Unique items - Add/subtract from skills

[Indirik]

My biggest issue with this argument is that the higher the "plausible deniability", the higher the risks, because these extra nobles usually have troops that will interfere with your activities.

Are you sure?

Secondly, that plausible deniability is not important. The invisible status wasn't useful because it protected your identity, it was useful because it covered your tracks. You couldn't be actively hunted down and followed.

That and the fact that you could sit around scouting, and no one knew you were there. Except the enemy infiltrators.

In most cases, you are acting against enemies. If you are, who cares if you are identified? You are already an enemy to them. The main cases where you would care not to be identified are against targets that the game does not reward attacking: friends.

Infiltrators who hope to do cause real change, and affect the political status of the game world, will not hit enemies. What purpose does hitting your enemies serve? They're already your enemies. The way to cause real problems is to nail someone you wouldn't be expected to hit, and pin it on someone else. You can't do that if you're invisible.

I agree that the infil game needs some changes. Anaris has already outlined that this is on the long-term plan. But simply adding back invisibility is not the panacea that will suddenly make infils relevant.

[skiarxon@gmail.com]

So you're upset that you have to plan, instead of knifing random people on a whim?

I don't mind requiring people plan their activities and wait for opportune moments to strike.

Stop assuming things I did not say please.

[Indirik]

Then please explain what you mean. Because that's really what it sounded like you were saying.

[De-Legro]

Stop assuming things I did not say please.

As I said in IRC to you. People can only respond to their understanding of what you type. If people are continually "assuming" something you believe you did not type, then I would suggest that what you typed is not a concise representation of what you were thinking. Neither Indirik nor I am attempting to extrapolate a tenuous position from what you said, we are honestly responding to what it appeared to us you were trying to convey.

[Eldargard]

I thought you used to, in the text when selecting the action you want to perform. Not sure if it was their for every infil option but I certainly recall that some of them used to warn you about elevated threat levels due to police work.

Perhaps ensuring this message is presented for every appropriate infiltrator action would help players make informed choices? Maybe have risk level appended to each action link infiltrators click on to perform an infil action?

Or maybe remove the option from all infil action pages and add a new infil action: "Perform Risk Assessment..." that causes the infiltrator character to try and outline, in detail, what he thinks the odds of success for various actions. The accuracy of this report might even be influenced by his infiltration skill, though I would not want to have it be too bad out of the box as this skill would be meant to help inexperienced infils who are unlikely to have his infiltration skills. Of course, if such an action is already present, ignore this!

[Eldargard]

Rubbish. In the end you are one man. The chance might be slim but I see no reason it should be negated entirely.

I can not say I agree with this argument. It has always been popularly held that it is far easier to lose one's self in a crowd. I think he most dangerous situation for an infil would be to attack in a low population region with only the knights/lord of that region present and all performing police work. This, I think would give the greatest chance of being caught as the soldiers should all know each other and the peasant population so well that a stranger, even in disguise, should stand out plenty.

I think the best opportunity for an infil would be to attack in a region with huge populations, and lots of troops including troops from various realms. With so many people it is already hard to spot the single disguised  infil. With so many troops in the region who are unfamiliar to each other and the local guard force, things become even more challenging when trying to catch an infil.

Of course, this is assuming that my understanding of infiltrators is correct. I believe that the noble openly waltzes into a region and can be seen by all. The noble has probably provided an excuse fr his presence and has some official work to do. When that noble performs an infil action he disguises himself, sneaks out so no one knows he is not where he is supposed to be, does something shady, then returns back to where he is supposed to be and pretends he has been there all along.

This is also only addressing the odds of the infil being caught as he is traveling to the job and back and has nothing to do with the chances of the PC nobles present pinning the deed on him or not...

[Eldargard]

My biggest issue with this argument is that the higher the "plausible deniability", the higher the risks, because these extra nobles usually have troops that will interfere with your activities.

How is this not true? I have heard many say that it is best to wait and perform infil action only when there are enough nobles present to make singling you out for the PC nobles difficult. When you do this however, you seem to increase the chance of NPC troops or patrols capturing you as more soldiers are in the region. It seems a bit like a lose-lose situation to me. Of course, I have never played an infiltrator and am betting that I am missing something here!

[De-Legro]

I can not say I agree with this argument. It has always been popularly held that it is far easier to lose one's self in a crowd. I think he most dangerous situation for an infil would be to attack in a low population region with only the knights/lord of that region present and all performing police work. This, I think would give the greatest chance of being caught as the soldiers should all know each other and the peasant population so well that a stranger, even in disguise, should stand out plenty.

I think the best opportunity for an infil would be to attack in a region with huge populations, and lots of troops including troops from various realms. With so many people it is already hard to spot the single disguised  infil. With so many troops in the region who are unfamiliar to each other and the local guard force, things become even more challenging when trying to catch an infil.

