Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I haven't worked on LCS in about a year, but I haven't missed that there's been a lot going on with the game lately. I'm thinking about getting back into working on the game, but I'm feeling a little out of the loop.

My understanding of the state of LCS development:

• At the time I started my new job, the National Crime Squad beta was unfinished and the Presidential features were very incomplete
• SourceForge users yetisyny and nickdumas (don't know the corresponding identities on the forums) are actively developing new features, fixing bugs, and improving existing issues on the main SVN repository
• SlatersQuest is actively developing and has a released an early build of his Terra Vitae mod, has been seeking help building for Windows
• SuicideJunkie is working on overhauling car chases, haven't heard an update in a couple weeks
• Zaroth and Lasica forked onto github and embarked on some ambitious changes, but haven't updated since early May

Questions about the state of LCS development:

• Are there some things that should go into the main build that others have done as mods or branches?
• Are there sweet new features already in the main build that I should know about?
• What outstanding issues exist in the latest releases -- either the last major one, or the National LCS beta? These issues could range from very general ("National LCS doesn't seem to add much yet") to very specific ("it crashes if I kidnap the president").
• Have these issues been fixed by other contributors since that release?

Some thoughts about the state of the game itself at the moment:

• Grinding. Boo. That's not the point of the game, but it's all over and it's kinda bullshit. Picking 50 locks a day at the apartments in order to level your security skill is a famous example. I'd like to fix this.
• The political game is really slow and you have very little impact on it directly. I bet there's more we can do here to make it feel like you're able to take direct action. The White House location is a good idea for something like this, but it's not finished.
• There are some choices pushed at you on launch about how much you want to speed up or slow down the endgame. These can probably be restructured to let you choose when the issue comes up. For example, Democrat Mode, we could prompt whether to declare victory at the time the early victory condition is met.
• It doesn't seem to crash all that much. Woah. Credit where it's due to everyone who has helped to hunt down some of the many instabilities in the game over the years!

Will you help me by correcting my understanding of the game's current development, answering questions I have, and/or contributing to discussion about the state of the game itself? There's a lot here, but feel free to latch onto any little bit of it.

[KA101]

Problem: in part thanks to the the Git fork, I'm not sure which is the latest version.  :-/

On mine, the dating bug remains and when I picked up a Vigilante in the LA gent-club, the given location came up as Seattle.  Since I'd closed down the DEB&G at that point, I'm not sure what to make of that--thought the CCS was OUT of Seattle.

I've been busy with DDA development, so haven't been around here as much. Been meaning to overhaul corporate targets but never found the time.  Sorry.  :-(

[Neonivek]

•The political game is really slow and you have very little impact on it directly. I bet there's more we can do here to make it feel like you're able to take direct action. The White House location is a good idea for something like this, but it's not finished.

Ehh there are two ways you can look at it honestly.

You can see it as something you are meant to fight against... or you can see it as weather or battlefield conditions influenced by how the game is going. Or as a third option it can be seen as a sort of world building aspect meant to make the world look more alive.

At least if you are talking about what I think you are talking about.

My opinion is that it shouldn't be too too malleable (in that you cannot play the whole political system like you can everything else), but I am hardly the arbiter of everything. The only two parts of LCS I'd fight someone on is: 1) The game should have a parabolic difficulty curve with High-liberal and High-Conservative being the hardest, and 2) That the game should feel like a satire written by crazy liberals with no sense of self-awareness.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Problem: in part thanks to the the Git fork, I'm not sure which is the latest version.  :-/

The Git fork hasn't been updated since mid May, I wouldn't sweat it too much. They made quite a few changes in the two weeks they were active, however, and their changelog does sound like a lot of stuff I'd be happy to import back into the original repository. The problem is that while I'm comfortable with using Git itself, I'm not clear on how to best migrate those changes back to SVN when the SVN code is ahead of the Git code.

Ehh there are two ways you can look at it honestly.

You can see it as something you are meant to fight against... or you can see it as weather or battlefield conditions influenced by how the game is going. Or as a third option it can be seen as a sort of world building aspect meant to make the world look more alive.

