Aweful lot of pirate attacks lately

[Cheshierekat]

Edit:: Nevermind...got the answer

[Spider]

kwor got attacked by 2 guys, after an attack, they would just undock and then dock for the next attack and quickly undock before getting hurt.

Yes, a new lock can be built, but sometimes, people don't have the iron to build a new one, or they might just not see the broken lock.

[west]

the Kwor thing was rather different from the avg. pirate attack, IMO.

[Surly]

Simple solution to piracy - just have a setting so that when someone hits you, you can hit back immediately, even when you're not online. In real life people would not just stand and take hits, they would hit back. Well, most would anyway...

I know this has been suggested before... Was there a reason it wasn't implemented?

[myst]

ust have a setting so that when someone hits you, you can hit back immediately

An incredibly important suggestion. It wouldn't eliminate pirates - but would mean they can only pick on the unarmed and defenseless. Like in real life - they attack and plunder towns, whilst the speed of the raid makes the army response too slow to be effective.

Shouldn't be too hard to code, either.

[Sparkle]

Well, this could cause problems. If you hit someone and they automatically hit back. This would mean that if a person of authority hit you for doing something wrong before you had a chance to explain you hit them back and end up in jail.

Sounds scary to me. Unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying.

[Cheshierekat]

I agree with Sparkle. It would create more problems than solve them. With the majority of the pirate attacks, at least one person has been awake to hit the pirate back. I know it doesn't solve everything, but neither would the hitting back right away feature.

[Surly]

Well, this could cause problems. If you hit someone and they automatically hit back. This would mean that if a person of authority hit you for doing something wrong before you had a chance to explain you hit them back and end up in jail.

Sounds scary to me. Unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying.

I completely disagree with that. Well, obviously it probably would happen... What I mean is that I disagree with that being a problem. If the authority figure can't deal with being hit back, then they shouldn't be hitting anyone. Violence should be the last option anyway, you should have plenty of chances to explain yourself. It should not be used lightly, and would prevent the current bias towards people who can stay online for hours on end. I hardly ever use violence in Cantr... I detest the imbalance of it. I believe that this would cut down on many instances of massacres and such as well.

And it wouldn't completely cut out pirates of course. What I meant was that it would prevent opportunist pirates, and cut down the lure of piracy. If piracy was as easy in RL as in Cantr... There would be many more pirates I'm sure.

[ephiroll]

If piracy was as easy in RL as in Cantr... There would be many more pirates I'm sure.

Huh...there are many "mondern" pirates on the oceans of the world right now as I type this, only instead of being on galleons armed with cutlesses and flintlocks, they're on yachts armed with AK-47's and shoulder launched rockets. Piracy, enslavement, and a host of other "old" crimes are still being carried out, if you pay attention you'll catch it on the news and in magazines here and there, but no one wants to talk about it because they're happy believing those things can't happen anymore.

And just for the record, I think the "hit back" approach to violence would never accomplish anything, nor would any other attempt to control violence other then toning down the weapons or introducing better armour. Cantr is a <i>society simulator</i> and violence has been a part of the human culture for as long as we've known enough to pick up the <b>big</b> rock to brain the other guy with. Basically, I'm against any measure taken that would artifically lower the violence in Cantr, either tone down the weapons and/or have better armour, no other solution is a solution that wouldn't harm the playablity of the game.

[joshua johnson]

Right now it seems that boats at see are safe havens for criminals, since if I read this right, you can't dock to a moving boat. Ground based thieves, on the other hand, are more likely to get killed because of their vulnerability on the road.

But how about this....

It would add a new element if you could attack from one boat to people in another with ranged weapons like bows or crossbows. The boat would not have to be right next to you, just somewhat close. Then, if you actually hurt the people, if they were in a self powered boat (rowboat, canoe, longboat?), thier speed would decrease, so you could catch them better.

This would create a reason for navies. It would also create a scenario more like true pirates at sea, and make see travel more hazardous and interesting.

[Surly]

I do agree that violence plays a large part in human history. But generally people would pick on others that are weaker than them - which is to say people whose weapons are not as good. If I walked up and attacked you, you would probably attack back. The fact that we only have 200min (which, on a seperate note, should not be increased) means that I will not always be awake. I feel that the current system is discriminating against those who don't have the same amount of time to spend on Cantr.

I do not propose limiting the violence system - that is not what this is about. The point is that in real life, if someone can hit back you are less likely to attack them. The same should be true in Cantr. This system would be more realistic, so don't use the irritating "it's a society simulator" excuse to avoid the issue.

