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[Paul]

I can't remember if this was in the older versions or not, but I notice that the way the creature file is dancers and yoga instructors are basically the best possible recruits. Dancers are the best long term, since they start young.

Heres how NPC stats work:
Assigns 40 points, then subtracts out each of the stats from that total. Heres the kicker - the max it can subtract from that pool is 4 in any given stat, so if you start with more than 4 those are basically free points. Then randomly distribute the points left to the stats. Liberals get a 50% chance of getting heart instead of wisdom when widsom is picked, and conservatives have the 50% of getting wisdom when heart is picked.

So basically any stat starting above 4 gives free points that don't count against the point total.

Dancers & Yoga Instructors have 10 health 10 agility 4 strength, with the default 1 on other stats. The two 10s give them 12 "free" points over the standard npcs. This makes them have higher overall stats than most of the other npcs except for some of the high end conservatives, but they have those points mostly allocated to wisdom which makes ithem worse for recruiting.

Agil and health also make for awesome fighters, making these npcs the ultimate combat recruits as well as just having overall better stats to boot. Soldiers or Agents can't hold a candle to well trained dancers & yoga instructors.

Is this part of the LCS humor, making dancers ultimate warriors, or is it just a consequence of a bugged system? Some of the other npcs are similarly boosted, but not quite to the extent of dancers and yoga instructors.

[G-Flex]

I don't see why dancers would necessarily make bad warriors. They tend to be in shape.

Athletes are some of the best, really. You can often find ones with all 10s in Health, Agility, and Strength.

Agents are pretty badass in the sense that they tend to start with (sometimes several) points in Dodge, which is a hard skill to train.

[Paul]

I'm not saying they shouldn't be good warriors, I'm just saying it seems odd that they get better stats than any most other npcs (even soldiers/mercs/agents).

And Athletes have 8/8/8 starting, so they are actually equal in terms of points gained, but the dancers/yoga instructors are better if you don't intend to use strength. Athletes would be better for melee fighters. AFAIK strength is only good for melee fighting, so if you're using a squad of people with guns then that's just 4 wasted points.

-edit- For instance, here are the base stats on a dancer I'm using as my new founder (original one kicked the bucket after receiving a lead donation from the CCS):
Age 18
Heart 9
Intelligence 9
Wisdom 1
Health 10
Agility 10
Strength 4
Charisma 9

When I finish getting him juiced up he's going to be 19/19/1/20/20/12/19. Way better than my founder.

Now given I probably got crazy lucky getting someone with this kind of stats (not a single point used on stength or wisdom, for instance - that's gotta be rare) but even the less ridiculously good dancers are, well, ridiculously good.

[Servant Corps]

You know, I always saw athletes and dancers as cultural sleepers, not as potential LCS agents. It just goes to show how much I abuse the game mechanics by using sleepers rather than terrorism.

[Neonivek]

It would be interesting to me if Athletes have a chance (small one) of being an Olympic Hopeful.

They are also named Athletes but they are considered Social Sleepers and have amazing physical stats.

[HAMMERMILL]

Yeah, Martial Artists, Dancers and especially Athletes have very high stats. They are difficult to recruit early on though, so it balances it out, and none of them come with very useful skills.

Just a few points of random skills, which makes them worst then the old standbys of hippies and college students.

[Paul]

Yeah, Martial Artists, Dancers and especially Athletes have very high stats. They are difficult to recruit early on though, so it balances it out, and none of them come with very useful skills.

Just a few points of random skills, which makes them worst then the old standbys of hippies and college students.

When you get to the point of being able to recruit them easily you usually have someone with decent skills that can teach your recruits. I made a team of dancers trained by an agent to good rifle skill and good first aid from a doctor. They wiped out a few SWAT teams at the local police station to get armor, then wiped out the CCS all by themselves, then held off numerous sieges. All without any losses. Just mowing everyone down and surviving crazy bad wounds due to the high health and first aid skill.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

The free attribute points for any fixed attributes above 4 is a fairly new feature, and it does favor characters like Athletes, Yoga Instructors, and Dancers by making them unusually powerful. These were always good recruits for combat, but they're even better now. The reason I added these bonus attribute points was that characters like those, and especially some of the higher end Conservative recruits, were becoming extremely homogenous, with universally low scores in their secondary abilities due to their concentration of the available attribute pool in those areas. I believe the latest iteration of agents, for example, are so powerful that they get more fixed attributes than the entire random attribute pool for standard characters -- so they'd all be exactly the same if I didn't do something. This solution increases the power of characters with high starting attributes, but makes them less lopsided. If it's too extreme of an effect, I could increase the threshold for the attributes being free to five or six as a partial fix, which would reduce their scores in the other areas by several points. I could also reduce the starting stats of yoga instructors/dancers and athletes by one, from 10-10-4 and 8-8-8 to 9-9-4 and 7-7-7 respectively.

[Paul]

It's kind of humorous, to be honest. I don't really see a problem with it being in, I was just curious why it was like that.

I think you should just make other high end people have high attributes. Like give characters like judges, lawyers, doctors, programmers, etc - a higher starting int or charisma. All the harder to recruit people could have high stats in whatever seems appropriate.

That way dancers could still be great fighting recruits, but you would be better off with lawyers and writers and such for non-combat people. As-is the dancers can get similar stats to these guys all the while having the 10s in health and agility.

[Neonivek]

Agents having insane stats at least make sense in terms of balance and story. (They are the hardest to recruit and they are obviously part of the elite)

Though if we wanted to have other characters along the same lines of the Agents there would need to be something.

Actually imagine if there was a way to get the Super Lawyers into your team, or supreme court judges, or other characters... Hmm that could be a bonus of opportunities.