increase the daily crime rating increase for owning an alley from +0.5 per day per alley to +1.25 per day for the first alley in a kingdom and +0.5 for every additional alley owned in the same kingdom. Roguery level 125 perk "white lies" should have it's effect increased from 20% to 50% faster crime decay. This way, you will actually accrue criminal rating for owning an alleyway slowly by default (but not as a vassal or ruler), and picking "white lies" over the other level 125 roguery perk, "scarface", will actually make some sense (and it would also be a choice between a gangster playstyle vs bandit playstyle) because it will let the player have one "free" alley as a commoner, and 2 as a lord/ruler (because the daily crime decrease rate for nobles/rulers is -1.5/day).

- Change the threshold and effects of criminal rating to; 25 crime for being barred from towns, 50 crime for being declared war on if not vassal/ruler (and the start for the daily influence loss due to crime if vassal/ruler), 75 crime for blocking the option of bartering for peace & 100 crime for having a 10% to even 100% chance of being executed if you're captured or caught (the chance depending on the merciful trait of the lord that captured you or the owner of the town that you tried to sneak in).

- Since it would be bad game design to have the player die with 100 crime rating if they fail to sneak into a town due to RNG, give the player a chance to fight for their life against 3-5 guards (who are troops between tier 2-5) if they fail to sneak in, similar to Warband. Town scenes already exist, so I imagine programming 3-5 guards to attack the player inside a town shouldn't be hard to implement.

 

[Dodgy]

All of those tweaks would be good, but they don't solve the main underlaying issue with the crime system added in 1.1.0: shallow and useless.

Shallow because ideally crime should have more of an effect on the prosperity/development of a town and surrounding areas, and be tied with an increased or decreased generation of bandits parties/hideouts in the immediate vicinity of it.

Useless because I am not going to sacrifice a companion I could be using as a governor, party leader or captain for a meager gain of 50-150 gold. From the quick look I had at the mechanic, the amount seems to be tied to the amount of skill the npc has in roguery, meaning that it will start really low when you recruit the companion in the early game, when you could actually use the extra income, and increase to barely acceptable levels when you are already in the mid/late game, swimming in millions of cash, with a couple of extra hundreds being entirely irrelevant due to the massive gains you make during wars.

Also your high tier troops seem to automatically change over "thugs" over time, and every time you have to waste your time travelling to defend your alley, you'll need to replace whatever troops were lost with your own high tiered troops.
All in all, absolutely not worth the money and effort needed.

Unless TW reworks the amount of money you earn from it since the beginning or adds something meaningful to it (such as alleys having some extra uses in enemy controlled towns, like increasing chances of rebellion, increasing the chances of allied lords escaping etc), I wouldn't waste a companion slot on an alley unless I was doing it for roleplaying reasons.

 

[Totalgarbage]

All of those tweaks would be good, but they don't solve the main underlaying issue with the crime system added in 1.1.0: shallow and useless.

Shallow because ideally crime should have more of an effect on the prosperity/development of a town and surrounding areas, and be tied with an increased or decreased generation of bandits parties/hideouts in the immediate vicinity of it.

I wrote another thread here on changes to alleys some time ago, this is more about crime. And while I agree that crime could've been tied to town stats, they've made crime purely a personal stat (which I actually prefer if it's done right). Alleys definitely can be made to affect things like town security and I've suggested numerous times that the player should be able to trigger riots where we have to fight some guards on the streets, and if we win, the loyalty drops to 0.

Useless because I am not going to sacrifice a companion I could be using as a governor, party leader or captain for a meager gain of 50-150 gold. From the quick look I had at the mechanic, the amount seems to be tied to the amount of skill the npc has in roguery, meaning that it will start really low when you recruit the companion in the early game, when you could actually use the extra income, and increase to barely acceptable levels when you are already in the mid/late game, swimming in millions of cash, with a couple of extra hundreds being entirely irrelevant due to the massive gains you make during wars.

Just to correct you there, the monetary gain is always 2% of town prosperity in gold every day (not the most exciting thing I know). But I should clear one of your misconceptions; while yes, alleys are low income (they can be increased a teensy bit), they are also very low risk and require little to no monetary investment. They are a very good source of money in the early game when you're actually struggling with money to the point that you make up the money you invest (troop and companion recruitment fees) in a single day. If the devs actually let us incite rebellion in a town where we own an alley and maybe some other bonuses like a bonus to sneaking in the town, they would also become useful in the mid-late game.

Also your high tier troops seem to automatically change over "thugs" over time, and every time you have to waste your time travelling to defend your alley, you'll need to replace whatever troops were lost with your own high tiered troops.

Yeah, higher tier troops definitely shouldn't be automatically changed unless there's an open slot, and our troops should automatically defend I agree. The main reward for us going and defending the alley ourselves should be the roguery exp and maybe the opposing gang leader becoming weaker.

