Premeditated
Methodically carries out their murders to avoid getting caught.
[NPC Only]
Details:
This module has no influence on a character's decision to murder someone. It steps in and takes over the character's behavior once that decision has been made. Instead of murdering people in a room full of witnesses as murderers tend to do in the vanilla game, this module seeks to make it seem as though the murderer has put at least some amount of effort into their plan. They will try to isolate their victim, only carrying out the murder when they're certain there's no witnesses around.
By default, murderers with this module will only go after their victim during the evening period. While this tends to be more effective since it's usually quieter around the school as people head to the station area or go home, it does tend to make things more predictable, and may also make it less likely for the murder to be carried out since the murderer may have other modules such as Compensated Dating or Ambusher which have their own evening routines, or the target may decide to go home before the murderer decides to strike. I've added a couple of global variables that can be edited to alter this behavior:
- PM_IS_EVENING_KILLER: Set to true by default. Setting it to false means the murder can happen during any period.
- PM_IS_EVENING_KILLER_RANDOM: Set to false by default. Setting it to true will randomly set whether the killer only works in the evening or not, and it will ignore whatever value PM_IS_EVENING_KILLER is currently set to.
If the killer has the Yandere Type A module, the values of the 2 variables are ignored and the killer can attempt a murder in any period. The reason for this is the Yandere Type A module handles murders in an impulsive manner, and doesn't persist the intention into the next period.
Read the Full Details if don't mind spoilers and want to know exactly how everything works, or remain content with the knowledge that murderers with this module will behave more intelligently, and are far less likely to be caught in the act and subsequently arrested.
Compatibility:
This module has gone through over 4 months of development/testing prior to release, and if this were the only module loaded in a game then it would likely work perfectly. That guarantee goes out the window however when other modules are added to the picture, but this is also true for every module. I've put a lot of effort into ensuring that it continues to work correctly in the presence of certain other modules, but obviously it's impossible for me to test every possible module combination out there.
The following is a list of problematic modules that I've identified during gameplay and have added handling for:
- Ambusher
- Compensated Dating
- Controlling
- Easy Victim
- Loyal on the killer in combination with Hot Body on the target
- Masseuse
- Murderous
- Stalker
- Vengeful
- Yandere Type A
Compatibility with the Armed module is included, and having it on the killer can impact their behavior. Check the Full Details for more information on this.
While not strictly incompatible, the Thorough module is redundant with this module, so if you're going to use this module then you might as well remove Thorough.
Known Issues:
- If the PC is the target and the killer is stalking you, when the killer decides to strike they will first perform an interaction with Yes and No choices, but no actual dialogue. This is intentional. The reason for this is normally when a murder interaction is performed, if the killer isn't right next to their target they will slowly saunter up to them, giving them plenty of time to move to another room or for witnesses to arrive. This isn't an issue if the killer is escorting their target since they'll be right next to them when they perform the murder, but when they're stalking the target they might be on the other side of the room when they decide to act. To get around this, the killer first performs this dummy interaction so that they will run up to their target rather than slowly walk to them, before following up with the actual murder interaction. When done towards an NPC the interaction is almost instant and barely noticeable, but because the dialogue window opens for the PC, it becomes more obvious that there's some shenanigans involved.
- Rarely when the killer is done escorting their target to the chosen spot, instead of killing the target they will instead perform some other interaction. If the interaction is either fighting or asking them to follow, it won't break the sequence of events, and the murder will just continue at the next location. If it's any other interaction then the module will detect this and clean things up so that it doesn't end up in a broken state. Usually this is caused by some other module trying to perform its own actions instead. I've added handling for some of these cases but it still happens on occasion. In the case of the Hot Body module, I've intentionally allowed it to prevent murders in this manner since that's the entire point of it. More often than not though the Hot Body module is ineffective and the murder happens anyway.
- Rarely after a fight the target will get up and walk around while still locked with the red ring around them. This seems to be a game bug rather than something caused by this module since I've encountered this before after fights that had nothing to do with the module. Doesn't usually cause a problem.
