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As far as gun control being a Liberal motive, you will need to get it to Elite Liberal to win the game, but that doesn't mean it won't make your life more difficult if it gets there early. Just a means to an end...
I can understand wanting tax law to remain an issue. Here's the problem which led me to replacing tax law rather than just adding gun control to the list: There isn't enough room on the [L]iberal Agenda screen for any more laws. It's a silly visual problem, but if we increase the total number of laws, it becomes a problem. Now, that doesn't mean it's insurmountable, but we have a few options.
First option is that we can remove something else other than tax law.
Second option is to change the [L]iberal Agenda screen to support more laws.
Options for the second option include adding a paging system for the laws, so that you press a key to go on to the next page (kind of icky, it's nice having one page), and reorganizing the screen as it is to support more laws. I can't add more lines to screen, but maybe shrinking the text and adding a second column? I'm open to thoughts on how to best support additional laws. There are certainly more issues which could be added, if we want to expand the number of laws (foreign policy, campaign finance, etc...)
I definitely think that there's room for improvement on the Liberal Guardian. News articles in particular are currently completely superficial; they do absolutely nothing. I want them to work like you describe, writing about LCS actions, current events, even responses to major news stories. I also agree that it would be much cooler if you could see more specific information about what you're writing about when the Guardian is released at the end of the month.
I don't think there's a way to page through major news articles.
I'll check out the squad setting up screen, because you're right about that, I may be able to re-use that code, which would make life very easy.
Edit: I don't *think* you need to have the files in the same location as the printing press, but you will need to have both somewhere. Beware that hackers, upon getting the files, will not put them in the squad's inventory, but in the safehouse's. If the safehouse is raided later, even if unoccupied, the files will then be confiscated.
[ June 09, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
With that said, there are ways to minimize the annoyance. One thing I do to deal with that is to take one step, then wait continuously instead of walking continuously. This is because waiting is just as likely to generate a new encounter, but if you over-wait on an encounter, they won't leave immediately, they'll just stand there waiting for you to make a move.
- The pawn shop sells different guns depending on the state of the law. You can get more powerful guns when it's Arch-Conservative than when it's Elite Liberal.
- If you carry a gun which is illegal to carry due to the current laws, you will cause instant alarm when spotted by Conservatives. So now walking through the front door of the Police Station with a squad of clowns with AK-47s will in fact cause a panic almost immediately. Exceptions are if you are able to conceal the weapon in your clothing, or you are wearing clothing which makes you look like you have business holding that gun (so if you're toting an M16 at the juice bar, you'll be less likely to cause a panic if you wear an army uniform than a John Ashcroft mask).
- If the gun in question is legal, but it's still out of place, you'll cause suspicion, but not instant alarm. So walking around a sweatshop naked may not be suspicious, but walking around a sweatshop naked with a shotgun under your arm will be.
- There is a new crime called "carrying an illegal weapon". I haven't ironed out all the bugs with this.
- If the LCS is popular, it will tend to disincline people toward voting for gun control. What happens is that LCS actions will tend to make people believe that guns are a citizen's defense against tyranny. This feeling will fade if you disband. The President, Congress, and the Supreme Court will be unswayed by such arguments.
Persuasion can be increased by defending yourself in court, recruiting (by hostage interrogation, dating, or discussing the issues), soliciting donations (but only if you have low skill), selling brownies, and bluffing when fighting evil. It increases slowly except when in court, at which point it increases very fast, but that's also a great way to get thrown in jail.
Disguise can be increased by wearing the appropriate uniform in a restricted area and standing or walking near conservatives. It increases very slowly.
The source code is up there, I just posted the wrong link. 
I don't understand what you mean about the [r]eview and reorganize screen though. Do you mean sorting by safehouse...?
[ June 09, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
1) Have the LCS be well known and well respected. The Liberal Guardian well help improve the LCS's standing slightly, but past about the first 20% of the population you'll probably need to use LCS actions to advertise the Guardian, and not the other way around.
2) Use intelligent, skilled writers to write good articles that make people think. If you have bad writers, you get a lot of "nutty" articles, which tends to alienate Liberals. This is probably what is happening if you get the message that only Conservatives are reading the Liberal Guardian. The other possibility is that the LCS is polling very poorly as far as who actually respects the group, which causes people to think badly of anything your people write.
3) Have enough articles written in any given month to draw people's attention. Even if you write a good newspaper and the LCS is quite popular, if it's only carrying a couple of articles a month, people will tend to think of it less as a pillar of Liberal thought to show to their friends, and more as a mildly interesting sideshow.
Printing presses will help you to reach a greater distribution by converting the Guardian from an online newsletter into a real newspaper.
