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[FinetalPies]

So I thought I'd throw another one into the pile.

Now, being able to make an active LCS member into a sleeper would probably be pretty overpowered. But I wish that it wasn't only sleeper lawyers that could defend you in court. Obviously having a license to perform lawyer duties is a thing, but maybe this could be simplified into any active member with sufficient law skill and no criminal record?

I do have fun recruiting a bunch of hippies to get arrested just so they can raise my sleeper lawyer's skills, but there should be a better way. Thoughts?

[KA101]

There's a Criminal Law course, but in order to level up a Lawyer's skills, yeah, you pretty much do need to defend people.

And a law license is kinda tough to get.  Undergrad degree, law school->law degree (and law school expressly aims to reshape your thought process; +1d6 Wisdom!), bar exam, and then character & fitness review (any previous crimes? wanted for ANYTHING?), then annual dues and continuing education.

If you could have about 7 or 8 years, yeah, someone might be able to get their license.  But a dilligent LCS can win the game in half that time.

-KA101, Lawyer IRL

[Mazur]

If you could have about 7 or 8 years, yeah, someone might be able to get their license.  But a dilligent LCS can win the game in half that time.

So... maybe not quite that realisticly implemented.  Besides, it's a Conservative world, the deregulators par excellence; they may have voted those restrictions out.

Mazur.

[FinetalPies]

8 years of schooling to get a licence to practice law? More like, $50 000 in bribe money to get a licence to practice JUSTICE

[Jboy2000000]

However, non-diligent, do it on whatever time, LCS game can run for over 20 years, leaving plenty of time.

[KA101]

8 years of schooling to get a licence to practice law? More like, $50 000 in bribe money to get a licence to practice JUSTICE

Let's see.  Paying to bypass the bar exam (which may or may not involve a falsified law degree), the C&F, and presumably have the annual files kept current, plus the local bar association's members who never heard of this person/working up fake contacts from another city...

I really think it'd be cheaper, easier, and safer to send the Liberal through the process formally.  Have it be something like going on a vacation, but you get the Liberal back during semester breaks.

[Jboy2000000]

I think having them back for semester would be more of problem then having them at law school all the time, because imagine how many crashes would be caused by people being out on dates and having them have to go back to school?

[tyrannus007]

I thought the OP was referring to the fact that you can recruit lawyers into your active gang from courthouses and such, and they should be able to defend you in court.

[KA101]

Joining the LCS full-time involves giving up their law practice.  Without a law license, they can't represent you.  Courts look for the credential, not a certain level in CrimLaw.

Besides, if you're wanted, walking into the courthouse and signing off on paperwork might be a Bad Idea.

[FinetalPies]

What if one of your business fronts was a law firm.

=o

[shibby1295]

Being able to get degrees for your active liberals could open up some interesting possibilities, especially for slower-paced, peaceful squads. But another approach to this same problem would be to expand on sleepers.

Possibilities:
You can fund sleepers' operations. This would include attending classes to raise skills, but also might allow you to boost existing tasks (i.e. throw expensive parties to gain influence)

Sleepers can go with the squad on operations. Lets you practice skills and, especially importantly, gain juice, but the risks are high: the slightest misstep (possibly as small as getting a suspicious glance) lowers effectiveness, and more serious attention (getting caught committing a crime) outs the sleeper.

Sleepers can gain juice from certain sleeper activities, with increasingly risky ones needed to advance.


Side note: if your sleeper expands the network, then you bring their recruits home and juice them, does the sleeper gain juice?

[KA101]

What if one of your business fronts was a law firm.

=o

Not exactly a cheap date, and you'd best not get it raided.  (No heavy guns or armor either.)  Aside from that, could be interesting.

[FinetalPies]

I really like your suggestions Shibby, since the actual issue that I originally wanted to solve was how difficult it is to train your Sleeper Lawyer's Law skill.

(And also all the time I'll wind up with a Sleeper Lawyer with say, 5 Law skill and 10 Intelligence, so I want then to defend me and raise their skill. But then I'll not realize I have another Lawyer with 6 Law and 7 Intelligence, and they'll end up being automatically chosen to defend me because their Law skill is higher right now, but they have way less potential )= )

 I think more sleeper actions, especially university classes, could be a super useful addition. (Could make the public policy class actually useful, too. For increasing Sleeper advocacy effectiveness)

[Liberal Elitist]

I really like your suggestions Shibby, since the actual issue that I originally wanted to solve was how difficult it is to train your Sleeper Lawyer's Law skill.

