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[ed boy]

This is a suggestion to improve the behaviour of properties and business fronts.

The current behaviour is observed:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-The only way to gain new property is to gain it via conquest of CCS properties
-Although one can set up business fronts, these provide only a fixed secrecy boost

It is suggested that the the following is preferable:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-When setting up a business front, one of multiple different types of business are selectable. Examples of possible businesses would be apartments, tailoring, finance, art gallery
-Liberals can be assigned to work at business fronts
-A Liberal working at a business front improves the secrecy of the front, generates money, and may provide a liberal influence.
-For the sake of balance, business fronts that require more initial and continuous investment may provide bigger benefits.
-The player can choose to embezzle money from the business. This can give the player lots of money, but is illegal and can generate heat. The heat increases with the amount of money, but decreases with the proportion of total business wealth.
-The player can choose to pay dividends. This is a legal way of getting money from the business, but it is inefficient.
-The player can hire outside workers to work at the businesses. Outside workers decrease the secrecy of the site, but are completely reliable.

This is a proposed implementation:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The "start a business front" option is removed from the site investment screen. The options on the site investment screen now depend on how the site was acquired, listed below.

From the main menu, a new option is added to acquire a new property. The following options are available:
-Find abandoned property. Only available for outskirts, industrial and similar districts. Gain a LCS property with no business. It is free, but has extremely low secrecy.
-Rent private property. Gains a LCS property with no business. It has a monthly cost. It has good secrecy. Its investment options are very limited, but for a large amount of money one can choose to 'buy property', which adds the full range of investment options and improves secrecy.
-Buy private property. Gains a LCS property with no business. It costs a lot upfront, but is subsequently free. It has very good secrecy. It has the full range of investment options. It costs a lot to buy a new property, but even more to rent one and then subsequently buy it.
-Start a Liberal [business], renting. Gains an LCS property with the selected business. It has a minimum startup cost. The play chooses how much to be paid out of LCS funds and how much to be paid for out of other investor's funds. At least 10% must be paid by LCS. More than the startup cost can be paid, and the extra becomes the business's starting treasury. The LCS gains a controlling share of the business equal to how much of the startup cost they paid. Each month the business must pay a certain amount in rent.
-Start a Liberal [business], purchasing. As above, but with a much higher activation cost, and with no monthly fee. More investment options are available. A renting business can purchase its property for a lot.

Each district has the following attributes:
-Max effective workers. The maximum number of workers that can commute to and from each business in that district.
-Rent. The amount of rent that has to be paid per month to rent a property in that area.
-Purchase cost. The amount that it costs to purchase a property in that area.
-Abandoned buildings. Whether or not this area has abandoned buildings.
-Secrecy boost. The amount of secrecy this area provides.

Each business category has the following attributes:
-Max effective workers. The maximum number of workers that will have an effect.
-Monthly costs. The amount that a business loses each month to overhead.
-Min worker product. The minimum amount of money the business will make each day per effective worker.
-Max worker product. The maximum amount of money the business will make each day per effective worker.
-Worker wage. The amount the business pays to each worker each day.
-Worker secrecy boost. How much secrecy the business will provide per effective worker.
-Min secrecy boost. How much secrecy the business will provide with no workers.
-Worker liberal effect. How much background effect the business provides per effective worker.
-Min liberal effect. How much background effect the business provides with no workers.
-Possible investments. Which investments are possible fort the business.
-Embezzlement sensitivity. How sensitive it is to investments.
-Severance pay. How much it costs to fire someone.
-Skills trained. What skills are trained by working at the business.

Each investment for the business provides modifiers to the above.

Each location has the properties above, with values equal to the base defined by the business type plus the bonuses from the investments and the district.. It also has the following properties:
-LCS ownership. This is the amount of the business that the LCS has ownership of.
-Funds. This is how much cash the business has.
-Total worth. This is the amount of cash plus the value of all the investments.
-Outside workers. This is the number of regular workers who work there.

