Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jonathan S. Fox]

To elaborate on why I think the ace attorney is actually more powerful than you're giving her credit for, let me explain some of the mechanics of the trial. There is a to-convict number. This number starts at zero and is added and subtracted from by the jury, the judge, the prosecution, and the defense. If at the end of everything it's above 0, you're convicted and sentenced. If it's below 0, you're acquitted. Exactly 0 gives you a hung jury with a chance for either a retrial or walking free.

Jury selection sets the initial level of the to-convict number from 30 points in favor of conviction if the country is 100% Conservative to 30 points in favor of acquittal if the country is 100% liberal, on a sliding scale depending on the current state of the country. The jury is randomly modified up or down by a random number of up to 30 points, and if the judge is a sleeper it's dropped another 20 points.

If you have $5000 attorney, and the jury at this point is still biased to convict (it can be up to +60 at this point if the country is conservative and you get a bad roll), the to-convict number will be cleared and set to -30. If the jury is already biased against convicting, the to-convict number will just be further reduced by another 30 points.

The prosecution then goes. The prosecution adds 40-100 points to the to-convict number, plus 20 points per ex-LCS witness, and an additional bonus based on how scary the crimes you're charged with are -- big ones are likely to be +1 per count of firing an illegal weapon, +1 per count of felony assault, and +2 per count of murder. As you can imagine, this adds up quickly for your FBI's Most Wanted candidates. If the judge is a sleeper, the prosecution's power is divided in half.

The defense then goes. The count appointed attorney adds 0-70. The ace attorney adds 80-150. The sleeper attorney adds 0-70 plus four times law and persuasion (to match ace attorney here, you need 20 total law and persuasion -- they start with 6-14 between the two skills, and have no guarantees of having the stats to get that high). Self-representation is significantly more complicated.

So take a thug with 30 points of penalty for crimes in a moderate society (10 counts of felony assault, 10 counts of firing illegal weapon, 5 counts of murder), with no former LCS testifying against and no sleeper judge.

If you pick your inexperienced sleeper lawyer:
Jury: +30 to -30
Prosecution: +130 to +70
Defense: -40 to -110
Adding those all together, the best case is -70 (skated through easy) and the worst case is +120 (crushed), with a fairly steep bell curve centered on +25. So your thug is most likely going to be convicted.

If you pick your ace attorney:
Jury: -30 to -60
Prosecution: +70 to +130
Defense: -80 to -150
Adding these up your chances vary from +20 to -140, on a similarly steep (and slightly irregular) bell curve centered near -30. So your thug is probably going to walk free.

Now, with a big trial -- let's say your founder just got arrested with 250 points of penalty (25 counts of murder, 100 counts of felony assault, 80 counts of firing an illegal weapon, 10 counts of arson...) and one former LCS testifying against. You have a sleeper lawyer maxed out on their stats with 20 law/persuasion. You have a sleeper judge. And the society is 5/6 liberal.

If you pick the maxed out sleeper lawyer, you get:
Jury: -70 to -10
Prosecution: +155 to +185
Defense: -150 to -80
Best case scenario is -65. Worst case scenario is +95. Bell curve is centered on +15, which is conviction territory. Hold your breath, but your founder's probably getting 50 consecutive life sentences and the LCS breaks apart.

If you pick the ace attorney, you get:
Jury: -100 to -40
Prosecution: +155 to +185
Defense: -150 to -80
Best case scenario is -95. Worst case scenario is +65. Now the bell curve is centered on -15, which is acquittal. Again hold your breath, but this time you're probably going to go free.

These scenarios explain why I say the ace attorney is more powerful 95% of the time. Actually on reference the chance of getting the elite rival for the ace attorney is 1 in 10 (this should probably be dropped significantly to make it more rare) -- the effects of this are the jury effect is removed (Jury set to +0, no matter what) and the prosecution gets +40, making the bell curve center on +15 even for just loitering. So the correct number should be 90% of the time your ace attorney is the better bet, 10% of the time it backfires.

