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Author Topic: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder  (Read 13145 times)

Jonathan S. Fox

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The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« on: February 15, 2008, 05:00:00 am »

This post is advice on how to get a founder with 100+, 200+ or 500+ juice, massive weapon skill, mowing down cops and security guards like grass, and shrugging off bullets saying "It's just a flesh wound." Somebody who you're not paralyzed in fear at the thought of having in the same room as a tank, and you can have them in the front line of combat during a SWAT raid.

STEP 1: CREATE THE FOUNDER

Decide what your weapon specialty will be. I would suggest either assault rifles, or a melee weapon.

For assault rifles, you can do multi-hits, and that's pretty badass. Biggest risk is that you'll get into a situation where it's difficult to get a proper gun (gun control laws Conservative or better), or even ammunition (gun control moderate or better). It has its distinct advantages, however, in particular that you can throw your founder in the back ranks during a siege and he'll shoot over the heads of your squad. Also, assault rifle ammo is very interchangeable in LCS, so even if the guy you kill wasn't using the same gun as you, you may be able to salvage his ammo.

For a melee weapon, best to choose clubs or swords. Clubs don't sever body parts, so that makes swords slightly better, but they do just as much raw damage. All your best melee weapons can be picked up at the Oubliette in the U District: Dwarven Hammers or the Maul of Anrin are suggested for clubs, while for swords, you get either Daisho (Katana and Wakizashi) or the Sword of Morfiegor -- doesn't matter, they're equally good. Sorry, you can't go Miyamoto Musashi and whip out both swords simultaneously if you pick Daisho.

If you're feeling really daring, you can go unarmed, but this is not advantageous. A good unarmed fighter with high stats can still kill armed cops though.

A strong combat founder should be mostly B options in character creation. Unless you plan to use shotguns, you should consider trying sports (C) for a physical stat boost, and sword founders in particular would benefit from picking D&D (E) when the options come up. Note that if you aren't planning on using assault rifles, getting a free AK-47 is pretty pointless at start, so feel free to branch out and take the money, sleeper, or downtown maps. The uniform isn't much good to you unless you're going unarmed, as people will not be impressed by your disguise as a security guard if you're also hauling a medieval maul around.

code:
Profile of a Liberal

Code name: Wyld Stallyon, Civilian
Real name: David Loeb
                                       Transient
Heart: 8                 Juice: 0       Hand-to-Hand: 4
Intelligence: 2          Next: 10       Sword: 3
Wisdom: 1                               Pistol: 2
Health: 11                              Knife: 1
Agility: 10                             Club: 1
Strength: 11                            Rifle: 1
Charisma: 4                             Shotgun: 1
Weapon: Sword of Morfiegor
Armor: Trenchcoat
Transport: On Foot


STEP 2: FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

If you have an AK-47, I would actually suggest unequipping it until you're ready to knock some heads, since toting an AK-47 around the city will have the police breathing down your neck in no time flat.

Your first step is to get some grunts to fight by your side. You can do this the lazy way, or the smart way. The lazy way is to skip to the next step and get your weapon, then walk into a sweatshop, smash the door open with your weapon, and start mowing down security guards and freeing sweatshop workers. Once you have a full squad of them and have smashed a few machines, leave. This is really awkward, and kind of risky, but it works. Note that sweatshop workers tend to start with horrible stats before you exercise them, and can be a major burden in footchases, as they'll slow the entire squad down.

The smart way is to take it slow and traipse around the homeless shelter or one of the many hippie hangouts in the U District and recruit a bunch of random people (except crack heads -- they're pretty useless). No sense keeping them all, recruit caps are going in soon anyway, but you at least want to survey their stats. Once again, each person can get a gun or melee weapon. Shotguns aren't bad here if you want guns, especially since assault rifles can be hard to find, but don't be afraid to give a bunch of grunts swords and hammers and start smashing things, it's actually not that bad a strategy. For melee fighters, consider strength, agility, and health. For ranged fighters, you can ignore strength. These are all important, but a special eye on agility and health is critical, as those will determine if your guys fall like fodder or stand like heroes when the Conservatives start shooting back.

Once you have a decent battle squad, your next step is to get armed, if you aren't already. If you are melee and you don't have money, feel free to recruit some hippies and have them sell shirts or something until you can afford a weapon. No sense getting in trouble just yet.

I would also suggest buying a trenchcoat if you can afford one. It gives a little extra damage resistance, if only through sheer badassness.

One nice thing to consider at some point is to pick up a doctor or nurse somewhere along the way. You can keep them back at your base to speed healing without using a clinic, or put them in a squad, or, if you have the money, have them *teach* first aid to your squad. First aid may not sound like much when it's at skill 1, but take a skill 5 doctor into battle with you and you'll see it for the godsend it is. I've had many good Liberals not die because of first aid.

