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[Innominate]

New LCS player here. Finally, on my 8th restart, I've got a good thing going. I hit what I consider a milestone when I got a change of laws that was actually pro-liberal. Given that I have a founder who is apparently invisible to everything short of a news anchor or eminent scientist (stealth 15, disguise 12, agility 20) - and yes, I will be working on that - it seems that the next step is to start getting a rifle squad together to have some defensive power in case of raids.

But I digress. I was wondering whether there are any plans to change the current system of conservative/liberal labelling? As it is, it seems a little odd that even a 1 heart, 1 wisdom crack head can, without even talking, determine the political leanings of every person they see. Of course, since a lot of game mechanics depend on it I understand why it is this way. I was wondering if there are any plans to change it in later versions?

A reasonable alternative I think would be to have each randomly generated conservative/liberal have a "subtlety" characteristic, with player-controlled characters having a skill related to determining their leanings - the existing skill street sense might be a good candidate. That way enemies that are obviously tools of the oppressive Conservative regime would be identified as such by even a new LCS member, while the same member wouldn't instantly know whether the janitor watching them was liberal, moderate or conservative.

Admittedly, the concept doesn't add much to the gameplay except disadvantaging new recruits slightly. Since you never commit any crimes in front of moderates anway (unless you want to alienate) and liberals almost as rarely (I think graffiti is okay by them) it wouldn't add very much. About the only thing I can think of would be that it affects whether you start shooting non-security personnel or not. It might also make you hesitant to attack a group of obvious Conservative scumbag police if there is an undetermined lawyer amongst them - what if your characters kill the lawyer?

[Kay12]

The way I see it, the people labeled as conservative/liberal are only the most flaming ends of the scale (those anyone could recognise as C+/L+). The rest, C-M-L people, are the moderates.

[Grimith]

That's how I thought of the matter as well: only the folks at the far end of the spectrums got lit up like a Christmas tree. After all, if you look at "The Status of the Liberal Agenda" screen, Conservatives and Liberals have their own (slightly) different color code. And those shown as Elite Liberals can still very much reject to join you, as those lit up as Arch-Conservatives... well, they might not join you, but a few of them will at least humor you. Consequently, the aura of such would be apparent even to a member of Society's Dregs because these people would WANT their views to be known.

Your idea would inject a bit more realism to the game and let the RNG have more fun in your life - which I, myself, would like since I like rolling the dice against the RNG in this game. But, as you admittedly, the idea doesn't do much to change gameplay, and I also have no idea how easy it would be to work into the game. Need the Fox Avatar here for that one.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

It wouldn't be too hard to change. I'm not currently planning to do so, since the gameplay is really built around the current system, but it's an interesting discussion and I'm happy to read arguments in favor of a more complex alignment and alignment detection system.