[E. Albright]

These scenarios explain why I say the ace attorney is more powerful 95% of the time. Actually on reference the chance of getting the elite rival for the ace attorney is 1 in 10 (this should probably be dropped significantly to make it more rare)

Hmm. Or, the chance should be scaled with the Juice of the defendant... a Random Hippie Prostitute is unlikely to be worthy of such an august person's attention, whereas Ché Reincarnate would have the Conservative lawyers drooling over being the one to send such Liberal Filth to the chair.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

That's a good point. I was actually watching Inherit The Wind the other day, and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to have sufficiently high profile cases/Liberals attract top characters from both sides to work for free, and indicate an extreme level of media and public attention on the case somehow.

[beorn080]

If you do implement the Juice requirements for both high end lawyers showing up it should also be influenced by crime levels. For instance an extremely famous, high juice liberal who gets picked up for for various nonviolent and non serious crimes should be more likely to just attract the liberal attorney to defend such a bastion of freedom while the conservative attorney doesn't bother with such small fry. However if said famous liberal has 300+ murders to his record the liberal attorney might be a bit leery of representing such a bad guy while the conservative lawyer would jump at the chance to get a death sentence on his record.

[E. Albright]

Well, yes and no, Beorn. If you've got an Evil Liberal Mastermind on the stand for 50 misdemeanors in a moderate-to-conservative justice system, that's still a fair chance to at the very least take that menace off the streets for quite a while. Which is to say, it should be severity of possible punishment moreso than severity of the crimes that gets the lawyers smelling blood.

[jasonred79]

To elaborate on why I think the ace attorney is actually more powerful than you're giving her credit for, let me explain some of the mechanics of the trial. There is a to-convict number. This number starts at zero and is added and subtracted from by the jury, the judge, the prosecution, and the defense. If at the end of everything it's above 0, you're convicted and sentenced. If it's below 0, you're acquitted. Exactly 0 gives you a hung jury with a chance for either a retrial or walking free.

Jury selection sets the initial level of the to-convict number from 30 points in favor of conviction if the country is 100% Conservative to 30 points in favor of acquittal if the country is 100% liberal, on a sliding scale depending on the current state of the country. The jury is randomly modified up or down by a random number of up to 30 points, and if the judge is a sleeper it's dropped another 20 points.

If you have $5000 attorney, and the jury at this point is still biased to convict (it can be up to +60 at this point if the country is conservative and you get a bad roll), the to-convict number will be cleared and set to -30. If the jury is already biased against convicting, the to-convict number will just be further reduced by another 30 points.

The prosecution then goes. The prosecution adds 40-100 points to the to-convict number, plus 20 points per ex-LCS witness, and an additional bonus based on how scary the crimes you're charged with are -- big ones are likely to be +1 per count of firing an illegal weapon, +1 per count of felony assault, and +2 per count of murder. As you can imagine, this adds up quickly for your FBI's Most Wanted candidates. If the judge is a sleeper, the prosecution's power is divided in half.

The defense then goes. The count appointed attorney adds 0-70. The ace attorney adds 80-150. The sleeper attorney adds 0-70 plus four times law and persuasion (to match ace attorney here, you need 20 total law and persuasion -- they start with 6-14 between the two skills, and have no guarantees of having the stats to get that high). Self-representation is significantly more complicated.

So take a thug with 30 points of penalty for crimes in a moderate society (10 counts of felony assault, 10 counts of firing illegal weapon, 5 counts of murder), with no former LCS testifying against and no sleeper judge.

If you pick your inexperienced sleeper lawyer:
Jury: +30 to -30
Prosecution: +130 to +70
Defense: -40 to -110
Adding those all together, the best case is -70 (skated through easy) and the worst case is +120 (crushed), with a fairly steep bell curve centered on +25. So your thug is most likely going to be convicted.

If you pick your ace attorney:
Jury: -30 to -60
Prosecution: +70 to +130
Defense: -80 to -150
Adding these up your chances vary from +20 to -140, on a similarly steep (and slightly irregular) bell curve centered near -30. So your thug is probably going to walk free.

Now, with a big trial -- let's say your founder just got arrested with 250 points of penalty (25 counts of murder, 100 counts of felony assault, 80 counts of firing an illegal weapon, 10 counts of arson...) and one former LCS testifying against. You have a sleeper lawyer maxed out on their stats with 20 law/persuasion. You have a sleeper judge. And the society is 5/6 liberal.

