I can see some problems in what you've suggested, and some things that have been fixed.
First, I recommend against using sweatshop workers. Employing them is an unnecessary crime, and can in fact get your leader arrested. In the later versions the chance of this happening becomes even higher, since they may rat you out.
Instead, I recommend making your starting money by recruiting a bunch of cannon fodder and having them make mischief and sell brownies. Yes, you will quickly be arrested. Have your leader defend himself in court; his law skill should be more than enough to get him off, and you'll be earning practice for it besides. You'll lose everyone else, but you don't need them anymore anyway. Repeat the process a few more times if you absolutely have to, but it doesn't take long to get the LCS to 100% popularity and to earn a few thousand bucks.
After you have your starting funds, just have your leader make garments. It takes a while to build up skill, sure, but why take any risks? Once you're good at this you can earn money fast at any time without committing a crime.
Oh, incidently, I recommend against the all-A leader. I suggest you go for computers for your birthday--the computer skill can be a bit hard to learn later on, and it means you won't have to keep a second computer specialist around. Conversation skills, by comparison, are very, very easy to raise.
Also, although the kidnapping step is essential, it's also the most risky part of the operation. If you kidnap an especially hard-to-brainwash person and their kidnapping is discovered, things can get hairy real fast--at the very least, a virtually immediate raid is almost guarenteed.
Raids have also gotten much tougher in recent versions. Wandering groups of raiders can have many more people, increasing the chance that they'll wound some of your Liberals.
(Also, maybe I've just been lucky, but I've never had anyone killed by snipers while waiting out a siege, and I've waited for almost 100 days on occasion IIRC. I still recommend against waiting out a raid, but it's because they'll remove your tank traps, not because of snipers. Tanks are a problem no matter how many agents you have on your side.)
But anyway, let's talk about fixes.
First, clothing-selling. The pawn shop should not pay more for a piece of clothes then it would cost to create. Not very fun, perhaps, but that's just common sense--nobody makes a decent living selling anything they made themselves to a pawnshop.
Second, defending your compound. This is probably the most important set of fixes, since raids are used as a balancing factor against so many things in the game--and right now you can essentially become invincible on defense by having an insane number of liberals. This is easy to fix--the number of liberals who can attack in such combats could be limited somehow. Not to six, but maybe to twelve or so (or whatever the new limit on raiding parties is, to keep things fair.) If you have more then twelve, the ones further back don't get to attack. Alternatively, the chance of liberals shooting each other could increase drastically if there are a large number of people and if the lights are off--this would make CIA raids especially dangerous. Finally, there should be a chance that any liberal in the group can get hit in combat, not just the first six. The first six should take most of the risk, but your leader should not be magically invincible just because you have a total of seven people or whatever.
This essentially breaks all the remaining steps in your plan, since kidnapping and publishing CIA info both carry high risks of nasty raids; but we might as well address the remaining points.
Third, to back up a bit, dating. Right now it's easy to get anyone you want on your side as a liberal with little to no risk through a date. There's a good side to that, and we don't want to ruin it entirely; but having someone from your secret criminal organization arrange a date with a CIA agent should really carry more risk then it does.
If the character going on a date is wanted or well-known, or if the LCS is simply very very notorious, then there could be a chance that the date is a setup (hey, who says the LCS is the only group that can kidnap people during a date?) Of course, both sides might try kidnappings, resulting in a shootout or somesuch. In any case, this would make it way too risky to ever use your leader to date a CIA agent or the like.
There could also be a chance that the character going on a date lets some info of some sort slip, ruining the date and potentally incriminating themselves or someone else in the LCS.
Hostages themselves might cause more trouble. CIA agents or important people might carry bugs, wires, a cellphone, a GPS, or something along those lines. A computer check by whoever's taking care of them would spot and disable it; if you fail, then every turn it's in your compound carries a high risk of both your location and the kidnapping being discovered.
Finally, using murder to discredit radio stations and the like: I don't think killing people ought to be a very effective way to influence public opinion. Yes, LCS is all based on influencing people through mayham; but just shooting up random janitors and the like is a bit too much.
Therefore, I suggest that the PR impact of killings be based on the relative combat ability of the two sides, with a cap on how far from 50% public opinion can be swayed by slaughtering defenseless targets. If a lone LCS member manages to fight off a roomful of security guards, cops, or agents using nothing but a sword, that makes the LCS (and, by extension, their goals) look cool; if six LCS members surround a defenseless janitor and beat him to death, it doesn't quite carry the same message.
Finally, although much of the value of sleepers in the game comes from the fact that they're essentially immune to everything and can't be lost, there should be at least some risks present for them. It should never be a big worry, but under some circumstances there ought to be a chance that a sleeper's cover gets blown. To offset this, the more sleepers you have at a location, the safer they are--they'll cover up for each other if they think another sleeper is about to get discovered. This way, players would be encouraged to set up a 'support network' of easier-to-get sleepers before they tried making a sleeper out of someone important.
[ April 25, 2004: Message edited by: Aquillion ]
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Topic: How to Win LCS The Really Boring Way (Read 4459 times)