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[couchchou]

Hi, I think I found a pretty consistent bug with version 1.41 (using IsaacG's windows version).

I believe the game always crashes upon encountering a supervillain's minion for me, as when I was attacked by the supervillain's minions, moving onto a tile with an enemy immediately crashes the game -- no error message is displayed.

I started a new game with a fresh download, but after uncovering the New Earth Conspiracy, I wandered around the Plaza with a squad to find potential minions to kidnap, but the game would just occasionally crash when moving into a new spot, and I theorize that it's because I'm encountering a supervillain's minion again, causing the game to crash, but I don't know for sure.

Sorry if this bug was already posted.

[SlatersQuest]

I think I found your bug.

Just to check: are you playing the game on single-city mode or on multi-city mode?

[couchchou]

Single city mode

[SlatersQuest]

Version 1.42 released - get it at the usual place.

Changes:
-couchchou's bug found and fixed; superpowered minions now spawn as intended and don't crash the game.
-Terra Vitae spouses now display their type name properly on the liberal stats screen ('husband' or 'wife' depending on gender)
-Certain enemy types now aim for the head when attacking Liberals as they were supposed to
-Movies now have a random factor that goes into determining the sizes of their budgets, as well as a blurb on the movie inspiration screen that gives an idea as to how big that budget is

[IsaacG]

Version 1.42 released - get it at the usual place.

Changes:
-couchchou's bug found and fixed; superpowered minions now spawn as intended and don't crash the game.
-Terra Vitae spouses now display their type name properly on the liberal stats screen ('husband' or 'wife' depending on gender)
-Certain enemy types now aim for the head when attacking Liberals as they were supposed to
-Movies now have a random factor that goes into determining the sizes of their budgets, as well as a blurb on the movie inspiration screen that gives an idea as to how big that budget is

For Windows
http://www.mediafire.com/file/rabva9jldpppkpq/Terravitae_1.42_for_Windows.zip

[couchchou]

Using the new 1.42 version from IsaacG, I found a few more things:

--I found Superpowered Minions out and about at various sites, but the game still crashes when trying to fight them off in a siege

--The game crashes when you are caught trying to have multiple dates at once

--Maybe I'm just dense, but I couldn't find the Supervillain in the Secret Laboratory, but I did find them in the other two lairs.

--Finally, when trying to obtain clues for the NEC, after obtaining the first clue it said that there was only one clue left.

This is in Single City Mode.

Thank you!

[wafflesoflife]

In the windows version, I can't find anyone with magic or powers and some of the new npcs won't spawn also in paragon city the superhero base is just a blank map where you can't move. Is there any way of fixing this?

[SlatersQuest]

Thanks for the reports - I will work on them when I am able. Right now I've got some professional work to do.

waffles, what are the laws in your game? If the laws aren't fairly extreme, then people with magic and powers will not generally spawn.

[Taberone]

-Certain enemy types now aim for the head when attacking Liberals as they were supposed to

Interesting. Would certain enemy types preferring to aim for the limbs be possible, like cops and SWAT? Sending a unwanted Liberal to commit suicide by cop is one thing that could potentially be nerfed if cops preferred to aim at the limbs, since they auto-arrest you in combat if your health is at Badly Wounded or below, and limb shots by themselves cannot kill a character (bleeding out, on the other hand...), only severely weaken them.

It would also enhance survivability of Liberals against police in general even if you're not doing suicide by cop, which is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, your Liberal got to live another day because the cops blasted out his kneecaps before subduing and arresting his heavily wounded ass, rather than put one between his eyes. On the other hand, he's alive to spill the beans and testify in court against you if his Heart stat is low.

[SlatersQuest]

At the moment, no, cops aim for the chest and death squads for the head. I might make SWAT aim for the legs.

My understanding of police procedure is that cops aim for the largest target (the torso) because if they're using guns, they're past the point of attempting non-lethal force. Part of this is because there is no "safe" part of the human body where you can shoot without killing someone. There are important blood vessels everywhere.

Also, this is Liberal Crime Squad. The cops are Conservative - they're supposed to be the bad guys. I suppose I might make police negotiators aim for the legs when they have to use their guns, and I suppose maybe also Amerindian police, but they're the only ones.

[TastyMints]

At the moment, no, cops aim for the chest and death squads for the head. I might make SWAT aim for the legs.

My understanding of police procedure is that cops aim for the largest target (the torso) because if they're using guns, they're past the point of attempting non-lethal force. Part of this is because there is no "safe" part of the human body where you can shoot without killing someone. There are important blood vessels everywhere.

Also, this is Liberal Crime Squad. The cops are Conservative - they're supposed to be the bad guys. I suppose I might make police negotiators aim for the legs when they have to use their guns, and I suppose maybe also Amerindian police, but they're the only ones.

