Reworking the Alarm System and Burglaries

[knppel]

45 minutes ago, Keane said:

break in crews will completely ignore anything out in the open and seek guns and drugs.

This really. Bospy's idealism to support crime in all honours, but- why again should we support people that reluctantly settle for the Rolex-collection openly on display only after not finding cocaine under the couch the hastily rp'd turning, or run a copy-pasted routine of putting a place to the torch?

 

Not to mention the part with waiting until people are offline- I can't comment on this, in my specific case  I was live on air with LSNN during the break-in and thus as distracted as possible, should the burglars have scouted.

But then again let's be real, chances are I just got lucky on this to have perfect rp on my end, coming home to find Sheriff and G6 standing clueless at the broken  in door.

It definitely happens, I've just not experienced here.

[zaXer.]

1 hour ago, Nervous said:

We have to take into account that IRL, the alarm can be disabled. Ingame now? It can't, and if we give everyone the script ability to, they will which will be unbalanced.

 I like the suggestion, but I don't like the price. I'm more in favor of a paycheck price to pay for your alarm. You want a great alarm? It'll cost you from $500 to $2000 per paycheck for example, which is a huge price if you take into account how long someone will play with the alarm, but way more realistic than the huge buyout cost suggested here.

I've worked in the past for a security company IRL, now a police officer, and leading the biggest and oldest security faction on GTAW -

House alarms cannot be 'disabled' by the burglars. House alarms work like any other major radiosignal operated, or gsm with sim cards, they transmit data back and forth every few seconds. The 'jamming' makes the alarm stop sending and receiving data, HOWEVER;

All security software is linked that when a house "stops responding", a silent alarm is activated and a security unit is still sent to check out the property manually just in-case. Of course 95% of the times such activations are false due to weather conditions or just by any other interference that may have caused the house to "not respond" for a few seconds. This is the first major reason why there are a lot of "false positives" as you call them.

 

The second most common reason there are "false positives" is due to defective equipment - proximity sensors, glass sensors & others can malfunction and activate, thus sending a false positive.

 

The third reason is, during bad weather conditions and heavy wind, sensors may still activate. This is most common in high-end alarms for offices, banks and rich houses, where people have paid extra to have sensors on every window of the property and not rely only on simple proximity sensors.

 

Alarms in real life have a specific 'time' frame that the alarm is triggered, but not active. This is usually a 30-second or less period, during which when you enter your property, you have time to go to the keypad and type in your password, to disarm the alarm. If you miss this period, the alarm activates. This is another major reason to "false positives", just human errors. If you even disarm your alarm after it activates, a security unit will either ring you to verify its you who made the fault or arrive on location and make sure themselves something fishy isnt going on.

 

All of this are conditions that people put under "false positives", when in reality, it's just sensors and human error, while the only real "false positive" we can count is equipment malfunction.

 

In order to have this to work, we need to;

- Script in a way to arm/disarm your alarm using your keypad (and a 4/6 digit PIN-code). Anyone you share this PIN code with, they can disarm your alarm. 3 errors send a notification to the security firm of possible malicious attempts.

- Script in a way to add a 'holdup code'. This is a code that works same as your PIN - it deactivates your alarm HOWEVER sends a silent trigger to the security firm that you are being held up and forced to disarm the alarm. This is also one small condition within the 'false positives' because people sometimes forget which code they had to use.

- Add in 'signal jammers' to disable the alarm signal. More on this later in the 'alarm configurations' below.

- Have an actual working security firm script

 

Alarm Configurations

I'm usually not a fan of the whole 'go to the hardware store, buy alarm, /installalarm, done'. Alarms should only be installed by security companies and/or individual people who have obtained the security alarm items through IC means.

Hardware stores and security firms should be able to supply security alarm equipment. Hardware stores should be limited to very poor and "walmart" style security systems.

As such, there should be a few major equipment items;

Alarm Box (which would portray having the alarm basic equipment such as the transmitter, actual alarm hardware, etc) - This would only enable you to have a 'keypad' unlock system and basically just control access through your door. The only thing that would be able to trigger that alarm is opening the door and not typing in the password after "30 second wait period" or typing in the wrong password 3 times, OR using the 'holdup code'. This can easily be jammed successfuly. This opens a huge door to burglars. People who forget to arm their system are practically defense-less against robbers. In my time leading G6 we've came upon 2000+ cases of people not locking their house doors, let alone task them with having to arm their alarm every time...

