Thanks for the comments everyone, especially Servant Corps, it's interesting to hear about how you were the original creator of this idea and how it used to be the Leninist Comrade Squad rather than Stalinist... that would explain the Cheka... that was the secret police very early in the Soviet Union's history... in Stalin's time it was the NKVD, headed by Lavrentiy Beria longer than anyone else.
I've read up on Stalin and the people around him and the history of that time and it's quite interesting. It was hard to find 2 cabinet members for him but I settled on Vyacheslav Molotov and Lavrentiy Beria, they were both top officials in Stalin's inner circle for many years and complicit in many of the atrocities he committed, although in both cases they fell out of favor near the end of his life and he was planning on having them liquidated. Stalin was quite serious about liquidating Molotov (who had signed the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler's Foreign Secretary to divide Poland). But due to Stalin's death, all the show trials and liquidations got put on hold and Nikita Khrushchev put an end to it along with some other folks. Vyacheslav Molotov was interesting, because even after he knew that Stalin was planning on having him killed, he thought it was understandable and sympathized with Stalin, and several years after Stalin died, Molotov thought that Stalin had been a good leader and agreed with most of his policies and still felt loyal... this eventually led to Molotov having a falling out with Khrushchev, after Khrushchev gave the famous "secret" anti-Stalin speech, which Molotov thought was the most appalling thing ever. Lavrentiy Beria was an interesting fellow too... like Molotov, he had personally approved and signed off on the liquidations of large numbers of top officers and innocent loyal Communists who the insanely paranoid Stalin kept purging. Lavrentiy Beria was responsible for setting up all of the gulags, as well as being in charge of the secret police and spy agencies such as the NKVD (the agencies got renamed and reorganized several times over the years). Beria led the spy agencies in all sorts of missions like when they assassinated Leon Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico (a crime that the Mexican authorities curiously never investigated or prosecuted, most likely due to Soviet pressure). Anyway, Lavrentiy Beria, complicit in Stalin's worst crimes and somewhat of a sociopath himself, you might expect him to be loyal to Stalin. But no... when Stalin was dying, it was Lavrentiy Beria who locked him in his bedroom and refused to let any medical personnel treat Stalin, and soon after Stalin died, Beria was celebrating wildly in front of all the other top Communist officials and boldly proclaiming that he had killed Stalin and now everything was going to be awesome, and while it was quite a somber mood for everyone else, Beria was just ridiculously manic in his celebration of Stalin's death and claiming that he was responsible for it. Well, Beria ended up being executed for that a few months later, and every single member of the Politburo, including Beria's old friend Molotov that he THOUGHT would be on his side, grimly gave their approval for Beria to be executed for treason... Molotov still felt loyal to Stalin, despite Stalin's plans to kill Molotov, and Molotov thought Beria's behavior was disgraceful and the only proper punishment for such behavior was obviously DEATH. Nikita Khrushchev was quite the interesting fellow too... he was quite a cunning politician, very skilled at winning people over, able to act very nice and friendly and caring, but then he would suddenly ruthlessly turn against people who thought he was their friend... except unlike Stalin he usually didn't kill them, instead he sent them off far away from Moscow on low-ranking missions to get rid of them. For instance Vyacheslav Molotov was sent off to Uzbekistan or something for some insignificant diplomatic post there or something like that.
I think part of what makes the Stalinist Comrade Squad idea funny is that Stalin and Stalinism are about the most unpopular thing there is in the United States. You can find skinheads and neo-Nazi Confederate types who think Hitler and the Nazis were cool. You can find Marxist-Leninists who say that Communism is the way forward. But it's virtually impossible to find any defenders of Stalin, even among the ranks of the most ardent Marxists in the United States. Most of them believe he badly perverted the ideals of Marxism and turned it into the opposite of what it was supposed to be. So the idea of a group of Americans involved in political action who actively proclaim themselves to be Stalinists is beyond ridiculous. Perfect for a political parody RPG simulator roguelike fighting text adventure like Liberal Crime Squad.