By and large shooters are trained to aim for the center of the mass. Aiming for the head or legs is very much a videogame and movie thing. LCS is a videogame and a fairly zany one at that so it fits. If I were feeling daring I'd suggest "Shoot to Kill" and "Shoot to Wound" instead of Aim for Head or Aim for Legs but that would look really weird with melee weapons and it's probably hard coded to use the same menu options. Maybe a combination, Aim to Kill or Aim to Wound. It's a shame LCS doesn't have comprehensive damage tracking like DF. It would go a long way toward keeping Murder charges from racking up and maybe dial down the effectiveness of mass shootings in-game. The presence of EMTs and hospitals seems to be nonexistent within the game mechanics. Maybe that should change at some point, or at least get mentioned in newspapers.

Oh and on the topic of cops as conservatives within the context of the game that may not be entirely true on a situational basis. Keep in mind that the average beat cop could be liberal, and is only chasing or engaging your liberals because they broke the liberal laws. A Deathsquad is most surely conservative, but police or even SWAT responding to a crisis or pursuing a criminal are not necessarily. Having normal cops shoot to wound makes sense in my opinion. Especially since running from normal cops can very often result in death for poorly trained liberals and early game founders. Being shot in the back and killed by a cop for setting off a car alarm and running is a little strange, yeah? Deathsquads or Gang Units maybe, but normal Cops?

The prison system should see a bit more use I think. I don't interact with it much because my liberals usually get killed in gunfights or running from cops rather than arrested. In fact, it's preferable that way since they can't rat you out if they're dead and a lot of times they're facing execution if caught and imprisoned. Low Heart liberals being captured can have serious consequences so it may act as a balancing mechanism for violence to up the survival rate on getting shot or police encounters in general. Early game TV tends to skew toward Arch-Conservative and Deathsquads within the first 5-8 years anyway. If the game's going to bust your founder it should do it before minor crimes are answered with the death penalty.

[SlatersQuest]

...realistically, I'd agree with you on all points. But this is Liberal Crime Squad, a video game and a zany one at that! 

There is a surrender to the police option that you can use and high-juice liberals can use it if you are appropriately prepared with the legal system. Sleeper judges can throw out witnesses that rat you out and dismiss them as evidence. If your rap sheet is relatively short of serious crimes, getting off with a good lawyer/judge combo is possible. Should be more possible, IMO, but you can do it.

In my experience, early game TV depends on how dangerous you've been taking. There are strategies that liberalize public opinion very quickly, yet keep your founder pretty safe (a founder who mainly recruits and masterminds from the shadows, and your own death squads that don't get taken alive is an obvious one. A founder who steals documents and publishes them in the Liberal Guardian is another good one). It's definitely possible to liberalize the country (excluding the supreme court) with one election cycle.

[TastyMints]

...realistically, I'd agree with you on all points. But this is Liberal Crime Squad, a video game and a zany one at that! 

There is a surrender to the police option that you can use and high-juice liberals can use it if you are appropriately prepared with the legal system. Sleeper judges can throw out witnesses that rat you out and dismiss them as evidence. If your rap sheet is relatively short of serious crimes, getting off with a good lawyer/judge combo is possible. Should be more possible, IMO, but you can do it.

In my experience, early game TV depends on how dangerous you've been taking. There are strategies that liberalize public opinion very quickly, yet keep your founder pretty safe (a founder who mainly recruits and masterminds from the shadows, and your own death squads that don't get taken alive is an obvious one. A founder who steals documents and publishes them in the Liberal Guardian is another good one). It's definitely possible to liberalize the country (excluding the supreme court) with one election cycle.

Aye, it feels a little dirty making the game mimic real life more closely doesn't it? Kinda strips it of its character in the same way that removing some of the long term bugs, placeholders, or oversights in DF can strip character away. Like how elephants used to be, or how prolific sudden and fort-lethal panic spirals used to be.

On the topic of prison and the courtroom, I've had 4-5 sleeper judges and good lawyers that have gotten me off of things up to a charges of Treason but that's less of the prison system being used and more of the justice system being rigged. What I mean to say is that prison itself is under-used and doesn't fulfill much of a purpose outside of gunning your way inside and breaking out your people. In reality the justice system revolves around extremes: You'll either never go to prison, or you'll probably be able to bust it wide open. But there's no real reason to choose surrender or allow your liberals to survive encounters with police outside of those. That's great for the personality of the game, but it also narrows the scope and adds spikes to the brick wall learning curve.

I've seen some mentions in other threads of violence being overpowered and I fully agree. When I've started new games I've tended to stay quiet early, legal fund-raise, and publish newspapers. That might be why things are slow going for me. Once corporate mercenaries raided my compound and killed half of my liberals I recruited a bunch of Sweatshop workers with my founder and made an Illegal Deathsquad out of them. After that the country started to liberalize more rapidly. I wonder if there could be some kind of diminishing returns and negative values instituted on violence so that constant and brutal violence would not only generate tremendous heat but also perhaps even harm the liberal agenda. Mass killings two or three times a month should probably make liberalism, not just the LCS, gain a poor image.

