More crime please!

[YertyL]

So, when is the last time you built a Hall of Judgement (upgrade to precinct houses)? Yeah, me neither.

Crime currently is too much of a non-factor, in particular for authoritarians/slavers. Egalitarians need extra civilian industries for the higher luxury costs, robot builders need the fabricators and minerals, authoritarians and especially slavers should need extra precinct houses, but they currently just...don't. Crime is currently IMO both not plentiful enough -- I rarely need the standard enforcer jobs even in authoritarian/xenophobe empires, let alone extra buildings -- and does not hurt enough -- it actually mostly has a positive effect via the negotiate with crime lords edict, the current implementation of which just boggles my mind.

The changes I would suggest:

1. Crime should scale non-linearly with happiness, being low to very low at 50+ happiness, but exploding when approaching the 0%. Currently a worker in a stratified economy compared to decent conditions has less than half the lux upkeep, but only produces 10% (of the max value) more crime via the 10% less happiness. The differences are IMO not pronounced enough.
   
2. Have crime affect stability directly and negatively (I have no idea why it does not do that in the first place)
3. Remove the "+5% happiness" effect from the "Nutritional Plenitude" policy, because that policy is just too good in the first place and one of the reasons it is too easy to keep slaves/low castes stable.
4. Consider giving the slave processing facility a crime reducing effect and/or enforcer jobs to give slavers some ability to compensate (but not without investment).

EDIT: Math clarification: Crime is currently proportional to (1-happiness); this means a 10% loss in happiness results in a crime difference of 1/0.9=1.1 times, or 10% more, for a 10% happy pop, 0.6/0.5=1.2, or 20% more, for a 60% happy pop, and 0.2/0.1=2 times, or a 100% more, for a 90% happy pop.
Taking a 60% happiness as a somewhat realistic base value for a decent living standards worker, a strat econ worker produces 0.5/0.4=20% more crime, a domestic servant with decent living standards 0.6/0.4=50% more, and a chattel slave with basic subsidience 0.8/0.4=100% more, while a Utopian abundance worker produces 0.2/0.4=50% less.
I am still torn whether the problem is scaling, crime base value, or the relative ease of keeping your pops happy.

 

[Mastikator]

The way crime is calculated should be changed, 0% planetwide crime is about as realistic as FTL travel. IMO there should always be SOME crime on a planet even with a Hall of Judgement and each enforcer makes the crime rate go down but instead of reaching 0% it should asymptotically approach 0%. Let me explain in layman's terms:

The crime calculation should be:
Total crime = (Total crime generated / Total number of enforcers) * X
where X is an empire modifier, empire modifiers should add multiplicatively. Having both a righteous governor and Artificial Moral Codes would be 0.75 x 0.85 = 0.6375, 36.25% reduced crime
events like criminal underworld add to the total crime generated.

Any amount of crime should also result in loss of trade value. Currently there are a few bad events associated with crime but besides that there is actually no harm in having 100% planetwide crime. A 100% planetwide crime sounds like a horrible dystopia but it isn't, and it should be.
Crime should reduce trade value (to represent stolen goods), massively increase emigration push and even reduce stability (if only a bit).

 

[Volapyk]

Funnily enough the only time I've ever build crime fighting buildings is as a machine empire.

I totally agree it should play a bigger role in planet management, and should be something you have to keep an eye on, especially for authoritarians, but also for other empires.

 

[YertyL]

The way crime is calculated should be changed, 0% planetwide crime is about as realistic as FTL travel. IMO there should always be SOME crime on a planet even with a Hall of Judgement and each enforcer makes the crime rate go down but instead of reaching 0% it should asymptotically approach 0%. Let me explain in layman's terms:

The crime calculation should be:
Total crime = (Total crime generated / Total number of enforcers) * X
where X is an empire modifier, if you have none then it's 1, if you have a righteous governor then it's 1.25, etc) events like criminal underworld add to the total crime generated.

Any amount of crime should also result in loss of trade value. Currently there are a few bad events associated with crime but besides that there is actually no harm in having 100% planetwide crime. A 100% planetwide crime sounds like a horrible dystopia but it isn't, and it should be.
Crime should reduce trade value (to represent stolen goods), massively increase emigration push and even reduce stability (if only a bit).

I would refrain from having crime affect specific ressources, as that causes a whole set of balance issues between trade heavy vs non trade heavy/Gestalt empires. I assume criminials would steal food and precious stones as well.

 

[Iosue Yu]

I would say Crime should just always be there. There should be a new value called "Enforcement". Crime means people doing bad things. Enforcement means you have policemen to punish the criminals. So if Enforcement is higher than Crime, your Stability is stable.

Keeping around 5 to 10% stable Crime in a developed planet with good Enforcement should be the main aim, instead of it always being 0.

 

[Zergor]

I agree with this. I love the flavor of "Negociate with crime lords" decision but right now using it feels weird.

 

[Mastikator]

I would refrain from having crime affect specific ressources, as that causes a whole set of balance issues between trade heavy vs non trade heavy/Gestalt empires. I assume criminials would steal food and precious stones as well.