Of course, this is assuming that my understanding of infiltrators is correct. I believe that the noble openly waltzes into a region and can be seen by all. The noble has probably provided an excuse fr his presence and has some official work to do. When that noble performs an infil action he disguises himself, sneaks out so no one knows he is not where he is supposed to be, does something shady, then returns back to where he is supposed to be and pretends he has been there all along.

This is also only addressing the odds of the infil being caught as he is traveling to the job and back and has nothing to do with the chances of the PC nobles present pinning the deed on him or not...

Yes, but game mechanics wise people want ways to mitigate the risk of infils. From a game mechanic standpoint one obvious way to do that is to allow increase CS to have an increased chance to capture them. Otherwise the best time to strike the enemy general is not when he is all alone in his estate, but when he is in the middle of the military camp marching.

You have to be careful with these things, it is easy to over simply the situation. Different infil actions would have different targets, different levels of risk etc. Burning down a warehouse for example, you could argue would be easy in big cities since there are more people around, blah blah. Conversely people would come back and say that since food is so important to cities, obviously their characters would make sure they are well guarded relative to other things in the city. In real life some military camps are relatively easy to infiltrate and lose yourself in the crowd, others have excellent security and procedures.

The game has to have a system that is relatively predictable, so the endless variables and considerations of real life need to be cut down in to a few easy to understand rules. In this case more CS = more risk. More CS performing police work = even bigger risk.

[Chenier]

Are you sure?
That and the fact that you could sit around scouting, and no one knew you were there. Except the enemy infiltrators.
Infiltrators who hope to do cause real change, and affect the political status of the game world, will not hit enemies. What purpose does hitting your enemies serve? They're already your enemies. The way to cause real problems is to nail someone you wouldn't be expected to hit, and pin it on someone else. You can't do that if you're invisible.

I agree that the infil game needs some changes. Anaris has already outlined that this is on the long-term plan. But simply adding back invisibility is not the panacea that will suddenly make infils relevant.

So what about scouting? Even better! At least, when the enemy knew what you were doing, you could suspect "damn, they've got infils planted in position" instead of automatically going hyper-paranoid "WHO IS LEAKING OUR ORDERS!?!" Gave plausible deniability to your realm-mates, if you will. Indeed, scouting was a form of low-risk infil activity that allowed infils to make themselves useful after having spent months training infiltration, but before taking more months to train swordfighting.

The uses of striking enemies are numerous and need not be listed. They may not be the same as the ones you describe, but the game doesn't actually favor that. If hitting friends and allies was intended, then why does it not yield any training? Risks are higher and rewards are lower. It also doesn't go much in the teamwork spirit to go around stabbing one's peers. I do not believe that this was ever the intent behind the creation of infiltrators, even if that may be how to achieve the most impact.

Invisibility is indeed not the panacea, as you put it, but there is, in my mind, no denying that its removal hurt infiltrators and the game overall.

[Indirik]

... add a new infil action: "Perform Risk Assessment..." that causes the infiltrator character to try and outline, in detail, what he thinks the odds of success for various actions. The accuracy of this report might even be influenced by his infiltration skill...

Oooh! In order for the infiltrator perform a Risk Assessment, they have to first complete a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and a Hazard Harm Matrix (HMM). The output of those processes is used to create the overall Risk Management Matrix (RMM). If any risks are higher than the acceptable risk level, the infiltrator could assemble a cross-functional team and perform risk mitigation. If the mitigation succeeds then it results in the lowering of all risks to an acceptable level, significantly increasing the chance of success, and decreasing the possibility of serving any prison time should something go wrong.

The chance of success should probably be linked to his bureaucracy skill.

Crap. Maybe I've been at work too long... 

[Vita`]

Should this infiltrator topic be split from the Unique Items add/subtract skills thread?

[Stabbity]

One thing that chafes me about infiltrators is no matter how good you are you never just get to stab someone who is completely defenseless, they always manage to grab a dagger last second, making it damn hard to stab accomplished swordsmen. If you are the top infil around and your skill is maxed or damn near it, you should once in a while catch someone completely off guard and stab the living daylights out of them. Frankly infils are shockingly incompetent. Not one has ever killed a noble, and not one has ever completely surprised a noble, due to mechanics.

[Tom]

It's possible to completely surprise someone, the code allows it.

[Haerthorne]

It's possible to completely surprise someone, the code allows it.

As much as this doesn't really need confirming that is in the code since Tom has said it, I have managed to completely surprise people as an infil with between 40-60% infiltration.

[Stabbity]

I know what's being said, and I'll clarify my point:

Even when you completely surprise someone, they still get to fight back, albeit with an apparent penalty to sword fighting (as they only grab a dagger). My point is you should be able to catch someone completely unaware and the first thing they notice is your sword in their chest. I've never seen this.