I had not really considered this. During my own gameplay, I try to avoid having anyone find out about any kidnappings I have done and try to avoid any sieges. I THINK the game already allows you to threaten hostages if you are in site mode and kidnap someone there. For an example of this try going to a bank and kidnapping a Bank Manager and then seeing what options you have.
Anyway this is a good idea. One of lots of good ideas we've had recently. Not just recently, I'm sure a lot of people had good ideas before recently, but I've only been really active enough on this forum to be noticing the good ideas recently though.
I have recently done a bunch of coding on the game. Mostly fixing bugs. Not so much adding new features. That is a bit harder for me. I have added a few features but only minor stuff. This is definitely a good idea, not sure if I'd be the best one to implement it though. It would be helpful, though, if you went into more detail about how you would like this feature to work. Like, would you be walking around a site and one of your people holding the hostage, during the Engage/Escape part of a siege, or if you kidnap someone in site mode when you go to a site and are carrying them around as a hostage? Would this be something you could do if you were under siege and you hadn't gotten to the Escape/Engage part yet? Would this be something you could do if you had a hostage you were interrogating and decided you wanted to announce to the world you have them and demand a ransom? I mean, what parts of the game do you imagine having this being added as an option to?
I think the best place to add it would be interrogation, since taking someone hostage and demanding a ransom is often done when people don't know who the kidnappers are and want to know the hostage is safe. Demanding a ransom during a siege is a bit more iffy. Usually the main thing people who are under siege want is for the siege to end rather than being gunned down, and authorities would be reluctant to give money to someone they have under siege instead of sending in a SWAT team to gun them down.
Anyway, implementing this would require making more newspaper articles for this sort of thing. And I don't really know quite well how the newspaper thing works yet, even though I'm working on code for some other parts of the game.
And how would the Liberal Guardian newspaper report on the LCS holding someone for ransom? Currently the Liberal Guardian runs stories like "LCS Denies Kidnapping" and tries to portray the LCS positively all the time. How do you spin holding someone you kidnapped hostage for ransom in a positive way in a newspaper article?
So, nice feature idea, I don't think I'd be the best developer to implement it though, but I'm still interested in hearing more about the idea.