Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Curses => Topic started by: EuchreJack on March 06, 2010, 02:30:39 am
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The main way to influence the Military Spending Issue is via Solder/Veteran sleepers promoting liberalism. There is currently no other way to reliably influence this issue. Oh, sure you can luck out on graffitti and broadcasts from the Cable/Radio stations, but generally the only consistent method is via sleepers.
This has to change. But how?
One idea would be to "roll" the Military Spending Issue into some other site, such as the Intelligence HQ (older players will see this as logical, as the Intelligence HQ used to be the Army Base, but that was before military spending was an issue, and it affected privacy protection).
There are probably better ideas, but Mr. Beer is not speaking to me. Yet.
Discuss.
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Currently the Fire Station doesn't affect any issue, right? And the only time the firemen are interesting is during arch conservative times when they all get flamethrowers. (which makes no sense) (neither does a lot of LCS... duh...)
Anyhow, an army base sounds good. Put it back, why not?
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I vaguely remember back when there was an army base, but it's been many years, and I don't have a copy of the game from back then. How did it work? Was there anything special about it?
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Currently the Fire Station doesn't affect any issue, right? And the only time the firemen are interesting is during arch conservative times when they all get flamethrowers. (which makes no sense) (neither does a lot of LCS... duh...)
Anyhow, an army base sounds good. Put it back, why not?
The Fire Station affects Free Speech. When Free Speech is C+, fire fighters turn into firemen, and they get flamethowers to assist them in their crusade against unacceptable speech. Trust me, it mkes perfect sense once you've read Farenheit 451.
Regarding the Military Spending issue, could a "Military Recruitment Center" in the university district serve the same purpose?
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how about instead you have an national guard armory or something instead of a army base.
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I vaguely remember back when there was an army base, but it's been many years, and I don't have a copy of the game from back then. How did it work? Was there anything special about it?
It pretty much was the Intelligence HQ, except the front door was not locked, and it was patrolled by more soldiers and less agents.
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Hackers should obtain evidence of "widespread" POW torturing or "civilian massacres".
Example: Hackers get a picture of a soldier forcing a terrorist into a clown suit and making him run in a giant hamster wheel at gunpoint. Published and media pick it up, blah blah blah.
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My Military spending seemed to jump after I shot up the Ministry of Love?
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I suggest that we add a new location for military barracks, and perhaps tie it to a few other issues as well (homosexuality springs to mind...). This area could feature new types of people...
Recruit - bloody common, most often moderate or conservative but can be liberal too, may have a bit of weapon skills. Armed with pistol, SMG or AR15 if gun control is conservative, and if gun control is liberal, they'll be unarmed as weapons won't be given to just anybody!
Officer - the corporate manager's military equivalent. A somewhat effiecent sleeper, has some weapons skills (pistol + random skills) and persuasion skills. Armed with a pistol. Becomes rarer as military spending lowers, but isn't especially rare even at L+. Always conservative.
MP - Deadly. Very good at spotting disguises and always comes armed. Not uncommon. Always conservative. Has good weapon skills.
General - a rare but powerful conservative speaker. Has a good pistol skill and other weapons as well, has a next-to-divine persuasion skill and high charisma. As a joke, I suggest they're called Warlords in ultra C+ society.
In addition, soldiers may appear in military base. The military base could also feature some sabotage options like the factories (ammo dumps, weapon lockers, fire alarms anyone?) or a secret military document safe.
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Good idea's, but one thing.
Gun laws don't affect the millitary.
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Good idea's, but one thing.
Gun laws don't affect the millitary.
If it doesn't, it should. I think L+ gun control would take away ALL guns in the game. So military would be armed with nightsticks, same as the police. Or even possibly have conservative versions of guitars :D (the banjo!?)
Anyway, the Fire House might be a "minor" location but I think it plays a huge part in the game. First of all, it's a great source of melee combatants, possibly fire fighters should also randomly have high music skill (because they're good with an ax :D). Anyway, at C+ levels, the effects of Free Speech are evident as firefighters become firemen, using blow torches to eliminate free speech.
I'm thinking a C+ free speech levels, writing to the newspaper/guardian should be highly dangerous, perhaps even at Hacker levels and you risk being raided by firemen who'll burn you up!! :o
As for locations, perhaps military should have more impact. Perhaps at C+ military the military takes over the Juice Bar and turns it into a recruitment center. There would be lots of soliders types around but it'd be a public area.
So recruits could be Liberal to Conservative, but the rest of the military should be very conservative.
Also, the Army Base should probably be re-included in the downtown area and have a database or safe or some special item that can release POW notes or terrorism reports (you mean they caught Osama 5 years ago!? What the hell has the War on Terror been about for the last half-decade!?)
