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Author Topic: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad  (Read 1473 times)

Servant Corps

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Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« on: December 10, 2008, 02:23:49 pm »

It does seem funny to see every single person move in lockstep, following the orders of the LCS Leader, no matter what. If LCS leader wants you to wear no clothes and storm the Police Station, then so be it!

But...there has been suggestions to add some sort of internal strife, even internal warfare, within the LCS. I don't know why such suggestions have...er...been discarded, even though people, including Toady, expressed interest for them. And the community itself have changed, prehaps 'internal dissent' may turn out to be a dumb idea, because, after all, why kill each other when you could kill Conservatives?

Still, I'll list three different ways 'Internal Dissent' has been suggested, if only because I need to know what you think.

1)Internal Elections:

Quote from: Floydman
In my game, my leader got badly injured just 3 days before the first month ends, and while he built some juice to be classified as an activist when he was active, he was quickly surpassed by his first recruits in terms of Juice by the time he got out (they were socialist threats or something like that).  Now that brings an interesting idea, our founder's leadership being questionned by his own organisation members.  Not only we would have to worry about the cons, but also from the internal politics.  It shouldn't be as easy as my early-injured-for-3-months-leader would have been overthrown as soon as he got back from hospital, but it could actually be a good way to prevent the "coward-leader strategy".  If at some point there is a certain number or people have so much more juice as our leader, is leadership could be questionned.  There would be a time-period where he would have to try to make-up for his errors from the past, but if after that period he still didn'y raise his juice sufficiently, there could be internal elections, and one of the top juice members would be elected.  I have no idea how this should be finished though.  Should the game end, or should we keep our founder into the ranks, and try to make him recover his leader status as well as overthrowing the conservative agenda?  Anyway, this would be a very good rendition of real-life.

I'm okay with the coward-leader strategy, but this was back in 2004, so maybe the coward-leader was a real problem back then. I don't really see this as the 'ideal', because in the end, it doesn't really matter to you who is the Leader of the LCS, only if Liberalism wins. I think number 2 seems a more practical solution.

2) Radical Crime Squad (name can change): If the leader have less Juice and Heart than one of his underlinings, the underlining may be upset about how slow the Liberal Crime Squad is (as well as how the leader is so corrupt, exploiting his workers while he gets all the credit for their sacrifices). This underlining may very decide that the LCS is a part of the problem, and so will leave the Liberal Crime Squad to form a splinter cell known as the Radical Crime Squad. The RCS' goal is the complete and utter destruction of the United States, to be replaced by a totally Liberal Society. This means the RCS will also target the LCS too, harassing and raiding them. As more and more underlinings get disappointed about the LCS, they also begin to defect to the RCS, boosting the RCS' power. To make matters worse, all RCS' raids are "rampages", thereby swaying society more Conservative.

You will have to find the RCS' safehouse and shut the safehouse down to disband the RCS...but as long as there are powerhungry people within the Liberal Crime Squad, there is always the possibility that the RCS may be reformed.

(The RCS is just one part of a suggestion to create 'splinter cells' that would operate in different parts of USA in order to assist in destroying Conservativism. A 'splinter cell' that may hate the LCS' main chain of command may rebel and turn RCS. The other way an RCS terrorist cell may be formed is if a underling have far more juice than his leader.)

3) Sleepers. If LCS have sleepers, why not the other Organizations within the game? For Sleepers to exist, they must have someone been in an area where they can be presumably brainwashed/enlightened to the Organization. So, surrendering to the Police, staying in the the hospital, engaging in prositution, being a Conservative sleeper yourself, etc., these people are exposed to the Conservative menance, and may turn into Sleepers.

All Sleepers follow LCS' orders, as normal, but sometimes, special, ahem, Stories, would be leaked to the Press, similar to the special stories leaked to the Liberal Guardian. Where the stories are leaked, and what are the types of stories that ARE leaked, all depends on the Organization who owns that Sleeper.

