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[Hotrootsoup]

I am a huge fan of this game, but it has one enormous flaw in my eyes: Walking around to find certain people.

Say I'm trying to find an athlete. I go to the Juice Bar, visit all the tables, but I don't find any. What to do now? Well, it might be a little faster to leave and come back again to refill the tables, but strategically the thing to do is to mindlessly walk back and forth until I find an athlete. Why leave and come back when it costs a day? This has lead to me wasting 10 minutes trying to find a single person. That is MMO style balance, and is not fun in any way.

I do know a decent amount of C++, but I'd like to hear what other people think before I attempt a mod. I know there's a good chance I'm missing something obvious If I'm not missing something obvious though, and one of you likes my ideas and has modding experience, I would love to work with you on this.


Idea #1: How about there are more tables, or tables refill a certain amount of times, and aside from that that you can't naturally run into anyone? Add table-like structures to all areas, and then have people appear based on certain events rather than time. So every crime I commit has a chance of spawning a conservative, and everything I do that increases juice can spawn a liberal. Once conservatives become suspicious+, people can just spawn like normal.

Idea #2: Spend the day looking for someone. Enter the name of a profession and their alignment, and your squad will search for a match. You are allowed 1 search per party member. Rarity of person determines success chance, but using a full squad's searches guarantees a find (if possible for that area). Possibly, kidnapping is not allowed on anyone you run into peacefully, aside from searches.

Idea #3: Similar to #1. Certain number of people per room, after that, nobody can appear without special circumstances (crime, etc.) You get a little message when you have run into everyone in the room. "The room seems empty"

[usr_share]

If you hit S, your squad will wait until someone will come. That way, you'll only have to move somewhere and hit S.

[fr0z3d]

I agree with you, and this gets annoying rather quickly for me. I like your second idea, it shouldn't be hard to implement (Could it be based in the "Steal a car" activity?). I also suggest changing the spawn rates, which is probably way simpler and easier to do.

[Hotrootsoup]

If you hit S, your squad will wait until someone will come. That way, you'll only have to move somewhere and hit S.

That still doesn't fix having to mindlessly look for one type of person though, it just makes it a little bit easier.

I agree with you, and this gets annoying rather quickly for me. I like your second idea, it shouldn't be hard to implement (Could it be based in the "Steal a car" activity?). I also suggest changing the spawn rates, which is probably way simpler and easier to do.

You're right, might be easier to implement as an activity of its own.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Idea #2: Spend the day looking for someone. Enter the name of a profession and their alignment, and your squad will search for a match. You are allowed 1 search per party member. Rarity of person determines success chance, but using a full squad's searches guarantees a find (if possible for that area). Possibly, kidnapping is not allowed on anyone you run into peacefully, aside from searches.

This or something like this strikes me as the best way to go about minimizing recruitment "search grind". Ultimately, this is what you're doing anyway -- it's just you're inputting hundreds of keystrokes to brute force it instead of having the game automate the search.

[KA101]

Idea #2: Spend the day looking for someone. Enter the name of a profession and their alignment, and your squad will search for a match. You are allowed 1 search per party member. Rarity of person determines success chance, but using a full squad's searches guarantees a find (if possible for that area). Possibly, kidnapping is not allowed on anyone you run into peacefully, aside from searches.

This or something like this strikes me as the best way to go about minimizing recruitment "search grind". Ultimately, this is what you're doing anyway -- it's just you're inputting hundreds of keystrokes to brute force it instead of having the game automate the search.

Perhaps the same general interface as car theft?

[Cheedows]

So your liberal attempts to "convert" the certain person type with varying difficulty?  Would there be a risk to it?

[Little]

I think a chance of the Police/CSS/CIA being able to put sleepers in your organization through this could be interesting. Perhaps a roll on Street Sense + Heart?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Idea #2: Spend the day looking for someone. Enter the name of a profession and their alignment, and your squad will search for a match. You are allowed 1 search per party member. Rarity of person determines success chance, but using a full squad's searches guarantees a find (if possible for that area). Possibly, kidnapping is not allowed on anyone you run into peacefully, aside from searches.

I've implemented a feature very similar to this one, which will be in the upcoming 4.08 release.

You can pick Recruitment as an activity for the day. This pops up a menu like the clothes making menu giving various classes and difficulties. That day, the character will make a street sense check to find someone of that class. Short of trying to track down a character that doesn't spawn at the given laws (mutants at liberal laws, for example), you should be guaranteed at least one person, but high street sense will get you more, depending on how common the character type you're looking for is. If you get more than one, you can see their names, ages, and alignments, and meet with one or more of them, your choice. You don't have to meet with anyone if you don't want to; you can just ignore them all if they have the wrong alignments or whatever.

You get one chance to talk to the person you meet with about the issues or drop a pickup line. If successful, proceed as normal. If unsuccessful, try again with another person, or try again tomorrow if that was the only/last person you could meet with. When talking to the person, you can see their complete top-of-the-screen (small form) character sheet. So you can see their exact attributes and top several skills when deciding how to talk to them and whether you want to even try to recruit them.

The Recruitment activity will continue day after day until you clear it, so a person will keep looking for more Teachers every day until you tell them to stop, whether you recruit some of the Teachers they meet with or not.

[Jboy2000000]

You'll still be able to look for people of sight though, right? I actually kind of like looking around for people, it gives me choices when I just want people to fill spots.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

You'll still be able to look for people of sight though, right? I actually kind of like looking around for people, it gives me choices when I just want people to fill spots.

Yes, that's unchanged!

[Jboy2000000]

Wait, 4.08? What exactly is going to be in the game thats big enough to warrant the jump to 4.08?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Wait, 4.08? What exactly is going to be in the game thats big enough to warrant the jump to 4.08?

The mainline unveiling of National LCS features, this recruiting feature, and (I intend -- coding not done for this) the White House/President features.

[seth--]

...

Fox, can you explain why it uses street sense?

Talking to people helps a lot to avoid being seen when stealing a car, that doesn't sound right.

[Cheedows]

...

Fox, can you explain why it uses street sense?

Talking to people helps a lot to avoid being seen when stealing a car, that doesn't sound right.

Maybe it involves the way your Liberal perceives a person.  For example, asking every person you see isn't efficient, while knowing the "look" of them would help.  Just a guess.