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I'm thinking a C+ free speech levels, writing to the newspaper/guardian should be highly dangerous, perhaps even at Hacker levels and you risk being raided by firemen who'll burn you up!! :o
This *is* already part of the game. Trying playing nightmare mode.
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I'm thinking a C+ free speech levels, writing to the newspaper/guardian should be highly dangerous, perhaps even at Hacker levels and you risk being raided by firemen who'll burn you up!! :o
This *is* already part of the game. Trying playing nightmare mode.
I am, haven't seen it yet :(
I have noticed other things though. Slaves in the CEO HQ, Genetic mutants all over the place (liberal mutants and conservative pet mutants), all the renaming etc.
I'm still in the first year. Doing pretty well, but I'm getting worried about backlash so I've started an emergancy militia recruitment program (i.e. hitting the crack houses for AK totting gang members). I've gotten the public heavily on my side, but the pres has been vetoing all the bills passed before him. Most are still going through with 3/4 majority but I digress...
I'm happy to hear about that, though.
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Get a publishing company too! (hire lots of writer types for the liberal guardian). Those firemen will come... I got raided by them twice in my recent game, before free speech became more liberal.
If free speech isn't C++ in your game anymore, I think you've missed your chance.
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Good idea's, but one thing.
Gun laws don't affect the millitary.
Yeah, basically we need a way to combat gun laws as well. The military could be affected by gun laws, as I proposed, so recruits who basically are people who haven't been in the army for long, wouldn't be granted weapons under liberal laws. The more trusted conservatives (soldier, MP, officer) would still be armed.
For gun violence, one thing that would really turn the public opinion around would be an armed mob or militia killing people, looting, burning or pillaging. Which is exactly what the LCS does. But perhaps another way would be nice too - add a weapons locker to the public area of the police station, and make it always guarded by a special NPC like the bouncers (having that guy as a sleeper would make the action not bothersome). Unlocking the weapons locker would of course let anyone passing by grab a rifle and start shootin', and perhaps there could be a RNG roll to determine if some maniac actually does this (a bigger effect) or whether the open locker was noticed and locked again before anything serious happen (a small effect).
Another choice would be adding something like the Hunting Lodge which would feature corporate managers and various other conservative types blasting deer (liberal oppressed, can be released once people too) with AK47 (funny in a sick way). Could also affect animal rights.
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I'm thinking a C+ free speech levels, writing to the newspaper/guardian should be highly dangerous, perhaps even at Hacker levels and you risk being raided by firemen who'll burn you up!! :o
This *is* already part of the game. Trying playing nightmare mode.
You may be surprised to find out that firemen only raid your safehouse if you print a Special Edition.. That's it. And Special Editions are very dumb, since all they do is temporarily effect the issues in your direction and permenalty angering a major faction.
Kay12: Gun laws are social issues arnd can be effected by shooting up the court house.
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Actually I've never found the anger from special editions to be permanent or the positive effect any more temporary than any other effect.
And about gun laws, I know how to change them in the game as it currently is, but they happen to be the one that's hardest to change when playing something else than an AK47-bunch. Some people want other ways to impact this issue.
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You can effect gun laws using sleepers; Lawyers and Justices.
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At least I'd want some other way, too bad there's no very realistic way apart from the currently existing ones. However, wasn't this thread supposed to be about military spending, not gun control?
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Yup. ;)
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I like the idea of creating a Military Base to deal with the Military Spending issue rather than rolling it into what is now the Intelligence HQ. Kay12's suggested character types would be a good population basis for the place, and a few exclamation points could be sprinkled over the place to allow Liberals the opportunity to acquire information about how the money's actually being spent (acquiring a recruit's amateur video of a particularly gruesome torture, discovering that the military have no qualms about testing their experimental weapons on populace, and so forth). Since I often push my luck with the RNG, I'd find it quite enjoyable to take a squad of Liberals in there and see how many MPs I could blast before the military crushed me.
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Bumping this idea: have C+ military buy out the vegan co-op and turn it into a recruitment or army base...
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That would make nightmare starts a real killer, as they probably wouldn't have any hippies in there... but that's what nightmare starts are all about, right?
By the way, I have just made myself a new semifavorite location - Juice Bar! Has all nice special liberals.
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The main way to influence the Military Spending Issue is via Solder/Veteran sleepers promoting liberalism. There is currently no other way to reliably influence this issue. Oh, sure you can luck out on graffitti and broadcasts from the Cable/Radio stations, but generally the only consistent method is via sleepers.
This has to change. But how?
One idea would be to "roll" the Military Spending Issue into some other site, such as the Intelligence HQ (older players will see this as logical, as the Intelligence HQ used to be the Army Base, but that was before military spending was an issue, and it affected privacy protection).