SOOO... I've finished implementing the political side of the Stalinist Comrade Squad mode, as of revision 816 (wow that revision number is going up FAST... but somebody else is committing a lot more revisions than me, at least lately, that is the main reason I guess). So this means there are 3 parties: Liberal Party, Conservative Party, and Stalinist Party, and all 3 take part in elections, and you can have Stalinists elected to the House, Senate, and Presidency, and fill out the cabinet positions like V.P., Sec. of State, and Atty. Gen., plus Stalinists can get nominated and approved to serve on the Supreme Court. All of that's fully implemented now, along with a short bit of temporary code I plan on removing later, that operates once a month to move all issues 1% in the Stalinist direction. If you don't do anything at all you will find yourself in a Stalinist country with a Stalinist President, Congress, and Supreme Court, and public opinion will be very Stalinist, and then the Stalinists will pass a Constitutional Amendment repealing the Constitution and Stalinizing the country permanently. If you DO do stuff, well 1% a month isn't that big, a squad of Elite Liberals is perfectly capable of changing public opinion by MORE than 1% a month, and turning the country Elite Liberal. But that code is temporary, I'll remove it once the Stalinist Comrade Squad ITSELF is implemented... we already have a Conservative Crime Squad and I don't think it'll be THAT different... and it'll do the moving public opinion in a Stalinist direction itself so I'll be able to remove that other code that moves it in that direction. Oh yeah and all the Stalinist stuff is completely disabled if the game isn't in Stalinist mode. I guess maybe back when you first worked on the Stalinist Comrade Squad (originally Leninist) there weren't really all those game modes you can choose at startup. But every game you either have Stalinist mode enabled or disabled... if it's disabled the game will be as normal with no Stalinists, no Stalinist Party, no Stalinist Comrade Squad, none of that. If it's enabled, then you will get all the Stalinist stuff... and then the game will stay in that same mode until you either beat it, lose it, or delete the savegame file so you can start a new game. But yeah, I worked hard on implementing the political side of Stalinist mode so that the Stalinist Party and politicians of Stalinist alignment are part of the game, when that mode's enabled.
The biggest problem I have is a lack of colors: both Stalinsts and Arch-Conservatives are the color red. There are some colors that aren't being used for alignments, but they are all way too dark! Plus communism is very strongly associated with red. And red is often the color of enemies in video games. As for Arch-Conservatives being red, well Republicans have been red and Democrats blue ever since the 2000 election, when all the major news networks coincidentally, or maybe on purpose thru planning, used the same colors scheme for both parties, and then this whole idea of red states and blue states stuck. But actually the color most often associated with Conservatives worldwide is blue. But since Elite Liberals are green and regular Liberals are cyan, I don't think blue would work too well for right-wingers in this game... for the time being both Arch-Conservatives and Stalinists are red text on a black background. I could try changing the background color, but most of the game doesn't do that sort of thing and it would look weird. For instance, Stalinists could be, oh, say, yellow text on a red background. The Soviet hammer and sickle flag was yellow on a red background. It would certainly stand out. I dunno though, maybe it would stand out too much...
Actually though implementing the Stalinist Comrade Squad might be a little harder than it seems from what I said earlier. Ya see, all the politics stuff, it was pretty much all in one file, politics.cpp, with bits and pieces in a couple other files like liberalagenda.cpp, endgame.cpp, and so on, but the bulk of it was in politics.cpp, all in one place, easy to find. But as for implementing another faction similar to the CCS that goes on raids that are reported in the newspaper, that has its own creature types, that has its own bases, that can raid your bases, and has a document about it and many news stories, and even has its own armor, and has an issue about it... well that is a whole lot of different things all over the code in different files. Still I doubt it could be that hard since we already have code for the CCS and it seems fairly straightforward to make some slight enhancements that allow another non-player faction. What would be hard would be adding another PLAYABLE faction. But the Stalinist Comrade Squad won't be playable, it is most certainly evil and your enemy. I have heard various people saying stuff about making the Conservative Crime Squad playable... basically by reversing the roles of the LCS and CCS, and having the CCS be the playable heroes and the LCS be the evil oppressive enemy. But, among other problems, that would give you even worse problems with the colors, the whole thing about colors like red, green, and blue, and which ones to assign to which factions.