Alarm Motion Sensor -  this would be an 'upgrade' to the alarm box, which would make the alarm activate for all of the above, plus people walking around the house, which would be caught by those motion sensors. The "30 second wait period" applies here.

Alarm Vibration Sensor (glass sensor, etc) - this would be yet another 'ugprade' to the alarm box which would make the alarm trigger with no waiting period (at least in real life) upon heavy glass vibration or breakage (of course we cannot really control "vibration" and other stuff IG, so we'd keep this to breakage only). This could be obtained only via contacting a security firm with them in stock.

Alarm Box Superior (?) - A more modern variant of the normal alarm box, which can only be sourced at security companies stocked with them. This version has the same features as the normal one, however it cannot be jammed. (it can, but it would emit a 'property alarm no signal" alert to the security firm. During this "jamming" period, the alarm would not be able to send any information (panic buttons, motion sensor activations, etc - nothing. The security firm would receive no information what happens at all, leaving it mystery to be found by the unit who arrives.) Contious jamming of the property should emit a 'property alarm no signal' status every 60 seconds, until the jammer is gone. Keeping in mind jammers would jam houses nearby as well (if jamming a house in mirror park for example, a few properties would jam at once, considering they are nearby each other and all meet the criteria of having the better 'security box'. This crates havoc in the responding party and makes them unsure where to go first. Jamming an alarm which only has 'notify owner' selected but no police/security firm, should still be successful, despite having the more expensive 'box'.This is based simply because the 'no signal' response is software generated, and you as a private person wouldnt run a whole server just to send signals back and forth from your house...

Fire Alarm Box - similar as above, but fire-oriented. Certified fire alarms IRL require actual approved security companies to come and install them, as such, none of those should be freely available on the market

Fire Temperature Sensor - pretty self explanatory, an 'add-on' to the fire alarm box

Fire Smoke Sensor - pretty self explanatory, an 'add-on' to the fire alarm box.

 

Of course this is the bare minimum of components an alarm system should have, it can always go in much more equipment and tools but those are the major ones that must surely be added. 

 

In terms of alarm response...

In real life, police response to your alarms is expensive as hell. Right now, having police respond to your alarm in California, considering that your alarms are 'false positives', is the following;

Number of False Alarms	Fees & Penalties
	Permitted	Un-Permitted
1st False Alarm	$267	$267 + $100 =$367
2nd False Alarm	$267 + $50 =$317	$267 + $200 =$467
3rd False Alarm	$267 + $100 =$367	$267 + $300 =$567
4th False Alarm	$267 + $150 =$417	$267 + $400 =$667

 

San Francisco

There is no penalty for the first alarm within the calendar year. The second alarm is $100, the third is $150.00, the fourth is $200.00, and five or more is $250.00 per alarm.

 

 

In statistics in San Francisco, while yes, old...

In 2002, the San Francisco Police Department responded to 55,202 alarm-related calls, over 90% of which were false alarms.

 

It is safe to say that the police does not take alarm response seriously simply because they are overoccupied with actual calls and requests rather than check every alarm. If they have to, no police officer (speaking of me IRL as well) responds with lights and sirens to a property alarm unless it is confirmed that it is real. 

Let's keep in mind that once you a piece of your equipment fails (ex:motion sensor), it may cause false positives multiple times a night, or even every 5 minutes! This alone, for example if you're not home to disarm your alarm but visiting someone elsewhere, would rack up massive sums for police alarm response for thousands of dollars in just one night. There have been cases where during my job as a security guard IRL in the past I had to visit the same house 63 times during one 12-hour shift. Some companies have a policy to stop responses once there are many false positives in a short period, but imagine having to pay the police 250$ each attempt...63 times. $15 750.

Not a lot of people use police response IRL either (some countries dont even offer such a thing), simply because false positives are common. If you get billed $250 bucks just because your sensor decided to malfunction or because the wind was too strong, you'd eventually stop subscribing for that service for sure.

 

On the other hand, this is why private companies who offer alarm response exist. Their fees are generally much cheaper than the police, there are most of the time no penalty fees for false alarms, however the firms are 100% focused on providing home security and alarm response, the chances of them arriving on your property before the police are much higher and they tend to generally be much more aware of what's going on and can be contracted on different terms (often home owners leave keys in the security company for their house yards, so the guards who arrive can open the gates and walk inside the yard to check out the house from close up), while this is not possible with the police. Security firms know their addresses better because they know which houses are their clients, while the police can be a bit confused sometimes where exactly a specific address is. This balances out the private security v. police response, as people will have to decide which bonuses they wish to have - the fact the police will arrive (if ever will), or a private service that may not be cops, but private guards who arrive faster, and most importantly - cheaper.