At least if you are talking about what I think you are talking about.

My opinion is that it shouldn't be too too malleable (in that you cannot play the whole political system like you can everything else), but I am hardly the arbiter of everything. The only two parts of LCS I'd fight someone on is: 1) The game should have a parabolic difficulty curve with High-liberal and High-Conservative being the hardest, and 2) That the game should feel like a satire written by crazy liberals with no sense of self-awareness.

I'm thinking that Congress can be more readily influenced by public opinion swings regarding which issues to vote on, and can pass laws every month while it's in session (just 1-2 per month). The President can also issue executive orders that are effectively law changes as well, at a significantly slower pace than Congress, and largely ignores public opinion.

[KA101]

Problem: in part thanks to the the Git fork, I'm not sure which is the latest version.  :-/

The Git fork hasn't been updated since mid May, I wouldn't sweat it too much. They made quite a few changes in the two weeks they were active, however, and their changelog does sound like a lot of stuff I'd be happy to import back into the original repository. The problem is that while I'm comfortable with using Git itself, I'm not clear on how to best migrate those changes back to SVN when the SVN code is ahead of the Git code.

Ehh there are two ways you can look at it honestly.

You can see it as something you are meant to fight against... or you can see it as weather or battlefield conditions influenced by how the game is going. Or as a third option it can be seen as a sort of world building aspect meant to make the world look more alive.

At least if you are talking about what I think you are talking about.

My opinion is that it shouldn't be too too malleable (in that you cannot play the whole political system like you can everything else), but I am hardly the arbiter of everything. The only two parts of LCS I'd fight someone on is: 1) The game should have a parabolic difficulty curve with High-liberal and High-Conservative being the hardest, and 2) That the game should feel like a satire written by crazy liberals with no sense of self-awareness.

I'm thinking that Congress can be more readily influenced by public opinion swings regarding which issues to vote on, and can pass laws every month while it's in session (just 1-2 per month). The President can also issue executive orders that are effectively law changes as well, at a significantly slower pace than Congress, and largely ignores public opinion.

OK.  Shame, as I'm on git just about every day, but fair enough (not like I was actually using the git fork: I wasn't).

Executive orders would likely be a Break from Reality--IRL they can only bind the federal government, not the states.  One issue regarding a more active Congress is whether that includes checking for Constitutional Amendments: if it does, that means that one might have to seriously turn the country around in the first month of Nightmare as they're pretty close to the ACA at that point, IIRC.  (Or do you need to have the Congress go even more conservative for an ACA?)

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Executive orders would likely be a Break from Reality--IRL they can only bind the federal government, not the states.  One issue regarding a more active Congress is whether that includes checking for Constitutional Amendments: if it does, that means that one might have to seriously turn the country around in the first month of Nightmare as they're pretty close to the ACA at that point, IIRC.  (Or do you need to have the Congress go even more conservative for an ACA?)

Good critical thoughts. The game doesn't really simulate state law as distinct from federal law -- you can see this in the way ballot measures take place that affect things the same way as federal laws. I think the benefits of modernizing the commentary on American politics by noting the expansion of the use of executive orders to alter the interpretation of laws under the last two Presidents outweighs the drawbacks that could come from over-exaggerating their impact.

Congress does indeed need to be more conservative to start the ACA. Nightmare Mode always starts 70 C+ Representatives and 12 C+ Senators short of losing the game, to prevent it from ending before the first elections. You always get at least one chance to turn things around before the end.

[EuchreJack]

The game doesn't currently simulate Administrative Law, which is almost entirely made by the President.  Regulations instead of Statutes, basically.

It also doesn't simulate that the President can propose bills that are far more likely to pass Congress than other bills.

Two more ways the President can wield more power, yay!

[Casei]

I just started playing LCS a week or so ago while waiting for DF to stabilize - and it's tons of fun as it stands, but there are a couple of 'weak spots' that I've seen, from an outsider's perspective.

Hacking is far too OP. It's too easy to get someone up to Juice 200.

Here's an alternative proposal:

At Computer levels 0-4, say, you can Troll. Trolling would get you only minimal amount of juice.

