Guards of a different kind

[Frelock]

I know how anti-NPC people are around here, and for good reason. However, if crime and punishment are to be balanced, it only makes sense that we're going to need guards at some point in time. They allow for someone to continuously protect their claim, without actually having to be online at the time. However, they also allow for strong players to take what they want, so long as they can beat or sneak past the guards at a certain place, which is a lot like real life crime.

However, since people are against NPC's, I thought up a different solution to the problem which wouldn't create characters with no depth needlessly. The solution is guard dogs. Obviously, this would have to wait for animal domestication, so it's probably a long ways off, but it allows you to create a guard without creating a non-player character.

As to the mechanics of the thing, here's how I think it would work. Dogs would patrol a certain area, be it a claim or something else marked out by the owner. If they come across a crime scent (which I propose should be made invisible to humans), they'll track down the perpetrator if he's within a certain distance, and then attack. Whether dogs would kill or simply KO might be something else for the owner of the dogs to decide. Perhaps every in-game day, a dog must go and rest at a kennel, or other similar building. This building would be a requirement for having dogs and/or training them. You could also set your dog's options here (ie, where to patrol, whether they should kill or KO, et ced.). Therefore, it would be optimal to have multiple dogs on multiple schedules.

You could also institute a tracking dog, which would work similar to the current ranging skill, only the dog would simply go after the scent so long as you were following within a certain distance. This would lead you straight to your target.

[Jackard]

could be reduced to just being able to tame persistent animals

why restrict this to dogs when you could have guard bears

[Delamore]

So you're saying that theft should be less about any of the actual theft related things, and more about brute force just like it is with walls and shit right now which is a huge problem to balance?
You seem to have thought this out very well.

[niltrias]

So you're saying that theft should be less about any of the actual theft related things, and more about brute force just like it is with walls and shit right now which is a huge problem to balance?
You seem to have thought this out very well.

If you have to set the dogs patrol area, it would not mean brute force...it would mean recon, to determine the patterns, and stealthy movement to sneak in. Sounds pretty theify to me.
Also, DOGS!

[Delamore]

So you're saying that theft should be less about any of the actual theft related things, and more about brute force just like it is with walls and shit right now which is a huge problem to balance?
You seem to have thought this out very well.

If you have to set the dogs patrol area, it would not mean brute force...it would mean recon, to determine the patterns, and stealthy movement to sneak in. Sounds pretty theify to me.
Also, DOGS!

Or you know any reasonable town has enough dogs to patrol everywhere all the time.

[Frelock]

Who has to be stealthy to rob an empty house? Stealth is only necessary when there are people (or dogs) to hide from. Not to mention, sneaking into an occupied home is very difficult to do unnoticed, especially if the owner happens to own a dog. Most crime is not burglary; it's pickpocketing and mugging. Personally, I'd love to see trade develop to the point where highway robbery is a viable profession (if somewhat dangerous).

We make do with the current crimes of tresspassing, theft, vandalism, assult, and murder, but really stealthy stuff happens only rarely. It *should* take an extremely specialized character to be able to sneak into a person's house, gather up valuables, and leave without anyone knowing. There would be, of course, counters for dogs; things like throwing fake scents(like throwing a haunch of meat over a wall), or sprinkling pepper across your trail, but it would be very difficult to do so, and take a character specifically designed for such an act. Also, while anyone could keep one or perhaps two dogs, it should be really difficult to get "enough dogs to patrol everywhere all the time." After all, dogs need food too, imagine needing 60 meat every day to keep a pack of merely 5 dogs (1 meat per every 2 RL-hours).

[Jackard]

Restating that all you'd need for this is the ability to tame creatures and for animals (or at least tamed ones) to become persistent.

For one, hounds hunting scents are a bad idea - the job of tracking should remain in the hands of players. Two, the nonsense over "patrol areas" and "dogs dogs DOGS" is restrictive - it wouldn't allow you to do things like animal companions, or leading sheep and cows, or playing pied piper to rats, or...

Also, the "real stealth stuff" is more satisfying against human opponents than the usual Eye of Mordor AI.

[Potjeh]

Taming everything isn't exactly a good solution either. Some animals just can't be properly domesticated.

[Jackard]

Well of course, i just mentioned bears earlier because that'd be totally sweet

and then if mounts ever come along, you could ride them

or ride wolves like goblins

[niltrias]

Or you know any reasonable town has enough dogs to patrol everywhere all the time.

Do they? I do not know that that any town, reasonable or no, has any dogs at all. We do not know what kind of resources or time dogs might take. For example, without their trainers being on to give them instructions, they might after 4 hours head back to kennel and eat. That would make constant maintenance of dog patrol necessary. It would depend on implementation, I agree, but dismissing something as overpowered before we see how powerful it is is a bit hasty.