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[NES630]

Alright, this is just a mechanics suggestion for infiltration. One of the things I wish was possible in-game is multitasking. Unfortunately, during an infiltration your group travels together, making it so everyone has to be committed to the same actions. Because of this, exploring large buildings in their entirety is a pain. So, a solution: Splitting the group. I don't know if this is programmable, but I'd like to see the ability to split one Crime Squad into two during an infiltration so that the individual groups can fan out as need be. The feature should allow you to designate the units split from the group, and possibly regroup if need be.

Scenarios where this feature could be used?

Primarily, this would be used to search buildings where key usable objects are randomly placed i.e. AM Radio Station, Cable News Network, etc. This could also be used to allow certain key members escape while leaving others to finish up an infiltration job, or for defending a base under siege.

Well? Leave comments/criticism/rants below!

[FinetalPies]

I see myself using this mostly as a way to have someone pick the lock for someone else to enter, without that lockpicking person have to take on the heat of whatever crimes you have planned. Or maybe leaving the getaway driver outside so they're guaranteed to be uninjured when it comes time to escape?

I don't really see this feature happening, but what do I know =P

[Liberal Elitist]

This would be difficult to code, for starters. Also, at certain places like a Sweatshop or Prison, you can recruit people into your party, up until it has 6 members. If you split into multiple parties, and they all Liberate Oppressed... well you could split an original party of 6 people into 6 parties of one person each, and then each of those 6 parties would be able to recruit 5 oppressed Liberals (such as illegal immigrants working at a sweatshop or prisoners in jail). This would give you the ability to get 30 people to join the LCS, all in a single raid!

Another consideration... while one squad is going around and doing things, what would the other one be doing? Just standing in one place, waiting, right? Well you've noticed, if you stand in one place waiting long enough, eventually other people show up, usually including some Conservatives, and then you'd better have disguise or stealth to avoid getting spotted and alarming them. If the Conservatives ARE alarmed, then how would you manage having multiple separate squads fighting Conservatives at the same time?

If you split up your group, then each of your members could easily get outnumbered by Conservatives. Plus how could the group coordinate their activities with each other? By walkie-talkies or something? That kinda thing makes it more likely for them to get caught.

Also, letting people escape at different times is also problematic. If you came there by car, everyone came in the same car, so if people escape, only one group escaping can use the car, everyone else would have to go on foot. And there might be a chase sequence for some of your Liberals, while other Liberals are still in the building.

What are the real benefits of splitting up, anyway? The things you cited (AM Radio Station and Cable News Network) work perfectly fine having the entire squad explore the site together. Those places aren't that big.

Anyway a Squad is like a team. They do things together. They go places together. If one of them commits a crime, they all get in trouble. If one of them picks a lock, the others can observe this lockpicking and learn from it. It's all about teamwork, for people in the same squad. If you want to go solo you can have a squad of just 1 person.

So yeah I don't think this feature is likely to happen, it would require lots of code overhaul, and we'd need to deal with cases such as what happens with the squads that are waiting in one place, how do we deal with people who leave the place before others, how do we deal with people releasing oppressed such as sweatshop workers or prisoners, how do we deal with multiple fights with Conservatives happening simultaneously, how do we deal with reuniting 2 groups if the total number of members in both groups is more than 6, etc. If we wanted to seriously implement this, we'd need to have answers about how to deal with every single one of those situations, or else the game would have errors if situations occurred which the game would not be coded to deal with. Plus this would involve creating lots more variables and functions and modifying a lot of existing code.

And for what benefit? Very little if any, as far as I can see. Having the entire Squad together works quite well, since they can learn skills by observing each other, they can all take the same transportation (such as a car) together, they don't get outnumbered in fights due to other Squad members being somewhere else, and they don't have to worry about other people who got separated. I don't really see how splitting up a Squad would actually help you out in the game. In the cases of AM Radio Station and Cable News Network, a single squad is quite easily able to deal with any situations that arise at such places, if they all have good skill levels: you can get all the loot, pick all the locks, take over the studio and do a broadcast, all that stuff. The only real challenges at those places are dealing with Radio Personalities and Cable News Anchors, whose special attacks in fights can turn your folks Conservative. And actually, it's easier to defeat Radio Personalities or Cable News Anchors if you have a full squad of 6 people fighting them. So again, what is the benefit of splitting up your squad into multiple parties? When you're a small group of Liberals in a location populated by hostile Conservatives, the LAST thing you'd need to do is split up and make it even easier for them to pick you off one by one.

