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.
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.
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 ]