Bay 12 Games Forum

Other Projects => Curses => Topic started by: Sergius on May 28, 2008, 07:46:00 pm

Title: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Sergius on May 28, 2008, 07:46:00 pm
I just send some of my guys to jail. I made a backup to see what kind of sentences I was gonna get by pleading guilty (one was guilty no matter what, because of breaking out of prison, but that one was buggy too).

My Death Squad (composed by the leader and 5 other gangmembers) got charged with 99 murders, 70-ish assaults and so on (pretty much every identical charge, +/- one or two charges of possession of illegal weapons)

5 of them got 1 to 2 consecutive life terms. No surprise there.

One got over 16000 consecutive life terms! <-- THERE MAY BE A SLIGHT BUG THERE

A couple people got sent to jail for two months for resisting arrest (wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose)

One ho got 2 consecutive life terms for prostitution, and 2 charges of escaping prison (and one of resisting arrest).

I would say this is major breakage (I don't mind so much the guy that got over 10000 years of prison, because I wasn't gonna wait 100 years anyway, except for the fact that it *looks* broken, at the very least. the Prostitute getting 2 life terms for escaping prison after being arrested for hustlin' was just inacceptable tho).

I got the save game from the day earlier to the trial. Haven't tested it with the source code 'cuz I can't get it to build in Eclipse :P

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Sergius on May 28, 2008, 07:51:00 pm
I should also point out that breaking out of prison after a life sentence is fairly trivial, so it's a bit of a bummer that every one of his recruits loses contact.

EDIT: I also noticed that remaining time in the Review screen is written in the negative for life sentences. Don't know if that's intentional or not.

[ May 28, 2008: Message edited by: Sergius ]

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Hanure on May 28, 2008, 08:20:00 pm
I think getting life sentences for escaping prison makes sence.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: mainiac on May 28, 2008, 08:23:00 pm
quote:
Originally posted by Hanure:
<STRONG>I think getting life sentences for escaping prison makes sence.</STRONG>

That sounds like conservative thinking to me.

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Hanure on May 28, 2008, 08:25:00 pm
Erp, I..I mean that conservatives would place anyone liberal enough to leave prison in bars for life, as they enhance thier own agenda.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: BishopX on May 28, 2008, 08:43:00 pm
I've had similar issues, several of my hackers and gun fighters got sentences so long that they rolled over into negative numbers.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: mainiac on May 28, 2008, 09:10:00 pm
quote:
Originally posted by Hanure:
<STRONG>Erp, I..I mean that conservatives would place anyone liberal enough to leave prison in bars for life, as they enhance thier own agenda.</STRONG>

... changing to topic to something completely unrelated...

What the name of your favorite corporation?

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Jonathan S. Fox on May 29, 2008, 04:01:00 am
A lot of the sentencing would vary depending on law; prison law, in particular, could see punishments -- and negative side effects from being in prison with poor conditions -- ranging significantly. At the most Liberal, life sentences could be abolished entirely.

Right now, life for escaping prison is a bit of a hack -- the game doesn't track how much time you have left to serve once you escape, so rather than risk getting a lighter charge, it slaps with "forever". But really, most of the time you wouldn't see escaping prison result in life in prison as it is now. Even if they feel the imprisonment was just, people are often mildly sympathetic to the human desire to escape, so it's not as toughly punished as you might expect.

Case in point, the Geneva Conventions. In achieving humanitarian standards for handling prisoners of war, they must balance the crucial need of the detaining power to maintain order and discipline in a POW camp with the individual soldier's sense of duty to escape and rejoin the war effort. Recognizing that this is the unstoppable force and the immovable wall, they make an effort to resolve this by allowing the prisoner to be disciplined for escape attempts, but only if the escape fails; if they get out of the country or rejoin friendly forces, they cannot later be punished for the successful escape if they end up in the hands of the detaining power again. Additionally, even if their escape attempt fails, punishment for minor crimes carried out for the sole purpose of getting away is limited.

