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[LordBucket]

>if you're grinding judge sleepers that much, >then you can have it.

  I found it extremely worthwhile to do. There's a cap on your legal defense, but there is no cap on the scare factor. So, perform enough crimes and it becomes impossible to defend yourself without a sleeper judge. Previously I had been deliberately getting arrested every month or two to clear out my criminal flags, but unfortunately since defense from Law and Persuasion skills are randomized, and the only legal defense you can really count on is from attributes, even with persuasion and law both over ten, it was always just a matter of time before I got an unlucky roll and lost somebody important.

On a related note...is Racketeering really supposed to have a scare factor potential of 100, or was that extra zero a typo? Without a sleeper, four or five racketeering charges can easily amount to an impossible to win situation.

[ July 14, 2007: Message edited by: LordBucket ]

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Where do you see 100 for Racketeering? I only see 10 in the lawflagheat function, and that number is divided by another 10 when calculating scarefactor, so only 1 scarefactor per count. The only crimes with 100 lawflagheat (10 scarefactor per count) are terrorism and treason.

I haven't tested this, but judges shouldn't be able to save if you have like 100 counts of murder on you or something... 3x100=300 bonus prosecution power, and even divided by two that's still a 150 bonus for murder alone, which should be enough right there to give any budding Phoenix Wrong, Ace Liberal a major run for his money.

[ July 14, 2007: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[Aquillion]

Wouldn't that be "Phoenix Left?"

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Oh, you're right   I didn't think of that, but you're so so right  

[LordBucket]

quote:
Where do you see 100 for Racketeering?

Ahh...my apologies. I was looking at the incarceration calculator, not the scarefactor. lawflagheat() for racketeering is indeed 10.

It's the jail time that's high:

From: \src\monthly\justice.cpp:

code:

g.sentence+=(6+LCSrandom(100))*g.lawflag[LAWFLAG_RACKETEERING];

So, a single racketeering charge can theoretically net you just under nine years in prison. A bit much, since the entire game can be finished in three or four years. A few of the others should prbably be reconsidered as well. For instance:

code:

         if(!LCSrandom(2))g.sentence+=(120+LCSrandom(241))*g.lawflag[LAWFLAG_BURNFLAG];

Ten to thirty years for burning a flag also seems a bit high.

quote:
judges shouldn't be able to save if you have like 100
counts of murder on you or something

  It's possible I misread this one as well. The -20 effect to the jury is relatively minor, but I was reading this:

code:

int prosecution;
// *JDS* The bigger your record, the stronger the evidence
prosecution=LCSrandom(101);
prosecution+=scarefactor;
if(sleeperjudge)prosecution>>=1;

To mean: "if there's a sleeper judge, set prosectution power to one." Which might not be what that does. I read it now as "if (?) is greater than or equal to one, break and do absolutely nothing. Otherwise, also do nothing." I'm not sure. C++ syntax is incredibly odd.

In any case, in the game I won I did notice that after getting the magic 11 sleeper judges, I never lost a court case. But I also never engaged in any crimes other than breaking and entering, theft, and racketeering, so it's possible it was just the -20 effect.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Racketeering is a serious crime with severe penalties, which in reality can run up to life in prison. To be charged with racketeering means they know they have an organized crime boss with the confession of an underling who was under direct orders from this person to commit crimes. If anything, I would think the only real change to protect from racketeering should be to ensure that people charged with very minor crimes don't rat out -- simply because the police really don't care so much whether they were under orders or not if all they got arrested for was disturbing the peace.

Actually, ten to thirty years for Flag Murder is a merciful charge. The line under it is life in prison, and elsewhere in the sentencing there's execution for it. But all three of these extreme sentences only happen if the legal status of flag is to equate it with murder.   Felony flag burning is only 3 years, and misdemeanor flag burning is one month. Of course, if the police surround your compound, and you commit "Flag Murder" in front of the world in protest... it's all the more rewarding.  

>>= is a binary bit shift assignment operator. prosecution>>=1 literally just means "prosecution/=2" or "prosection=(prosectuion/2)" in obscure syntax that is primarily just effective at confusing people who either don't know the syntax or aren't in the practice of thinking in binary.

[LordBucket]

quote:Racketeering is a serious crime with severe penalties, which in reality can run up to life in prison.

  At some point we might want to ask which is more important for a game: "Reality" or "Fun."

Being sent to jail for 80 years because you had a dozen people selling brownies for a few thousand dollars so you could start actually playing the game isn't very fun.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Quoting Toady from April 2004:

"There's a bit of control for large-numbered squads, although not enough. People who go to prison can rat out whoever hired them, and that person will get hit with a racketeering charge. Still, large numbers of liberals are still abusable."

Racketeering is *supposed* to punish you for abusing large numbers of recruits. The issue is not the fact that it makes you lose when you let your founder be convicted of hiring a bunch of drug dealers, but why people feel the natural opening strategy for the game is to basically set themselves up to lose. This has to do with the police being too raid-happy, sleepers being too important, and interrogation being too focused on money.

Rather than trying to make racketeering into a minor charge, it would be reasonable to consolidate all "counts" of racketeering into a single charge, and only use the number of "counts" to determine the strength of prosecution (number of ex-recruit witnesses testifying against you) and the intensity of the police hunt (perceived scale of danger of the person in question).

[Tommy2U]

quote:Originally posted by LordBucket:
<STRONG>

  At some point we might want to ask which is more important for a game: "Reality" or "Fun."

Being sent to jail for 80 years because you had a dozen people selling brownies for a few thousand dollars so you could start actually playing the game isn't very fun.</STRONG>

Use intermediaries. Seduce a lawyer or telemarketer and have him/her recruit dozen drug dealers. Your leader will get 1 racketeering charge tops, not 20.

[Aquillion]

If you want to be clever, you can wait until the lawyer's underlings start getting arrested, then send him off on a suicide mission.  You'll lose contact with all his followers, but so what?  They were just junk liberals anyway, easy enough to replace, and your founder gets off completely clean.