Abusing the stealing game-mechanic.

[jtm_alaska]

Stealing is pretty cool addition because it allows another avenue of play besides just being a good person and buying items.

It's currently incredibly abused however, and even if you want to play the good guy, the benefit of stealing is just too good to ignore. The stealing game-mechanic needs a tweak.

Here's a few examples (Not all of them are abusive but take your pick):

-Some regions have far too many good items to steal and not enough patrol paths for security.
-You can grab NPC's to move them or face them a different direction so another buddy can steal.
-I've heard a Toy Hammer helps people steal, but I haven't experienced this first-hand.
-The penalty for getting caught stealing is a minor reputation loss with no repercussions.
-Since outpost reputation only local, losing reputation by being caught stealing is not a big deal because you'll likely never see that outpost again.
-You can drag NPCs into the airlock and drown them to death, steal their gear, then use their security cards to access the armory. The NPCs won't care.

Feel free to help add to this list.

[Bookslayer10]

I think that just making it impossible or way too hard isn't a good idea because it's fun to steal. Moving NPC's around or drowning guards should be kept in. Also, reputation is going to be changed to be purely faction based, so if you get caught it will matter more.

I think *some* consequences for doing it would be good, just so that it's more of a trade off to steal. I think that even if you aren't caught, everything you steal from a station should decrease your reputation a little bit at the end of the round. After all, the locals will certainly notice everything disappearing after your sub leaves, and word will get around. You can pillage factions you don't care about, but if you want to maintain good relations you will need to make sure to treat friendly stations well. I think this will help Captains convince their crew to not steal, and take breaking the law more seriously if it's will a faction designated as friendly.

[Marii Wukruk]

I guess one other fair thing to add would be that it's actually even worse when on an extensively modded server, which is a substantial if not plain major part of servers, and stealing a PUCS from outpost crew or diving suit locket as early as Tier 1 or even the very first outpost, is rather common, on top of all-out theft.

A roleplay-friendly solution rather than lazily nerfing stuff, outpost items or selling prices into the ground and whatnot, would be introduction of a morale&reputation system, introduction of pirate system e.g. Dynamic Europa, Pirates Ahoy! except expanded ten-fold since we're talking game developers not independent modders resources-wise and wage-wise, who aren't charging a penny for the mods.
For example, if you're staying for far too long in an outpost, occupying a docking port, delaying traffic, risking a fine, or there's a report(s) of items missing during your stay, if you don't leave, to suffer suspicion and low to extreme reputation loss/hostility gain if repeat offender, each individual player/bot on the station is asked or demanded to submit to a personal search depending on the extent&value of theft, escalating into submarine scan (requires active sonar AND reactor to be offline, which scrambles scanning, active sonar most), and eventually, if there's no cooperation from the bot(search requests go to the player via message, options e.g. submit, (try to) talk out of it, run or fight with a small damage buff/player crew, there's just a squad of guards descending into the submarine to do a thorough search, going into each container, depending on your reputation, rumours, throwing items searched on the floor sometimes/more, escalating suspicion progress, etc.

[xolophreny]

I believe there are some changes and tweaks to stealing to address precisely the issues mentioned, plus the whole factions rework, in the upcoming release, so stay tuned for that and hopefully the changes would be for the better!

[Greb]

Reputation will probably have more of an impact when the factions overhaul gets added. Maybe they'll even fine you if you're caught stealing too, I dunno.

The game has changed a lot since I last played, but I used to always filch the diving suits to break down into materials, and weapons from military outposts.

I just hope any punishments or whatever we get in the future aren't too soul destroying, like there being a 5 minute timer once the first item gets stolen to leave or the whole outpost turns hostile or something, or you just lose a huge chunk of reputation. It's up to the players to steal or not, don't want the game trying to force the player not to steal or something.

It's also kinda funny when you tell your friends not to steal and then the next round starts and there's a crate filled with all the stuff they nicked from lockers, including all the oxygen tanks from the diving lockers...but maybe that's just me. The Captain has lost control of his ship and now the clowns are running the circus!

