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Other Projects => Curses => Topic started by: BrosephStalin on April 07, 2013, 02:53:44 am

Title: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: BrosephStalin on April 07, 2013, 02:53:44 am
How do you change policy? Government is full of conservatives. I guess you just keep getting into the newspaper to gain attention? Does writing for the liberal guardian actually influence anything? Sorry for the newby questions, but even after searching google/ the wiki I'm still at a loss.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: Jboy2000000 on April 07, 2013, 03:37:24 am
You have to keep doing things to swing the public opinion, and then liberals will start to join the government, and based on public opinions you may also have the people vote in liberal laws. Writing for the Liberal Guardian boosts the opinion bonus you get from doing onsite actions, as well as stump the negative effects from alienating the masses.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: usr_share on April 07, 2013, 03:44:42 am
Not necessarily.

First of all, even a Conservative Congress can be influenced if you influence the public opinion enough. The Senate is harder to influence, though, but at least you'll stop Conservative bills from getting to the President.

Secondly, on October of each even year, the whole House and a third of Senate gets reelected. Depending on the public opinion, they may become more Liberal or more Conservative. (For some reason, presidential elections are once per six years in this game, not once per four.)

Not only that, but on October, propositions are voted on directly by the public; this is the easiest way to liberalize the federal policy.

If the public opinion becomes _really_ liberal, then an Elite Liberal Amendment may be proposed. If it succeeds by being ratified in 38 states, then either the whole Congress or the whole Supreme Court gets reelected / reappointed.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: BrosephStalin on April 07, 2013, 04:26:57 am
Thanks for the replies, but how do you sway public opinion? Somehow I don't think killing security guards and spraying graffiti really gives people a good image when they think liberal. Is there some other way to sway opinion, or is it mostly based on site raids?
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: usr_share on April 07, 2013, 04:38:35 am
Thanks for the replies, but how do you sway public opinion? Somehow I don't think killing security guards and spraying graffiti really gives people a good image when they think liberal. Is there some other way to sway opinion, or is it mostly based on site raids?

Yes, it is. If the newspapers say "LCS strikes" instead of "LCS rampage", you're doing the right thing.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: KA101 on April 07, 2013, 12:52:35 pm
OK.  First, LCS isn't actually that compatible with actual sociology.  If at any point you think "that doesn't make sense", well, maybe it doesn't, but run it through a Hollywood filter first.  Movie Physics, Rule of Cool, etc are very prevalent.

As for public opinion's effect on the issues: yeah, it doesn't happen too often, but when it does it's immediate and significant.

Every significant political shift hits at the end of a month.  Elections are at the end of October to simulate Election Day (Tuesday after the first Monday in November. /BA in political science).  You get direct popular vote on laws once per year, Congress/Presidential voting/signature twice per year IIRC, and Supreme Court decisions/appointments once per year.  I can dig up the schedule of what happens when if you like--got it on another computer.  There's a kinda-secret way to directly affect one issue, but that's a one-time deal.

Pretty confident that Presidential is four years--did Fox change it?
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: MetalSlimeHunt on April 07, 2013, 12:55:24 pm
As far as I know the Presidential elections are still every four years.

Anyway, when it comes to swaying political figures, it is important to remember that Arch-Conservatives and Elite Liberals may never be swayed, no matter what public opinion is. They're too radical to not support their own interests.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: SealyStar on April 07, 2013, 01:24:59 pm
As far as I know the Presidential elections are still every four years.

Anyway, when it comes to swaying political figures, it is important to remember that Arch-Conservatives and Elite Liberals may never be swayed, no matter what public opinion is. They're too radical to not support their own interests.

Yes, presidential elections are every four years, on the same schedule as in reality. The conservative president who takes power in 2009 (at the beginning of the game) was theoretically elected in 2008, the next election is in 2012, then 2016, 2020, 2024, and so on.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: usr_share on April 07, 2013, 02:33:55 pm
Sorry. It's just that the wiki says "every six" and, so far, I failed to see a second election in 2016 (my only winning run ended in '13, and my losing runs end earlier)
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: BrosephStalin on April 07, 2013, 05:07:19 pm
OK.  First, LCS isn't actually that compatible with actual sociology.  If at any point you think "that doesn't make sense", well, maybe it doesn't, but run it through a Hollywood filter first.  Movie Physics, Rule of Cool, etc are very prevalent.

As for public opinion's effect on the issues: yeah, it doesn't happen too often, but when it does it's immediate and significant.