Anywho, more in reference to TV: I actually felt some nostalgia for City of Heroes when I played through TV for a while. I never really connected the two, but a faction of militarized hippy deathsquads carrying out terrorist acts would have fit right in CoH. I wonder if you have considered adding mad science type stuff for LCS to do to go with the theme like genetic experiments with mutants? Would be neat for high Science skill characters.

[SlatersQuest]

All right, I see what you mean - the prison system is underused. I am not sure how to make it more used, since avoiding going to prison is generally a good idea in Liberal Crime Squad. One idea that has occurred to me is randomized story events, that might do things like add Liberals to your party but place them in prison, etc. These would be more complicated than existing events in Liberal Crime Squad, but I've seen other roguelikes (e.g. FTL: Faster than Light) that use a similar concept. The challenge comes with balancing these events with the rest of the game.

Violence is overpowered, and I've got a couple of ideas on how to fix it. My current way that I'm thinking of is that violence causes the LCS to become less popular, and LCS site actions exert a conservative influence on most views if the LCS is unpopular. Therefore, if you rely on a strategy that uses violence and nothing else, you will end up harming yourself more than helping because the LCS will become unpopular and then your site actions will exert conservative influence. However, if you can find a way to keep the LCS popular while doing violence - by publishing special editions in the Liberal Guardian, for example - then you can use site violence to improve public opinion as part of your strategy. You wait until the LCS is popular via community service and Liberal Guardian special editions, then you go on a rampage and affect other views, then go back to improving the LCS' image again.

I miss CoH. Its closure is one of the reasons why this mod exists. That said, I don't think that the LCS would have existed in Paragon City because in this game, the LCS are unabashedly the good guys, and the establishment they are fighting against are the villains. I can easily see something like the LCS existing in the Rogue Isles, and something like the LCS does exist in Praetoria, but not in Paragon. Terra Vitae could have existed in CoH (probably - there are issues there, too), but not the LCS.

The reason I haven't put genetic engineering of your Liberals to give them superpowers in this mod is because I don't feel like that is something that the LCS would or should be doing. Performing dangerous experiments on your minions to give them superpowers is something conservatives would do, not liberals. Maybe we should think about some way that the CCS could experiment to give themselves super-powers, and you could catch them in the act... Incidentally, supervillains (new endgame content) are implied to do this already, since mad science-themed supervillains exist and their minions and lairs have a mad science theme to them.

[TastyMints]

That sounds like a fantastic idea, and there's a lot of things in prison that political activist types do to better themselves. Right now I think events pop up that either wound your character, increase their Juice, and I believe the capacity to learn skills from other criminals. Meeting contacts and sleepers in prison could be useful for a character that picks up a several year sentence. My imagination runs with things like an LCS prison gang opposed to the Conservative Brotherhood prison gang or the Mafia's prison mooks. Not sure if the prison event system could even handle complexities like that, so take those less as suggestions and more as idle thoughts.

Targeted violence sounds like the way to go. It creates a procedure of gameplay through which multiple characters with various skills can excel and contribute to a common goal. Think about it: Let's say you want to commit acts of violence against the Corporation. You would want to go in and steal Secret Corporate Files, publish them, and then when the public is scrutinizing them you come in and start breaking things and shooting people to win the day through the public's very short attention span. Constant and sustained violence would require hackers, sleepers, and skilled thieves to be working constantly alongside journalists to manipulate public opinion in favor of liberal idealisms even though the media are owned by conservatives. Public opinion polls would be much more useful, maybe even necessary.

Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if the news system could be a battleground all to itself. I'm sure that within the context of the game the conservative media establishment would be more than happy to throw its own under the bus in order to draw attention away from issues you've made hot topics in the media. The Corporation might leak Evidence of Church Corruption to take attention off of itself, or the AM Radio Station could run a news story on corruption within a petty liberal business or institution like the Latte Stand that actively turns public opinion against liberalism. Turning conservatives against eachother temporarily to save their own skin would be a great liberal victory for the LCS! Maybe it'd give you free license to attack a new target instead of the one you had intended too. Bonus points for the Liberal Guardian's monthly publishing being the limiting factor in violence. (I'm not sure how these things work so please don't take offense if I'm spouting off about things I clearly have very little understanding of.)

I'm not quite sure the LCS would have ethical limitations in regard to genetic experiments. They don't have ethical problems buying up AK47s illegally, gunning down crowds of people, or kidnapping then brainwashing via savage beatings and mind bending drugs. LCS are very much pragmatic hypocrites convinced of their own utter righteousness and the endgame of genetic experimentation is something extremely liberal: engineering people so there is no significant differences between anyone, and things like skin color or race would be regarded as entirely cosmetic since everyone's a post-human. Forcing equality on everybody is clearly the most liberal thing there is. But then this is your LCS in your mod, so they are whatever you want 'em to be. Cheers.