mental weight aspect to crimes

[ethan]

Battery should then have a much softer penalty, whereas theft should be very minor - with trespassing nonexistent.

Vandalism and Murder should be huge.

This would ALSO create a reason to not kill people, and prefer to KO them and steal.

No penalty matters when it comes to war though unless it's absurdly extreme. And I don't see anyone supporting that either. A dead enemy character is well worth sitting it out for a while. But for the most part, fighting types would rightly complain that said type of murder penalty would mean successful fighters have to effectively sit the game out for a while after a kill. I don't think the answer is that simple, as much as I would prefer it to be.

(this all hinges around pairing this with making claim entry easier)

I don't think its really that much of an issue.
Its pretty hard to get people organised enough to be raiding more than a couple times a week anyway. Committing murder on your own claim should come with no penalty so successful fighters can still defend.

It would even be possible to do fun things like having equipment that is not as effective in combat, but significantly reduces mental weight of committed crimes. Eg.g necromancer robe worn as armour, bandits mask worn as helmet.

[Potjeh]

Well murder could take a RL year to release the mental weight it took

[ethan]

Well murder could take a RL year to release the mental weight it took

I realise your post is tongue in cheek, but I will explain how I see it working.

All numbers pulled out of my ass for the sake of argument.

To make defense breach easier, you have a siege weapon that has a large resource cost to breach walls, it only lets 6 people breach then return back over it without being able to lift/carry anything over, with no mental weight penalty.

The siege weapon that breaches palisade will require 60 hard leather, among other cosmetic stuff like wood and rope.
The siege weapon that breaches brick walls will require 60 steel.

That way you will want to raid people that will give you a return on investment of the siege engine. In the case of war, it will likely be the side with the largest economy that would win.

So now we have 6 people who have breached a wall. Lets make them 100 int characters, early tier brick wall village.
They breach a palisade claim that has a shit load a mulberry bushes, in the hopes of getting some silk. The claim owner has 80 charisma.
The raiders have 100 points to fill with mental weight. The mental weight multiplier will be 80 charisma/100 int = 0.8.

Base Mental weight for each crime:
Trespass: 1
Theft: 10
Battery: 15
Vandalism: 25
Murder: 35

Reflection time for each crime (fixed doesn't change):
Trespass: 1 hour
Theft: 8 hours
Battery: 12 hours
Vandalism: 24 hours
Murder: 40 hours

Again, all numbers pulled out of my ass for the sake of argument.

So back at the silk factory our raiders will be able to loot 12 items each (100/(10*0.8)), for a total of 72 items between 6 of them.
They start taking what ever they desire, when silky mcfarmer logins in.
Raider 1 tries to attack by has reached his mental weight limit, raider 2 has only stolen a couple awesome dandelions so has the (15*0.8) points to spare, and happily engages Mr mcfarmer.
raider 3 helps raider 2, poor old silky is knocked out and the (15*0.8) is split between them.
raider 6 who has been stuck between a plow and a rock this entire time, comes along and decides to murder old Mcfarmer for his stupid plow placement, and receives (35*0.8) points of mental weight.

The raiders piss of back where they came from, chuffed with their trade of 60 hardened leather for 47 dandelions and 1 silk cloth.
Raider 1, whose most heinous crime was theft, only has to weight 8 hours from the time of his last theft to be back to full mental capacity.
Raider 2, is no longer burdened by the guilt of theft after 8 hours, but is still suffering from the guilt of battery (15*0.8/2), which will take another 4 hours.
Raider 6, will have to wait 40 hours before the (35*0.8) points of mental weight are returned.

The penalties stop the silk farm from being leveled in 1 night, and the raiders have no real desire to go back there straight away as everything valuable was taken.
The little silkfarmer lost a lot, but all his infrastructure remains, he can stay and hope he doesn't get raided again, take what he can and flee or contact another faction asking for help.

[Potjeh]

And therein lies your problem - you can't balance cost solely against the raider's profit. Raiding is far from a zero sum-game, and will always be a lot more expensive for the target than it is profitable for the attacker. Sure, it'd be fine if people only raided for profit, but most don't. Most often it's either removal of a rival or pure griefing, and in these cases the attackers will happily eat a loss knowing that it will cost the target a lot more. So no instant assaults please, if that's what you meant with this siege weapon.

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

This idea has some really interesting potential... I look forward to further discussion. +1

[ethan]

And therein lies your problem - you can't balance cost solely against the raider's profit. Raiding is far from a zero sum-game, and will always be a lot more expensive for the target than it is profitable for the attacker. Sure, it'd be fine if people only raided for profit, but most don't. Most often it's either removal of a rival or pure griefing, and in these cases the attackers will happily eat a loss knowing that it will cost the target a lot more. So no instant assaults please, if that's what you meant with this siege weapon.

Maybe you have a better handle on this,
I am assuming 99% of raids, are already instantaneous, with the 1% being accomplished by guarding a ram for 24 hours?

The mental weight aspect would still extend to raiding for removal of a rival or pure griefing... as it would limit the damage done in 1 hit.

I am certain, no matter the cost, there will always be some pure griefing,
but if the cost is higher, there will be fewer people willing to, when there is more rewarding raiding to be had.

In the aspect of removing rivals, the attacker runs the risk, of not being able to inflict enough damage, to discourage retaliation.
Which means starting a war, that will be incredibly resource intensive for both sides.
Leaving both sides vulnerable against a third party.

[rye130]

A siege machine that lets you jump over walls and murder people without them getting any real warning time? No thanks!

[ethan]

A siege machine that lets you jump over walls and murder people without them getting any real warning time? No thanks!

Focusing on murder is looking at it incorrectly.

There are 3 ways it can play out.

Never have your walls breached.
Have your walls more often breached but the damage (theft murder etc) be limited.
Have your walls breached once and the damage be substantial.

If we look at it as a slider,

Easy to breach / limited damage |====================| hard to breach / unlimited damage
Currently we sit towards right side of the slider, what I am promoting is methods to move that towards the left.

Now damage is going to mean different things to different people.
For you murder is the worse possible, for others it's the slaughter of high Q animals.
However I think it's fair to discourage acts that only negatively effect the person being attacked.

[rye130]

Balancing the cost of that is going to be impossible. With a high price for the siege machine, people will only use it for highly damaging acts. With a low cost for the siege, you have people using them all the time. Either way things would be worse off than they are currently IMO.

[Potjeh]

The only way I could see it working is if jumping walls like this gave you a "Thief" debuff that only allowed trespassing and theft.