I could deal with there being a fine so long as it wasn't applied automatically, maybe at a % chance basis or just dependant on being caught + how long you hang around a station for. Make it so it doesn't just appear instantly and dock you credits or reputation, but make it happen later on when you next dock with that faction. Imagine that, you go to talk to the outpost mayor and they recognise you in dialogue and ask you to pay a fine, accept a mission without pay, or take a reputation hit. Maybe this will be a way to "burn" some goodwill with a faction, using your reputation to get away with something, if you have a really high reputation, I dunno.

Reputation was a bit of a mess when I last played. I remember times when me and the crew completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up an outpost, one time we deconstructed all of the diving suits and then flooded the entire station and caused everyone to get crushed by water pressure, and when we left the place we didn't lose any reputation, and then other times we get caught putting stolen goods in a deconstructor or taking some morphine out of the trash can and when we leave it's like -44 reputation, lol.

Really looking forward to the faction and reputation overhaul, anyway.

[Champis]

What you say is true. In our last campaign, we noticed all kinds of high-end stuff in Tier1 colonies that we thought would be better served if we owned it instead. So, our , sec officer, ironically, would steal a lot of goodies to quip our sub with. Recent update did dial down the # of high end items spawning in outposts, esp on higher difficulty. So, we were hoping this helps mitigate the issue somewhat. Our tactic was to grab w/e we wanted, and run like hell for the sub if caught. I dont think stealing should be removed entirely, but, it should not be so easy to cheese it the way it is currently is either.
Not the easiest thing to balance in a game like this, but, I am sure there are ways improvements could be made.

[climbingeastofwinter]

The resource tightening from a few patches ago leaves killing and looting station personnel one of the few remaining reliable sources of decent amounts of items. Sounds less to me like stealing is 'overpowered' and more like the risk/reward of the game has been reworked so crews are encouraged to just be murderbots, since you can take your sub out, burn fuel roads, ammunition, and a lot of valuable time mining resources only to barely be able to make 1000 marks from a nearly a full crate of raw ore, or kill a single security guard and have an easy 1500 marks in items. When the devs are tired of it being the meta, they'll bump up raw resource returns again or sale value, I imagine.

[Bookslayer10]

Originally posted by climbingeastofwinter:

The resource tightening from a few patches ago leaves killing and looting station personnel one of the few remaining reliable sources of decent amounts of items. Sounds less to me like stealing is 'overpowered' and more like the risk/reward of the game has been reworked so crews are encouraged to just be murderbots, since you can take your sub out, burn fuel roads, ammunition, and a lot of valuable time mining resources only to barely be able to make 1000 marks from a nearly a full crate of raw ore, or kill a single security guard and have an easy 1500 marks in items. When the devs are tired of it being the meta, they'll bump up raw resource returns again or sale value, I imagine.

I'm pretty sure the devs don't intend players to mine resources to then sell to outposts for cash; they want people to just hoard the resources for themselves, and use missions to get the money for submarine upgrades. In general selling seems like a poor choice compared to keeping or deconstructing resources.

It would be nice if a very basic supply/demand system was added to the game, where places like research or military stations would have practically no raw resources available but you could sell ore for a few times its base value. The same with other outposts, they would pay a lot more for things they don't have.

[Bait]

I'd enjoy more indirect consequences for stealing. Life on Europa seems to be a zero-sum game, so why not let it play out exactly like that?

Have the game keep track of the things that were stolen.
A lack of tools could result in rising repair/upgrade fees - or maybe even complete lack thereof.
Stolen medical supplies means more expensive/no healing offered. Possibly along with fewer/no additional crew to hire.
Or flip it around - steal and hoard supplies from one station and offer them to another to get discounts and better relations. Maybe even extort them with absurd prices and gamble on actually putting that money to good use in another biome?