When inspecting a site with a business, the regular upgrades are not available. Instead a set of upgrades is available depending on the business type. There are also the following options available:
-Purchase property. Only available if currently renting.
-Dividend. Choose an amount to pay out, at most the cash level. The business loses that much cash, the LCS gains that much multiplied by their ownership.
-Embezzle. Choose an amount to pay out, at most the cash level. The business loses that much cash, the LCS gains that much. The chance of being caught is (E/SQRT(E*W))*((M+O)/M)*S, where E is the embezzled money, W is the total worth, M is the maximum effective workers, O is the number of outside workers, and S is the embezzlement sensitivity.
-Hire/Fire daily workers. Firing them causes the business to lose severance pay.
-Liquidate. Pays a dividend equal to the current worth and destroys the business.
-Invest. Choose an amount. That amount is transferred from the LCS to the business, and the LCS's ownership increases by a corresponding amount.

A new option is added to the activate liberals screen - work at business. Only available if they are stationed at a business.

At the end of each day, the business loses money for each outside worker there. It transfers money to the LCS for each activated Liberal there, who then get trained in the relevant skills. For each worker up to the maximum effective number, the business gaines money, secrecy and has a background effect as dictated by that building's properties.

At the end of each month, rent is paid and monthly costs are paid. If a business has its total worth negative, it is destroyed.

Room for improvement in the above:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Under the above model, a highly skilled LCS member produces the same output as an untrained one.

[Liberal Elitist]

Wow, you put a lot of thought into this. Quite complicated system you've come up with. Sounds like a good idea, but difficult to implement so much stuff. Are you a coder? Maybe you could implement it yourself if you know how to code...

Oh and you aren't entirely accurate about how to gain new property in the current version of the game. Currently, you can gain new property by:
1) Taking over a CCS property.
2) Taking over a Crack House.
3) Renting apartments (this is only temporary though).

You can set up business fronts at CCS properties and Crack Houses you take over, but not at apartments, at least currently.

Coincidentally with your interest in business fronts, in revision 712 (which came out less than a day before your post), I increased the number of possible different business front names from 5 to 28. Before it was just 3 types of insurance and 2 types of temp agencies. Now there are 7 types of insurance, 7 types of temp agencies, 7 types of restaurants, and 7 miscellaneous business fronts (Real Estate, Imported Goods, Waste Disposal, Liquor Shop, Antiques, Repair Shop, and Pet Store). I tried to think of business fronts used by the mafia. So Italian restaurants are used by the mafia, sometimes the mafia say they are in the "Waste Management" business, sometimes they say they are in the "Import/Export" business. All 3 of those are covered among the 28 options now. 28 is an arbitrary number, it was hard to think of more than 7 types of insurance that had short enough names, and I felt it would work best if each of the 4 categories (insurance, temp agency, restaurant, and miscellaneous) had the same number of possibilities. It used to just be 2 categories, I added restaurant and miscellaneous.

Oh and your idea to INCREASE the number of available hideouts in each city would make the game too easy, there are already enough available hideouts in each city, no need to add any more abandoned buildings or places to rent, there's plenty already. (Have you tried taking over the Crack Houses or renting apartments? You aren't just limited to taking over CCS hideouts, you know.)

Still, most of what you propose IS a good idea (namely the new more complicated system for business fronts that you can actually work at, embezzle from, etc.) I don't quite see how a business would provide a liberal influence though (for instance, if you have a bunch of liberals running an insurance agency, how is that going to make anyone liberal, it's not like they are going to chant liberal slogans at all the customers is it?) I don't really see how you'd influence the political views of your customers (subliminal messages? no that's rubbish).

Also lots of businesses have trouble starting out, and in fact many large corporations have divisions that are unprofitable (for instance Microsoft only has one profitable division: the operating systems division, which makes HUGE profits off Windows... all other divisions of Microsoft, especially the gaming division that produces XBoxes, lose money, but Microsoft keeps those divisions operating anyway because they want to expand into as many things as possible just so they don't have all their eggs in one basket). If a business's total net worth is negative, but the Liberal Crime Squad itself has enough money, it ought to be able to pay the business's expenses. So they should really only go kaput if their expenses add up to more than the Liberal Crime Squad can afford, or if you decide to close them to stop losing money.

Oh, and each business would also need a minimum number of workers, you forgot to mention that bit. For instance, a restaurant can't just have 1 or 2 workers, that's ridiculous. If a business doesn't have the minimum number of workers than it can't be open to the public, it would have a "CLOSED" sign on the door (which would be locked), and not provide any bonuses.

