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Included in Build Challenging to Steal from Item Traders and Town Guards

I made a new function for this purpose now:
Code: 
void MerchantGuildAttack(aref attack, aref enemy, bool bKill)
{
   Logit(TranslateString("","The Merchantguild's watchmen are very vigilant..."));

   int numGuards = 30 - LAi_numloginedcharacters;     // LDH - changed from 32 to TIH's original 30
   if ( numGuards > 0 ) Ambush("Navy_office4", numGuards, "enemy", "friend","");

   // TIH --> bug fix... this now works right Jul23'06
   if ( sti(attack.index) == GetMainCharacterIndex() )
   {
     ref PChar = GetMainCharacter();

     PChar.merchantattack = true;     
     StartQuestMovie(true, false, false);

     if(bKill)
     {
       ChangeCharacterReputation(PChar, -100);// TIH MUST BE INT Nov17'06
       if ( CheckAttribute(enemy,"nation") )
       {
         SetNationRelation2MainCharacter(sti(enemy.nation), RELATION_ENEMY);
         LooseLetterOfMarque(sti(enemy.nation));
         LeaveService(PChar, sti(enemy.nation), true);
         SetRMRelation(PChar, sti(enemy.nation), REL_WAR);
       }
       PChar.nation = PIRATE;
       if(GetRMRelation(PChar, PIRATE) < REL_AMNESTY) SetRMRelation(PChar, PIRATE, REL_AMNESTY);
       UpdateRelations();
       RefreshBattleInterface();
     }
     // TIH <--
   }
}
If you just try to steal, a LOT of enemies show up.
If you kill the merchant, you also lose your reputation and turn hostile with his nation and friendly with the pirates.
Also, you can't leave the location until all enemies are killed.

Does that sound about right?
 
As an added bonus, I now extended this to town guards as well.
They generally come very well-equipped and therefore stealing their gear should NOT be easy either.

There are multiple town guards and they carry less equipment than the traders though.
So what I did for now is that there will be only two reinforcement soldiers for each town guard you kill.
Location lock does remain in place until you've killed them all.

Not sure what this will do for gameplay, but we'll find out!
At least all players will have to think twice before assaulting the town guards. :wp
 
1,000 curses! :rumgone Where am I going to get the good swords now? :nerbz Hmm. Ok, I'm nothing if not adaptable. :flower
 
You've got to admit that being able to get them quite easily early in the game sort-of defeats any challenge, right?
You can still do it; it'll just be harder. Perhaps a bit too hard; we'll have to see about tweaking this further once people get to play with it.
 
I decided to be a bit nice about the town guards. If you use a Thief's Knife or stun them and loot them without being caught, then you can get away with it.
However, if you ARE caught OR kill one of them, then you get into some nice trouble.
At least this gives you guys a nice new challenge. See if you can steal from the town guards or item traders without getting killed! :cheeky
 
Well as it is they don't always get knocked out and we have to fight it out with all of them anyway. I kind of liked it before when they were pretty tuff characters and fighting them was not a good idea at all.
 
Hylie Pistof said:
I kind of liked it before when they were pretty tuff characters and fighting them was not a good idea at all.
Click to expand...
There is still code in place to make them stronger than level 1 characters, like they were originally.
On Swashbuckler, they should be rank 20-36 with fencing skill 4-8 and several abilities.
So they shouldn't quite be push-overs, especially not in the early game. :confused:
 
Oh, I thought they were made lower ranked and easier. That one did take quite a while to kill with a good sabre and my melee level 4.
 
Stock game they started at rank 1. Then at some point we made them ALWAYS super-strong.
Now it is dependent on difficulty level.
 
Mentioned changes now included in here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-3-5-internal-wip-for-testing.24817/

Please let me know if this seems reasonably balanced, especially when killing item traders.
Also I don't know if this might influence certain quest situations, such as when you have to escape the guards in Speightstown.
However, it *should* affect only regular town guards and not any other soldiers.
 
So I sneak into Guadeloupe by the back door, present my thief's knife to the nearest guard, and he duly hands over his weapons and walks off. If I go back out of the gate and then re-enter the city, he's back in place and re-armed, so that bit is working. I never had much luck with stoning a more distant guard, though - he always turned hostile.

The trader is a lot more susceptible to a cobblestone. I talked to one of them, even bought a book from him, then retired to a safe distance and lobbed a rock. Then I made him comfortable by relieving him of anything heavy. There was a message about the merchants' guild being vigilant, the screen started flashing red to indicate a battle in progress, and I didn't wait to see what was looking for a fight because the store was just round the corner, so I took refuge there and sold my ill-gotten gains. When I left, there wasn't anyone looking for a fight. I talked to the trader; although he was now standing upright, he gave the same dialog as if he'd just been stunned.