There are probably better ideas, but Mr. Beer is not speaking to me. Yet.
Discuss.
I have just confirmed. Shooting up the Intelligence Agency/ Ministry of Love will influence the military spending issue. Maybe this is a holdover of it being the army base? In any case, problem solved. Or rather, there never was a problem in the first place.
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The army base was like five years ago, while the current military spending issue has only been around for a year or so. It was probably just a matter of needing a site for the military spending issue and tacking it onto the Intelligence HQ for lack of anything better.
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That would make nightmare starts a real killer, as they probably wouldn't have any hippies in there... but that's what nightmare starts are all about, right?
By the way, I have just made myself a new semifavorite location - Juice Bar! Has all nice special liberals.
That's the point. Although at nightmare C+ levels, the co-op/juice bar are still pretty useless because of the huge amount of conservatives vs. liberals.
The idea is basically that at C+ spending levels, the Military has to expand and so they buy out the Co-op farm to turn into a training ground. At < C+ levels they shut down the base and the hippies move back in.
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I'd say the Military recruiters would buy out the juice bar, as a co-op farm is less useful for setting up a recruitment office and the hippies are more tied to the area, both due to it being a farm.
But it makes sense that the juice bar would not have enough customers in Arch-Conservative land to stay in business. But it needs to be tied to a single issue, like the firehouse, and Military Spending is just the right issue. If the player neglects the miltary spending issue (as they are prone to do, I will admit this personally), then suddenly their favorite recruitment site is taken over by the Conservative Machine! Awesome!
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I was thinking they'd buy out the farm and turn it into a military base.
Perhaps recruitment was the wrong word? Perhaps they do both? Turn the co-op into a military base and because the juice bar no longer has organic fruit to use, it gets converted into a military recruitment place.
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...then suddenly their favorite recruitment site is taken over by the Conservative Machine! Awesome!
Considering my attitude toward certain recruitable characters, I might be the only person who genuinely considers this awesome and has no qualms with the vanishment of this great locale for aforementioned certain recruitable characters. Consequently, I am fully in support of the co-op becoming a military base and the juice bar turned into a recruitment facility. Huzzah!
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...then suddenly their favorite recruitment site is taken over by the Conservative Machine! Awesome!
Considering my attitude toward certain recruitable characters, I might be the only person who genuinely considers this awesome and has no qualms with the vanishment of this great locale for aforementioned certain recruitable characters. Consequently, I am fully in support of the co-op becoming a military base and the juice bar turned into a recruitment facility. Huzzah!
Thus, by that logic there is NO opposition to this idea! Definitely needs to be implemented then!
As a brief aside (ok, not really brief), you really do not lose any recruitables, as anyone that can be found in the Co-op and/or the juice bar can be found in the College Apartments or elsewhere. But the chance of finding the person you actually want goes down dramatically, to the point where anyone who would actually want the inconvenienced recruitables would just firebomb the new Military Establishements until they get back their prefered recruiting spot, which is one goal of this change. Now to see if we can convince Fox to put this in the next version...
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I'm thinking the balance is that the Military Recruitment site would be full of soldiers, veterans, and other top-notch fighters...assuming they don't shoot you for being a commie loving hippy!
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Now to see if we can convince Fox to put this in the next version...
Liberal protests with picket signs are in order. We shall petition him through non-violent means to get him to redress the matter!
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...then suddenly their favorite recruitment site is taken over by the Conservative Machine! Awesome!
Considering my attitude toward certain recruitable characters, I might be the only person who genuinely considers this awesome and has no qualms with the vanishment of this great locale for aforementioned certain recruitable characters. Consequently, I am fully in support of the co-op becoming a military base and the juice bar turned into a recruitment facility. Huzzah!
Juice bar & co-op: useless hippies, which are found all over the place anyway
Military recruitment centre/base: lots of soldiers for training stealth and disguise, recruiting (much later on) or seducing, as well as yet another location to incinerate
I am 100% in favour of this idea.
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Juice bar & co-op: useless hippies, which are found all over the place anyway
I admire your strength in voicing your attitude!
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Whoa, man, you guys really need to, like, chill out, or something. Let me just get my guitar, and I'll play a little song... *strum strum*... this one's called "Liberal Peace Flower Blooms Some Day Overthrowing Restricting Corporate Machine..."
[edit: Actually, this gives me an idea]
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...then suddenly their favorite recruitment site is taken over by the Conservative Machine! Awesome!
Considering my attitude toward certain recruitable characters, I might be the only person who genuinely considers this awesome and has no qualms with the vanishment of this great locale for aforementioned certain recruitable characters. Consequently, I am fully in support of the co-op becoming a military base and the juice bar turned into a recruitment facility. Huzzah!