Also, don't you think the idea of running businesses is a bit Conservative? The Business skill is highest in Corporate CEOs and Corporate Managers, who happen to always be Conservatives. The idea of Liberals putting a lot of time and energy into running a business is kind of... well... it goes against the political stereotypes of this game. Of course, one could argue that while large corporations are inherently Conservative, small businesses are perfectly capable of being Liberal. Anyway, maybe if your business gets too big and gets too many customers and expands too much, it could run the risk of turning into a Conservative corporation and backfiring on you somehow. Or maybe having it get big enough to be a corporation might actually be good, since you'd be able to keep the business Liberal and now you'd have a large corporation run by Elite Liberals rather than Arch-Conservatives. If we go even further with this (rather ridiculous) idea, if your business operations get big enough, the Liberal Crime Squad could become a Fortune 500 company and get listed on the New York Stock Exchange as "LCS" and have its stocks traded on Wall Street. Yes, that sounds quite ridiculous, having people buy and sell "Liberal Crime Squad" stocks on Wall Street. But it would be funny. By the way, did you know that stock symbols on the NYSE stock exchange are 3 letters or shorter, while stock symbols on the NASDAQ stock exchange are 4 letters or longer? Interesting factoid. That's how those 2 competing stock exchanges keep from having different companies have the same stock symbols (the NYSE and NASDAQ are competitors, each of them wants to dominate the stock-exchanging business and crush the other one like a little worm).

So just to reiterate, while I think most of your stuff is a good idea, I don't agree with all of it (namely increasing the number of locations the LCS can take over, and having business fronts influence public opinion in the liberal direction), and think that it needs the following 2 changes: 1) Business fronts would need a minimum number of workers to stay open. 2) Business fronts that are unprofitable would still stay open as long as the Liberal Crime Squad has enough funds to cover their expenses (although you'd get an option to shut down an unprofitable business if you don't want to keep losing money to it).

Plus it would be quite hard to implement such a huge amount of stuff like what you are proposing. Very ambitious goal there.

Anyway those are just my thoughts on this idea, I'm sure plenty of other people have thoughts on it as well.

[ed boy]

A clarification: when I say business, I'm also referring to things like charities,libraries, art galleries, museums, etc. Although most businesses wouldn't have a liberal influence, I could see a museum doing an exhibition on political oppression that would have an influence.

I would agree with your proposal that businesses have a minimum number of workers before they can operate.

I also agree with your suggestion about funding businesses that are about to close, and suggest an end of month message for each vulnerable business with an option of whether to invest and how much.

I also realize that the original has no option for part time work, and therefore purpose that maximum effective daily workers is changed to maximum effective monthly workers, with revenue, secrecy and liberal influence changing accordingly.

I would also like to amend the above to have outside workers give half the secrecy boost of lcs members.

I also question that extra locations would be unbalancing. Given the number of locations available (eight plus ccs shelters in single city mode, don't know about multicity mode), I question how much influence extra locations can have.

I also realize that this provides a very limited model of businesses, but I justify it with the following: a complex business model is a game in its own, liberals would be opposed to megacorporations, and it would be very difficult to code something more complex.

[Liberal Elitist]

Very persuasive arguments. Sounds good to me!

[Darvi]

I would like to ammend that having a wanted felon working at a business font should risk them being recognized by a passing police officer or something, and subsequently risks them being arrested and the security of the font dropping as they're being investigated.

[ed boy]

How about this:
The number of lcs and non lcs work days are tallied each month. At the end of the month, the following happens:
-The business gains money for each work day, up to its limit
-The business loses money for each work day, with the lcs gaining money for each lcs work day
-The liberal influence increases a certain amount for each lcs worker, and increases or decreases for each non lcs work day, with the amount mostly determined by business type,subject to bounds.
-The secrecy is similarly modified for each lcs and non lcs worker

The problem arises of what exactly secrecy provided by a business front is supposed to represent. I've conventionally thought of it as essentially money laundering and trying to make activity at the site seem normal - for instance, an auto dealer buying a bunch of cars or a firing range buying a bunch of guns wouldn't be odd, but it could be for an individual. A bigger business would enhance the illusion. On the other hand, a bigger business means more people to see dodgy stuff and report it.

[Darvi]

A bigger business would also be more immune to the law, but thats a conservative concept so we don't talk about it.