IMO Crime should be a completely different beast to normal empires than Deviancy is to gestalt consciousness as deviancy should constitute an existential threat, crime represents a civil and monetary threat.

 

[Aexrael]

Designers should probably start by removing the -Crime modifier from Governor skill level, it's too much and affects multiple systems equally. Then evaluate how much crime pops generate, which is probably too little.

 

[sortulv]

Crime fighting buildings is something you get when there are criminal syndicates in the galaxy. They massively increase the amount of crime on worlds. They are also useful for police states for generating unity without the consumer goods.

 

[Kayden_II]

I prefer the more "simple" approaches. I would just terminate the enforcer-jobs of the capital-buildings, so that these ones only provide administrator-jobs since it makes way more fun to deal with buildings, which aren't a cluster**** of what-ever (jobs in this case). I had played my first game with the police-state-civic, so that I had constructed anti-crime-buildings, but after round about an hour, I had figured out, that I had no crime at all, even after I had trashed my anti-crime-buildings. I'm aware, that it's somewhat useful to counter syndicates of the MegeCorp-DLC, but since it's also part of the base-game, it has to be adjusted.

 

[Shirasik]

authoritarians and especially slavers should need extra precinct houses

Why?

 

[stumason]

Just chiming in to agree that crime is too easy to deal with right now. Between the capital and the precincts, the enforcers provided heavily outweigh almost any crime on the planet by a significant amount. Also, you'd think with such a heavy police presence/enforcement that would have an adverse affect on happiness. Sure, people like crime to be dealt with, but they also don't want Police on every corner and being asked for their papers every 5 minutes.

 

[Zergor]

I imagine though that the main problem with a harsh crime rate would be to balance slavers.

Right now the slavers empires are fairly good probably a bit above average due to the slave bonus and low slave maintenance.
But if crime requires something like 3 buildings to be dealt with, it probably severely hinder the playstyle.
It would probably be interesting though to have to choose between making your slaves happier, add more enforcers or just roll with high crime and negociate with crime lords for stability.

 

[YertyL]

Why?

Because looking at the alternatives of standard workers, robots and stratified economy/slaves, the latter currently get a significant reduction in consumer goods with basically no drawback. Robots are at least limited in their pop growth and require investment.

Also because I want to fulfill my secret police state fantasy but that's difficult if you dont actually need police.

 

[th3freakie]

Another thing: Pops belonging to unhappy factions in non-democratic empires should generate crime. For Space USSR, going to church might be crime. For Space South Africa, being part of a xenophile movement might be a crime. etc etc

 

[Ridixo]

While having 0% crime is unrealistic yes, the idead of having some stable crime is good, good work @Iosue Yu good thinking. The problem then will be how not having 0% crime will affect crime syndicates, will be their branch offices be impossible to close? In any case i hope the Devs look this thread, crime is a great idea, but the execution of that idea is kinda off. Crime another thing that needs some rework when time is available

 

[The Founder]

Crime currently is too much of a non-factor, in particular for authoritarians/slavers. Egalitarians need extra civilian industries for the higher luxury costs, robot builders need the fabricators and minerals, authoritarians and especially slavers should need extra precinct houses, but they currently just...don't. Crime is currently IMO both not plentiful enough -- I rarely need the standard enforcer jobs even in authoritarian/xenophobe empires, let alone extra buildings -- and does not hurt enough -- it actually mostly has a positive effect via the negotiate with crime lords edict, the current implementation of which just boggles my mind.

If you negotiate with Crimelords you get 3 or 4 pop jobs that are filled with high priority and substract resources. On top of the usual Pop maintenance.
So even if the negative is very low, I fail to see how it could be viewed as a positive.

Mostly I agree, of course. Crime needs a lot more "bite". But that might be in large part to the current Approval figures. Happiness and Stability were just divorced. So the modifiers for either have not yet reached they extremes they can.

Based on the whole Criminal Syndicate Megacorp, I asume that Crime will also tie into a Espionage System (if we ever get one). That part alone would utterly wreck the "just make a deal with them" tactic.

 

[The Founder]

Another thing: Pops belonging to unhappy factions in non-democratic empires should generate crime. For Space USSR, going to church might be crime. For Space South Africa, being part of a xenophile movement might be a crime. etc etc

They do.
Unhappy Factions apply a Happiness Penalty
Unhappy pops produce more crime.

https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Factions#Approval

People asumed just because those Factions are no longer the base happiness, they no longer have any effect. Wich is a easy mistake to make.

 

[RoverStorm]

So, when is the last time you built a Hall of Judgement (upgrade to precinct houses)?

I mean I'd build them for a dedicated fortress world because they give more defense armies than fortresses. Soldiers give 3 armies, times 3 for a fortress gives 9 armies. Enforcers give 2 armies, times 5 for the hall of judgement gives 10 armies. You still want enough fortresses to trigger the "fortress world" buff, but otherwise hall of judgement friends. Also, unity without citizen service. Really good.

 

[Uskayaw]

I see no reason for having separate values for stability and crime.