Publishing a special edition will also provide a huge one-time boost in readership, plus it will likely improve the writing of all of your writers in the future (by giving them juice) and it will improve the respect and recognition of the LCS by a large amount, all of which should help your future releases. You can only do this if you have a printing press and something to feature in the special edition.
I am totally open to suggestions for changes with the way this works. If it seems too hard, too easy, anything.
Edit: But the score board is compatible, yes, you can copy that over. The high score format hasn't changed since LCS 3 first came out!
And you're welcome. I enjoy working on it! Let me know how the Liberal Guardian feels; it's still roughly made, so any feedback will help me to refine it and make it fit in with everything else. Also, how are the new weapons? Do they make sense? Are they confusing? Do you get an idea of how to use them, or is it unclear where they fit in?
[ June 08, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
I gave her written permission afterwards.
I have an insane week, including a police officer kicking in my front door and missing two college assignments, but that hasn't stopped me from finally releasing the new version of Liberal Crime Squad! Now with writing crazy rants, more interesting liberal guardian, new weapons, and an altered police search method! Also with bugfixes and balance tweaks. Try it out! Let me know what you think!
My thought on gun control would be that you'd need to get it to Elite Liberal status -- the extreme of having all guns completely banned for civilian use -- but that doing so would be somewhat counter-productive toward certain strategies. The main issue is that I'd want that issue to be carefully manipulable by the LCS. There should be a concrete way to Liberalize the issue and a concrete way to de-Liberalize the issue. If the LCS shoots up a police station, should that help or hurt the Liberal Agenda? On one hand, they've demonstrated the dangers of guns. On the other, if the LCS is getting positive press for this, aren't they glorifying gun use? Isn't their ability to resist police sieges something the public would like to maintain, rather than hurt? And if armed LCS action actually hurts the Liberal Agenda on gun control, and makes guns more acceptable to the public, how does the LCS promote gun control? One thing I'm reluctant to do is invalidate a very combat-oriented play style, in which the player has a lot of weapons and a lot of people to use them, and is constantly fighting.
One possibility is that Gun Control could be made an issue that tends to slowly Liberalize over time, and so long as the LCS doesn't hurt the issue. Thus, as long as they disarm in the very end, Liberals will forget their temporary Conservative leanings and return to their True Liberal Nature. I'm not sure if I like this approach though, it seems to be a bit of a weak solution to the issue. If I do add a gun control issue, I'd want it to be properly thought out, and be an interesting dimension that adds to gameplay rather than just getting in the way.
I considered whether they'd need a wheelchair when adding the FREE Clinic job, and consciously decided not to require them to procure one. I don't know how they get there, but they do. By the way, you can get a wheelchair by going to the activation screen and selecting the I'll have to release what I have at some point. The writing system is incomplete, but it'll give people a taste and I'll be able to hear feedback on what's there so far.teal a car option. It'll have changed to
ecuring a wheelchair.
I'm adding a few new weapons, but don't want to complicate the skill system further. I'm trying to fit everything under existing gun skills. So I'm splitting the weapons like this: If it's bigger than a pistol, and fires only one shot per round, it's a rifle. If it's bigger than a pistol, and fires multiple shots per round, it's an assault rifle. The problem is that I'm adding a couple of weapons that aren't actually assault rifles to this category. The main issue being an SMG (submachine gun -- smaller and fires pistol ammunition). So I think I might need to rename it. I'd like to keep the name for the skill under 14 letters long. It's currently "Assault Rifle" -- 13 letters. I'm thinking about "Machine Gun" -- 11 letters. The problem with this is that the usage of the term Machine Gun to cover all fully automatic firearms may be a distinctly American usage. Otherwise it could be taken to refer to very heavy personal weapons unsuitable for LCS-scale fighting. I'd like to get other opinions about this (do you even care?), simply because I'm developing for public release, and I want people to be happy with the name for the category.
The other alternative is to add a new skill for it. I'm just trying not to inflate the skill set unnecessarily.
Edit: At the moment, what I'm going to do is just leave it Assault Rifle and let people figure out that SMGs are under the assault rifle skill in this game.
Edit again: Actually, for now I'm going to make the SMG draw on BOTH pistol and assault rifle skills. It's fairly abstracted anyway, and I like the idea of having it be influenced both by your skill with small weapons and your skill with fully automatic weapons.
Edit tres: The multi-skill system seems to be working well, and I'm comfortable with that, so unless anybody has any objections, I'll probably use it in the next version.
[ June 04, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
[ June 04, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
[ June 04, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]
I've also been thinking about making a gun control issue. At the moment it seems to be a glaring omission, given how pertinent it is to the LCS's activities. That particular issue would probably be influenced any time the LCS uses guns in combat. You'd see a progressive scale, movement in either direction simultaneously helping and hindering the LCS...