[Cheshierekat]

But you can only hit once a day. So, if you aren't awake during the first attack, you can rest assured that they probably won't attack you again until the next day or later. So you still have a fighting chance even if you aren't online as much as other people.

[The Industriallist]

Well, this could cause problems. If you hit someone and they automatically hit back. This would mean that if a person of authority hit you for doing something wrong before you had a chance to explain you hit them back and end up in jail.

Sounds scary to me. Unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying.

I completely disagree with that. Well, obviously it probably would happen... What I mean is that I disagree with that being a problem. If the authority figure can't deal with being hit back, then they shouldn't be hitting anyone. Violence should be the last option anyway, you should have plenty of chances to explain yourself. It should not be used lightly, and would prevent the current bias towards people who can stay online for hours on end. I hardly ever use violence in Cantr... I detest the imbalance of it. I believe that this would cut down on many instances of massacres and such as well.

Very much what ephiroll said. This is a society simulater, and society is not like the morals of pre-K TV, or even like the society most of us see as citizens of developed countries. Developed countries usually don't have the kind of violence you see in cantr for several reasons:

There's this huge police/military force waiting in the wings to utterly crush without any hope of resistance anything that goes far enough and is visible enough to justify and permit its use. To a degree, you can't commit outright highway robbery or gun people down and pick over them, because if anyone gets an ID on you, you can't run fast enough and there aren't many places to hide in the world. In cantr, most police can be outrun by a lightly loaded criminal on foot, and you can run to the next town and change directions to lose pursuit.

People have a lot of comforts and guarantees. When there's a lot to lose, threat of violence gains power, even indirect threat of future violence. This means that less threats will be ignored, forcing actual use of violence. But violence and threat thereof is the basis of all law everywhere, and when the threat doesn't suffice you have to bring out the actual thing, or you lose credibility. Cantrians combine a tendency to low personal wealth with the OOC 'this is a game' influence to often place a low value on their own lives compared to material gain. This means that even threat of death often isn't enough to deter thieves, pirates, and other criminals. And of course many characters become hardened to the 'thieves always, always run' experience, so when some idiot takes something, they shoot first to save the time of chasing him that much further.

And a worldwide factor: Weapons are much more powerful compared to defenses. So if you start drawing fire, there's no opportunity to surrender or change course between "doing fine" and "dead or maimed". That's a significant discouragement to get involved in violence.

As for the moral 'value other people's lives' argument...why? When some no-account stranger steals a year's (or even 5 days) labor and runs, or seems like he's going to hurt you (or someone you care about), what reason do you have not to maul him or kill him? The harm to you is reduced or prevented and maybe other people will think before they try the same thing. It's not as if you gain anything by the person being alive.


And modern piracy...yeah. Most cantr small towns more people and probably more weapons than the crew of a modern cargo ship. Passenger ships of any kind have far more people, but they're easily cowed. A half-dozen to a dozen people with automatic weapons and no compassion (easy to come by in many places) can easily deter the entire population of a passenger ship and collect any valuables. Of course, I doubt it happens much to US-flagged ships, seing as that could provoke a huge retaliation, but a lot of countries can't hold that kind of hammer overhead.

[Surly]

I really don't understand the huge resentment towards programming an automatic retaliation feature. If I just happen to be awake when someone hits me, then I hit back. No-one has a problem with that. But if I was offline, and told my character to 'guard' or something and therefore hit back when someone attacks me, that's somehow ruining Cantr?

The fact is that the way that the piracy raids were done (they know that if they attack and undock before someone wakes up they're safe) is manipulating the violence system. It is exploiting a flaw in the game to your own advantage, and this would simply redress that flaw. Where's the problem in that?

[Cheshierekat]

It isn't exploiting a flaw, it's a fighting tactic. If you were going to war, you would want the element of surprise on your side wouldn't you? Pirates that dock, attack, and then undock are just being smart in my opinion. They don't want to die, they just want to destroy the town without getting too badly hurt or locked up in the process. A smart defense would be for the towns people that are getting attacked to move into a locked building. That's one way to keep them from attacking. Or better yet, put a lock on your coaster harbor. That way the pirates with the bigger boats can't get in without a crowbar, or without knocking first. Which I doubt would happen.



You hear someone knocking on the door to Coaster Harbor
You enter Coaster Harbor leaving the central area of some town and see 2 people.
Pirate says: "*smiles* Hi, we're here to pillage and destroy your town, can you kindly unlock the door for us?"