[crossfire] shops and stealing

[hv at crypt.org]

Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net> wrote:
:  For a long time, the thief skill stealing has been available, but the only use 
:was the limited ability to steal from monsters.
:
:  With the addition of new fields in the map header for shops, it'd seem like it 
:would not be possible to extend stealing to shops.  Not that the current headers 
:are really in any way useful, but in a sense, because they sort of give an 
:example of extending the shop attributes.
:
:  What I'd suggest then is fields like:
:
:steal_adjustment:  Represents how hard/easy it is to steal from this shop.  A 
:positive value denotes it is easy, negative value means it is hard.
:
:max_steal_value: Maximum value of an object that can be stolen from this store. 
:  Thus, if someone drops a 10,000 pp item in a shop easy to steal from (which 
:normally has junky stuff), one wouldn't be able to steal it, because this value 
:for the shop may be something like 10 pp.

Maybe shops should refuse to buy such expensive items from players if they don't
have the facilities to display them securely, or they should buy and immediately
sell on to the nearest shop that does.

:jail_map:  If the theif is caught, map where they are sent.  At least scorn has 
:a jail if I recall - not sure if other maps.  But basically, get caught 
:stealing, have to sit around for 5 (or more) minutes.  Easier shops would 
:probably sentence you to less time.   This could be in the form of mapname at x,y 
:to denote coordinates to put the player into.

I don't like the idea of automatic jail time - keep that for things that
you *don't* want players to do, like pking and abusive behaviour.

For game balance, I think it'd be enough to ban a thief from the local shops
for a period of time (maybe around constant * (1 + log_2(item_value)) ticks).
If more is needed, the shop keeper should call the guards - no loot, no exp,
and guaranteed to be higher level than you. But I don't think it is needed.

The rest sounds good to me.

Hugo