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[Nonanonymous]

Okay...  First, what's the effectiveness of melee weapons compared to ranged?  Is there a significant difference, do they always act last or something?

Second, is there a significant difference in effectiveness between, say, a baseball bat and a Dwarven hammer?

Third, can you still recruit the genetic mutants?  Is it a case by case basis?

Fourth, is there a maximum number of skills for any one liberal?  And are their stat-based caps to the skills they do have?

Fifth, what's the best way to make money?  I'm being extra cautious about going out and stealing things, as I currently have some of the worst possible luck when it comes to receiving deadly wounds.

[mainiac]

Ak-47's are the weapon of glorious revolution and work well enough that I don't use much else.

There are skill maximums for a single skill based on stats but you can have any number of different skills.

Money is a mixed bag.  Recruiting a few sweatshop workers and making t-shirts is a nice way for a steady supply at the start.  Once you have an elite liberal or six, looting can get you all the money you need if you spend it with liberal concern for practicality.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Melee weapons use strength to modify damage and can't attack when during the back ranks during a siege or in a car chase. Ranged weapons are more consistent damage even for people with low strength, and consume ammo. For sheer damage output, The Incredible Hulk can do more damage with a large melee weapon than with a machine gun.

I believe baseball bats are given the same high damage output as Dwarven hammers, and I think they both use the Club skill. The only difference is whether you want your Liberal to look like a crazy fantasy geek or a crazy sports jock when she's bludgeoning things.

I think I made genetic mutants unrecruitable along with tanks and dogs. It was a very sad moment. Now, the nuclear and toxic waste mutants are another matter altogether, but less people know about those...

Liberals can have as many skills as they want, up to and including every skill in the game, but at some point they'll trail off the bottom of the profile screen and you won't be able to see your lower ones anymore due to having so many. But they'll be there. All skills are capped, most of them by being unable to go above one or more stats -- for example, your sword skill can't go above the average of your agility and strength. When you reach the cap you'll see your skill level say 3.99+ (for example) to indicate that you are capped at level 3, but have the experience to reach level 4 if it were possible. You can still keep high skills if your stats drop in the future (through injury or heart loss), but you won't be able to increase them further.

Fastest/easiest way to make big wads of game-breaking money at once is to have good hackers doing DDoS Racketeering. It's an advanced technique though, not really easily available at the start of the game. It can get your bases raided, and requires a high base skill level in computers just to start being effective. You can train people on credit card fraud and website harassment if you want to work on getting there.

[Nonanonymous]

I think I made genetic mutants unrecruitable along with tanks and dogs. It was a very sad moment. Now, the nuclear and toxic waste mutants are another matter altogether, but less people know about those...

I think you should make the purple Gorillas recruitable again, because I've always found the idea of intelligent Gorillas somewhat awesome.  Also, this.

Liberals can have as many skills as they want, up to and including every skill in the game, but at some point they'll trail off the bottom of the profile screen and you won't be able to see your lower ones anymore due to having so many. But they'll be there. All skills are capped, most of them by being unable to go above one or more stats -- for example, your sword skill can't go above the average of your agility and strength. When you reach the cap you'll see your skill level say 3.99+ (for example) to indicate that you are capped at level 3, but have the experience to reach level 4 if it were possible. You can still keep high skills if your stats drop in the future (through injury or heart loss), but you won't be able to increase them further.

Right, so...  About how much driving skill until I can stop running over all those fruit stands?  I'm driving a Sports car most of the time (Which I just realized seems to be from the future), FYI.



And another thing, where the heck do I get wheelchairs at?  And do brainwashed conservatives count towards the follower count?  What are the main factors involved in the maximum follower count?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

If we get an animal rights issue, and the Elite Liberal law is "Animals may apply for citizenship and vote", I would make dogs, genetic mutants, any other animals recruit-able through all of the normal means. (That is, I would allow it when the law is in this Elite Liberal state. It would be like the various Arch-Conservative easter eggs, only this one is Liberal.)

I don't remember how much driving you need to avoid fruit stands consistently. It used to be around 8-10, but I think I dropped it considerably because that was ridiculously unbalanced. It still is, but, car chases in general need more interesting and balanced obstacles. You're probably save around skill 5 with a sports car, but I can't promise without looking at the code.

Wheelchairs can be acquired by selecting someone that needs a wheelchair and going into their activate menu. There will be an option to get a wheelchair where he steal a car option normally is.

