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[socially_inept_butterfly]

Who should I recruit? I mostly went with A questions to get a good recruiter, but now I need someone who is good at stealing things, should I go for gang members or what?

[Neonivek]

It depends...

Generally speaking the game favors the ability to burst into locations, stealing everything not bolted to the floor, while killing anyone in your way!

If you mean cars... then that is another story.

[mainiac]

Anyone can learn to pick locks if you hit up the apartments enough.  For stealth/disguise I find that practice makes perfect, go a stealing non violently and you'll learn 'em soon enough.

[socially_inept_butterfly]

Ah, alright then. I'll do that.
now, about stealing cars.
Basically the same thing?

[penguinofhonor]

For sneaking:
Just get a single person with the proper dress code and go into the gentelmen's club, and just stand around nonviolently training your disguise skill, leaving when you smell conservative panic. Kill the bouncer if you need juice. Once you have lots of disguise skill, go out of dress code and repeat the process. It's how I train my ninja liberals.

[socially_inept_butterfly]

For sneaking:
Just get a single person with the proper dress code and go into the gentelmen's club, and just stand around nonviolently training your disguise skill, leaving when you smell conservative panic. Kill the bouncer if you need juice. Once you have lots of disguise skill, go out of dress code and repeat the process. It's how I train my ninja liberals.

Ah, that might work.
For juice I've really just been sneaking around the textile factory naked destroying machines and stealing goods.

[ChemicalVengence]

I'd say, if you have someone with a decent security skill as it is and can recruit a few more ppl, go to the police station or prison, the prisoners seem to all have decent sleight of the hand or security skills, and many of them are professional thieves

[beorn080]

There are half a dozen types of people who can randomly turn out to be professional thieves. Those are the best initially for straight up solo theft with good disguise and stealth. Also Actors and I believe Hair stylists start with good disguise skill. Another great way to steal stuff and possibly get some powerful recruits is use single prostitutes who go in seducing everyone they meet to avoid suspicion. Finally not sure if you can do this anymore but if you recruit a

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tank

, you can steal anything at that point.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

The professional thief, surprisingly enough, is the ideal recruit if you want somebody good at breaking in and stealing things. Unfortunately, this is a hidden job, and professional thieves show up masquerading as other character types when you run across them in site mode. To find one, the most straightforward option is to recruit a bunch of prisoners and hope there's a professional thief among them. The fastest way to get prisoners is to break into the prison on the outskirts of town, but you'll probably have to shoot your way out. Note you'll get some worthless small-time characters too if you're freeing prisoners, and you'll rack up heat pretty fast.

If you'd rather play it safe, you can search for people who seem slightly "out of place" in the homeless shelter or crack houses -- folks like painters, sculptors, socialites, things like that. Those people might be professional thieves, and you should be able to find out their true profession by asking them on dates or getting them into a recruiting session, then viewing their character sheet. Unless you have a very strong recruiter, I would recommend dating over talking about the issues, as professional thieves, even if liberal, are not generally socially conscious enough to be as receptive to normal recruiting as the hippies at the vegan co-op are. Naturally that means someone with good seduction though, so it might be worth recruiting a prostitute first and having them conduct the search.

[penguinofhonor]

I just got two professional thieves from a couple batches of prisoners and I can vouch for their quality.

They start out with six slight of hand (which I believe decreases the amount of suspicion you get for stealing stuff) and four or three (two skills will have 4, one will have 3) disguise, stealth, and security.

If you want to train up security, go to the genetics lab and open lots of animal cages.

Edit: One of mine actually had 7 sleight of hand and 3 disguise and security. Which means this is how it goes: They come with 6 sleight of hand and 3 security, disguise, and stealth. Two of their skills will get an extra level.

[Cosmonot]

I just got two professional thieves from a couple batches of prisoners and I can vouch for their quality.

They start out with six slight of hand (which I believe decreases the amount of suspicion you get for stealing stuff) and four or three (two skills will have 4, one will have 3) disguise, stealth, and security.

If you want to train up security, go to the genetics lab and open lots of animal cages.

Edit: One of mine actually had 7 sleight of hand and 3 disguise and security. Which means this is how it goes: They come with 6 sleight of hand and 3 security, disguise, and stealth. Two of their skills will get an extra level.

If you want to know exactly how a creature's stats are generated, it's easier and more accurate to go source-diving than to compare a couple of specific examples.

[penguinofhonor]

If you're a programmer, you mean.

[mainiac]

Don't train security at the genetics lab, train it at the cosmetics lab.  Fluffy bunnies don't rip your throat out. Well, except...

[beorn080]

Security is easier trained in apartments. A 5 story apartment has maybe 30+ locked doors along corridors.

[Cosmonot]

If you're a programmer, you mean.

You hardly need any programming ability to be able to understand many of the game mechanics in the source. For example, here's the relevant bit of code that controls the starting skills of a professional thief:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

case CREATURE_THIEF:
   sk=LCSrandom(5)+3;cr.skill[SKILL_SECURITY]=sk;randomskills-=sk;
   sk=LCSrandom(5)+3;cr.skill[SKILL_DISGUISE]=sk;randomskills-=sk;
   sk=LCSrandom(5)+3;cr.skill[SKILL_STEALTH]=sk;randomskills-=sk;
   sk=LCSrandom(5)+3;cr.skill[SKILL_SLEIGHTOFHAND]=sk;randomskills-=sk;That code does a bunch of things, but all you really need to know is that a thief's security, disguise, stealth, and sleight of hand are all equal to LCSrandom(5)+3, and that LCSrandom(5) is a number from 0-4. In other words, thieves have 3-7 points of security, disguise, stealth, and sleight of hand skill.

There's more to it than that, but in general understanding what code is supposed to do is a lot easier than making it work.