[sadbot]

In regards to the rules of conflict and engagement, some sort of loose 'scene lock' rule sounds like a great idea that I haven't heard before. I feel like it would handle the main issues that dissuade people from wanting to play an antagonist. The complaints I usually hear from those that have or would like to do antagonist character type things, myself included, is the response that the ic community at large has to these events. The general flow of the situation goes as follows most of the time:

1. Antagonist commits an illegal act/makes themselves known in some public fashion.
   
2. A group of players, whether guards or just bystanders in the area, form a party to fight the antagonist. This immediately means that the antagonist must either have a 4 man group of competent fighters of their own for anything like this, or avoid conflict entirely in all but the rare situations that they aren't heavily outnumbered for some reason, limiting their options.
   
3. The guards, or more guards, swiftly arrive after being notified IC and/or OOC unless this event is taking place in all but the most private or secluded of locations, usually leaving the antagonist outnumbered by multiple 4 man groups even if they brought a 4 man group of their own in preparation for conflict.
   
4. This outnumbering continues as a solid portion of the online player base flocks to witness the event (In most cases, unless the event is very small scale, again limiting options) until their is nothing more the antagonist can do other than surrender, be defeated in the conflict or flee on the players' terms or the terms of the fleeing rules.
   

All in all the number of people that get involved in conflict against antagonists is what causes most of the problems. Obviously nobody wants a rule that would force events like this to be small scale only by limiting how many people can even attend/participate, but perhaps an optional 'scene lock' on conflict participants so that the antagonist group can't be outnumbered, or can only be outnumbered to a smaller degree, would prevent this type of roleplay from getting regularly derailed via antagonist dogpiling. This would allow it to be used in public spaces and more private events as well, in an effort to keep antagonist roleplay in general more stable.

As for the the other points, I don't have much to say about punishments for the antagonists, but some variety beyond just jail time would certainly be a nice change that would add some weight and seriousness to the jail time route without dissuading antagonist behavior in general by making it a guarantee on capture.

I do think establishing some rules and guidelines on antagonistic roleplay would also be a good step to making it more achievable and stable, and of course more enjoyable for everyone involved as a result. I do think however that those rules should be kept somewhat loose, so that it doesn't infringe on people's creativity when it comes to this sort of thing. After all, it's basically down to a player's imagination when it comes to antagonist motivations, plans and actions. Most likely it should just be some guidelines on the where/when/how side of things, and perhaps some loose rules and protections on the protag and antag side in order to prevent the roleplay from breaking down into pvp dogpiling while still allowing conflict to be included.

As it stands right now, the only way I've see of consistently avoiding the conflict dogpiling is for antagonist roleplay to be restricted in various ways to either avoid conflict entirely at all costs, or shrug off the inevitable problems that come with it by either accepting that antagonists rarely if ever succeed in their plans regardless of scale and/or creating throwaway antagonist character that are just deleted afterwards. This usually leaves this sort of roleplay left exclusively to heavily pre-planned events in an effort to keep things on track, which leaves it somewhat inaccessible for those unwilling to put in a lot of time and effort for a single event while limiting options and making more casual antagonistic roleplay near impossible.

That all said, this sort of roleplay can and does happen, but I can't remember the last time I saw an antagonist or an antagonist group even successfully escape from the near inevitable dogpiling and subsequent arrest, let alone succeed in any capacity with their plans, regardless of scale. Probably the destruction of Cellsvich, which would fall under the category of heavily pre-planned event (that was already pre-determined to be successful for the antagonists technically due to the upcoming Cellsvich update). 

I've ended up kinda rambling here. Please don't jump on me too hard as I don't claim to be any kind of expert here, just someone that would very much like to see more of this type of roleplay. but to summarize, I think the main problem right now is that antagonist roleplay if often derailed by pvp dogpiling, and antagonists succeeding with their plans, regardless of scale, is almost impossible in anything more casual than a planned event setting as things stand at the moment.