 

[czarny]

Currently the criminal gameplay feels lacklustre despite the new additions made in 1.1.0. I think that the actual mechanics for making crime more impactful are mostly there, but they are currently not utilized and tied correctly. To make the system better, I have some few suggestions:

- Increase the daily crime rating increase for owning an alley from +0.5 per day per alley to +1.25 per day for the first alley in a kingdom and +0.5 for every additional alley owned in the same kingdom. Roguery level 125 perk "white lies" should have it's effect increased from 20% to 50% faster crime decay. This way, you will actually accrue criminal rating for owning an alleyway slowly by default (but not as a vassal or ruler), and picking "white lies" over the other level 125 roguery perk, "scarface", will actually make some sense (and it would also be a choice between a gangster playstyle vs bandit playstyle) because it will let the player have one "free" alley as a commoner, and 2 as a lord/ruler (because the daily crime decrease rate for nobles/rulers is -1.5/day).

- Change the threshold and effects of criminal rating to; 25 crime for being barred from towns, 50 crime for being declared war on if not vassal/ruler (and the start for the daily influence loss due to crime if vassal/ruler), 75 crime for blocking the option of bartering for peace & 100 crime for having a 10% to even 100% chance of being executed if you're captured or caught (the chance depending on the merciful trait of the lord that captured you or the owner of the town that you tried to sneak in).

- Since it would be bad game design to have the player die with 100 crime rating if they fail to sneak into a town due to RNG, give the player a chance to fight for their life against 3-5 guards (who are troops between tier 2-5) if they fail to sneak in, similar to Warband. Town scenes already exist, so I imagine programming 3-5 guards to attack the player inside a town shouldn't be hard to implement.

I was waiting for criminal gameplay since beginings of ea. Now when TW fixed and reworked rougery perks and added owning alleys I'm so dissapointed. It doesn't feel any different than regular independent -> merc -> vassal -> ruler. There is nothing new to do. alleys are just cheap and bad workshops with big drawback - criminal rating. Raiding villages is boring, unimmersive and worthless activity. There is nothing to do when you infiltrate enemy town. No sabotages, no assassinations possbilities, no stealing, no bribing guards, nothing. Prison breaks are okay, smuggling weapons for gang leader is okay, fighting in gang wars is okay, breaking into gang leader house to free lord is okay but all those activities can be done by everyone and they are just okay.

If TW wants to make real "criminal enterprise" they promised they should just pay @Spinozart1 and implement fourberie mod in native game. There are activities for early game, mid game and late game. You start as just some small criminal, keeping low profile, building your wealth and criminal network and then you can become real cunning merc and finally lord/king with assassins, saboteurs and spies that have real impact on the game. You can also skip completly lord/king part and become shadow that manipulate events on campaing map as you see fit. That last path was my best Bannerlord late game expirience just because it was diffrent, I wanted to keep status quo balancing power of all kingdoms.

My most memorable vanilla criminal expirience was during Ea. I made my character, gained 30 criminal rating in Vlandia, went to Sargoth to sell loot so i had to disscuss terms of surrender. I picked corporal punishment aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand my character died during taking corporal punishment. You should see my face when this happened. It was short, medicore campaing with very cool end.

 

[Totalgarbage]

If TW wants to make real "criminal enterprise" they promised they should just pay @Spinozart1 and implement fourberie mod in native game. There are activities for early game, mid game and late game. You start as just some small criminal, keeping low profile, building your wealth and criminal network and then you can become real cunning merc and finally lord/king with assassins, saboteurs and spies that have real impact on the game. You can also skip completly lord/king part and become shadow that manipulate events on campaing map as you see fit. That last path was my best Bannerlord late game expirience just because it was diffrent, I wanted to keep status quo balancing power of all kingdoms.

Honestly if TW just paid him and implemented fourberie I would be very content as well, although I must admit that I don't really like the implementation of alley ownership in fourberie particularly due to needing to upgrade our enterprises every week until we reach the point cap. I wish it was much more simple in how it worked, such as working like a workshop where we have to choose our production among things like spices (are they actually spices or drugs?), slaves or weapons (or something else idk).

My other (somewhat minor) complaint about what is otherwise a phenomenal mod is that our other actions from our hideout such as blackmail and assassination has an unintuitive and ugly looking UI (might be because of the game, not the modder, idk). I want to reiterate that I really do love fourberie and appreciate the work done by @Spinozart1 (and all the other people involved in making the mod if there are any).

 

[czarny]

Honestly if TW just paid him and implemented fourberie I would be very content as well, although I must admit that I don't really like the implementation of alley ownership in fourberie particularly due to needing to upgrade our enterprises every week until we reach the point cap. I wish it was much more simple in how it worked, such as working like a workshop where we have to choose our production among things like spices (are they actually spices or drugs?), slaves or weapons (or something else idk).

My other (somewhat minor) complaint about what is otherwise a phenomenal mod is that our other actions from our hideout such as blackmail and assassination has an unintuitive and ugly looking UI (might be because of the game, not the modder, idk). I want to reiterate that I really do love fourberie and appreciate the work done by @Spinozart1 (and all the other people involved in making the mod if there are any).