Yeah yeah, so that's all well and good, get a squad up, but what about how you actually fight off the bad guys? Right. So, there are hit-and-run style attacks, and deep attacks, where you dive deep into the secured areas of the building and steal hordes of junk. For deep attacks early on, stick to the sweatshops -- if somebody falls, you might want to replace them with some fodder, and sweatshops have lots of sweatshop workers happy to join you at a moment's notice. For hit and run style attacks, there are a lot of buildings with an open lobby. If you have an AK-47, this doesn't do you much good, but if your weapons aren't illegal, you can run around freely in the lobby until you find a soft target, kill them, and leave. In little time you should be able to get everyone above 50 juice. Use some judgment -- if you see five cops chase you out of a building, you might want to run if your guys aren't up to taking them on. Cops are pretty tough. But don't shy away from fighting secretaries and corporate managers, unless they're in large numbers.

Don't alienate people. You don't get juice if you do. If a News Anchor (huge threat, can turn your own people into conservatives just by smiling at them) or some other highly dangerous but unarmed Conservative shows up next to a bunch of moderates, and they're about to attack you, take them hostage to get them out of action early.

You'll pick up injuries. For bad wounds and worse, you'll definitely want to pull them out of combat. At that level of injury their stats are being penalized anyway, and that means "easy kill" for bad guys. Normal wounds can go either way -- if they're real badass, and you have a doctor at your base, they can take it, otherwise let them get some rest. For light wounds, I don't worry about it -- especially if I have a doctor back at the base. They'll get over it, and it's more of a risk to you to pull them out of combat and reduce their experience and juice by missing the action than to just put someone with a few cuts or glancing shots back into battle.

Eventually you will probably lose some people. Replace them as you can.

Aim for 100+ juice across the board before your first raid.

STEP 3: RESIST THE RAID

SWAT officers are tough as heck to fight off, because they have higher stats, higher skills, better weapons, and better armor than normal police. But you have a key advantage -- you can fight with more than six liberals at once. Throughout your adventures, you probably picked up lots of cheap revolvers and shotguns from the fallen Conservatives you've opposed, and when the raid comes, it's time to put those to use. Any bystanders you have in the base, like hippies selling tshirts, should be reordered into the front of the squad the moment you start the escape and engage action, then equipped with the best guns you can give them. Once they're armed, shuffle them to the back and put any melee people you have in the front. If your founder is a gun user, it's perfectly fine to put them in the back too, and shuffle some fodder up front. SWAT's tough, we'll forgive you for playing it safe.

Try fighting off the raid -- you'll need to take out about two full squads to drive them back. You'll take losses, most likely, but once you've downed a group of five SWAT officers, you'll suddenly find yourself sitting on a pile of M4s and SMGs, clips included, some of the best weapons in the game for close combat with relatively unskilled characters. Plus you'll have body armor you can slap on people in place of the trenchcoats, which will up the survivability of your best people substantially. Assault rifle founders should note that M4s use the rifle skill too, have higher accuracy, almost as much damage, and unlike an AK-47, do not cause instant alarm if you are wearing a police or army uniform/body armor. I switch when I can, but it's up to you.

Once they're gone, you should probably move, as they'll hit the same safehouse again in a week or so, and this time they'll bring the army. Soldiers have M16s and army body armor. If you want M16s and army body armor, go for it. Otherwise, I'd scoot.

Keep pressing the attacks on various buildings. As you get above 100 to 200 juice with your founder and other front line troops, don't get afraid of a few cops. With a squad of people at 300 juice, I had them fight toe to toe with a armored tank for five rounds (founder in front row), and -- well, okay, I lost two people, and didn't even scratch the tank, but it's still a powerful group that can do that.

Keep in mind public opinion, since that's the overall goal. Spread your hits around to buildings associated with different issues -- the genetics lab an interesting one, if you're feeling gutsy. Once you get a car, you can hit some of the more risky buildings on the outskirts of the city. The Intelligence HQ is like the last dungeon of LCS -- broken doors set off alarms instantly, and the place is crawling with insanely skilled agents. If you thought soldiers and SWAT officers were tough, you'll get roughed up pretty good by agents. Plus, your getaway will involve a car chase, with agents following. If I may make a suggestion, bail out. High speed chases tend to wipe entire squads easily, and even a great founder won't survive getting smeared across the pavement.

Recruiting agents here is not a bad strategy, but you don't really need it.

STEP 4: ATTEND THE FOUNDER'S FUNERAL

Eventually, you founder dies. OK, maybe not. But maybe so. If you've done well with all this, you probably have a whole slew of extremely high juice subordinates directly under the founder. So you're okay. Because suddenly, you have a new leader, who has great combat ability, and all that. Your biggest risk is getting *everyone* killed, or "whimping out" and letting people get arrested.   ;)

Of course, there's always going to be a risk that this will happen sooner rather than later, and you'll have to restart the game. That's part of the risk of riding into combat with your founder early in the game. But I've found that with these strategies, and a little courage, you can quickly get to a point where you can stop worrying about your founder. And once they hit 500+ juice, and have stats in the 20s, your founder will be virtually unstoppable.