So in summary, any amount of benefit from adding this feature does not outweigh the costs of how difficult it would be to implement and how it would unnecessarily complicate the code and make the program more likely to have errors and crash. At least that is my cost/benefit analysis (although I do admit that cost/benefit analysis is a Conservative notion, so you can discard it if you wish). However, speaking from a Liberal perspective, it would be great if we could implement every proposed feature, that would be fantastic in a Liberal utopia, and I wish it worked that way. This feature COULD be implemented, but there'd be quite a bit of difficulty involved, and I don't really see what the point of this feature is, I don't see WHY you would want to split up in the first place, what do you hope to achieve by splitting up?

In a Conservative world, Liberals gotta stick together to survive. Peace.

[NES630]

This would be difficult to code, for starters. Also, at certain places like a Sweatshop or Prison, you can recruit people into your party, up until it has 6 members. If you split into multiple parties, and they all Liberate Oppressed... well you could split an original party of 6 people into 6 parties of one person each, and then each of those 6 parties would be able to recruit 5 oppressed Liberals (such as illegal immigrants working at a sweatshop or prisoners in jail). This would give you the ability to get 30 people to join the LCS, all in a single raid!

Another consideration... while one squad is going around and doing things, what would the other one be doing? Just standing in one place, waiting, right? Well you've noticed, if you stand in one place waiting long enough, eventually other people show up, usually including some Conservatives, and then you'd better have disguise or stealth to avoid getting spotted and alarming them. If the Conservatives ARE alarmed, then how would you manage having multiple separate squads fighting Conservatives at the same time?

If you split up your group, then each of your members could easily get outnumbered by Conservatives. Plus how could the group coordinate their activities with each other? By walkie-talkies or something? That kinda thing makes it more likely for them to get caught.

Also, letting people escape at different times is also problematic. If you came there by car, everyone came in the same car, so if people escape, only one group escaping can use the car, everyone else would have to go on foot. And there might be a chase sequence for some of your Liberals, while other Liberals are still in the building.

What are the real benefits of splitting up, anyway? The things you cited (AM Radio Station and Cable News Network) work perfectly fine having the entire squad explore the site together. Those places aren't that big.

Anyway a Squad is like a team. They do things together. They go places together. If one of them commits a crime, they all get in trouble. If one of them picks a lock, the others can observe this lockpicking and learn from it. It's all about teamwork, for people in the same squad. If you want to go solo you can have a squad of just 1 person.

So yeah I don't think this feature is likely to happen, it would require lots of code overhaul, and we'd need to deal with cases such as what happens with the squads that are waiting in one place, how do we deal with people who leave the place before others, how do we deal with people releasing oppressed such as sweatshop workers or prisoners, how do we deal with multiple fights with Conservatives happening simultaneously, how do we deal with reuniting 2 groups if the total number of members in both groups is more than 6, etc. If we wanted to seriously implement this, we'd need to have answers about how to deal with every single one of those situations, or else the game would have errors if situations occurred which the game would not be coded to deal with. Plus this would involve creating lots more variables and functions and modifying a lot of existing code.

And for what benefit? Very little if any, as far as I can see. Having the entire Squad together works quite well, since they can learn skills by observing each other, they can all take the same transportation (such as a car) together, they don't get outnumbered in fights due to other Squad members being somewhere else, and they don't have to worry about other people who got separated. I don't really see how splitting up a Squad would actually help you out in the game. In the cases of AM Radio Station and Cable News Network, a single squad is quite easily able to deal with any situations that arise at such places, if they all have good skill levels: you can get all the loot, pick all the locks, take over the studio and do a broadcast, all that stuff. The only real challenges at those places are dealing with Radio Personalities and Cable News Anchors, whose special attacks in fights can turn your folks Conservative. And actually, it's easier to defeat Radio Personalities or Cable News Anchors if you have a full squad of 6 people fighting them. So again, what is the benefit of splitting up your squad into multiple parties? When you're a small group of Liberals in a location populated by hostile Conservatives, the LAST thing you'd need to do is split up and make it even easier for them to pick you off one by one.

So in summary, any amount of benefit from adding this feature does not outweigh the costs of how difficult it would be to implement and how it would unnecessarily complicate the code and make the program more likely to have errors and crash. At least that is my cost/benefit analysis (although I do admit that cost/benefit analysis is a Conservative notion, so you can discard it if you wish). However, speaking from a Liberal perspective, it would be great if we could implement every proposed feature, that would be fantastic in a Liberal utopia, and I wish it worked that way. This feature COULD be implemented, but there'd be quite a bit of difficulty involved, and I don't really see what the point of this feature is, I don't see WHY you would want to split up in the first place, what do you hope to achieve by splitting up?

In a Conservative world, Liberals gotta stick together to survive. Peace.

And there we have it. A concise, well-written reason why this should not happen that has in a single post confirmed how impossible this idea is. That logic is so irrefutable I completely agree with you. Nope, I won't argue the contrary.