Unfortunately I don't have a savegame because shortly after that I had to restart the game as part of my campaign to get Hornblower's side quests working. The vendor got his revenge, though - when I returned to Guadeloupe during the new game, all the vendors and the store showed no items in stock, and the vendors also had 0 gold. Not much point in mugging them now...
 
Grey Roger said:
So I sneak into Guadeloupe by the back door, present my thief's knife to the nearest guard, and he duly hands over his weapons and walks off. If I go back out of the gate and then re-enter the city, he's back in place and re-armed, so that bit is working. I never had much luck with stoning a more distant guard, though - he always turned hostile.
Click to expand...
That sounds OK then.
If you are successful stealing from the guard, then nothing happens. It is when you get caught that you get into trouble.

Grey Roger said:
The trader is a lot more susceptible to a cobblestone. I talked to one of them, even bought a book from him, then retired to a safe distance and lobbed a rock. Then I made him comfortable by relieving him of anything heavy. There was a message about the merchants' guild being vigilant, the screen started flashing red to indicate a battle in progress, and I didn't wait to see what was looking for a fight because the store was just round the corner, so I took refuge there and sold my ill-gotten gains. When I left, there wasn't anyone looking for a fight. I talked to the trader; although he was now standing upright, he gave the same dialog as if he'd just been stunned.
Click to expand...
That there does NOT sound OK. You shouldn't even be able to exit the location.
You used a cobblestone, you say? I didn't test that yet myself; just did regular killing and a thief's knife. Will have to check that.
And he doesn't reset properly after being stunned? That's quite peculiar, since that uses the same code as resetting after the thief's knife. :modding

Grey Roger said:
Unfortunately I don't have a savegame because shortly after that I had to restart the game as part of my campaign to get Hornblower's side quests working. The vendor got his revenge, though - when I returned to Guadeloupe during the new game, all the vendors and the store showed no items in stock, and the vendors also had 0 gold. Not much point in mugging them now...
Click to expand...
I'd also be interested in a "no items, no gold" savegame. Have heard of that issue before, but never looked into it yet.
That would probably deserve a proper Bug Tracker entry too.
 
I don't have a savegame with no items and no gold. But here's a savegame with me ready to mug a vendor in Guadeloupe who has no items, though he does have some gold. Thieves' knife, poisoned throwing knife and cobblestone are available, and the store is just round the corner for a quick exit. Don't try to run for the ship, though - it's parked at Anse Casse Bois, so you'd need to get through the gate to the jungle, and the Merchants' Guild is approaching from that part of town... (Having said that, if you're planning to close down all exits to prevent the mugger from escaping the Guild's vengeance, you'll also need to disable the quick teleport to ship.)
 

Attachments

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Grey Roger said:
Having said that, if you're planning to close down all exits to prevent the mugger from escaping the Guild's vengeance, you'll also need to disable the quick teleport to ship.
Click to expand...
I'm not planning that; I already DID it, dammit!
And you are proper locked in the location and cannot leave when that happens, including disabled fast travel.

Are you sure that doesn't happen for you? Even if using the Thief's Knife? That is what I used to test with and it worked for me last week.
You do have the very latest update, right?
 
I tried this last night at Port Royale at the port and in the back part of town. At the back part the merchant only had $10 and no one noticed. At the port he had $96000+ no goods and they noticed. After fighting until there was no one around I went to my ship and sailed away even though the red flashing was still going on saying there were more to fight.
 
Hylie Pistof said:
At the back part the merchant only had $10 and no one noticed.
Click to expand...
You probably didn't talk to the merchant yet and therefore he didn't have an item tree generated.

Hylie Pistof said:
At the port he had $96000+ no goods and they noticed. After fighting until there was no one around I went to my ship and sailed away even though the red flashing was still going on saying there were more to fight.
Click to expand...
So you could exit the location despite the danger icon still flashing?
That is not supposed to be possible! How did you do your merchant-mugging? Thief's Knife or something else?
 
Ah, killed the guy. That'll do it too.
Did the Trade Federation (sorry, Merchant's Guild) intervene at all?
 
A bunch of red coats showed up and in the fighting some blue coats got killed too.
 
Blue coats = merchant's guild. So that sounds like it works at least. Did your reputation and nation relations turn absolutely atrocious? They should do if you kill a merchant!

By the way, was that test done with the latest WIP from the link in my signature? If not, that would explain why the rewritten behaviour isn't taking effect.
 
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