Level 5-9 you can Skript. Skripting is a little more potent, gets you a little more juice, but it has a tendency to pull in small amounts of Heat, and it isn't the juicy stuff, which should be done at skill level 10-15:

The Hack. I'd like to see the actual 'hacking' portion spread out over three phases, such as Discovery, Penetrate, Exploit. The first round gets you past the first firewalls, the second round past the second layer, and finally the goodies, which can be a variety of actions (like a date menu): get map, deactivate security, pilfer secrets, steal funds.

I'd like to see each major location (Power plant, Intel HQ, Prison, etc) have its own computer security system that needs knocking down before operatives can infiltrate. For instance, after 'deactivate security' on Courthouse would cause their alarm system to be inoperable for the next day. Attacking a place without deactivating their computerized security should be akin to suicide.

That's the big one I had, the others were small and mostly about standardizing some interface. Otherwise, this is a pretty epic game.

I'd contribute, myself, if I knew the C's.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Casei, just to make sure -- are you playing 4.07 (downloaded from the forums), or 3.09 (downloaded from the Bay12Games site)? Hacking is a little more in-depth and less powerful in 4.07, and there are a lot of other features and balances that have been done in the last five years or so since 3.09 came out.

[Casei]

It's 4.07, from your pinned post at the top of the forum. I press 'A' to start an activity, put an unsquadded liberal on hacking and let them go, and they just rack up the insane juice, quickly outstripping whomever hired them in the juice department.

Edit: This might be related: the 4.07 I have looks different from the Youtube videos that you made, Jonathan - for instance, the recruits show all of their skills at all times instead of the 'unknown' ? ? ? ? ?: ? kind of thing - but it *does* say 4.07 on the splash screen. Did someone roll back the source?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Perfect. In regards to your suggestions, I think the idea of electronic security systems that can be hacked is a good one, but I wouldn't want to make it obligatory -- I like the game supporting and encouraging a range of playstyles, to ensure that there's always more strategies to explore in repeat plays. Robbing the bank vault, for example, can be done through either a high-tech heist or a heavily-armed "everyone get down" raid, each with their own set of challenges.

Hacking is currently fairly tiered already -- low Computers skill results in hacking failing to produce results (juice or otherwise), while the "harass websites" action is easier for medium tier computer users to pull off. Low skilled computer users picking that will just troll forums and stuff though, which doesn't actually accomplish anything. Will consider additional choices and depth on the top end.

[Capital Fish]

Wasn't the "harass websites" option removed from the game years ago, though?

[FinetalPies]

Oh man I would love for there to be a low end, less illegal way to train computer skills

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Wasn't the "harass websites" option removed from the game years ago, though?

You're right -- it was merged into Hacking. You will automatically harass websites if you're not skilled enough to hack.

[Casei]

Perfect. In regards to your suggestions, I think the idea of electronic security systems that can be hacked is a good one, but I wouldn't want to make it obligatory -- I like the game supporting and encouraging a range of playstyles, to ensure that there's always more strategies to explore in repeat plays. Robbing the bank vault, for example, can be done through either a high-tech heist or a heavily-armed "everyone get down" raid, each with their own set of challenges.

Hacking is currently fairly tiered already -- low Computers skill results in hacking failing to produce results (juice or otherwise), while the "harass websites" action is easier for medium tier computer users to pull off. Low skilled computer users picking that will just troll forums and stuff though, which doesn't actually accomplish anything. Will consider additional choices and depth on the top end.

It doesn't have to be obligatory - give the security-droppers a bonus, or disable the alarm triggers on the 'big doors' or something - it can still be taken without dropping internal security, but it should be a harder thing to accomplish.

As it stands, though, hacking is either giving out too much computer skill, or too much juice. A good test would be to take someone who has zero hacking skill, and see how many days it takes to get them to 200 Juice.

Oh man I would love for there to be a low end, less illegal way to train computer skills

Agreed. I was surprised that you couldn't take Computer classes at college. An alternative would be to have 'Teach Liberals Practical Life Skills' as an option for an activity (trains computer, finance, business, etc - not as effective as a college ed, but it should be relatively inexpensive).