I guess this thread can be closed. I would delete it, but that post deserves commendation. And cookies. Because damn is that well thought-out.

[Liberal Elitist]

And there we have it. A concise, well-written reason why this should not happen that has in a single post confirmed how impossible this idea is. That logic is so irrefutable I completely agree with you. Nope, I won't argue the contrary.

I guess this thread can be closed. I would delete it, but that post deserves commendation. And cookies. Because damn is that well thought-out.

Wow, I actually managed to convince the guy/girl (can't assume genders on the Internet) who posted this to change their mind? I'm impressed, usually on the Internet people love to debate each other endlessly, at least that's how it is on the Huffington Post between the liberals and the conservatives (not to mention libertarians, who disagree with everybody). And in real life I've had plenty of arguments with parents, girlfriends, etc. Never won a single argument my whole life until now. Even my niece, when she was 2 years old, would always beat me in an argument, because whatever I would say, she would just say "NO!", and I was too caught up in the moment to think of a strategy that now seems obvious: reverse psychology, getting her to say "NO!" to the opposite of the last thing she said "NO!" to. Thank you for ending my life-long losing streak in arguments!

But actually I was kinda hoping you'd think up a nice rebuttal and explain some way that splitting up is a good strategy. I know that in some games your party does have to split up (for instance, in Warcraft 3 Orc mission 7, when Thrall and Cairne go to see the Oracle in a great cave, they split up, and if you've played Final Fantasy 6 a.k.a. Final Fantasy 3 in the U.S., there's several dungeons where you need multiple parties, essentially splitting up, such as the Phoenix Cave where you find Locke, and the final dungeon where you finally kill Kefka). In those games, splitting up actually makes sense, since the dungeons are actually designed so that you need multiple parties (for instance, party 1 gets to a spot where they are stuck, but they can unlock a way forward for party 2, and then party 2 can get to a switch or something that unlocks the way forward for party 1, and so on). If you've done the Phoenix Cave in Final Fantasy 6 (Final Fantasy 3 in the United States), you know EXACTLY what I mean (it's the cave in the World of Ruin where you get back Locke, the legendary thief). The same thing is repeated in the final dungeon of Final Fantasy 6 except requiring 3 parties, not just 2. Liberal Crime Squad, of course, doesn't HAVE any dungeons of this type. But, it's an idea. It works pretty well in those games where your party does split up that I mentioned, Warcraft 3 and Final Fantasy 6. Also I might mention Final Fantasy 5: in the Barrier Tower your main party and Xezat split up so that Xezat can shut off the power in the basement of the tower while your party shuts off the antenna on the roof, and in Fork Tower you need to split up into 2 parties to climb both sides of the tower, since on one side, magic doesn't work and you can only do physical attacks, and on the other side, physical attacks don't work and you can only do magic, and both parties need to reach the top of the tower SIMULTANEOUSLY for you to rescue Cid so he can upgrade your airship (if they don't do it simultaneously, the tower explodes and everyone is dead, Game Over).

Yes, I play a lot of video games, including some where you actually do have to split up your party, for good reason. But... Liberal Crime Squad just doesn't have those sorts of dungeons that require splitting up, now does it? If it did, then maybe your idea would actually be cool and awesome. But it would be VERY hard to implement (and we don't have large numbers of well-paid full-time programmers working on LCS, the way Squaresoft and Blizzard Entertainment have loads of them for their games).

Furthermore, when Adolf Hitler split up his forces, Steiner wasn't able to mobilize enough men, and then when Hitler found out, he gave an epic rant. So that's an example of why splitting up your forces is a bad idea.

[FinetalPies]

What if you could send two squads to the same location at the same time? It would solve the issues of on-site recruitments and getaway vehicles. Currently, if you send two squads to the same place on the same day, you just do one raid, then the other. If you had a button to switch control between the two squads, it could be treated, mostly, as two seperate encounters. Then you could implement further things to compliment this.

When one squad gets alerted, you can no longer switch between squads. You have to fight you way out immediately. Once that squad escapes or dies, you return to the other squad, now in a Conservatives Suspicious state (Maybe a heightened state, making stealth and disguise even tougher than usual) This could represent your second squad hiding out for a while, or maybe your escapes happen simultaneously. But the two squads wouldn't really be able to interact with eachother, cause that sounds complicated =P

You could have a squad go to a section of the nuclear reactor to disable security systems. Which would be far away from the reactor itself. It would be possible for a single squad to go in and do both, but the security center is guarded so you'd likely have to make a long trip, during an alert phase, all the way to the reactor to sabotage it. But if you had two squads, you could speed up this process and make it safer for everyone. The second, saboteur squad wouldn't even need to be combat oriented. Merely with science and disguise skills.