Horse Thievery

In the Wild West, one of the most common things stolen were horses (and cows, but we don't have cattle in game). Horse thieves were usually hung or shot for this serious crime.

Walk up to someone else's horse, open it's menu. One of the options is "Steal this horse". Select it, and after 2 minutes, the horse is unlocked. During the time it is being stolen, the horse owner would see a message similar to a Cartel being taken over "Your Horse is being Stolen!". The owner could ride the horse away from the thief, or call it back to a stable using the Stable Manager, to stop the timer.

Unlocking the horse would let you ride it around, or take from its inventory, but would NOT transfer ownership of the horse. You can steal neither your own, nor your teammates', horses.

There could be NPC Horses in Towns, that you can steal allowing you to unlock and ride them or store things in them, but not /call them or own them. Sheriffs would be alerted when these Town NPC horses were being stolen, similar to robbing a conductor.

Speed Horses/Horse 2's could be found in Indian Camps where stealing it spawns some angry Indians around you, Donkeys could be found tucked away in Mines. A Tank horse with some gold in its inventory could be found tied up outside a Sheriff station, or attached to a Stagecoach in the Wild. Stealing any of these would not give you ownership of them, but it would let people experience the premium horses prior to purchasing their own.

Beginning to steal a horse should give you 750 bounty. Successfully stealing a horse should result in a few thousand bounty, and possibly turn you Rogue for 3-5 minutes.



Disclaimer: I like killing people's horses. There's no need to debate it in this thread, thanks ahead of time.

 

IMO, you shouldn't be able to sell someone's premium horse so that they lose it forever. Would it just respawn in an hour after being sold?
edit: This is exploitable, would require further thought.

And yeah, that Horse Dealer would be a great additional dimension to horse thieving.

 

OK, so, because Premium Horses are able to be bought for Real $$$, and because finding one in the wild and selling it to a dealer would result in 100K+ profit, Horse Dealers should refuse to buy Premium Horses. This would allow for horses to be sold to Dealers for a higher % of the original cost as well, perhaps even 100%. Current is 50%

edit: it does not make sense for a player's USD$ to be able to be stolen from them.

Also, currently the premium horses seem to be impossible to buy from the Stable Manager in game.

 

But it requires someone to AFK while having their horse out. Two minutes is comparable to the time it takes to push a horse outside of Town. So it wouldn't be changing much from the way things currently are.

And if you can ride it, you can ride it outside of no pvp zone and kill it to get the loot, so realistically you cannot be both +1 Ride and -1 Loot

 

This would also increase the value of houses as a safe storage place.