If you pick the maxed out sleeper lawyer, you get:
Jury: -70 to -10
Prosecution: +155 to +185
Defense: -150 to -80
Best case scenario is -65. Worst case scenario is +95. Bell curve is centered on +15, which is conviction territory. Hold your breath, but your founder's probably getting 50 consecutive life sentences and the LCS breaks apart.

If you pick the ace attorney, you get:
Jury: -100 to -40
Prosecution: +155 to +185
Defense: -150 to -80
Best case scenario is -95. Worst case scenario is +65. Now the bell curve is centered on -15, which is acquittal. Again hold your breath, but this time you're probably going to go free.

These scenarios explain why I say the ace attorney is more powerful 95% of the time. Actually on reference the chance of getting the elite rival for the ace attorney is 1 in 10 (this should probably be dropped significantly to make it more rare) -- the effects of this are the jury effect is removed (Jury set to +0, no matter what) and the prosecution gets +40, making the bell curve center on +15 even for just loitering. So the correct number should be 90% of the time your ace attorney is the better bet, 10% of the time it backfires.

Hmm... looking at this, for your sleeper lawyer to be better than an Ace Attorney when the people are Liberal, your sleeper needs a combined 28 in Persuasion and Law. Tough, but not impossible?
And if you're just starting out in AC Nightmare mode, Ace Attorney has a HUGE affect, likely giving -30 + (-30) to your jury. Sleeper needs 35 P+L here to come equal.
 
According to this, the BEST RNG results possible in the best environment possible are:
Jury -80 (100% liberal, Sleeper judge, sleeper lawyer)
Prosecution (+40 + Crimes) /2 (sleeper judge)
Defense -230 (SL with 20 Law + 20 Persuasion)
Giving -290 +(crimes/2)
 
Hmm. So. If your crimes are 580 or worse, you have NO chance of acquital. Interesting...
 
How much crime to make it probable borderline guilty or not guilty?
 
Jury -50, Prosecution +35 + crime/2, Defense -195. So 420 worth of crimes... Interesting. So you can MOST LIKELY commit over 100 murders (and assaults, since you must attack to kill), and you will usually go scot free with a sleeper lawyer with 20+20.
 
How much crime can you commit with a super sleeper lawyer and judge and elite liberal society, and an EVIL RNG?
 
Jury -20, Prosecution +50 +Crime/2, Defence -160. So you can commit up to 260 crime and yet be *guaranteed* to escape! That's a LOT!

Now, how much juice does a sleeper lawyer lose and gain when defending LCS members? Seems to be a measly 2 points per successful defence. BOO. And I hear sleeper lawyers lose 10 when they lose a case??? BOO!!! This makes the sleeper lawyer you can start the game with seem really bad...
 
So, what's the mechanics for "defend self"?

[Grimith]

Considering the age of this topic, might some of this informaton be out of date?

[mainiac]

I don't think the trial system has received any significant overhaul since Jonathan's post earlier, so this topic should be up to date.

A random idea: If a high juice liberal is caught then either side might have the option of throwing the case in order to create a scandal about justice run amok.  For the liberals to throw the case they would need a sleeper attorney and the defendant would need to have a not too scary rap sheet while for the conservatives to throw the case, the liberals would need a strong defense (ace attorney or strong sleeper) and a scary rap sheet.  The effect of throwing the case is that it would create a powerful news story that would instantly shift public opinion on judges by 50% and  give it a huge boost to public interest.

[Zsword]

Umm... I'd say that this is a little out to date because there is more random event moddifiers that have been added recently. (ELITE LIBERAL HAND SIGNAL! One of Jurors is the defendant long lost childhood friend ETC.)

[jasonred79]

Interesting. Though it would appear that they already DO throw cases in the current game. (actually, it's just the effects of Jury-society and DP issue)
Example: This LCS member gets sentenced to death... for LOITERING... or for 1 charge of vandalism (public grafitti).
Next 2 years, after some public swaying, another LCS member commits repeated mass murder, killing 1 person with a sword every day at the downtown apartments for 1 whole month. (the cops should be sacked for this, btw!) Result: Not guilty! Goes free!

I think that the hand signal and childhood friend are just indicators of what the RNG gave you for your jury roll... it's not a modifier but an indicator.