Every time a Sleeper Lawyer defends anyone in court, it trains both their Law and Persuasion skills:

From justice.cpp in the monthly directory:

Code: [Select]

            {
               // Sleeper attorney
               defensepower=LCSrandom(71)+sleeperlawyer->get_skill(SKILL_LAW)*2
                                         +sleeperlawyer->get_skill(SKILL_PERSUASION)*2;
               sleeperlawyer->train(SKILL_LAW,prosecution/4);
               sleeperlawyer->train(SKILL_PERSUASION,prosecution/4);
            }

As you see from the above code, the amount by which a Sleeper Lawyer gets trained is based on the prosecution power, NOT the defense power. And the prosecution power is based on how many crimes you committed, whether anyone is testifying against you, how severe the crimes are that you committed, whether or not there's a sleeper judge, and whether or not you paid $5,000 for an ace Liberal attorney (90% chance of weakening prosecution, 10% chance of strengthening it by having CONSERVATIVE ARCH-NEMESIS show up as prosecutor).

So to train your Sleeper Lawyer fastest, you need a strong prosecution, and need to do lots of cases, so this is best done by recruiting a whole bunch of lowlifes, having them all commit heinous crimes, and all get arrested.

But to get your Sleeper Lawyer to gain lots of juice (up to 500), you need a WEAK prosecution (under 100) and a very strong defense (over 145):

Code: [Select]

               if(prosecution<100)
               {
                  addstr(attorneyname, gamelog);
                  addstr("'s arguments made several of the jurors stand up ", gamelog);
                  move(10,1);
                  addstr("and shout \"NOT GUILTY!\" before deliberations even began.", gamelog);
                  if(defense==4)addjuice(*sleeperlawyer,10,500); // Bow please
               }

Plus every time a Sleeper Lawyer wins a case they get juice, up to 100:

Code: [Select]

         if(defense==4)
         {
            // Juice sleeper
            addjuice(*sleeperlawyer,10,100);
         }

So ya, to train a Sleeper Lawyer's skills you want them up against a strong prosecution, and then to juice them up you want them up against a weak prosecution. Their skills still go up a little bit if they're against a weak prosecution, just not as much as against a strong prosecution. The main thing in training a Sleeper Lawyer is to use them again and again and again and have them defend in lots and lots of cases. The more experience they get in court the better they'll get as lawyers (in both their skills and their juice, and you can theoretically get their juice up to 500 which will give them very high attributes and very high skill caps for Law and Persuasion). It's not THAT hard to train a Sleeper Lawyer, you just gotta use them in court a whole bunch of times. This is really not that hard. If you get 6 people arrested at a site action, all 6 of them will go on trial on the same date. Get another 6 arrested the same month, and you can have 12 trials on that date. Have the same Sleeper Lawyer handle all the cases, and he or she or xe will level up really fast. Well maybe not THAT fast, because there's a maximum to how much someone's skills can go up in one day, the limit is the next level plus 0.50. So each month you can raise a Sleeper Lawyer's Persuasion and Law by 1 each, and as for juice, you can easily get to 100 juice, but getting to 500 juice requires much more skill. And to get a weak prosecution so you can juice up to 500, you'll want a Sleeper Judge, that cuts prosecution power in half, and the other way you cut prosecution power is by having people who didn't commit any major crimes be the defendants. Getting juice for a Sleeper Lawyer up to 500 requires you to have 10 victories and then 40 EPIC victories in court. So that is a LOT of trials...

I can see why you might be frustrated. Then again, most skills in this game require lots of continued effort to train to a high level. And a maxed-out Sleeper Lawyer is virtually invincible. So it shouldn't be too easy to get one. But maybe it would make sense for you to have more than 1 way for a Sleeper Lawyer to train their skills, and not always have to do it in a trial.

I think more sleeper actions, especially university classes, could be a super useful addition. (Could make the public policy class actually useful, too. For increasing Sleeper advocacy effectiveness)

Yes, letting sleepers take university classes would be the best solution to this little problem. It wouldn't make training a Sleeper Lawyer THAT easy... it would require plenty of time and money to do the university classes, and not be as fast as learning by being a defense lawyer at trials. But it would be totally risk-free, and wouldn't risk your sleepers getting outed, because taking university classes is a legitimate legal activity, unlike stealing things or uncovering secrets or embezzling money. But even though it would be risk-free and not risk being outed as an LCS operative, it WOULD have a very small penalty to the infiltration percentage. Because how can someone be increasing their infiltration level at their job, if they are off taking classes all the time? It would make their infiltration level go down. But very slowly, because university classes require lots of time and money, so having a really big infiltration penalty wouldn't make them a very desirable option for players, the infiltration penalty has to be small enough so that taking university classes is worth it.