 

Alarms should not be charged per paycheck. One property owner who logged in for 2 hours this week and another who has been online for 40 hours receive essentialy the same service throughout the week, however one has paid much more than the rest. Law enforcement and private companies should privately control how, when and how much to charge their clients. Add in a command to "enable" an address for your firm - "/attachalarm 21 Procopio Drive", which would activate the property to send information to your company/department. Implement "/detachalarm 21 Procopio Drive" to detach the property if they stop paying their fees, cancellation, etc. There are cases where one property sends signals to few different copmanies / agencies, making it possible to hire 2 companies, or to have 1 department and 1 company responding, or any other mix. All alarms should have the option to send a notification to the owner free of charge (or with a funny sum every paycheck, that would replicate you paying for sim card data usage.)

 

Alarm false positives
There should be a % chance of your property emitting a false positive alarm.  This % would change to higher during rain and other bad weather conditions, and during heavy storms, it should spike up to almost 70% or more for properties equipped with glass sensors. There should be a 1-minute "cycle" period, during which those 70% would apply - there'd be a 70% chance that during this 1 "cycle", the alarm activates (given the weather suits for such % or less ,depending on discussion at a later point). During normal weather and times, the % of having a false alarm should be kept fairly low, however - the more 'upgrades' your property has, the higher chances you get a false positive. The 1-minute "cycle' period should apply for jammers too. If you jammed the property 30 seconds before the 'cycle' period, you earn 30 seconds before the alarm activation begins (+30 seconds if the house only has motion sensors). If you jammed the property right after one 'cycle', you'd earn 60 seconds. If you jam it just before a cycle, you'll earn just 5 seconds bonus.

Of course all of those % i'm talking here are just as examples. We should aim that the % of false positives in the server to be above 90%. This would have everyone who is tasked to deal with alarms to be "meh" whenever they see an alarm and treat it as something petty and 'just another false positive'. This is what will earn even more extra time to burglars.

I quote..

What percentage alarms are fake?

 

 

Between 94 and 98 percent of alarm calls are false. Nationwide, false alarms account for 10 to 25 percent of all calls to police. In the United States alone, solving the problem of false alarms would by itself relieve 35,000 officers from providing an essentially private service.

Edited December 18, 2021 by zaXer.

[fortyfive]

it would be much better if supported with certain furnitures in the property may come with goods items with variety of values (which may be created with admins' supervising (if it's not existed at /pinv), and the property owners are the subject to lose the percentage of their money according to the items' values). so that the main intention of housebreak is not solely just for drugs and weapons.

[Mahitto]

2 hours ago, Moe said:

Increasing the time it takes to trigger the alarm is one way to do it, in my opinion. Typing out roleplay takes time, especially with the level of quality we expect to see as admins. Whereas in real life, searching a house is much faster. Right now, the alarms are triggered within a minute or something ridiculous like that. Giving the criminals more time to RP would be one way to balance it.

 

That'd be a really cool idea, regardless of what happens with this suggestion. House burglaries shouldn't feel rushed on an OOC level - the robbers should be able to take their time in order to fully role-play their actions. Sure, some sense of urgency is required.

 

2 hours ago, Topinambour said:

 

You're currently not able to /vpark a car with a weapon inside (even if it's just a baseball bat lol), but you'd also be unable to securely store your PF weapons in a home - since safes are kind of easy to break into and alarms would essentially become useless.

 

Yes, but the vehicle despawns after 3 hours or at the daily restart. I've seen way too many people store millions in drugs and guns in a car, park it in front of PD and wait for it to despawn. I'm not role-playing aroun such people but I believe it's pretty commonplace. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Bospy said:

The cost on these is so prohibitive to reflect that these would only really be used in the headquarters of expensive companies. If a gangbanger seriously invests cash into an alarm of that level, it's not really great character portrayal. Think of how much money a security company would spend securing a company's expensive building. I agree with making them only apply to certain properties. I've ditched the "role" idea as well.

 

Would it really be a good idea, though? Imagine how much the price of all properties would be bumped if they had such alarms. For houses too, but imagine having businesses cost millions more because of these alarms. I think that, if anything, it would just encourage people to either go grind in order to get the money or stop using properties to store valuables altogether and store them in stashes or designated vehicles. Why would anyone invest that much money into an alarm that is basically guaranteed to do nothing? The reason they still do is because the discrepancy is not that severe but if it were to become, this would also become mainstream and house robbers will still not be able to rob anything.

