First of all I want ot thanks DarklingWolf and everyone, who took development of this branch of Cataclysm. Great job guys.
When I heard, that Cataclysm development continues in CataclysmDDA, I decided to play it again after a year. I tried many new additions and I think that I found only small part of new features. But I think it needs one feature that I didn’t find: Lockpicking.
I have created a new character, took quest to retrieve a dog from the NPC’s house, raided nearby shops, hid in the bathroom, smoked some weed and read books all day. When the night came I creeped through zombie infested (probably) streets to the house where poor dog was. I came to the front door, reached it and… What? Locked? That dumbass forgot to took his dog, but didn’t forget to lock his froont door and make sure that all windows are closed? And he didn’t give me the keys? For a moment I thought of abandoning his request, but when I imagined the dog, starving alone in locked house, I decided to free poor creature. I rammed into door with all my strenght. Then the horde came and ate me. The End.
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[size=12pt]What is lockpicking:[/size]
This is a skill and an action you can perform on locked doors, containers and probably other things using lockpics. It will be more silent than smashing and even prying open closed doors and containers, but it will take more time.
[size=12pt]How is it works:[/size]
How to start picking lock:
activate lockpick on something locked.
Mechanics of lockpicking:
Locked object has two parameters: difficulty and complexivity. Difficulty is how hard given lock is; complexivity is how much work is needed to open it. For example simple lock which can be opened using only a finger but requires one hungred revolutions to unlock have very low difficulty but large complexivity.
One lockpicking action takes 1 minute or 1000 action points (if you want character speed to effect lockpicking speed). It compares your lockpicking check (which equals [tt] + [0Dex, 0.5Dex][/tt]) with lock difficulty. If your result is less than difficulty then you fail. Usually you just lose all your progress and should start again, but some object can have special penalty for failed lockpicking: ring an alarm, electrocut you, explode, made large amount of noise jam the lock and others.
If you succeeded your lockpicking check you will add [tt] − difficulty[/tt] progress points. Yes, even if you succeded, you can make no progress.
After that, check your if amount of progress points larger or equal lock comlexivity. If so, lock is opened, if not — new lockpicking action starts immediately. You cannot stop picking a lock as you cannot stop crafting or building. So you don’t know amount of time it will take beforehand. As other actions this is interruptible by monsters or other conditions. If you agrees to stop picking a lock when prompted, you lose all progress you made, but don’t suffer consequences of failing.
For each lockpicking action you didn’t fail you will get a little amount of experience. For action where you have opened the lock, you get much larger amount of experience. You don’t get any experience if you fail a lockpicking check that round. This is to prevent players from finding hard lock without penalties for failing and grind experience to gain high level of lockpicking.
Kevin is tired by having to run from a horde each time he barges into closed house to loot it. He decided to get some experience in picking locks so he may slip into houses unnoticed. He found locked wardrobe inside house. It has a simple lock with difficulty of 1 and comlexivity of 3. Armed with improvised lockpick he made on a spot, Kevin begins to pick lock. As he have average dexterity of 8 and no experience with lockpicking his roll will be [tt]0 + [0, 4][/tt]. He rolls 3, which good enough to beat the difficulty of 1, and he gets 3 − 1 = 2 progress points and get a little experience. It is less than comlexivity of 3, so next lockpicking action immediately starts. He rolls 1, enough to beat the difficulty, but he gets [tt]1 − 1 = 0[/tt] points and didn’t make any progress this action, but still gets experience. On next action he rolls 3 again, gets [tt]3 − 1 = 2[/tt] progress point raising his total to 4. This is more than 3, so the lock is opened and Kevin gets experience for this action and for opening the lock. Also he get access to stuff inside! He have a speed of 100, so his three lockpicking actions took 3 minutes total.
[spoiler=Draft plan for implementation:]
Legend:
[ul][li][ ! ] — CORE feature. Absolutely needed.[/li]
[li][ + ] — GOOD to have around. Should be implemented after core features.[/li]
[li][ ? ] — MAYBE will be implemented. Unnesessary changes to other aspects of the game and bonus features.[/li][/ul]
[ ! ] Dummy skill, should be able to distribute points to it during character creation, should show in character screen.
[ ! ] LOCKED atribute. Should have difficulty and complexivity fields and fail penalty.
[ ! ] Lockpick item, should be able to use it with ‘a’. It should check if object is LOCKED and react accordingly: start lockpicking or give a message “This isn’t locked” or whatever… Should be craftable. No skkills needed.
[ ! ] Lockpicking process. Time skip, interrupts, mechanics, experience gain.
[ + ] Locked container support. (I think we already have supply crate you can pry with a crowbar, but ability to unlock a freezer in bar would be nice!)
[ + ] Terrain generation. Chance for doors to be locked. Easy locks on wardrobes and inside doors in houses, a little harder on outside doors, hard locks on pharmacies and weapon shops…
[ + ] Different lockpicks: lockpick set can be crafted with lockpicking and mechanics, gives you [0.25Dex, 0.75Dex] random bonus instead of default.
[ ? ] Locked vehicles.
[ ? ] One sided locks: As I remember we have something similar with windows, where we cannot open them from outside. So the door may be openable from one side, but reqire lockpicking from another (Your everyday lock). Or pickable from one and only pryable/smashable from another (padlock). Or openable from one side and smashable from another (Bolted door).
[ ? ] Balance prying: some doors can be more easily pried than picked (outside house doors, the are thin and could be pried faster than picked) or othewise (iron doors to ammo storage)
[ ? ] Picking one from a set of double doors opens both.[/spoiler]
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I am waiting for your suggestion, corrections and general opinions.