So yes, I think that is what we should do, follow your suggestion about letting Sleepers take university classes, then people who don't want to go through a huge amount of trials will be able to train their lawyers, and other sorts of Sleepers will also be trainable. And if you train them at the skills they use when Advocating Liberalism (which are different depending on the Sleeper's occupation), and then have them Laying Low long enough to get their infiltration level high, this will allow skilled players to train their Sleepers to be REALLY good advocates of Liberalism.

But what about the juice cap for Sleepers? Sleeper actions such as embezzling, stealing, or uncovering secrets have a juice cap of 100, while a Sleeper Lawyer can potentially get their juice up to 500 by winning lots of trials. There ought to be ways that non-Lawyer Sleepers should also be able to get their juice level higher than 100. Something dangerous. More dangerous than embezzling money, stealing equipment, or uncovering secrets. And illegal too. But if a Sleeper is wanted for a crime, they couldn't continue being a Sleeper anymore, since it would expose them as an LCS operative. Unless they do illegal stuff when they AREN'T at work, and their co-workers don't find out about it. Eh, this is too complicated, I don't really know what to do with regard to giving non-lawyer Sleepers a way to get juice higher than 100. The option of letting them participate in site actions would be really complicated and hard to implement, for instance.

[KA101]

I really like your suggestions Shibby, since the actual issue that I originally wanted to solve was how difficult it is to train your Sleeper Lawyer's Law skill.

<lots of helpful info, needs put in the wiki>

I think more sleeper actions, especially university classes, could be a super useful addition. (Could make the public policy class actually useful, too. For increasing Sleeper advocacy effectiveness)

Yes, letting sleepers take university classes would be the best solution to this little problem. It wouldn't make training a Sleeper Lawyer THAT easy... it would require plenty of time and money to do the university classes, and not be as fast as learning by being a defense lawyer at trials. But it would be totally risk-free, and wouldn't risk your sleepers getting outed, because taking university classes is a legitimate legal activity, unlike stealing things or uncovering secrets or embezzling money. But even though it would be risk-free and not risk being outed as an LCS operative, it WOULD have a very small penalty to the infiltration percentage. Because how can someone be increasing their infiltration level at their job, if they are off taking classes all the time? It would make their infiltration level go down. But very slowly, because university classes require lots of time and money, so having a really big infiltration penalty wouldn't make them a very desirable option for players, the infiltration penalty has to be small enough so that taking university classes is worth it.

So yes, I think that is what we should do, follow your suggestion about letting Sleepers take university classes, then people who don't want to go through a huge amount of trials will be able to train their lawyers, and other sorts of Sleepers will also be trainable. And if you train them at the skills they use when Advocating Liberalism (which are different depending on the Sleeper's occupation), and then have them Laying Low long enough to get their infiltration level high, this will allow skilled players to train their Sleepers to be REALLY good advocates of Liberalism.

But what about the juice cap for Sleepers? Sleeper actions such as embezzling, stealing, or uncovering secrets have a juice cap of 100, while a Sleeper Lawyer can potentially get their juice up to 500 by winning lots of trials. There ought to be ways that non-Lawyer Sleepers should also be able to get their juice level higher than 100. Something dangerous. More dangerous than embezzling money, stealing equipment, or uncovering secrets. And illegal too. But if a Sleeper is wanted for a crime, they couldn't continue being a Sleeper anymore, since it would expose them as an LCS operative. Unless they do illegal stuff when they AREN'T at work, and their co-workers don't find out about it. Eh, this is too complicated, I don't really know what to do with regard to giving non-lawyer Sleepers a way to get juice higher than 100. The option of letting them participate in site actions would be really complicated and hard to implement, for instance.

Problem: Law-school classes, let alone undergrad, aren't THAT effective at training lawyers.  Steady flow of continuing-ed isn't much better.  Probably a better approach might be to spend the money on a Pro Bono stipend, having the Lawyer volunteer at the PD's office for a month at a time?  (Basically, more expensive and believable for this IRL Lawyer.)

(PD=Public Defender)

re Sleeper Juice, problem is that Juice is in fact a rep/cred sort of thing, as well as XP.  You can't have that without either participation or special-case positions such as the LCS' Lawyer which allow for Liberal heroics.  So not everyone should be able to Juice up to Urban Commando, let alone Liberal Guardian.

Other potentially-Heroic roles?

Lab Tech/Eminent Scientist: sabotages experiment/allows critters to escape
Engineer/Camera Operator: "technical difficulties" at a Liberal time
Police X: "loses" evidence, etc
X Driver: cuts Conservative Swine off during a pursuit! +50 Juice (Seems like a nice reward...who makes a sleeper Driver anyway?)
Security Guard: looks the other way for other sleepers Doing Stuff at site, gives bonus/reroll for them to succeed

Thoughts?