Stun Weapons

[LordGanny]

Just an idea I am tossing around with my faction, is the ability to make and run a prison, and to be able to run bounty hunting missions. So I am thinking of ways to capture prisoners alive, and I have a few ideas, but one thing that would greatly improve that ability would be stun weapons. It would also add to pvp by giving us the option to choose lethal vs non lethal actions.

[Madrummer]

Mmmm nahhh.  I appreciate the idea but am against the idea of imprisoning people at this stage in the game.  Sure, for you cops, that's a cool idea.  But that would bring rise to actual slave trades if you could incap and bind people.  Griefing would get out of hand.

 

Now, for a non-lethal alternative, maybe have a system with diminishing returns.  First "stun" lasts at 100% of its time, up to say 10 seconds max.  From there the stunned player gets a 1 minute stacking buff that gives 20% duration resistance to the next stun effect.  That would guarantee over 30 seconds of positive control over someone and give you and your crew the opportunity to surround them and tell them to peacefully "comply or else." At the end of that 30 seconds of control, they will have 1 minute of autonomy before you can incapacitate them again.

 

See, you can't just hijack somebody's account by enslaving them.  That ruins the fun for them, no matter how much pleasure you get out of it.  But if you can have a control method where you can convince them to RP with you and comply to your demands, well that's different.  At the same time, the player being set upon ultimately gets the final choice of whether to try and run, fight back, or go peacefully and maybe reassess their options again later.

[Kael]

This was discussed in another thread (tried to find it, but I can't see it at the moment) and there is a lot of issues with any sort of "Prison" system.

 

In essence It's just restricting game play to certain people who you deem to be in "the wrong" by your standards, rules, or laws. I can create a law that says no body is allowed to speak/talk within my claimed tiles. It's obviously over the top as an example, but how would to expect to full enforce that and "imprison" players?

 

You can't lock paying players up with no mean of escape/release, this is just trolling on so many levels, especially if one of your enforcers has a vendetta against an individual and refuses to release them.

 

The only "fair" way is to Fine a player for any infractions and not allow them back into your territory until they have payed the Fine. If they refuse to pay then you can put a Kill Order on them and send bounty hunters after them.

 

This then leads to how other orgs will interpret the threat or a Kill Order on one of their members...could lead to war! I can't wait! ?

[LordGanny]

The only thing our prison would be used for, would be traitors and spy’s within our own alliance. Prison sentence would only be a couple hours allowing us the ability to determine how bad the leak was, respond to it, and seize retribution (monetary, or resources). It would not be so much a restriction on game play, so much as it would be a way to keep all of us safe. 

 

But it the whole system is useless without the ability to capture.

[LordGanny]

I do like the idea of diminishing returns on stun weapons. Other uses for these weapons would be shock troops, and boarding parties. The ability to possibly lock down a player(s) while boarding/attacking or defending would allow for an interesting alternative to the typical kos style of game play we have all come to know.

[Madrummer]

On 11/4/2019 at 4:12 AM, LordGanny said:

The only thing our prison would be used for, would be traitors and spy’s within our own alliance. Prison sentence would only be ...

Read that again and realize the problem with this.  "[...]our prison system" implies restricted use to just you.

 

Again, if you start making capture and containment a simple thing, you WILL have slave trades and griefing.

[Madrummer]

On 11/4/2019 at 4:16 AM, LordGanny said:

I do like the idea of diminishing returns on stun weapons.

Thanks, I genuinely believe that's the only functional way for stun effects to be practical in this game.  And on that note, it makes it quite practical...!

[plmkoi]

On 9/6/2019 at 1:20 PM, LordGanny said:

Just an idea I am tossing around with my faction, is the ability to make and run a prison, and to be able to run bounty hunting missions. So I am thinking of ways to capture prisoners alive, and I have a few ideas, but one thing that would greatly improve that ability would be stun weapons. It would also add to pvp by giving us the option to choose lethal vs non lethal actions.

I support this concept in the game, but I am also going to be honest and state  that I a sociopath that loves to grief people, because I am a sadist. If you put in a imprisonment I can actually tell you what I would plan on doing as soon as the game goes into launch. I would first recruit people that have the same play style as me and this is not hard when you have Goons and once we established territory, we would imprison people just for the lol's. If we can get them to quit that would be even better and enjoy those tears.

 

I highly suggest you look into the sand box games that came out in the past and learn that there is a lot of people that would do the above. You would be surprised how many people tend to scale closer to my play style.  