Juice bar & co-op: useless hippies, which are found all over the place anyway
Military recruitment centre/base: lots of soldiers for training stealth and disguise, recruiting (much later on) or seducing, as well as yet another location to incinerate
I am 100% in favour of this idea.
Hippies are not useless. They maybe cheap, expendable and disposable, but they are not useless. And juice bar is the place for recruiting the only powerful liberals in the game: specialists mainly (liberal judges/authors/journalists for the Guardian for example), very helpful if playing something else than AK47 revolution.
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Agreed. Hippies are very useful both in the early game for high heart & misc. non combat skills and easy recruitment, and end game because they are easily recruited by your subordiantes' subordinates' subordinates for massive trouble making/fundraising.
That's why losing the juice bar and/or vegan co-op is quite the blow at C+ military levels.
But as part of a game balancer, it opens up one or two prime areas for both mayhem and recruitment of soldiers. Actually this might be a flaw of the game is that at C+ it suddenly becomes very easy to directly effect the military spending issue, so you raid the army base a couple times and then it will flip back to the hippy factories. So here is my updated proposal:
Either the Vegan Co-Op is turned into a military base, a private place full of soldiers & guard dogs with loot (generic army equipment which is high value and other high value loot), treasonable secrets in the form of covert operations plans (think Special Ops going in and assassinating "troublemakers" around the world, overthrowing dictators, blowing up schools under the cover of "eliminating threats"), and a special area. I'm suggesting an Armory full of assualt rifles and body armor with high security and instant alarms if it is opened.
OR the Juice Bar is converted into a military recruitment office. It will be full of high physical conservatives. Security Guards & Police at low chances, Soldiers and Athletes at medium chances, and Teenagers and College Students at high frequency. It will be a public place, but still dangerous due to the likelihood that if alarms are set off, the military will respond (not the police) and you have a good chance of encoutering baddies with high weapon skill and assault rifles.
I think having both things happen is a bit extreme. Given the two, I think converting the juice bar is slightly better. It's a public place so recruitment is possible, and the military base would end up being very similar to the CIA HQ in terms of loot, enemies, and secrets. The two have a high overlap. Plus, because the army base would really only effect one issue, having two zones for one single issue is a bit extreme. Then again, having more dungeons & specials are always fun.
If possible, perhaps have a complete zone conversion. So the juice bar would start with an open "recruitment" center that has the above things, and a locked door that leads to a private area that has the rest of the base (similar to the police department and court house zones).
Finally, I think the trigger should be C+ military laws, but it should only flip back once Military Spending reaches 'M' level or greater (to avoid a close game constantly flipping the zone back and forth and back and forth)
Anyway, the purpose & impact would be numerous:
- More Dynamic World - another zone dramatically changes in response to C+ laws
- More appropriate game play - why are there so many hippy communes in Nightmare mode?
- Game Balance - at harder difficulty, although dangerous it gives you access to a prime source of mid-level fighters, operatives, and equipment
- Issue Focus - clear area to effect military spending.
- fun & Fun! - more dungeons are always fun, and more soldiers & M16 baddies are always more Fun!
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...then suddenly their favorite recruitment site is taken over by the Conservative Machine! Awesome!
Considering my attitude toward certain recruitable characters, I might be the only person who genuinely considers this awesome and has no qualms with the vanishment of this great locale for aforementioned certain recruitable characters. Consequently, I am fully in support of the co-op becoming a military base and the juice bar turned into a recruitment facility. Huzzah!
Juice bar & co-op: useless hippies, which are found all over the place anyway
Military recruitment centre/base: lots of soldiers for training stealth and disguise, recruiting (much later on) or seducing, as well as yet another location to incinerate
I am 100% in favour of this idea.
Hippies are not useless. They maybe cheap, expendable and disposable, but they are not useless. And juice bar is the place for recruiting the only powerful liberals in the game: specialists mainly (liberal judges/authors/journalists for the Guardian for example), very helpful if playing something else than AK47 revolution.
Just to reiderate what I said before: ALL the recruitables found at the juice bar can be found elsewhere. It just is not as easy. Check out the Court House for the Liberal Judge, and the college/downtown apartments for all. But, apartments have a low encounter rate, these encounters are mixed with other encounters, and there are far more Conservatives (Moderates are actually good for the player when going for sleepers).
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Oh sure, we could get rid of all other locations in the game since anyone can be found in the park (except for mutants and guard dogs, amirite?).
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Actually, anyone that can be found at the Juice Bar can be found at one (and usually two) of the apartment types. They're really not all that unique.
Also, it's not just the park where anyone can be found, the latte stand has the same feature.