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  • theft enhancements for topside ? ? ?
  • what if we didn't use a code saved in notepad on every door

theft enhancements for topside ? ? ?
what if we didn't use a code saved in notepad on every door

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Keycards. Key fobs. I know keys to locks exist in game. Why don't we place some keyed/carded locks in the world for certain roles to promote plots that revolve around stealing an access card to get into a secure area? It's not like I can cut out someone's eye or their hand and use that part to activate a door currently. But keys and stuff DO exist for special doors around the world. Imagine needing to pickpocket a corpsec guard for an access card to a certain floor, and getting some data inside. Hopefully this gives some ideas for a future plot or system to put in to make the theft skill have some neat plays besides steal 1st wallet from joebaka
By robotdogfighter at Jun 18, 2024, 10:11 PM | 0
We've had some really interesting discussions over the years about heists and B&E gameplay topside, though a constant roadblock was narrowing down ideas that fit two tricky qualifiers:

1) Not requiring a lot of dev or GM time.

2) Not massively unbalanced, or feast or famine rewards.

I liked the idea of self-populating automated secure vaults in CorpSec buildings that would themselves automatically seed the tools needed to enter them to the world, both because I like the idea of corp HQ heists and I thought it would give CorpSec a perpetual player threat to defend against, but the outcomes with macguffins kind of demonstrated that this sort of thing might end up being dominated by a very small number of players overall and end up not really being worth the dev time.

I do think there exists a concept to have this sort of thing that fulfills these limitations, it's just a matter of someone coming up with it.

By 0x1mm at Jun 18, 2024, 10:31 PM | 0
Never experienced those Big Mac whatever things before, so I have absolutely no insight on how it played out unfortunately
By robotdogfighter at Jun 18, 2024, 10:32 PM | 0
Me either! Most players didn't. Expanding and supporting heists and fencing and thievery in general is pretty much my raison d'être for playing at the moment because I feel that is like a key piece of the cyberpunk theme that has to be present, and I definitely feel like Gold Sector is the place for this stuff.
By 0x1mm at Jun 18, 2024, 11:22 PM | 0
Good on paper, not so much when it comes to execution. As it was mentioned here before, the only way I can see this being implemented is if it were like MacGuffins – an automated sort of weekly/monthly thing for CorpSec to defend/attack.

If it were something regular (such as making actual HQ doors keycard only) then I don't think it'd work at all. Except for specific GM plots, the only thing people are going to be stealing are gear and/or very specific data that would barely be useful for anyone in the game (you overestimate how much data there is in CorpSec buildings). And even then, it'd be better and easier to acquire that data (and more) through the social game anyway.

What happens if it's found out that a keycard has been stolen? It sounds like we'll constantly need more puppets/dev time to hunt down existing keycards OOCly and who has the items, cancel them codedly, make new ones as items and so on. I don't think we have enough staff resources to accomplish any of that.

Overall, while a good idea in theory, I don't think it'd be executed as well as people think it might be.

By Cowbell at Jun 19, 2024, 5:40 AM | 0
Also, with GM support you can certainly cut hands or eyes out to access doors.
By Cowbell at Jun 19, 2024, 5:41 AM | 0
I think shifting the access systems of major buildings that can be the center of espionage roleplay into breakable-and-enterable access systems would be very nice. Corporate security would have more to do and they would be more likely to get into a fight, which I think is a positive thing.

Keycards would be nice. Highly sensitive areas could still be eyescan, but less sensitive areas could be keycard accessible with the IC reasoning of saving system resources by reducing the amount of biometric data to be stored and processed. Keycard encryptions could be cycled often in an eyescan-only room, so a stolen card wouldn't be a permanent access to the tower.

I don't see what this has to do with macguffins or automated income, though. Macguffins were removed because they were too easy to basically cheese and thefts were very rare, so it essentially just became free income. Comparing apples to oranges, unless I missed something.

By batko at Jun 19, 2024, 2:57 PM | 0
I don't see what this has to do with macguffins or automated income, though.

Macguffins often figured heavily into the past discussions about heists and corporate B&E in terms of what stuff players could actually be heisting, but it was all hypotheticals that never got beyond the 'it would be cool if people tried to steal them' stage. There was quite a lot of them but I just grabbed one (edited) excerpt from a Guided Discussion log as an example here:

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): Sure, but how do we balance a corporate theft system such that is accessible without being stupid ICly?

Hek [to Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither)]: Can you expand on that? What about it needs to be balanced? What would make it stupid ICly?

svetlana: Right, this isn't about apartment B&E but rather corporation B&E – might be better to call it a 'heist'...

