Wiki/Home.md is the suite's front door; every layer's wiki now mirrors here under Wiki/<layer>/ (core, contraband, justice, gangs, ward), so the whole suite reads in one place with the index linking to the local pages. The layer repos stay canonical -- Tools/sync-wiki.sh refreshes the aggregated copy on demand. The README's main page points to it.
121 lines
6.0 KiB
Markdown
121 lines
6.0 KiB
Markdown
# Policing — the pre-arrest half
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*The other half of the loop. Where the rest of Justice deals with people the colony has already
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caught, **policing** is what happens before the cell door: your own colonists commit crimes on the
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propensity spectrum, the colony investigates, and — sometimes — arrests.*
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It is a big behavioural change (your colonists become potential criminals), so it has **its own
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toggle** in the mod settings, on by default. Turn it off to run the rest of Justice — classification,
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deterrence, discipline, parole, regime — without colony crime.
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---
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## The loop
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```
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[crime] → [witnessed / investigated] → [weighed arrest (resist?)] → prison → … → parole → [recidivism]
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```
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Every stage reads the shared engine (`Propensity`, the `CriminalRecord`, the deterrence meter), so
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policing is not a bolt-on — it feeds the same record classification grades on and discipline reforms.
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## Crime — and why small colonies stay honest
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Every ~40 seconds, each free colonist gets a seeded roll to offend. The base rate is low (`0.06`) and
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multiplied hard by nature × nurture — almost nobody with an ordinary disposition ever does anything.
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But it is *also* multiplied by **crime cover**:
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| Free colonists | Crime cover |
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|---|---|
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| ≤ 3 | 0.15 |
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| ~8 | ~0.6 |
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| ≥ 13 | 1.0 |
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In a tight 2–3 pawn colony everyone knows everyone and retribution is certain even without a jail, so
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crime is **rare**; a larger, more anonymous colony offers cover. This is a deliberate inversion of the
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naive "no enforcement → more crime": a small colony is kept honest by its own closeness, not by a
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constable.
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A crime is one of **theft**, **vandalism**, or **assault** — leaning on who the culprit is (a
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kleptomaniac steals, a bloodlusty pawn assaults, a pyromaniac vandalizes).
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## Consequences — the stakes
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A crime leaves a mark the colony can *see* (all wrapped defensively — a consequence that finds no
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target never breaks anything):
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- **Theft** lifts a small stack of the colony's goods and the thief **pockets it**. RimWorld has no
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per-person property (stockpiles are communal), so theft is theft from the common store — but the
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culprit now physically carries what they took, a natural evidence trail a search can pick up.
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- **Vandalism** damages a nearby colony building.
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- **Assault** gives a nearby colonist a light, down-safe knock — and the culprit chooses their mark
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**wisely**: someone they resent (motive), who is weak (little retribution), and unwatched (few
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witnesses).
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- **Relationships fray.** An assault victim thinks much worse of their attacker immediately (they saw
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who did it); and when investigation *names* a culprit, the whole colony's opinion of them drops.
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- The colony is **notified** a crime happened — culprit unknown.
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## Witnesses and investigation
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A crime is not equally solvable. Colonists who were near enough to **see** it are witnesses, and each
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is a partial lead — a witnessed crime starts up to `0.8` of the way to solved before anyone lifts a
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finger; an unseen one is a **cold case** worked from nothing.
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Investigation then accrues evidence toward `1.0` (naming the culprit) two ways:
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- **Ambient**, scaled by how many colonists the colony can spare (`~0.34` per check per unit of
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effort — a few investigated windows).
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- **The police work type.** Assign a colonist to *policing* and they walk to open **crime scenes** and
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work them, adding a chunk of evidence scaled by their Intellectual + Social skill. A sharp constable
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cracks cases fast; a colony that spares no one lets them go cold.
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## The weighed arrest
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A solved case does **not** mean an automatic arrest. Fellow-colonist cops will not gut the colony to
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jail someone over a petty crime — the arrest is a cost/benefit (`ShouldArrest`):
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```
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arrest ⇔ colony can afford a prison AND severity ≥ 1.5 + value × 3
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```
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- **Severity** — the crime's kind (theft 1 · vandalism 1.5 · assault 2.5), escalated by the culprit's
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record (a rap sheet and prior escapes compound).
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- **Value** — 0..1 from the culprit's best skills. A star colonist raises the bar to ~4.5; an
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expendable one leaves it at ~1.5.
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- **Capacity** — **below ~5 colonists, or with no prison bed, the colony arrests no one.** A prisoner
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plus a warden would cripple a small colony. Capacity ramps up as the colony grows.
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So a petty crime by your only doctor → they walk. A murder → arrested regardless. And a crime that
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paid, unanswered, erodes the climate of order a little more (crime emboldens).
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## Resisting arrest
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The disposed do not go quietly (`WouldResist`, seeded nature × nurture):
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- **Comply** → taken in cleanly (they become a prisoner of the colony — imprisonment is direct, and it
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survives guest-management mods like Hospitality).
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- **Resist** → the violent turn **berserk**, the rest **flee**. A botched arrest becomes a crisis the
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colony must handle the hard way, and openly defying arrest emboldens the lawless.
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- **Subdued** → a resister the colony beats down is then **imprisoned** (auto-capture) — the resist
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path resolves to a cell once the colony wins the confrontation. One who flees the map gets away.
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## Prison riots
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When the climate of order **collapses** (deterrence at the floor) in a colony holding prisoners, a
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neglected prison boils over into a **riot**: disposed prisoners turn violent together, and the unrest
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shatters order further. A well-run colony (high deterrence) never sees one — a riot is the thing a
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badly-run institution *earns*. It ties the deterrence meter, the propensity engine, and the prison
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population into one emergent event.
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## Recidivism, made visible
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The loop closes on itself: a pawn hardened in prison (negative reform) runs a higher propensity and
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reoffends. When investigation names a culprit the colony had **paroled**, it says so out loud — the
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recidivism loop turning in the open, the payoff for everything classification, discipline, and parole
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did upstream.
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---
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Part of **Institution: Justice**, in the Institution suite. AI disclosure: developed with substantial
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assistance from Claude (Anthropic).
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