Playing with the Slave System

[Hanah]

Hello all....

Last night myself, Sniven, Neo and Kenshin hopped over to the test server to monkey with addicted's slave system... I'd like to discuss my findings with it, let the others speak for themselves:-)

1) Firstly, wonderful idea with bucketloads of RP potential. Even in the time we took to play with the system I think we had fun and even started some impromptu RP:-)

2) The disclaimer and waiver for consent are well-thought out and a very, very good idea. While it probably won't stem 100% of conflict (but what will, really?) it should cut down on misunderstandings or disagreements.

On to the actual mechanics then...

3) In my experience slave induction, purchase and *ahem* discipline were easy to do and well-thought out. However for the life of me I could not transfer my purchase to another player... when I attuned my slave and then used the wand to transfer, I was told that my slave wasn't attuned... maybe I didn't do it right?

4) The actual wand of submission (that was the name, right? I thought of it as 'the beating stick') worked well.... no save versus stun, very nice, can't use it on any one other than your own slave. Let's just say that it went in my quickslot immediately and was used liberally;-)

Now, me being me I have to have some criticisms...

5) Why is there a level cap for slave induction? I'm sure there is a rationale behind it but I just can't think of it... if it is to prevent a level 5 char from having a level 25 slave, that denies some RP potential (think of the Herculean labours).

6) Cost... during our experiments, I believe I forked over 20k per level 3 slave. Now we didn't have any other chars to enslave, so I wasn't sure if cost scales with level. If cost doesn't scale with level, maybe it could? That may deal with some of the issues in (5). Alternatively, maybe there could be a slave auction periodically, run by a DM... drive up the price on some of those more desirable slaves:-)

7) This is most likely a scripting thing but I would love to be able to directly access my slave's inventory, a la henchman inventory access in SoU.

8) Can we have a 'choke chain' that can be used by slavemasters to automatically retaliate against slaves that go hostile? It could be made very expensive and have a chance of breaking so that it isn't a perfect defense... just a thought, probably a scripting nightmare.

My general impression was very very favourable, and I look forward to seeing this on the main server. Hopefully patch 1.60 doesn't muck too much with the system! Thanks for all the hard work that went into this great idea.

[sniven]

I unfortunately lost the dice roll..err so ended up a slave with one of my off cast pcs. Hanah seemed to enjoy herself with the whole slave concept. It was quite entertaining in truth just toying with so although i never got to use any of the toys i must say the disicpline rod thing works well. Followed by a beating from neo really makes a slave think... lol

I also look forward to its addition to the main. thought this time hope to be on the other end of the stick.

Well done the forwarnings were all valid well thought out and very accurate to my interptetations as well.

Sniven

[addicted2rpg]

I am greatly honored that my first, totally untested (until now), pioneering uber alpha, totally raw system has worked 90% and got a good review. I guess I was born to write code, but I'm sure someone will find something still later on.

To answer some of the feed back issues.....

For 3) The attune rod is probably busted. Thati s supposed to work, but when you are testing it by yourself locally, who are you going to test it on? You can't be your own slave, or your own master at the same time, let alone transfer yourself to yourself. So naturally I had to write it as good as I could, cross my fingers, and hope it worked. I'll take a look at some of the files. For Makz: I'll be sending them in a patch form, so its probably best to transfer the whole slavesys on over to the HotU server and import fixes rather than a whole new slave system import.

For 4) Yes, the wand of submission is very nice and immunities to stun won't help a person there. It was originally going to be called a "shock collar", but it turned out that stunning a person was more logical because it allowed the master to do whatever it is they want to do next unimpeded (i.e., hit the victim, beat the victim, kill the victim, whatever).

5) Makz and I decided there needed to be a level cap. The real reason is people like you two (no offense) might submit your level 20 characters into slavery and find yourself suddenly wanting out. With a lot of time and patience invested in an old character, and then having it tossed away into the chains of slavery, could be a devestating experience. We wanted players to "make the char for slavery", so to speak. People would be less likely to ask us to intervene between player made deals and return them because "they didn't know" or "invested too much time" or what not.

6) The cost can be changed by Makz at any time. I made a configuration file where the system administrator may set a cost function and it will employ that acrossed the system. I initially set it up to something linear like 1k/level or so. Any polynomial can be used.

7) This is a feature I really wanted to put in. It may even be a "future feature." Makz and I agreed that initially though that the "bug risk" was high, say, what if my untested system was getting confused about who it really owned and allowed rampant stealing. As you pointed out, the Wand of submission doesn't effect non-slaves, so it looks like I got that part right. I may make a feature where you can inspect their bags and it will print out a list of all their items or something. I think this last case is highly likely to be added, but first thing would be first -- testing it thoroughly and getting it bug free/stable.

8) This code would be really bad. I would have to run something every heart beat to see if you had a last attacker which was a slave. Since you can't set heart beat scripts for non-npcs (i.e., you players), it would also have to cycle through the mods player list and check this property for all the owners on-line. It could be done, but there would be a big performance hit. More lag, etc.. Knowing this in advance, I think most of you (and Makz definitely will) vote such a feature down unless an alternative way could be found to make it. In a way, your wand of submission "is" your choke chain. Be wary about enslaving rogues. You can have more than one copy.

[Sledge]

Drow often take slaves. A small drow city-outpost with the faction set to friendly (DM type talk ) who are slave traders to the Underdark would be a wonderful addition. I would love to escape from there.

The escaped slave who runs away to Castille because it has no slavery. The bounty hunter who is hired to try to get him back. Endless.

Hope it works out.

[Kenshin]

The slave system is a very good idea and has good potential. I hope we can get it up and running soon.

Kenshin ;D