If you believe that someone has turned 'Sleeper', you have the possiblity to just kill the Sleeper (or maybe just interrogate/brainwash them so as to 'cure' them of their "Sleeperness" and then send them as Sleeper Double-Agents, undermining the organization that they are supposedly 'sleeping' for). There is a chance that the Sleeper may find out about you trying to kill him, and will therefore run away. Non-Sleepers will, of course, never resist.
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Rezan

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2008, 04:46:39 pm »

I prefer the idea of having persuasion and leadership determine a person's loyalty to you. Perhaps influenced by wisdom and heart. A highly loyal person is more likely to do anything for you (and you could likely persuade him to kill himself in a glorious blaze of suicide bombing), and a person less committed to your leadership and cause might not bother attacking anyone in combat.

Basically this would be another "bar" or stat, what have you. Obviously an Elite Liberal leader who has killed more Conservatives than Jesus likely killed fig-trees when they were out of season (READ THE BIBLE TO CATCH THE REFERENCE) would command more respect and loyalty than a measly Activist who's idea of "action" is throwing paint on a Conservative's fur coat.

This would give your Founder a benefit of being a mass-murderer; and would balance the whole "COPS RAID EVERYWHERE HE GOES" situation out, by making it positive for a leader, or a "lieutenant" if you will, to be a die-hard Liberal.

Oh, and on a sidenote: In Fight Club, there is soap-making, which can very quickly lead to bomb making. I would like to see primitive IEDs and homemade explosives make it into LCS. They're really not that hard to make, and we could finally use eminent scientists and the science skill for something really useful.

This matches well up with loyalty; where you could command one of your loyal troops to strap on a Liberal Vest of Destruction, loaded to the brim with explosives. Maybe we could do that to hostages, too. You know, to wipe out those pesky police/military officers besieging your Liberal Safehouse. I took this partially from Swordfish, but still. It's damned awesome, and would make the "realistic combat" easier to cope with (as there would be ways of avoiding it, or making it easier).
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mainiac

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2008, 05:47:44 pm »

I have a religion skill of like 3 or 4 and I have no clue what you're referring to with the bible and fig trees.

Suicide bombings are an interesting idea.
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Rezan

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2008, 06:21:06 pm »

Jesus likes to bitch-slap fruitless fig-trees with no regard to the season. I suggest we leave it at that.

I am quite fond of the prospect of suicide bombing. A paraplegic could become useful again!
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Karlito

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2008, 09:27:47 pm »

I have always thought it would be interesting to have sleepers (for other organizations) within the LCS, especially when you have a large organization.  Just think, then you could get the Liberal Inquisition to root them out.
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Guy Montag

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2008, 03:52:18 am »

I think it might be kinda fun to root out and eliminate traitorous elements within yout organization. "This guy has too much Wisdom... he's gotta go, he's a liability".

IRL criminal organizations often fall to internal dissention. Maybe once the LCS reaches a certain size, it becomes more vulnerable to internal dissent.
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E. Albright

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #6 on: December 11, 2008, 09:36:16 am »

One thing I'm not comfortable with in 1 and 2 is that they're specifically considering Juice. When you get to a certain point, you need to be going out on site actions (even if not perforce killing people) in order to maintain Juice levels with those who are. Not all leader builds are well-suited for this... nor should they be, looking at real-world parallels. If you're not skilled at combat, but are a good organizer, you're not going to be pushed out just because someone has a longer rap sheet than you. At a certain point, if you have a strongly non-combat leader, it's possible that they will stagnate at, say, 100 Juice... and if someone in your combat squad had decent Heart, they could easily surpass them while spiraling upwards towards LE by sheer weight of Juice.

Also, EVERYONE knows Liberals don't consider anything resembling military service necessary in a leader... ;)
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mainiac

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2008, 11:00:06 am »

Also, EVERYONE knows Liberals don't consider anything resembling military service necessary in a leader... ;)

Well, liberals don't fawn over military men like conservatives do, but they also tend to highly resent chicken hawks *cough*Bush*cough*.  Maybe there could be a mechanic whereby if the LCS is losing good men (say 10% of total recruits killed or 50% sent to prison) and the founder has not put himself in the same risk (i.e. racked up assault charges and juice), liberals will start leaving the organization, disgusted by the cowardly leadership.
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Ancient Babylonian god of RAEG
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Rezan

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Re: Internal Dissent within LCS...good idea or bad
« Reply #8 on: December 11, 2008, 11:33:06 am »

What if high levels of juice required maintenance? That way your loyalty could rely mostly on juice. Let's say you can go above 1000 juice for Elite Liberal - perhaps 1300. Your founder would lose a bit of juice every day.
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