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[Jonathan S. Fox]

- Fixed a crash bug
- Fixed the bug where you don't gain weapon skill
- Fixed a bug with kidnappings not triggering raids sometimes
- Made interrogations a bit easier and made the news report later

On the last part:

You can now get someone to join you either by getting their heart really high relative to their wisdom, or by getting them to like your character. To get them to like your character, talk. A lot. High charisma + high heart + high interrogation skill characters will be able to spin even rough treatment in their favor by comforting the target in their darkest moment. You'll know when this is happening, there's a message for it. It's pretty hard to pull off, don't expect to get it with most characters. There's also a new indicator on the screen where you choose your tactics that shows how well the target and your lead interrogator get along. If your interrogator is the target's "only friend", you shouldn't have trouble converting them even if their heart and wisdom seem stuck at 1. Basically, you've shattered them, but they still know who their 'friends' are.

Also, this is subtle, but in the rare case that you manage to convert somewhere when they're sitting at like 9 heart and 4 wisdom, they might even be so stable that they become a permanent member who can't be deprogrammed.

OH YEAH, maybe I should provide the link: www.jonathansfox.com/LCS/lcs_win32_312_alpha5.zip

Should be compatible with old saves from alpha 4.

[ February 02, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[Skeeblix]

Awesome, man. grabbing it now!

[a1s]

fun fact: alpha5 comes pre-packed with a fighter character!  

also, I don't know (I could be unlucky or it could just be perspective) but it seems to me that news of the kidnapping come earlier not later in this one...

also x 2: I perma-recruited my victim, yay!

[ February 02, 2008: Message edited by: a1s ]

[Jonathan S. Fox]

on the fighter --
Whoooops!   That was an accident.

It's probably just unlucky if you get a shorter time before it was reported. Previously the minimum time before the kidnapping was reported was 2 or 3 days, never more than 15 or so. Now it's up to 5 or 6, and can take up to 20 days or so if you're lucky.

[ February 02, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

[Toaster]

Very minor bug:  I just got a newspaper report on Feburary 29th, 2009.

[John Gaden]

Awesome.  

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Oof. It's not that the game doesn't understand February has only 28 days in 2009, it does know that -- it's just that the month doesn't advance until AFTER the newspaper shows up. So you can get Jan 32, 2008, etc...

[Toaster]

The selling interface at the pawn shop is a bit messy.  It can overwrite oddly when it asks you how many of a stack of an item you want to sell (and are on the selectivly pawn screen).  Pawn extra weapons/clips doesn't seem to work for me.

Nice job on the improvements, though.  I'm trying to figure out an effective interrogation strategy now.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

It's a little thing, but it's always bothered me how in elections there's massive and chaotic turnover in seats. I've changed the way it calculates house and senate seats -- it'll still shift steadily back and forth in the big numbers, but now there's a sense of continuity. You get a visual feel for when Liberal politicians are going down and Conservative ones are holding up. It also keeps score on gains and losses, giving you the numbers at the bottom of the screen for how the composition of the house or senate has changed as a result of the election, and then also declares a victor. This is normally Democrat or Republican, but if public opinion is skewed strongly and the results are extremely one-sided to the point where even solid seats are falling to even more extreme insurgents, it's possible to have a third party to the right of the Republicans (you don't want this) or the left of the Democrats (you do want this) gaining power, at least according to the flavor text. For the most part I don't anticipate this change will affect game play much, but it might make it a little more interesting to actually watch the elections when they float past.

[Skeeblix]

One thing I would really love to see implemented: THE ABILITY TO SELECT A TARGET IN COMBAT.

Honestly, it's a pain in the ass to get gunned down by a police officer because there's one other conservative in the encounter that you have to kill before you can attack him. I know I'd be shooting for the guy with the gun over the one trying to start a fistfight.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

In terms of game play, the reason I kind of resist the idea of letting you target specific opponents and direct the scene much more tightly is because it slows down combat a lot. There are a few times where one target is way more dangerous and I'd rather my guys target that one first, but more than nine times out of ten, I just want to see my guys shoot up the other guys. I don't want to have to tell them *how* to do it.

I don't think it's weird that you don't always have your guys attacking the big target either -- I think of combat like a scene in an action movie.

In a kung-fu movie, the hero doesn't get to pick his target. Enemies come at him from all sides and he fights them off and lands blows where the opportunities present themselves. Pow, minion one down. Pow, minion two down. Whap-whap pow, tough minion three down. He couldn't attack the tough minion before he got through the small fry.

In a shooter movie, people are ducking and weaving behind cover. The hero doesn't just open fire on the boss, he has to fight off cronies that come up to the sides. Even if it's picking between the guy with the gun and the others without, the ones without get up in the hero's face, forcing him to divert his attention to fire at them. Bang bang, the guy charging at the hero with the crowbar goes down. Boom, the hero ducks behind a crate as the guy in the corner with the shotgun fires. Just as the hero levels his gun to fire back, another dude comes up behind the hero, and the hero wrestles him off and shoots him next as the guy in the corner leisurely reloads, and the hero barely gets under cover again before the next shot comes. Finally, the hero gets to focus on the guy with the shotgun, and takes him out with his next shot.

[Torak]

quote:Originally posted by Jonathan S. Fox:
<STRONG>Finally, the hero gets to focus on the guy with the shotgun, and takes him out with his next shot.</STRONG>

Or shoots out his teeth, either way.

[Earthquake Damage]

Your action movie analogy breaks down when your hero (founder) takes a bullet to the head from some random mook and dies.    :p

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Hm... maybe that's when the second in command takes over? I think that happens in this version if you have others with very high juice.

[Toaster]

quote:Originally posted by Jonathan S. Fox:
<STRONG>Hm... maybe that's when the second in command takes over? I think that happens in this version if you have others with very high juice.</STRONG>

I just lost a game where my leader died and no one took over.

My leader and the two other Elite Liberals were in the same squad that got raided and tried to escape.  On the way out, my leader dies, but everyone else got out.  Next turn, everyone loses contact, game over.  Is it conditional or just not guarenteed?

EDIT:  I also noticed that once a site went High Security, it was almost always stuck there all game.  Several sites were on HS for well over a year.

[ February 03, 2008: Message edited by: Toaster ]