[hUbert 2]

Stealing has been the subject of many discussions and will be nerfed for 1.0

[Buggy Boy]

How about an alert system whereby if a guard sees you doing something they will come and challenge you on minor things like stealing, but for anything like causing harm to another NPC or breaking walls etc they will run to the nearest alarm button (they will be dispersed around the station and take maybe a few seconds to reach, depending on where the guard is at the time) and then the entire station will go into lockdown, the guards will all run around looking for you (they won't just automatically know where you are, but they might go to your last known location). Make this more organised, so some guards will have orders to search, others will be on heightened alertness and walk brisk patrols, sensitive areas or rooms of high value will suddenly have more guards hanging around. You won't just be able to run to your sub either as there will be some security doors that are locked (especially leading to the docked sub), you'll need to either break the doors / hatches or make 'other' exits. That is if you don't want to just submit and face the music, which should be a fine and rep loss suitable to the crimes committed. If you subdue or incapacitate the guards who saw you commit the crimes then the alarm won't be triggered, none of the other guards will be any the wiser for a while at least (they will get suspicious after a while because Fred didn't check in on schedule).

I'm sure this sort of thing could be implemented by the devs in the game, most will just be some security logic and behaviours, perhaps with different types of guard (not necessarily visibly different from the others). For really bad or repeat behaviour, perhaps the next station will have beefier or more guards that will watch you more closely everywhere you go on the station, assuming it's controlled by the same faction.

[ebe-a51]

+100
Agree - stealing is WAY overpowered.
Almost EVERY multiplayer game at the beginning involves everyone stealing everything and luring security into airlocks to drow.
Totally OP

There are some nice suggestions here - but I think it can be simpler than this.

There should be a percentage of stuff stolen and people killed, that if you exceed it, whether you are detected or on your sub or not, you are instantly regarded as hostile.

Think about it.
If stuff goes missing, even if you didnt see it happen - suspicion is raised.
If people go missing, even if nobody saw them go missing - suspicion is raised.

If the station tracked amount of stuff stolen/people killed, regardless of detection - it would create a *suspicion threshold* that would allow you to steal some stuff, kill some people, but only to a point.

And you can change the threshold per station level (outpost - med threshold, security - really low threshold, research & mining - high threshold, city - med/high, outlaw - NO threshold).

I think this would be the most balanced way.

[climbingeastofwinter]

I mean, if people absolutely needed a 'fix' for this, they could just make some adjustments to NPC behavior so that they mimic the same basic cost/benefit analysis players use when players try to determine whether they actually still want someone on their ship, and apply that to they react to players trying to dock at their outpost.

They hear reports from other outposts about submarines that were docked there and incidents that occurred while the submarine was there, and if they hear something bad happened they have a 95% chance of deciding it isn't worth the bother of communicating with words and just use maximum force -- i.e., you dock, and immediately on your sub loading, you aren't placed in the lobby of the outpost like you are at a friendly outpost, you're placed at your station on your sub, but then the outpost guns come alive, while explosives are dropped into your ship from the top hatch and the station immediately seals it's end. That sort of thing. Also, just like dealing with players, it could be a case of mistaken identity ~75% of the time because the NPCs misread or misunderstood what actually happened. It'd be great and would bring the fun of multiplayer to singleplayer games.

You could probably just set it all up with a few easy scripts. It wouldn't take many games being tanked from the danger of being perceived as a threat for stealing behavior to be self-remedied, and the instanced where games are ended because the players are mistaken for criminals would just keep the fear alive in them and reinforce continued good behavior, no?

[Bookslayer10]

I think that simple reputation loss would work better than any physical danger to come directly from stealing. We are already getting a system overhaul which will probably add in harsh negatives for having low reputation, so simply lowering reputation after you leave the station as your mass theft is discovered would be a good enough disincentive.

[Dragon]

I've never seen anything more expensive than a few hundred mark item in an outpost inventory. Clothes are easy to come by anyway. Most everything worthwhile to steal is modded. The vanilla items that spawn are things that you will generally have or get a lot of anyway.

Really making a mountain out of a molehill imo.

[duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusty]

I kinda think it'd be neat (though a little excessive) if your character could be jailed for a mission or two, and you'd have to play as another character in the interim. Or, I guess jailbreak your friends :'D