No Psychic/Transporting Guards?

[Spookii]

So, I know about the No Psychic Guards mod that gives you a little more room to steal without psychic guards knowing of your crime even when you were completely hidden.

 

But one thing that has bugged me is the fact that if I get caught in say, Cheydinhal for breaking into a house - somehow, the guards know about it in Anvil instantly.

 

I looked online and saw another mod that keeps your crimes committed in a certain city confined to that city. But that's too much of an extreme, in my opinion. I really like hardcore realism mods.

 

I was wondering if anyone knows of/would be willing to make a mod that gives you X number of days before word of your crime gets out. I understand that time continues to pass even if you fast travel somewhere, but I still think that I could make it to Anvil from Cheydinhal faster than the exchange of news between local guardsmen.

 

Perhaps something like one month/two weeks before guards in other towns begin to notice you. Maybe the length of time could depend on the severity of the crime. You commit a murder - word is going to travel faster than if you were just a pickpocket in the Imperial City.

 

I wanted to try to learn how to mod to make this for myself, but I don't think I have time. :/ I keep getting distracted by school. Any help would be awesome!

[Ferryt]

I agree. The mod you're talking about is unrealistic in that word of your crime doesn't spread to the other cities. However, based upon the "reality" of the game, itself, giving you a month, or even two weeks, before this happens isn't realistic, either. The Imperial Legion patrols the main throughfares between the cities regularly (i.e. constantly). Based upon the time it actually takes to get from one city to the next, word should travel pretty quickly since every single member of the Legion could be carrying an updated list of people with bounties on their heads. If you want some leeway, I think it would be reasonable that word should spread from one city to an adjacent city (meaning connected directly by a road without passing through/by another city) in one day. Thus, it would take two days for word of your crime in Anvil to reach Imperial City, and four days to reach Leyawiin. This could be made a little more complex if, say, the patrols automatically check in at Imperial City when in the vicinity, rather than proceeding directly south to Bravil if they're coming from Skingrad, which might delay transmittal of the bounty list to Bravil and Leyawiin for another day.

 

Such a mod should probably also try to take into effect the individual members of the Legion (where they've been and where they're going). I really haven't looked into their scheduling to see how it works, but I would suspect that each one merely shuttles back and forth between two cities -- at least that would make the most sense to me.

[Megatarius]

That sounds like a really good mod idea.

 

I've always thought crime in the game would be vastly improved if they only had a scripted delay before your bounty kicks in at all. I know it's not realistic in certain situations, but I think it would be realistic in most. Guards that notice you commiting a crime would still receive the required AI packages and come after you, but with a lowered range of "alarm" so they don't know too easily. Other guards would receive the same AI packages if you resist arrest. However, your bounty itself has not gone up. Get away from the guards (more on that in a minute), and if you run into a legion patrol coming from the other direction, they don't know anything. Why? Because you have no bounty yet.

 

Getting away from the guards would be accomplished with a feature that makes them (gasp!) give up the chase after a while. Let's say it's region based. If you enter a forested region, they have a higher chance of giving up (losing you). On the roads, they never would. If they see you again, it's on again.

 

Go back to the same town, after the guards change, and you're in a safe zone where nobody knows anything until you get your bounty.

 

Then after a while it happens. You get a quest update message or a scripted message: "It's been a while. The guards have probably sent word of my crime to other towns by now. I must be careful."

 

 

Four more things that would really help:

 

1. When you get to any town, the one you commited the crime in, or the furthest from it, and your bounty is above 500, guards run at you if they see you. And instead of their God-awful "Stop you violated the law! Your stolen goods are forfeit!" it would be "You look a lot like someone who ______ in ______ a day or so ago. Why don't you come this way quietly?" Your choices would be "I confess. It was me. I'll pay the fine." "I confess. It was me. I'll go to jail." These raise the guards disposition really high toward you. All guards in the city. "You've got the wrong person, I've never even been there!" or "Why don't you try to make me?" Go with them and find yourself standing in front of the guard table in that particular town's dungeon. Now speechcraft comes into play. A chance to actually roleplay a smooth criminal. They accuse you of the crime. The evidence is just flimsy enough to be believable in medieval times, but not overly superstitious either. Raise their disposition high enough (you might not be able to at all) and they'll let you go, but you don't lose your bounty. You'll have to do this once per town, and once per guard change. Do it to all of them and you're bounty goes away. (You need like 75 Speechcraft to talk your bounty away.) If you can't raise it up enough, or don't bother, it's jail or fine for you. Or running again, in which your bounty just goes up again (after a certain time of course).