In the next release, liberals will start hurling themselves in front of your founder to act as body shields in combat. Then this all will be even more achievable. But I've found when testing this that with a strategy like this, it's rarely needed, because I almost never have a strong founder get hit hard enough to justify someone taking the hit for them.

[ February 15, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

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Torak

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2008, 09:46:00 am »

With Squad formation, is spot 1 in the front, and 6 in the back, or are you just speaking generally, such as when others are there, they'll more likely be shot than you?


Also, in the Toady version, I had something like this, but with a Law Founder, a guy who could get out of any charge because of his amazingly high persuasion and law skill.

Me: 38 Counts of Murder, 14 of Racketeering, and 5 of Trespassing on Government property? Hell, it wasn't me, it was probably the other guy that looked like me.

Jury: That makes sense. Not guilty.

[ February 15, 2008: Message edited by: Torak ]

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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2008, 11:00:00 am »

Oh, there are other strategies to be sure, I'm just suggesting one for people who have difficulty with using their founder in combat because of the "game over" factor, and want to try it.

When I speak of front and back in combat, I'm referring specifically to sieges, where you can reorder people out of your squad entirely into the "back ranks", and they'll still be able to fight with ranged weapons (with a penalty), but won't be shot at. You still need six people in the front, but everyone else can help from the back.

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Earthquake Damage

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2008, 12:43:00 pm »

I've never tried bringing two squads to the same site.  Do you get a "back row" then, too?  That could be awesome.
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Wisq

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2008, 01:07:00 pm »

My understanding is that the "back row" thing only applies for sieges.

I haven't actually had a siege with more than one squad's worth yet, so I haven't been able to use it.  However, my current base of criminal ops has a business front and booby traps, and I'm going to camp there until we get raided, so I should be able to try it out soon.  :D

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Solara

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2008, 01:27:00 pm »

This is awesome, thanks! I'm definitely going to try and alter my strategy some. As much as I can be said to have a 'strategy' anyway, I've got the basics down but I'm still in the stage of figuring everything out. (I've always had a distressing tendency to say 'screw it' and go out GTA style after a bout of bad luck or when things get a little slow, unfortunately that keeps me from getting very familiar with the late game stuff...)

I'm trying to be more patient now and my most successful game so far has basically been my very persuasive and charismatic leader soliciting donations until she could afford a crowbar, then busting into a clothes factory and making off with a handful of sweatshop workers and fine cloth. Then she started her own little sweatshop (for the greater good of course), having them rake in the cash by selling t-shirts and then making various costumes to stash at several safehouses until they're needed.

Stage two was running around recruiting a ton of gang members and prostitutes, a few of which had stats that were actually usable. All the prostitutes and a few miscellaneous others I'd recruited were sent to one safehouse to raise funds illegally (though I'm wondering if this is even necessary, it seems like I could just recruit more sweatshop workers to sell shirts at less risk), while the gangsters went to another to wait until there was a job for them. I've sent them on a few practice factory raids but I always wind up losing somebody...I understand now that the juice bar is the place to go for training, before I was under the impression that randomly shooting unarmed civilians would make people dislike us for some reason but I guess not.

Anyway, I'm not making much of a dent in the nation's politics at the moment    but at least everybody important's still alive, generally I'd have been wiped out by the police by now.

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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2008, 02:47:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Earthquake Damage:
<STRONG>I've never tried bringing two squads to the same site.  Do you get a "back row" then, too?  That could be awesome.</STRONG>

No, the second squad will arrive on site only after the first one leaves. If you make a big fuss with the first squad, the second will back off as the place will be "too hot" after your initial raid.

quote:
Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>I understand now that the juice bar is the place to go for training, before I was under the impression that randomly shooting unarmed civilians would make people dislike us for some reason but I guess not.</STRONG>

Eventually it will be damaging to the LCS's reputation. One of the more undisclosed changes I've been doing over time is to overhaul public opinion shifts. There's still more to do, like having the LCS popularity grow when you act out on a very popular issue (even as the LCS acting on that issue alienates some of the supporters of that issue who hate the LCS), while having the LCS acting against an issue where everyone disagrees with the LCS hurt the LCS slightly (even as it persuades some of those who like the LCS to come over to your side on that issue). Once I'm comfortable with how public opinion and LCS popularity interact, I'll start experimenting with having some more violent actions hurt the LCS's popularity. This may go in only after there are other benefits besides public opinion to really smashing up a site.

