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Author Topic: LCS: Everyone left my group?  (Read 852 times)

yarnosh

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LCS: Everyone left my group?
« on: September 28, 2007, 12:26:00 am »

One turn I have like 25 members and the next everyone leaves. Says the "lost touch with the Liberal Crime Squad" or something like. I know I wasn't exactly moving ahead quickly, but I did have a 99% public approval rating, so I must have been doing something right. What happened? Oh, wait, did I run out of food in my hideout??

Also, a couple of other questions... how do I find people with "disguise" skill besides myself. I find that I can only infiltrate a place with my initial character who has like 4 in disguise. In general, most anyone I recruit is largely useless for anything but soliciting for donations or selling brownies. Well, i did get some sweatshop workers to make clothes, but beyond that... Oh and hookers are good at dating. :-)

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Metalax

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Re: LCS: Everyone left my group?
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2007, 05:04:00 am »

Did your leader get sent to prison after a trial? That will cause you to lose contact with everyone.

Disguise skill is easily trained so it's not normally a problem. I've sometimes found Actors with decent starting disguise ratings.

While most civilian professions just give you warm bodies to swell your ranks of brownie salespeople, some are useful.

Writers/journalists for writing in the Liberal Guardian.
Hackers for funds and items for special issues of the LG.
Fashion Designers for making your disguises and a source of legitimate funds.
Judges/Lawyers recruited as sleepers to prevent/reduce incorrect verdicts.
Police/Soldier/Agent usually have good skills if your going for a combat team.
Taxi Drivers with a good driving stat are essential for car chases as it's difficult to train.

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In the beginning was the word, and the word was "Oops!"

yarnosh

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Re: LCS: Everyone left my group?
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2007, 10:32:00 am »

Nope, nothing happened to my leader. He wasn't arrested or killed. He came back from a job one day and everyone just up an left all at once, including those in his squad.

Good ideas for the professions, although I still don't quite understand what good it would do me to have a getaway driver with a low disguise skill, for example. I mean, doesn't EVERYONE in a squad have to have a good disguise skill? If your driver is really good at driving but bad at anything else, won't he give your group away? Conversely, what good does bringing an actor along do if he sucks at everything else? Man, i really need some spoilers.  :)

I tried training disguise skill by simply sneaking around sites until the Conservative Swine was suspicious/alarmed, but it didn't seem to ever go up. How long does it take?

Also, about fashion designers... isn't it a lot easier to get clothes makers by freeing sweatshop workers? I know they have bad Juice, but is that important if they never leave the safe house?

Oh, and one more thing about recruiting... the only way I've found to easily recruit anyone besides a Hippie, Teenager, Prostitute, or the like is to date them an make them love slaves. Either that or date them and just kidnap them and try to convert them. I usually have a squad of prostitute on the street for this purpose. Or is the a better way to get, say, Programmers and Lawyers? They never seem to want to convert by reason alone.

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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: LCS: Everyone left my group?
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2007, 11:14:00 am »

Try sneaking around relatively safe areas where you're not likely to be chewn up if spotted, like the crack houses, and then stop and idle near conservatives to see how long it takes them to notice you're acting funny. Each turn you sit around near them you'll train disguise a little bit. As disguise goes up it'll take longer.

One consideration is to think of what your goal is for a certain mission you send people out on. Do you want to shoot the place up and make a big news story? Then disguise is not very important, and you want a combat team. Do you want to sneak through and steal stuff, maybe crack a safe or break someone out of the lock-up and then get out without getting shot? Then you need disguise and security skills, and persuasion and charisma will help you to fast talk your way out if they get suspicious when you're deep inside. If you don't plan on fighting, you don't really need a big team.

It's definitely easier to get clothes makers from freeing sweatshop workers. One problem is that if they're caught by police, they'll be sent out of the country without trial. Additionally, anyone caught harboring them will be charged with hiring an illegal immigrant. It's easier, but a little less safe in the long run.

For high skill people you're limited to seduction and brainwashing, yeah.

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yarnosh

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Re: LCS: Everyone left my group?
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2007, 11:40:00 am »

Isn't it a little bit better to have sweatshop workers deported? I mean, they're easy to replace and if they are deported, they can't rat on you, right?
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: LCS: Everyone left my group?
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2007, 03:58:00 am »

Hm, you have a point. If I had time to work on the game, I'd consider reducing the max initial clothes making skill from sweatshop workers, in order to provide incentive to have veteran clothes makers that aren't trivially replaceable. This could be balanced by reducing the amount of practice needed to increase in clothes making skill. As it is, you can get sweatshop workers with ~10 initial skill points in clothes making, which is enough to make almost everything perfectly on the first try. Why worry about the characters you have, when there are just as good or better ones eager to be recruited?
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