Every significant political shift hits at the end of a month.  Elections are at the end of October to simulate Election Day (Tuesday after the first Monday in November. /BA in political science).  You get direct popular vote on laws once per year, Congress/Presidential voting/signature twice per year IIRC, and Supreme Court decisions/appointments once per year.  I can dig up the schedule of what happens when if you like--got it on another computer.  There's a kinda-secret way to directly affect one issue, but that's a one-time deal.

Pretty confident that Presidential is four years--did Fox change it?

Thanks, but you don't have to dig up the schedule for me. I would like to know how to directly influence policy on an issue though- I kinda figured that sweatshop raids would affect labor laws and immigration laws, that kind of thing. Am I wrong?
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: seth-- on April 07, 2013, 05:22:52 pm
OK.  First, LCS isn't actually that compatible with actual sociology.  If at any point you think "that doesn't make sense", well, maybe it doesn't, but run it through a Hollywood filter first.  Movie Physics, Rule of Cool, etc are very prevalent.

As for public opinion's effect on the issues: yeah, it doesn't happen too often, but when it does it's immediate and significant.

Every significant political shift hits at the end of a month.  Elections are at the end of October to simulate Election Day (Tuesday after the first Monday in November. /BA in political science).  You get direct popular vote on laws once per year, Congress/Presidential voting/signature twice per year IIRC, and Supreme Court decisions/appointments once per year.  I can dig up the schedule of what happens when if you like--got it on another computer.  There's a kinda-secret way to directly affect one issue, but that's a one-time deal.

Pretty confident that Presidential is four years--did Fox change it?

Thanks, but you don't have to dig up the schedule for me. I would like to know how to directly influence policy on an issue though- I kinda figured that sweatshop raids would affect labor laws and immigration laws, that kind of thing. Am I wrong?
Yes, it's like that.
The wiki has a list of issues related to each location: http://lcs.wikidot.com/locations
Also, there are special points in some locations, marked with an exclamation sign in the map. Doing something in most of those can help you with public opinion.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: Cheedows on April 07, 2013, 09:07:15 pm
Regarding rampage vs strikes, alienating the masses would involve you murdering everyone, so that would be a rampage
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: Grimith on April 08, 2013, 08:04:13 am
The Liberal Guardian can have a major impact on public opinion, but you must be careful with it if Free Speech is at C+. The Firemen are very interested in attacking those who are responsible for harmful speech. Special editions at the end of each month (created with evidence acquired on-site) will also draw the ire of various government factions, regardless of the current state of Free Speech.

As for how to change policy, I believe everyone else has addressed that part of the OP. The LCS Wiki is outdated in some sections and vague in others, but it provides a gist of which sites control which issues. You can observe yourself how your actions influence public opinion if you have someone skilled in Computers; simply have that Liberal take opinion polls every day while you Go Forth to Stop EVIL. As you vandalize industrial equipment and release cute little bunnies from cages, you'll see the modifiers fluctuate.

It will take some time, but if you motivate the populace enough, they will ouster even an Arch-Conservative Nightmare government through the power of Elite Liberal Amendments, and you will be well on your way towards winning the game.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: Callista on April 08, 2013, 09:30:58 am
Ah, but the Firemen are such fun to play with when they siege you. And you get flamethrowers from them!  :D

I'm working on the wiki thing today; maybe some decent pages on sites and issues and activities that affect them. The ol' brain doesn't want to do schoolwork today anyhow. Ah, the wonders of being an adult; you can do silly things like editing wikis for political satire games when any reasonable parent would be throwing your textbooks at you.

BTW, does anybody know whether it's possible to download the source code as plain text, so I can search it for relevant variables? I'm not actually going to modify the source code; just look at it. For that I don't need a compiler.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: KA101 on April 08, 2013, 08:46:13 pm
Yeah, well the Firemen seem to burn down my safehouse even if they never directly shoot at me.  And I can't repair the place, ever.   :(
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: Jonathan S. Fox on April 08, 2013, 09:12:26 pm
BTW, does anybody know whether it's possible to download the source code as plain text, so I can search it for relevant variables? I'm not actually going to modify the source code; just look at it. For that I don't need a compiler.

http://lcsgame.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lcsgame/trunk/ (http://lcsgame.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/lcsgame/trunk/)

Feel free to browse online, or just scroll down and hit the download GNU tarball link to download to your computer.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: Xaioxaiofan on April 09, 2013, 05:41:45 am
Start the liberal newspaper, have a massive sleeper network feeding me classified info, publish said info in the special edition and it's all green in a year or two.
Title: Re: How do you actually get policy changed?
Post by: Cheedows on April 09, 2013, 06:08:16 pm
Newspapers are great, just have some liberals who can guard against special sieges and you're fine