 

2. If you're in the thieves' guild, and you pay half your bounty off, that takes the same amount of time to kick in.

 

3. Stolen goods are not realistic either. How do they know what's stolen? There should be an endurance check and a willpower check. If one or the other or both together is above a certain amount, set by the guard's aggression and responsibility levels, you get to keep them. Why? Because they're torturing you for the answer of course. How else would they know what you stole? If the item is valuable enough they would know, because that would be part of the report. If, on the other hand, all your stolen good are clutter, low weapons and armor, low soul gems, and cheap food, they wouldn't know unless you told them. After this ordeal, whether you're in jail or just fined, you have a certain percentage of your health down. Prison should be scary. Perhaps one or two guards, as long as they're alive (hint hint) would even follow you around and harrass you after you're out. You know, to intimidate you into being quiet about something that may or may not have happened while you were inside....

 

4. And on the same note, how about a chance to get a disease in jail? Bravil, Leyawiin, Bruma, and the Imperial City would be highest chance. Cheydinhal, Anvil, and Chorrol would be the lowest chance. Porphyric Hemophilia is a bit cruel to the player, but some nice Yellowrot or Dampworm sound just about right.

[Spookii]

Those sound like awesome suggestions!

 

I'm definitely tired of the way crime is handled in the game, and even though I do use many mods to somewhat lighten the load - I still am hesitant about making a full-fledged thief. It's no fun to be a perfect thief that never gets caught. Where's the fun in that?

 

@Ferryt - You're probably right. A month is a bit too long, but your suggestion sounds a little too short in my opinion. Just taking into account the fact that...

 

1. Word would have to go from the guard who saw your crime to the appropriate person. I doubt that guards are permitted to leave duty to report a petty crime (which goes back to my suggestion that more intense crimes be reported and shared amongst cities faster) and so they would have to wait until they were switched out (or even until day's end) to report it.

 

2. I think we can also assume that most Imperial guardsmen don't qualify for Police-of-the-Year awards. To sort of let crime run (a little!) a muck in the city would be more fun to me! They just don't care. So perhaps they wouldn't even want to have to walk all the way back to the guard tower to report a little wood elf pick-pocketing a poorly merchant. :D The only person who seems to care is Heironymous Lex, and he's just out for the Gray Fox. Maybe this would be more prominent in the Imperial City than in the smaller cities - just due to the sheer size of the Imperial City.

 

3. The word would then have to travel from the guard to the actual courier. This probably wouldn't happen too often, but still - I think that someone checking in for new information once every 24 hours seems fair.

 

4. And then the dull, long road to the next city. I think that you're about right. One full day of travel time per city sounds appropriate - but that's just travel time.

 

5. When word reaches the next city, it may take a half day for every guard to finally hear word of your crime. (Maybe there could be some sort of increasing chance of being recognized? At first, it's a 10% chance, then a few hours later, it increases until you hit a 75% chance? I don't think it's fair to say that someone who has never seen you and only knows what you look like from a verbal description can spot you from across a city. It might even be fun to integrate clothing somehow. If you change clothes/put a helmet on, your chance of being recognized is decreased.)

 

So all in all, I think it should take somewhere between 2-3 days for word to reach the next closest city and then another day for cities after that. And even then, it will take another day in each individual city before you're really recognized at a level where you should worry.

 

Sorry, I don't want to seem nitpicky but I just love uber realism! :D It's fun to think about and fun to play with. My idea might be a little too complicated, but if I ever learn how to make mods - this will probably be the first I'll make if it's not made by then.

 

@Megatarius

 

Wow, you have some sweet ideas!

 

I definitely agree with your suggestion on the Thieves' Guild taking longer than instantly to fully kick in. I think it should be more of a "Okay, I'll pull a few strings and your bounty should be wiped soon but you may want to lay low for a couple of days to let everything blow over.".

 

And I have ALWAYS thought it was annoying that guards somehow magically knew what was stolen in my inventory. Not that it's hard to recover the items, but still.

 

I also like your disease idea. That would add something interesting to the game!