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): Like, do we require corpsec players to be online for the code to function? Do we restrict it to X times a month because how the fuck is a corp so bad that they can't catch these people? Do we restrict what you get so that you aren't just printing money? Is the risk worth the reward? The only way I see that happening is via GM supported plots.

ReeferMadness: We don't want gear.

ReeferMadness: We want obscure corporate shit like macguffins, biomods, etc from these heists.

svetlana points at ReeferMadness.

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): I hear what you are saying but like... how ya gunna get a bio-mod unless you have someone coming with you that has the skills to use the rosco? And if they have those skills, what are the chances they don't already work at VS?

ReeferMadness: Those are great RP dilemmas to solve.

spookybiitch: Steal the printer.

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): But like, will people actually be able to -do it-?

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): It's technically possible currently to steal macguffins, and to track them. It's always been possible.

svetlana: But we need more corporate PCs first...

Hek [to Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither)]: It's like @Reefer just said. You limit it by controlling the frequency with which things "spawn". Will characters break into the corp every day if they're only going to get something 2 out of 30 days a month?

ReeferMadness: The thing about MacGuffins is what's been done with them though.

crashdown: I think biomods is a bad example because we've seen over the last two years that people will do stuff with them that isn't always above board. I think corporate espionage does have to entail time investment by putting people in place in those corporations. Maybe if the transfer stuff still existed, I was under the impression that portion had been taken out of the game but I'm not 100% sure any more.

ReeferMadness: Someone stole one and a NPC whipped out a tracker than said 'Bobby did it.'

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): Sure Hek – but what about when you have 3 different factions trying to hit a corp? How do we balance it so that it isn't just first come first serve? If it's first come first serve it becomes a min/max situation where the characters invovled forgo RP because otherwise they get nothing.

svetlana: I mean keep in mind corporate heists are also very dangerous and people tend to be risk-averse so the heists probably won't happen as often as y'all are saying it will

Hek: MacGuffins are most of the way there already. The system that tracks them, spawns them, informs people where they are, etc. is good. It just needs to be tweaked a bit. eg inform more people. Provide more detail about them.

ReeferMadness: It also claims to catalogue your dna on pickup. From most players perspective, it is a daunting and not rewarding task.

ReeferMadness: That mentality needs to change and I'm working on it but those loops could use some help from the Staff side.

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): Yeah, that's fair Reefer-- we should probably change that.

Hek [to Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither)]: I think I get what you're saying. The concern is that players will sit around camping spawn timers and foregoing RP to basically do PvE content of getting the spawned items?

crashdown: On the topic of the DNa for macguffins I believe that's on a timer from how I understand it to work. There's a certain sequence that'll happen and to my understanding you're in the clear but there's other players that know more than me.

Staff Mr. Cooperative Competition (Slither): Possibly we need NPC generated macguffins that they move around with, so theft can happen in a PvE environment and not just a PvP environ. Because if it's PvP everyone involved is incentivized to try to win.

By 0x1mm at Jun 19, 2024, 3:20 PM | 0
Fair enough. For what it's worth, I do hope changes like these will help MacGuffins make a return, as they were very helpful for plotting, but the issues were undeniable.
By batko at Jun 19, 2024, 3:34 PM | 0
Reminder to please take care in crafting your BGBB titles. There is no need for three questions marks. Make sure they are human readable and make it easy to understand what the topic is about. Thanks!
By Slither at Jun 24, 2024, 8:47 PM | 0
In general, I like this idea. I also would prefer it if one could harvest eye/hands from corpses without needing a GM present (if that's not already the case).

A lot of the questions Slither asked in the copy/paste OOC chat seem moot to me in relation to this and given my limited understanding of the context.

Even if a PC gets a keycard/eye/hand for a door in a corp, they can't just use it. They need to adhere to 'help crime'. Possessing one of these items, in my mind, doesn't grant an exception.

So GMs will (should) have advanced notice. They can work an IC response and make it a challenge as they see fit. They can use IC means to make repeated back to back attempts prohibitive. They can scale the reward. They can drop macguffins (they don't even have to know or understand what they do when dropped and can create story around them behind the scenes as time goes on).

So yeah, I do agree that GM involvement is going to be needed, especially as things stand. But I don't think that this is an argument against the idea proposed here. If the access items are for doors/vaults in secure areas, we have 'help crime'. If not, then have at it.

By Grey0 at Jun 25, 2024, 5:38 AM | 0
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