Well, your suggestion about illegal workshops sounds great. It could work well with my smuggler carvans idea.
TW won't make any game changing and exciting features. During ea they just polished the game and added minor changes. I would adress suggestions about criminal activities to Spino. He consider implementing suggested changes if he likes them. I remeber playing early version of his mod reporting bugs, issues and giving my feedback and ideas. Many of them are now implemented

 

[Spinozart1]

My most memorable vanilla criminal expirience was during Ea. I made my character, gained 30 criminal rating in Vlandia, went to Sargoth to sell loot so i had to disscuss terms of surrender. I picked corporal punishment aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand my character died during taking corporal punishment. You should see my face when this happened. It was short, medicore campaing with very cool end.

Happened to me when I was doing some tests for my mod, was not expecting such a result

Honestly if TW just paid him and implemented fourberie I would be very content as well, although I must admit that I don't really like the implementation of alley ownership in fourberie particularly due to needing to upgrade our enterprises every week until we reach the point cap. I wish it was much more simple in how it worked, such as working like a workshop where we have to choose our production among things like spices (are they actually spices or drugs?), slaves or weapons (or something else idk).

My other (somewhat minor) complaint about what is otherwise a phenomenal mod is that our other actions from our hideout such as blackmail and assassination has an unintuitive and ugly looking UI (might be because of the game, not the modder, idk). I want to reiterate that I really do love fourberie and appreciate the work done by @Spinozart1 (and all the other people involved in making the mod if there are any).

You seem to not like my handcrafted UIs!
No worries, I understand it takes some time to get used to (especially the Scheme Room).
It was quite a challenge (for me) to resume everything in one page and defenitely has room for improvement.
As @czarny said, you can leave your suggestions on Nexus (or here) and I will see what can be done.
But for now I'm still working on the beta compatibility (new alley system is unfortunately not what I was expecting...).

 

[Totalgarbage]

You seem to not like my handcrafted UIs!
No worries, I understand it takes some time to get used to (especially the Scheme Room).
It was quite a challenge (for me) to resume everything in one page and defenitely has room for improvement.
As @czarny said, you can leave your suggestions on Nexus (or here) and I will see what can be done.
But for now I'm still working on the beta compatibility (new alley system is unfortunately not what I was expecting...).

Oh it's only the scheme room that I have a problem with tbh, I just couldn't remember the name of the specific menu. I don't have any problems with other UI elements.

As I've said, while I think that fourberie's additions are incredible and it's one of my favourite all time mods (not just for Bannerlord, but including mods from other games such as Skyrim as well), but I think the alley management is a tad too complex. It's not hard to understand how to use it, there's just too much in it. I would much rather have a workshop-like system in place where we choose one out of several types of outputs (smuggling, drugs/spices, prostitutes, gambling, etc.) and maybe could maybe level up only 2-3 times (similar to Bloc's Better Workshops mod video here) rather than putting roughly 500 points to max out all 3 "sectors" as it is.

I hope I don't sound too demanding or offensive, I know that this is something that you're doing in your free time (and I assume that 1.1.0 is a massive headache for you especially), likely for free, and I appreciate your work a lot. These are just a few of my suggestions.

 

[Forest-Bandit]

Currently the criminal gameplay feels lacklustre despite the new additions made in 1.1.0. I think that the actual mechanics for making crime more impactful are mostly there, but they are currently not utilized and tied correctly. To make the system better, I have some few suggestions:

- Increase the daily crime rating increase for owning an alley from +0.5 per day per alley to +1.25 per day for the first alley in a kingdom and +0.5 for every additional alley owned in the same kingdom. Roguery level 125 perk "white lies" should have it's effect increased from 20% to 50% faster crime decay. This way, you will actually accrue criminal rating for owning an alleyway slowly by default (but not as a vassal or ruler), and picking "white lies" over the other level 125 roguery perk, "scarface", will actually make some sense (and it would also be a choice between a gangster playstyle vs bandit playstyle) because it will let the player have one "free" alley as a commoner, and 2 as a lord/ruler (because the daily crime decrease rate for nobles/rulers is -1.5/day).

- Change the threshold and effects of criminal rating to; 25 crime for being barred from towns, 50 crime for being declared war on if not vassal/ruler (and the start for the daily influence loss due to crime if vassal/ruler), 75 crime for blocking the option of bartering for peace & 100 crime for having a 10% to even 100% chance of being executed if you're captured or caught (the chance depending on the merciful trait of the lord that captured you or the owner of the town that you tried to sneak in).

- Since it would be bad game design to have the player die with 100 crime rating if they fail to sneak into a town due to RNG, give the player a chance to fight for their life against 3-5 guards (who are troops between tier 2-5) if they fail to sneak in, similar to Warband. Town scenes already exist, so I imagine programming 3-5 guards to attack the player inside a town shouldn't be hard to implement.

The last part is unessacery fighting guards when it can do the math based off how many guards/prosperarity/loyalty/crime rating/clan rank.

 

[Forest-Bandit]

The last part is unessacery fighting guards when it can do the math based off how many guards/prosperarity/loyalty/crime rating/clan rank.

And then just use ur imagination

 

[Forest-Bandit]

This game is set up more like a role playing game board,and it needs to have the most acruate math.all the way done to physical capabilities to the character skills, wind speed,how fast horses are realistic wounding.like in red orchard stra (ya I use to own a pc)but that should be goals,