[LordGanny]

I’ve played a lot of those games, and the good ones have a built in safety, such as after x amount of time the imprisonment instrument despawned or unlocked, most of those games however, were indie games made by developers that had a streak of games they started but never finished, as such the games dies aka: Reign of kings 

[d3ck3r]

stuns need proper game mechanics where you are immune to a next stun right after you were stuned for certain amount of time, otherwise it will end up in a stun-chain abuse wich is not realy funny.

[LordGanny]

That is absolutely true, one of the many things we have passed around in our talks, was the need for immunity, or other mechanics, so as to not be the be all end all of stun locks. Another great thing for stun weapons though would be ship mounted electronic warfare, to shut down ships and the like. However, you could have a mainframe on the ship/station with buffers to withstand these assaults.

[Fenrave]

Call me crazy, but how would a civilization in DU, let alone a living economy, function without a proper legal system? Fines would almost be unenforceable, and kill orders just throw out due process entirely. Sure the laws would be arbitrary and sometimes ridiculous, but given that more sensible legal codes would obviously be respected and followed, anything absurd will just be ignored by any person with common sense. A prison system exists as a deterrent to stop people from committing crimes that don't necessarily need the death penalty.

What more to compliment a system like this than a non-lethal weapon that solely exists to incapacitate people? Stun guns will be abused, that's indisputable, but griefers won't be able make much effective use of them if they're already in jail for, well, griefing. Obviously stun weapons will still be abused, but in what capacity? Stunning someone doesn't really do much, assuming there isn't pick pocketing mechanics associated with it. Maybe kidnapping some high level official for ransom? Well that would just be more interesting and intriguing to see, than an actual problem.

As for slavers, you would be kind of ignoring the elephant in the room; what use would slaves be good for? mining? You can't just throw people on a planet and tell them to mine, they'll just figure out a way to escape and waste the slavers time. You can't make them mine asteroids since they could just float away in various directions, forcing you to kill them or to recapture them, again wasting their time. Not like you could force them to produce things for you either, since killing them isn't permanent.

In fact, that does also show some holes in the mentality that kill orders are better than prisons. Death isn't permanent, its quick and easy to get through. Prison on the other hand? Thats slow and not so easy to get through, in fact its a pretty good deterrent all things considered. I wouldn't want to steal from someone knowing i risk being thrown into a jail for half the day, as it would waste so much of my time. If i was just killed right away however? Well gee golly, I'll just do it again the next time i get the chance, especially if i have nothing to lose.

[LordGanny]

That was our reasoning for it, a prison sentence would not be a lifetime as people fear, but more of an inconvenience. Kill orders might take away a skill or 2 which while annoying, isn’t as annoying as spending the better part of your day locked up. An easy way to not let stun weapons be abused, is after say a 30 second stun, you have a 5 minute timer, before you can be stunned again, done by game mechanics. 30 seconds with a seasoned group would be long enough.

 

when it comes to slavery systems, you also have to think about food for however many people you are trying to force to do things, water, oxygen, and so on. And if you cannot get them to “work” for you, than it’s wasted resources.

[Fenrave]

A slavery system(i doubt the team at novaquark would make an actual system people could use, so lets assume its player driven), is logistically and fundamentally impossible for dual universe as far as i can tell so far. There is no way to make people work for you, there is no way to stop them from running away. It would just be a complete pain for any large group of griefers or pirates to ever make use of it. Assuming people might use slaves, say in a factory setting, whats going to stop them from just ruining your production line?

I'd imagine the closest you could get to slavery is a form of indentured servitude. You could impound peoples vehicles and force them to work or else you scrap their ship, or some other valuables that they may not want to leave simply by attempting to kill themselves. Though this does begin to raise questions about automation, and why you would ever need a workforce of players who may have inconsistent hours, or ones that might just intentionally leave the game to grind whatever you had them doing to a halt, and excuse it with a "family emergency," when you can simply just automate your factory and try to cut out players as much as possible as to avoid these problems.

Stun weapons are not the tools of a slaver; they would only serve as a means of self defense or as a means of incapacitating people who have broken the law.(As arbitrary as said laws may be, even though in a game thats probably going to have people who are more aware of terrible law systems, i doubt unreasonable laws, in most player driven societies at least, would ever take hold, or be tolerated.)

[LordGanny]

I whole heartedly agree Fenrave, this talk about stun weapons steams from a riot control, police force nature or self defense. Originally we were talking about a prison system, to be used on our own members, Incase of sabotage, spies, or treason. While possibly outsourcing our prison for other factions to use (for a price of course), for the same reasons, as well as POWs the thing is you have to rely on the player base to not imprison for life, and to have rules of conduct for how long a person can stay in said prison.