[ed boy]

The biggest problem I want to address before starting to implement something like this is how to have the Liberal's skills influence their output. Although one could add skill rolls of theirs to the productivity, the problem then arises of how the outside workers would be handled, given that they wouldn't actually exist and thus wouldn't have skills to affect their output.

[Liberal Elitist]

The biggest problem I want to address before starting to implement something like this is how to have the Liberal's skills influence their output. Although one could add skill rolls of theirs to the productivity, the problem then arises of how the outside workers would be handled, given that they wouldn't actually exist and thus wouldn't have skills to affect their output.

Workers could be hired through something akin to the recruitment system or the dating system, so that they would actually exist in the game data and you could do skill and attribute rolls on them. They wouldn't count towards anyone's recruitment cap or dating cap, there wouldn't be any cap on workers, since workers wouldn't actually be LCS members, and you'd have to pay them salaries or else they'd quit, so the real cap on workers would be how much money you have. But if you had actual LCS members do the work, they wouldn't demand salaries for it. Hiring workers, the salary they demand, or whether they are even willing to take a job at all, would depend on their creature type (for instance, if you tried to hire the President or Corporate CEO they would always refuse, while a Transient, Crack Head, Highschool Dropout, Prostitute, Gang Member, etc., those types would be willing to do almost any work, and for minimum wage, although they might not do a very good job, which is where the skill and attribute rolls come in, plus certain lowlifes might have a chance of stealing from your business if you hire them, especially the types with negative Juice who are Punks, Society's Dregs, etc. And if you hired a Professional Thief, why then they'd be stealing from your business AND they'd be very likely to get away with it, given their professionalism, although they'd probably also be very good at their jobs so as to avoid being fired.)

[Neonivek]

Honestly I get the strangest feeling that eventually there is going to be a version of LCS where you are just running a business in a world where businesses try to kill each other.

[ed boy]

Workers could be hired through something akin to the recruitment system or the dating system, so that they would actually exist in the game data and you could do skill and attribute rolls on them.

I considered that, but I had two issues - firstly, keeping track of so many people could cause performance issues. Secondly, Making the player individually approve dozens of applicants could be tedious.

[EuchreJack]

I can see how restaurants and liquor stores would be able to subtly convert people to the liberal cause or empower those already liberal.  Both businesses have regular customers and can become fashionable.  The regular customers could be expected to gradually develop stronger liberal leanings as the staff mentions the liberal plight little-by-little each visit.  Once fashionable, the businesses could actually force their beliefs on conservative customers, who have no choice but to "buy in" to the liberal propaganda, at least during their visit, in order to appear cool.

For character, the restaurants should be vegan and the liquor store should specialize in either vodka or wine (Wine for the Liberals, for instance).

I don't know the first thing about code, but perhaps the workers could be treated as sleepers set to promote liberalism?

[Persus13]

You could also have the game be more fun by having those places be on the list of places the CCS raids. It might make the game harder by you losing money from having to repair the business or losing liberal workers. Also, it could give you the opportunity to attack back and stop the raid. That last thing is probably a lot more complex to make.

[ed boy]

You could also have the game be more fun by having those places be on the list of places the CCS raids. It might make the game harder by you losing money from having to repair the business or losing liberal workers. Also, it could give you the opportunity to attack back and stop the raid. That last thing is probably a lot more complex to make.

I support that. It's incentive to keep some liberals there to defend your businesses instead of using them as zero maintenance cash cows.

[theprofileth]

I think you are missing out on running more advanced businesses like Abortion Clinics and Free Clinics or even  Cannabis Dispensaries. Obviously the laws would reflect how legal these things would be, which reminds me, why don't they have a welfare or healthcare issue? Either way things such as the businesses I listed before would require permits and skilled liberals to keep them from failing while spreading liberal influence not to mention the fact that they would be an ever present target for the CCS or angry mobs. This could lead to interesting way of handling raids if for example each business was also a safe house thus you might need some extra muscle to help secure some locations, either way I am in favour of having businesses locations be varying in size obviously affecting the rent and be in different locations also affecting rent but both would affect the number/quality of people who showed up and the amount of storage/workspace you have. I mean worst come to worst you might just operate a Self Storage* facility that doesn't require a lot of workers just mainly a lot of space and containers.
*Obviously self storage is the most liberal kind of storage, storage for the everyman!
Also nice to join this community I always have been on the forums just never made an account until now