[fall of the titans]

The prices are absolutely ridiculous. No from me until this is re-worked but the concept is good.

[Unity]

Do you even own a real life house alarm? Even a very bog standard house alarm is reliable. While it doesn't contact the police at all. It shoots out a defeaning sound alerting anyone within the area that something isn't right. And these trip within 30 seconds of not having the code put in.

 

While I agree that alarms in GTA World need to be overhualed. What you're proposing isn't good either. Having alarms fail is poor. Just change it up that the cheap low end alarms don't inform the police automatically. Just have it so they set off a noise outside the property for people who are say triple /shout distance can hear. And for realism sake. Admins can then inform the police after five or so minutes to simulate neighbours calling the police.

 

As for the more expensive alarms that alert the police? Make them need a subscription that has to be paid every month. Like a car needs insurance. A house needs to pay monthly to have a direct line to the police. Easy way to do this would make the alarms that inform the police have a timer before it needs replacing. So each month a new one has to be bought.

 

Drop this whole % of alarms being reliable. Unless you bought the thing off the back of a truck. It's going to work. Just change how the alarms work and how they inform the police. Maybe change the pricing of each tier though.

 

Edit: Also, to add on to this. There are more ways to stop your home from being broken in to than just alarms. If you're gonna nerf alarms. Allow for better locks and deadbolts to be bought for doors.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Unity

[Topinambour]

1 hour ago, Mahitto said:

Yes, but the vehicle despawns after 3 hours or at the daily restart. I've seen way too many people store millions in drugs and guns in a car, park it in front of PD and wait for it to despawn. I'm not role-playing aroun such people but I believe it's pretty commonplace. 

... I must be too naive because I hadn't even considered doing something like that lol, this is so fucking cheesy ^^'''

Still, it would kinda suck to make all alarms useless for literally everyone, just because some dickheads are cheesing the system 😕 

 

That said, Keane's ideas are interesting, and I love the details provided by @zaXer. on RL alarms ^^ Making alarms a per-paycheck (or per month or whatever) cost could be a better idea, than making alarms cost more than a house - because even the shitty 60% alarm costs more than my apartment and it's far from being shitty lol. 

[orca112]

I am much more in favour with Keanes proposal than the initial suggestion. The property alarms both in its current stage and OPs suggestion are effectively a binary system the side on the short end of the stick does not appreciate - 100 to 0 for either property owner or criminal breaking in. By allowing for more diversity, such as goods that can be stolen other than your average asset-driven weapons & drug random break-in and different tools that can be used to deter a criminal with an alarm system that is more balanced in terms of having occasional false positives and allowing for more roleplay to happen whilst also accounting for the technically present owner, albeit the player being offline, can create so much more than a flat 100% "win" for a property owner or person breaking in solely to hit a big weapon or drug stash.

[Phased]

5 hours ago, honey. said:

It doesn’t need to be a supplier role, unnecessary. We should substitute it with something else.

Absolutely seconded - fewer forum applications more time in-game.

 

5 hours ago, Bospy said:

 

False Positives

 

Occasionally, IFM may trigger false positives. In real life, alarm systems are not 100% reliable - much the same way that current fires work, we will trip alarms to keep law enforcement on their feet and react realistically to alarm systems. At the moment, any house alarm brings an entire combat force. If we trip many false positives, a more realistic number of officers will respond. Usually, only one officer is sent to a house alarm in real life.

 

The command to trip a false-positive alarm shall be /falsepositivealarm.

 

@Bospy do you not think that maybe instead of implementing this whole thing - just doing this, or having LFM set a rule on the server for realistic police response and telling PD and SD that they cannot dispatch special weapons teams, and a max of one to two units for a house/business alarm till it's confirmed, then only allow special weapons teams if there's an active hostage situation? 

 

If you ask me, that, plus setting a percentage chance on alarms instead of a guaranteed alarm, and allowing players to just roleplay de-activating it and having the handling admin deactivate it before it goes off would be a far easier way to handle this issue than completely revamping a system like this.  

[Inked]

6 hours ago, honey. said:

It doesn’t need to be a supplier role, unnecessary. We should substitute it with something else.

 

This. 

 

It's a bit complicated and some parts maybe a bit extra, but I think there's certainly a lot of pros to it too. Bospy making me proud again!!