Brainwashed conservatives do not contribute to the follower count. The calculations to determine your cap are here -- basically, your juice level and leadership, plus a bonus of six followers to your founder. Note that the seduction cap is separate from this; you may have one lover, plus another for every two seduction points. People who are already in the LCS by being seduced already have one lover (their boss), so will need at least two seduction points to recruit by seducing others.

[Nonanonymous]

If the police raid an empty safe house, will they come back and search it again?  Or will they just look in all the other possible hiding places?

What's the best way to take the heat off?  Of all things, they show up asking for a janitor I kidnapped for no purpose other than to train up my interrogation skills.

[beorn080]

Keep your safe money makers seperate from everyone else if you use them. Just keep cycling between fully upgraded safehouses and grab the 2 high end apartments to spread it out even further. Note that if you go to trial and win all heat gets removed from that person. However I recommend againest this if you are drawing sieges every couple of days because the crime count will be to hard to beat.

As to the effectiveness of melee weapons. Swords in the right hands are FAR more deadly then guns and can quickly cripple any conservative in one swing. They have no chance to accidently hit someone else as far as I can recall, and you never need to reload them. Guitars are another extremely effective melee weapon if you have a well trained cadre using them.

Like Jonathon said, the DDoS racket is extremely good money especially if you train your liberals with hacking to get those initial 50 points in juice. Use your initial guy to seduce a programmer and snag 6 hippies, trying to get one that has 2 points in leadership. Train up your guys in credit card fraud or harassment and then start hacking. Each success is worth a good chunk of juice and when you hit 50 train everyone in leadership and go out and keep recruiting. I think my current game has around 200+ hippies doing just that, CCS hasn't appeared yet, and I make 3 grand a day from extortion plus all the loot from sieges. Only thing I really have left to do is send out shutdown squads to close everything down at once.

[Nonanonymous]

Although the unlawful entry and theft counts might be ridiculously high, this LCS run I've only actually killed 10 conservatives, and kidnapped 22, though probably over half of those were turned into sleepers thanks to my high juice leader, fairly high interrogation skills, and barrier breaking magic shrooms.  Unfortunately, I only have a few competent combatants, and the only thing they ever defended themselves with were guitars and spraycans.

[beorn080]

The kidnapping will be pretty hard to beat. Save some money and snag the super lawyer. If your lucky you'll get off and won't have to worry about heat.

[mainiac]

It's much cheaper to brainwash judges and lawyers then hire an ace attourney.

[Neonivek]

It's much cheaper to brainwash judges and lawyers then hire an ace attourney.

It is also safer

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'm pretty sure the $5000 lawyer is better than a $100 sleeper lawyer, some 95% of the time. I say 95% of the time because there is a small chance of the ace liberal attorney backfiring by getting the prosecution to hire someone just as good. But short of that, the expensive lawyer is not only more skilled, but will take the risk out of jury selection by guaranteeing you get a liberal jury.

A sleeper judge also helps with jury selection, plus it directly weakens the prosecution's case (upholding objections against their arguments, chastising them, framing the issues for the jury in a way that is helpful, etc etc), and I think they'll be more likely to reduce the sentence if you are found guilty. There's no drawback to having a sleeper judge, and you can use either lawyer with one, so I think most of the time your strongest combination ends up being the $5000 ace liberal attorney with a sleeper judge.

You might still be able to use your sleeper lawyer enough that she gets really really skilled at defending your people, and becomes the stronger option. I don't remember for sure if I added that mechanic, or just made a note to add it in the future.

[Neonivek]

Imagine a Sleeper Mayor who could Pardon you!

[mainiac]

I don't think mayors have much pardoning power.  Governors or the prez can overrule excecutions and forgive pretty much anything though.  Should Governor be an elected official in the game?  A hardass governor would have a lot of power to make the LCS' life miserable.

Ace lawyers are nice, but not all that nice.  A steady flow of minor cases will get a sleeper lawyer and judge combo more then strong enough to dominate.  If your active enough to have a big trial, then your active enough to turn the country liberal enough that you'll probably have a decently liberal jury anyway.  These aren't easy, but neither is ponying up 5 G's.  IMHO, ace attourny's were underpowered before interogation got a massive tone up.  Right now I think they're severely underpowered.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

If you use the latest exe that was linked somewhere around here, it has all that debug text in combat and trials -- might be worth trying that out, as it exposes some of the performance numbers in trials, such as the strength of the jury and the prosecution and defense.