A Path Beyond Allow Thieves to always steal from silos even if Refinery exists?

[Pushwall]

Could make them more useful? I bring this up because much of the what made this feature insanely overpowered in much older versions of APB are no longer there:

• you can't steal while inside a vehicle anymore - so no outright flipping the bird to AP mines (Gamma fix)
• you have to be touching the silo computer instead of any part of the silo - making it even harder to avoid mines (Delta fix)
• there's now a short delay between entering the stealing zone and actually stealing - so you can't just jump out of your vehicle, insta-steal before the mines trigger or before enemies can kill you, and merely give the enemy 1 ranger/LT/other transport of choice in exchange for half their money. (Delta fix)

In addition this would completely remove the confusion about when you can and can't steal from a silo.

Thieves are the same tech level as Minelayers so this would not create issues on River Raid/Guard Duty.

Silos with inaccessible computers, like the one near helipad on Pacific Threat, would still be unthiefable. I could do the same for some other silos on other maps if they prove too troublesome.

As far as I've seen people typically mine the silo on maps where it's not well defended anyway (probably because of Tanyas), so this shouldn't change game flow much, except maybe the percentage of money stolen might need to go down a bit, or increase the stealing "charge-up time" even more?

[Einstein]

I agree, mostly for the sake of consistency from one map to another (the confusion for newbies). But as you said, the other reasons it was done to begin with have been mitigated pretty well now so I don't think it would harm the balance at all either. Do eet

[JigglyJie]

I'd say yes though I'd argue for the silo to give reduced stolen income, that way the refinery should always be the bigger target (since it holds a lot of the ore). Though the further reduced income shouldn't apply on silo only maps, naturally.

[Pushwall]

Thing is the modifier for credits stolen is a property of the thief himself and not the stealing zones, so it's the same wherever he goes. If that turns out to be a popular request I'll have to poke jonwil about that. But it makes sense, I like it.

[Omar007]

I completely agree with JigglyJie. Stealing from silos should always be possible but it should be less profitable than stealing from a Refinery.

[OrangeP47]

I was on the fence, but have been convinced, mostly by the argument for consistency for newbies. I also agree with the reduced take from the silo.

[ChopBam]

I think all silos were intended to be stolen from until Delta development.

[Raap]

You need to make a clear difference between a silo or refinery theft, because stealing from a silo is in nearly all cases much easier.

I also think you need a satefynet for large games. Typically in large games, personal credit capacity is higher due to more people harvesting or less pressure on each individual player due to combat load spread. So essentially a scaling effect that results in a lower theft percentage with increasing population sizes, from 50/30% (refinery/silo) at 6 players to 30/10% at 20 players.

Finally, I really dislike the "instant theft with only a text message to inform you" logic. I think stealing should require an interaction with an object that uses a "casting bar mechanic" similar to flare deployment. This will give Soviets a chance to interrupt the process and make zig-zag suicide ninja thieves not viable. Perhaps the easiest way to make this work is to create a flare-type weapon that has a casting time and uses a warhead that causes a script to react and initiate the stealing mechanic. You'd obviously need to create this script logic, along with a tool and thief animation... Probably the thief crouching down to plant some device on the ground and pressing some buttons to initiate the ritual voodoo magic... (?!?!) With some luck, you might find a suitable stock Renegade animation for this, although those are pretty bad mostly.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Raap