New guard Item: Security equipment

[Shadowstar]

We've seen lots of different kinds of security equipment in the Thief games, but only a few of these items have made it to Thievery.

What I'm thinking is along the lines of the faces that shoot the cannonballs, and controllable mini-watchers.

These items could potentially be very effective and may overpower the guards, so to balance them they wouldn't be buyable, rather would be placed in the map similar to the way some maps have whistlers lying around.

This would limit the number of these items by the map, rather than by guard lives, and would require tactics in placement.

Face-cannons would have similar detection schemes to the whistler, and should probably be affected by shadows, so a thief could sneak past one. Upon spotting a thief, it will automatically fire a heavy, bouncing ball that would do lots of damage to a thief when hit, and also explode after a few seconds, but not neccessarily on impact with a thief. Possibly they could cause fires too, but that may be too much. Face-cannons could be broken like whistlers and would then need to be fixed, and guards could pick them up and carry them around.

As for mini-watchers, these are small security-camera like watchers that will stick to walls. A guard item called a watcher control device (probably for about 70 gold) could be bought and activated to switch to watcher control. Primary fire would cycle through each placed mini-watcher (and maybe the standard watchers placed in a map by the mapper), and alt-fire would escape from the watcher camera. While viewing from a mini-watcher, the guard could rotate it all around. Mini-watchers wouldn't be able to make noise or light up when spotting a thief, however, so whistlers and map-placed watchers would still be useful. Mini-watchers could be picked up and moved around just like any other map object (like a whistler), with the small exception that they can be stuck to walls or cielings.

I don't think there were mini-watchers in Thief or Thief 2, but they should be smaller than regular watchers if guards are going to be able to carry them around.

Mini watchers should be either destroyable or stealable by thieves and could possibly even count as a small amount of loot? Hmm... maybe not...

[Kiech Bepho]

We kinda have something like that now in aquatone - the grey heads in the head guys room but they are not mobile. They shoot out little electrical shocks.

Kiech

[[E.D.G]Chief]

no to mini whistlers- After all if they only work in light- then the guard would have to be mad not to spot a thief in light I think if you go on Aquatone the arrow shooting whistler is the same as the cannon ball faces (which gave me a nasty shock in Thief 2 :x ) I know thief 2 had arrow shooting whistlers but TH-2O was going to have the Karrass' Children in- only there were problems so in the end I shoved in a krall-and not many people were too happy ah well- now ive finally played Thief 2 I have great map ideas-Pity all my great maps ive done have turned into bsp holes that I never managed to fix :cry: my last map which ive stopped production of is about a party by some rich Lord, who also runs a thieves guild ......very Thief 2 like -but........now if i add any objects/items to it half the map vanishes as a bsp hole

[Arrowgrab]

That gave me an idea: How about attachable floodlights? You can buy some (maybe 100-150 gold each), and attach it to any sentry. It can be attached only once (no removal), and it makes the sentry shine a large and strong beam of light on the thief's location when an alert is triggered.

[Shadowstar]

The idea with the mini-watchers is that you can place them around in different areas and then go to a safe place and toggle through them, effectively allowing you to keep an eye on several different areas at once. This has obvious advantages, as it takes you out of harm's way (unless a thief sneaks up behind you while you're viewing watcher outputs), and also allows you to watch several areas at once, which you can't normally do. The best way to use it would be to stake yourself out in a safe spot and then cycle through the watcher cams spotting for thieves. The guard team could have one guard who just spends the whole game going through the different watcher cam feeds and reporting areas where there are thieves. The devs could further expand the utility of the mini-watchers by allowing the zone name of the watcher a player was currently viewing from be displayed when they use the whisper command. A simple "thief spotted" from the watcher-controller player would then be able to give all the info that was needed.

Of course, just like regular watchers, the mini-watchers could be disabled, but it would force thieves to be more sneaky since they'd not only have to avoid being seen by human and ai guards, but also by the mini-watchers, unless someone wasn't looking through the mini-watcher cam at the time. Perhaps a small light could be visible on the mini-watcher that would indicate if someone was viewing through it at the time. A thief could hide in a shadow and wait for the light to go off, then make a mad dash before the watcher guard switched back to that camera.

I think it adds alot of strategy and stealth possibilities, and encourages more skill on both sides, as well as guard team coordination, which is always a good thing.

As for the face-cannons, there are indeed already variants of it available, but a moveable one could be handy.

[Anonymous]

These would be the guards equivalent to make up for the scouting orb. If these are included though it would be a shame not to have players controlling the giant offensive robots. Maybe just one on one map?

[Shadowstar]

I think the idea of having these certain items include in the map rather than the buy screen is the best way of limiting thier use. They could be very powerful, and allowing the mapper to regulate that would go a long way to promoting balance in the game, while increasing strategy. The robots, in addition to the rest of the items mentioned here, could all be controlled in this way. Map placement would guarantee that there is a limited number of them. But they should all be fixable. A guard with a repair kit should be able to repair a dead robot, but on the other hand, the thieves could use a dead robot as guard bait, similar to the way they do with dead torches. Guards just can't resist a doused torch... Take out a robot in a dark room and wait for the engineer-guard to come along... BONK!