Crime & Justice
The criminal path runs in three phases: Train a skill → Scout a target → Commit the crime.
Skills & training
Four skills (0–100): Stealth, Intimidation, Lockpicking, Crime Combat. Training costs 25 Energy and takes 1 hour; gains taper off as the skill rises (roughly +5 below 30, +3 below 60, +2 below 80, +1 above that).
Scouting
Costs 20 Energy, takes 30 minutes. Reveals either 5 random players in your nation (tiered Poor/Average/Wealthy/Rich by cash) or 6 businesses (3 companies + 3 shops, tiered Small/Medium/Large). Scouted targets expire after roughly a year.
Crime types
| Crime | Key skill | Requirement | Reward | Jail (base) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pickpocket | Stealth | — | Up to $4,000 (30% of victim's cash) | 1 year |
| Shop Theft | Lockpicking | — | Up to $8,000 (half the shop's stock, fenced at 60%) | 2 years |
| Robbery | Intimidation | 1× Weapon | Up to $15,000 (40% of victim's cash) | 3 years |
| Burglary | Lockpicking ≥ 50 | — | Up to $25,000, min $2,000 (60% of company funds) | 4 years |
| Murder | Crime Combat ≥ 80 | 1× Weapon | No money — kills the victim | 8 years |
What the victim loses. Pickpocket and Robbery take the cash straight out of the victim's pocket. Shop Theft carries real goods off the shop's retail shelves: about half the stock by value, the most expensive items first, and never more than about $13,334 at the shop's own prices. The thief fences them for 60% of that. Goods come in whole units, so a shop whose only item is worth more than half the shelves loses nothing. Burglary takes the money from the company safe, and its $2,000 minimum never takes more than the safe actually holds.
Success chance: base% + floor(skill × 0.4) − min(20, criminal_record × 2) − min(30, security), minus the victim's own defences (see Defending yourself), clamped between 5% and 90%.
Robbery and Murder use up 1 Weapon only if the crime succeeds — a failed attempt keeps it. If you carry Weapons of different quality, the best one goes first.
On failure, arrest chance is 65 − floor(stealth × 0.4) + floor(security × 0.8), clamped between 20% and 92%. Note what is not in that formula: the skill you used. Arrest risk hangs on Stealth alone, so a robber with Intimidation 100 and Stealth 50 is just as likely to be caught as a novice. Jail time = round(base jail years × (1 + min(3, criminal_record) × 0.35)), ticking down 1 year per annual tick.
Bail costs a flat jail years × $4,000 for immediate release. Law Firms sell vouchers that shave time off a sentence: Basic (−1 year), Advanced (−2 years), Expert (−4 years) — one voucher per sentence.
From a cell you cannot work a shift (your own shop and studio included), sleep, study, train, travel, socialise, gamble, commit another crime, or take part in war and militias. Nobody can rob or murder you either — scouting skips prisoners, and a criminal who scouted you before your arrest finds you out of reach. Your businesses get no such protection: your shop and your company can still be robbed while you are inside.
Racing and jail. You cannot enter a race while in jail, and an entry bought before the arrest is withdrawn when the race is run: the entry fee (and the Fuel of a Motorsport entry) is lost, and bets placed on you are refunded in full. The same holds for events you never sign up for: an Olympic qualifier in jail on the day of the Games is not called up, and a senior in jail is left out of that year's tournament. Those Games are simply lost — the qualified lists are wiped after every Olympics, so you qualify again for the next ones exactly like everybody else. The Dog Show works the other way round: you cannot enter your dog from jail either, but if you are still in jail at the year change of the show, your dog simply does not compete and you get the $200 entry fee and the 10 Energy back.
Security: voted, and built
The security in both formulas is not one national number any more. It is the sum of two things, capped at 30:
- The National Security Level, voted by Parliament. Only two values exist: Very Low (5%), costing the treasury 2% of its funds a year, and Low (10%), costing 4%.
- Whatever Police Stations add on top: +20 on the four plots touching the station and +10 on the ring beyond.
So the ceiling is unchanged — 30 is still the most protection anywhere can have — but the two upper levels are no longer a line in a budget. A country that wants them has to build them, one intersection at a time, and pay the upkeep and the wages that come with them.
Crucially, the security that counts is the one around the victim, not the criminal. The same thief has different odds against two neighbours on opposite sides of town. Every scouted target shows its real figure on its card, and the Crime panel states the arrest risk for that spot before you act.
Defending yourself
Pickpocket, Robbery and Murder target a person, and that person's own defences come straight off the criminal's success chance. They do nothing against Shop Theft or Burglary, which hit a business, not you.
| Defence | Criminal's odds | Protects against |
|---|---|---|
| Being armed | −20 | Pickpocket, Robbery, Murder |
| Fitness | −floor(Fitness × 0.2), max −20 | Robbery, Murder |
| Stealth | −floor(Stealth × 0.3), max −30 | Pickpocket |
| Crime Combat | −floor(Combat × 0.15), max −15 | Murder |
What counts as armed
At least one Weapon in your backpack. That is the whole test:
- One Weapon protects exactly as much as ten, and its star rating makes no difference.
- Defending never uses it up. It keeps protecting you until you spend it on a crime of your own, sell it, or equip it for the military.
- Your military service weapon does not count. Equipping a Weapon moves it out of your backpack into its own slot, for training and enlistment only — so if it was your only one, equipping it leaves you unarmed. Keep a second one in the backpack.
Criminals cannot see who is armed: nothing on a scouted target's card gives it away. A Weapon makes an attack less likely to succeed, but it does not scare anyone off before they try.
Two examples (Robbery)
| Robber | Victim unarmed | Victim armed |
|---|---|---|
| Intimidation 50, clean record, security 10, victim Fitness 50 | 20% | 5% |
| Intimidation 100, clean record, security 5, victim Fitness 50 | 45% | 25% |
In the first case the Weapon only takes 15 points off, because no crime can drop below 5%.
Being armed changes the odds and nothing else. If the crime does succeed you lose exactly what you would have lost unarmed, and it has no effect on whether the criminal gets arrested.