Locking people up in a prison or POW camp and then deciding what to make of it when they run away is complicated. On one hand, you don't want to encourage that behavior. On the other, it's hard to blame them. This -- combined with laws treating it differently depending on the legal philosophy in the area -- makes it a great candidate for being dependent on the state of the country.

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Ioric Kittencuddler on May 29, 2008, 04:40:00 am
I'd think an Elite Liberal Prison would be more like a rehab center or something.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: E. Albright on May 29, 2008, 08:43:00 am
Aye, if you're in a EL prison you should come out with a couple of points in useless fluff skills like Copier Repair, Professional Basketweaving, or Dental Hygienistry.    :p

[ May 29, 2008: Message edited by: E. Albright ]

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: mainiac on May 29, 2008, 11:31:00 am
Thinking it out, liberal justice could actually be more dangerous to the squad.  Put a man in a box and mistreat him and you've created an enemy if/when he get's out of that box.  Put him in a nice rehabilitation center with a therapist who's going to address the root of his problems and you'll take away his need to rebel.  So, liberal therapy centers could successfully rehabilitate LCS members, removing them from your organization forever.  You could add another category after martyrs "Working the 9-5".  It would be conservative to think otherwise.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Jonathan S. Fox on May 29, 2008, 11:39:00 am
That's a very good idea. One thing Toady was mentioning about the game as he left it (and as it is now) is that the difficulty of the game gets easier as the laws become more Liberal, and harder as they become more Conservative. (Edit: The reason this is bad is because it means the game gets easier as you approach the endgame, rather than harder.) Having successful rehabilitations in prison would be an increased level of threat, but also a cuddly compassionate one that comes when the laws turn green.

[ May 29, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Ioric Kittencuddler on May 29, 2008, 03:38:00 pm
Of course if things started to swing back towards conservativism the rehabilitated would be likely to revert, since the system that kept them happy and content was being dismantled.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: E. Albright on May 29, 2008, 06:36:00 pm
Also, I'd expect increased complacency to set in, and LCS tactics to seem more and more brutal and aberrant as we moved closer to Liberal Utopia. A long-term goal of balancing the difficult in the endgame seems good and just and right.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: polpoint on May 29, 2008, 10:21:00 pm
I like the last idea (even though I have never stayed in a game long enough to make society very liberal yet)
Another way to implement something along these lines would be to come up wtih a couple of negative aspects that can be added to the different aspects of society as it gets more liberal - besides gun control (that's the only one that does anything negative right?)
maybe, as they increase, some of them cause negative things and some of them cause increasingly less positive reactions to liberal actions

here i am telling people to make the game harder - what am I thinking?!

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: mainiac on May 29, 2008, 10:33:00 pm
Gun control is a boon.  Conservative gun laws are SCARY if your still a little fish.  Between SWAT teams and the black market, it's not too hard to get guns in a liberal society.  They're a big source of income for me in fact.
Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Hanure on May 29, 2008, 10:54:00 pm
maybe guns should become more expencive at the black market when the control laws are liberal, also SWAT teams are going to get a lot more difficult I hear.

As another aside, I really like the idea of increased difficulty as the game goes on, as it is I am bored after two or more years of game time, at which point I am pretty much just making sleepers, and hitting places that get big conservative boosts.

Title: Re: The Broken Arm of Justice
Post by: Jonathan S. Fox on May 30, 2008, 08:59:00 pm
The trouble with the black market is that it basically weakens the big disadvantage to the gun control going Liberal. I never intended it to be a really easy replacement, and right now the only balance is that it's a bit more expensive than the equivalent pawn shop guns. One thought is to make tougher police crack down on the black market more effectively, and killing police tend to Conservatise the police regulation issue rather than Liberalize it. Then, the more you abuse guns by killing cops, the more they take away your source of armament while getting tougher themselves. I dunno, not really sure -- I'm hesitant to punish the player too much for taking action that realistically would backfire, since that pretty much covers most LCS actions anyway, so there's the question of where it stops.