Crime is inescapable. As your civilization advances, Nuggets will continue to evolve their way of thinking, giving them more individuality and free thought. However, a consequence of this is the birth of criminals who go against the flow of society. You can’t prevent it, but you can minimize it. Here are a few things that may increase crime rates: a lack of Schools, too much pollution, the introduction of certain laws, and a lack of utilities (no water, electricity, or so on for a long period of time).
Once the Law Enforcement Station is constructed, it’ll reveal how many criminals are running rampant in your city. However, there will be no easy way to distinguish these individuals until they commit a crime. The severity of crimes is entirely dependent on the overall Crime Level in your civilization. You can try and take things into your own hands by selecting suspicious Nugget to be arrested and interrogated, either in Prison or a Rehabilitation Center. Arresting an innocent Nugget will lead to a general decrease in Happiness, though. Nuggets despise injustice and will be very vocal about it.
Assigning Law Enforcement Officers can lead to a significant decrease in criminal activity, but adding too many officers will make Nuggets feel oppressed and controlled. The more officers you have, the more unhappy they may become.
Crime Levels
- Very Low
- Low
- Moderate
- High - Creates Dangerous Criminals
- Very High - Creates Dangerous Criminals
Each level will also change how often criminals are spawned.
Types of Criminals
Thug - Vandalism and thievery.
Dangerous Criminal - Terrorists who constantly seek to harm the civilization and their fellow Nuggets. They can destroy food supplies, poison Wells, or even create large explosions to destroy buildings and nearby Nuggets.
Criminals have individual skill levels, with every successful crime increasing this level. As they level up, they become more difficult to catch. They will be smarter and more calculated with how they perform their crimes, making them less suspicious to Law Enforcers. Criminals perform a certain animation every now and then when doing something illegal. These animations are longer and more noticeable with low-level criminals.
These animations give you a chance to spot criminals while you’re surveying the civilization. You can then have these criminals arrested by marking them in their ID cards (remember, arresting innocents will drop Happiness and possibly make you lose Believers, so be careful). Law Enforcers will also notice criminals, if they perform these actions within range of an officer. Law Enforcement Officers are very suspicious, which leads them to take pre-emptive action and arrest certain citizens they believe might be criminals (criminal profiling). Only 20% actually turn out to be criminals on average, meaning that only 2 in 10 arrested Nuggets will be criminals. This is why general Happiness may be affected. You can control the arrest rate by lowering the amount of officers, but that can increase overall criminal activity. It’s a tricky balance.
Prisons have plenty of cells to hold suspected Nuggets to increase the likelihood of catching criminals before a crime is committed. Interrogation takes a certain amount of time. Upon completion, the Nugget is either released, executed, or placed in a Rehabilitation Center, based on your preferences (indicated by your research choices). Executions are brutal, but they will generate enough fear to lower crime levels for a while.
Effects on Crime
Increases
- No Schools
- Low Happiness
- No Law Enforcement Stations
- Certain Research Perks
- Certain Laws
- Unnatural Nugget Death/Nugget Sacrifices
- Buildings with high pollution levels
- No Rehabilitation Centers
Decrease
- Schools
- High Happiness
- Law Enforcement Stations
- Certain Research Perks
- Certain Laws
- Prison
We will be putting this system into full production next month, which means we'll hopefully have it ready in a month or two. Remember that the design isn't finalized and everything may change depending on how it plays. We would also love to hear your thoughts on the system, including anything you'd like to see added to make it even better. Like most things in the game, you'll have the power to intervene or allow your Nuggets to catch criminals on their own.
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❤ Crytivo