Anyway there are a bunch of enemy factions besides the CCS already: the police, the hicks, the firemen, the corporate mercenaries, the CIA, the military, the secret service, and giant humanoid robots piloted by Japanese children. Oh, wait, that last one isn't from this game, it's from half the TV shows I watch. Anyway, these enemy factions... they can all raid the LCS's bases, they have their own creature types, armor types, and so forth, they all have locations where they are based from that you can attack... so really, creating a faction that is at the same level as, say, the corporate mercenaries... not THAT big of a deal. But, I have to put more thought into planning, before I can implement it. I can't write code to implement something I haven't already planned in my head. I spent a lot of time planning how to incorporate Stalinists into the existing political system without disrupting the existing system of 5 gradations from far left to far right... basically Stalinists are in another dimension... that is to say, instead of just a line going from left to right and a spectrum that way, there are multiple dimensions to politics... left vs. right, and totalitarian vs. anarchist. The Liberal Crime Squad is perhaps totalitarian about a FEW issues (banning the private ownership of firearms, banning nuclear power, banning scientific experiments on animals, etc.) but is quite anarchist about others (legalizing recreational drugs, having unfettered free speech, restricting the powers of the police to oppress civilians who might happen to be doing illegal things, etc.). Generally the LCS's views are about having more freedom and less government control over what people can and cannot do, except in issues where the harm in allowing something might outweigh the good... i.e., the LCS's views are based on serious ethical considerations. The Stalinist Comrade Squad is also a left-wing radical militant group, like the LCS, but its aims are entirely totalitarian. Even the things where they are allowing stuff (allowing abortion, flag-burning, pollution, nuclear power, animal experimentation, etc.) where those could normally be viewed as increases in freedom, the Stalinist Comrade Squad specifically makes things mandatory and thus deprives people of their freedom (forced abortions, forcing people to be experimented on without consent, poisoning people with deadly pollution and no recourse to do anything about it, etc.). And none of the Stalinist Comrade Squad's views are based on serious ethical considerations, they are just all about having totalitarian power, for its own sake, perhaps tied to some ideology, but the ideology is mostly just an excuse for their totalitarianism, rather than what motivates them... what motivates them is their lust for power and control, domination and empire. Thus they are far more evil than the Conservative Crime Squad, whose main motivation is, trying to avoid losing what they hold dear, and trying to preserve what they value, by preserving the status quo, or trying to go back to the "good old days", which means doing everything possible to stop anyone who is trying to change everything and turn their precious status quo upside down. Another reason the Stalinist Comrade Squad is the ultimate enemy is they claim to be the true left-wingers and that the Liberal Crime Squad are just faux-lefties, and they go around giving the left wing a bad name. Conservatives and Liberals aren't really enemies, because whenever one side overreaches it gives the other side new talking points that help it out. But someone on your own "side", people claiming to be fellow left-wingers, that is what really makes you look bad by association.
So for now I am thinking, newspaper stories about raids, just like the newspaper stories about CCS raids, and having it change public opinion the same way, so I can get rid of the temporary code. Other stuff like creature types and bases can come later after I and/or other people brainstorm it and figure out what might be a good way to implement it. The Stalinists could have their own newspaper and call it something like "Pravda" or "Truth". There could be a Stalinist youth organization and all sorts of children that are part of the Stalinist Comrade Squad as basically child soldiers. There could be Stalinist intellectuals who don't know how to fight, but just go around theorizing all the time, maybe they'd have an argument-based attack and convert your Liberals to Stalinism, plus they would also be influential with public opinion. Then there could be thuggish types affiliated with the Stalinists, who don't really care too much about ideology and just want to fight and beat people up and shoot people. And rather than being secretly funded by Conservative institutions like the CCS, the Comrade Crime Squad would be something originally funded and organized by the spy agencies of hostile foreign governments in an attempt to destabilize the United States and make it subservient to other nations like perhaps Russia or China, although I don't think I'd specifically name Russia or China in the game as being behind the Stalinist Comrade Squad, I don't want to get too geopolitical, I don't want folks from those countries to take offense. It'd just be a generic reference to hostile foreign nations that have nuclear weapons stockpiles and are on the UN Security Council as permanent members... I could be talking about any country when I say that... if the Russians or Chinese think I am talking about them they are just being paranoid... I'm actually talking about the French and British. You can never trust the French, they have strong anti-American sentiment as shown by their callous disregard for American winemakers, and as for the British, it's fairly obvious they'd like to have us as a colony once again, why else would they have that royal wedding and broadcast it on TV in our country, if not to showcase our future rulers and get us emotionally prepared for King William and Queen Catherine, the King and Queen of America? Anyway, as for the Stalinist Comrade Squad, another interesting feature might be if it had a charismatic leader with a cult of personality like Stalin had, and if converting that person to Liberalism would get the entire Stalinist Comrade Squad to follow, and cease promoting Stalinism, and promote Liberalism instead. There are many different possibilities to think about. The possibility I mentioned of a Stalinist youth group... well all Marxist organizations tend to have youth wings... my own mother was once one of the Pioneers, the youth wing of the Hungarian Communist Party, back when she was a kid there before the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. She didn't WANT to be a Pioneer, it was just mandatory for all children in Hungary... but also considered a great honor and very elite, something to be proud of. That is what I find funny about it, she was in a group that all kids in that country had to be in, that was mandatory, but somehow being in it was a great honor, even though everyone else was in it too. The Stalinist Comrade Squad could be like that too...
Regardless, now the political side of Stalinist mode is done and it's actually playable because, if you don't do anything, public opinion will gradually get more and more Stalinist, in Stalinist mode as it's currently set up now in the latest SVN build on SourceForge. So maybe, try it out and tell me what you think? You can give suggestions what to do next... although I might not necessarily follow them... Some things are easier said than implemented in a computer program... I do want ideas though... right now I am at a crossroads or in other words, I don't really know what to do next.
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Topic: So I was looking through the source code for 4.07.0... (Read 5172 times)