[Ferryt]

Actually, Spookii, I was making my time estimates based upon the best-case scenario, which would be a crime committed near the end of a "watch" and an on-the-ball captain of the watch who doesn't delay the paperwork side of his job. You're right. A guard isn't going to leave his post to report a petty crime, although he might in order to report a really serious one. At the end of every watch reports would be turned in and collated. This won't take as much time as you might think, either. Let's assume there are three watches of eight hours, apiece and that the first one starts at 6 in the morning. That means the second watch begins at 2 in the afternoon, and the third begins at ten in the evening. Let's also allow for a full watch for the watch captain to prepare his report. If you commit a petty crime at 6 in the morning, just as the morning watch takes its post, then your crime will be reported to the watch captain during debriefing at 2 that afternoon. The collated report will be available no later than the beginning of the night watch at 10. I wasn't assuming a "courier" to ride the report to other cities. The most effective way of doing this is to hand every "road guard" an updated copy of the report every time he checks in at any city. This will spread the word in the most rapid way possible without tying up a bunch of people just to run messages. One problem, of course, is that different cities will be lagging behind others in getting stuff up-to-date, but that's true in real life, as well, although our computerized data bases are making this job a bit easier.

 

Megatarius brings up some very good points, too. One of them, which has vexed me about this game, is that not only are the guards psychic, but they have eidetic memories, as well. What the heck are they, anyway? Elder Scrolls versions of RoboCop? Just because you have a bounty on your head doesn't mean every single guard should have a 100% chance of recognizing you 100% of the time on just a glance. These guys are humans -- not machines. I can commit a crime in my "street clothes" and then dress up in an entire suit of full-coverage armor, including helmet, that I've never worn before, and I'll still be recognized. What's with that, anyway?

 

The stolen goods issue is another annoying point, although I'm not sure just how fixing this problem could be done. No. There's absolutely no way a guard can know that something is stolen (neither can a merchant, for that matter), unless it's a well-known artifact or unique private property that has been reported stolen. A generic silver spoon does not qualify for this! It's one of the reasons I broke down and decided to install a mod that gives me an "extradimensional" space to store things -- namely stolen property. I'm role-playing my character. I expect the game to role-play the NPCs and they can't know the stuff I've stolen has been stolen because it's identical to every other item like it in the world. Therefore, I feel obligated to hide it from the NPCs so the game can't cheat on me. I use the Storage Sacks mod. Basically it gives you up to ten "sacks" in your inventory where you can store stuff. I set the bags to zero weight and the contents to full weight, so I'm not cheating in being able to carry more weight than my encumbrance should allow. However, since the stolen items in one of the bags aren't actually in my inventory, guards can't find them. Frankly, it annoys me to have to use this to keep the game from cheating, and I wouldn't have to if someone could figure out a way to fix the guards so that they can't recognize stolen property automatically. Same with merchants. How the heck does some innkeeper in the middle of nowhere know that I stole a roll of cloth from the warehouse on the Imperial Waterfront? Somebody please explain that to me, because it so does not make sense.

 

Yes! Diseases in jail! I like that, and it really is realistic. They should be chosen from a separate list, though, and not just randomly generated. As Megatarius points out, some don't make sense. Although, who knows? You might be able to catch Porphyric Hemophilia in the Skingrad jail. It just depends upon where some vampire we all know goes hunting for dinner every night.

 

Your own observation on crime running amok in the city, Spookii, makes sense to a certain extent, but it should depend upon the city. I would think, for instance, that the guard in Imperial City would be quite gung-ho about their jobs. Those in Bravil? Eh ... it's a run-down dump of a city. Convergence with reality tells me the guards, there, are probably more apt to be inattentive, or just look the other way, or be more corrupt (and bribe-able) than IC guards. Indeed, different guards, depending upon their posts might be more or less responsible, based upon the part of town where they work. The guards stationed outside the castle are going to be very good at what they do. Those patrolling the slums are probably rookies trying to work their way up through the ranks to the better positions.

 

You want über-realism in jail? It wouldn't surprise me if some prisoners get abused, some of them rather badly. It could depend upon the severity of the crime, or even the gender (women are more likely to be victims in prison than men, for instance). Yes, this could stray into "adult" situations, but a mod introducing this doesn't have to involve a blow-by-blow account. "I've been beaten and 'taken advantage of', but at least I survived. Maybe I should be more careful where I commit crimes in the future." should be enough for any imaginative gamer ... perhaps followed in a month or so by "I seem to have developed a new illness. I wonder if it's related to my last stay in jail? Perhaps I should invest in a cure disease potion." Far be it for me, a stickler for realism, to suggest introducing STDs into this game, but ...