Eventually I'd like to get it to the point where, like Hamas, you need to balance more aggressive and violent actions with very popular actions that will cause people to rally around you. They'll believe what you're advocating is right only if you can convince them that *you* are right. Going too far into pure aggression will end up having the news reports start calling you gangsters, then terrorists, and next thing you know your actions are backfiring -- you launch an attack on the police station, and instead of seeing your side of things, the people decide the police need more power to fight back. But if you can manipulate public opinion and choose your attacks carefully, you can still get people thinking you're the good guys in a fight.

It'll take a lot of balance and work, which is why this is slow progress, as I keep adding one tweak here, another there, slowly working it toward where it needs to be to get this playable. I don't want to run at this goal and break the game in the process.  :D

So for now, you can use the juice bar as a shooting range, yeah.  :p

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Solara

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2008, 04:41:00 pm »

I'm glad to hear you're working on the whole popularity thing, it may be fun but it's pretty unrealistic that a bunch of terrorists can run around gunning down innocent people without some kind of massive public backlash. Legitimate targets shouldn't be tragically deceived teenagers and fast food workers, but the puppets of the Man and the Machine.

Instead it would be cool if you had other options, like say you could arm a bunch of college students with cans of spray paint and take them over to the juice bar to spray slogans on the walls (I know there's already passive graffiti but this would be more fun). Maybe there are signs around, some evil corporations advertisements that need to be defaced? Or maybe the juice is made from fruit picked by poor overworked and underpaid migrants, if there was an actual bar area with machinery in the juice bar you could wreck it in protest.

Or heck, let us buy some guitars for our musicians and send them somewhere to put on impromptu concerts about how much the government sucks - if they're really really good they ought to be able to lower people's wisdom or maybe even have a chance of turning a moderate green on the spot. Eventually the police would arrive to try and arrest them for disturbing the peace but maybe that would just convince some of the public that the laws were written by draconian dictators who hate good music, man.

Of course I have no idea how plausible this stuff is, it's mostly just wishful thinking on my part.

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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2008, 05:37:00 pm »

Those are simply awesome ideas! The concert would be the toughest one to do -- the game doesn't have a way to handle crowds very gracefully. I love the idea of active graffiti, or equipping instruments. We really need more of the creative non-murder go forth actions -- more things to smash, disrupt, and such.
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Toaster

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #9 on: February 15, 2008, 06:06:00 pm »

These would be more distant future ideas, but there's always organizing protests, marches, speeches, and the like.  A high heart/juice/persuasion speaker could have crowds chanting "Down with the man", but you're risking police beatdowns and such.

On that matter, tear gas could be added to make things harder for your liberals.

EDIT-  Expanding on the idea, a potential new zone:  A public park.  Fairly wide open, with a wide mix of types who spawn there.  Somewhere is a podium, or forum, or some place idea for speeches.  It'd be similar to the TV/Radio studios, but weaker.  The danger in using it could vary depending on the status of free speech laws- at more liberal ones, you might just get an angry crowd of rednecks/yokels, but at the conservative ones, you might get a police attack and some level of crime.

[ February 15, 2008: Message edited by: Toaster ]

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Solara

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2008, 06:32:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Jonathan S. Fox:
<STRONG>The concert would be the toughest one to do -- the game doesn't have a way to handle crowds very gracefully. </STRONG>

Well, what about making guitars held by skilled musicians a sort of 'weapon' that worked like the opposite of a newscaster's smile, lowering wisdom or raising heart and turning the person you're attacking with it into a liberal or at least a moderate who could then be recruited? (I guess you'd need high persuasion too.)

edit: Maybe the guitar could double as a club when you need to make a quick escape.  :)

[ February 15, 2008: Message edited by: Solara ]

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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #11 on: February 15, 2008, 08:31:00 pm »

Please test: http://www.jonathansfox.com/LCS/lcs_win32_312_experamental.zip  

Go to the new park in downtown. Let me know how it looks and feels. Let me know if the background blinks or does anything funky while walking around the park. Do you like it? Do you hate it? Any suggestions on getting the colors adjusted?

Linux users can get the latest build from the branch on svn, it has the same code.

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Little

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2008, 09:07:00 pm »

The EXIT things on evry location looks alot brighter.

It just feels like another cafe. What features do you have planned for it?

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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #13 on: February 15, 2008, 09:11:00 pm »

Yeah, the exits are brighter... side effect of some earlier testing before I changed it. Right now it's just a bigger version of the latte stand, I'm currently trying to get the graphics feeling okay -- putting features in is easy enough. Right now I'm mainly concerned, does this new handling of outdoors look alright?
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a1s

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Re: The Mythical Almost Invincible Battle Founder
« Reply #14 on: February 15, 2008, 09:25:00 pm »

the park look nice, all tough each time I stumble into a road, for a split second I think it's an exit.

also, now all building look like there are no lights in them (due to the contrast between the gray street, and the pitch black interior.

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