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[Rolan7]

I've enjoyed this game for a long time, but some things about the interface have always really gotten to me.  I redownloaded the code today and poked around a bit, and came up with this list of (I think) feasible goals I'd like to work on.

Some of them affect balance quite a bit, so I'm curious as to what people think.  Some of these are a lot more ambitious than others.  I'll probably focus on the earlier inventory stuff first.


Ability to equip a liberal on their details page under [R]eview
Also liberals playing music should equip a spare guitar if you have one, which would make this mostly unnecessary...
And a button to arm/disarm all liberals not in squads, having them (randomly and potentially unoptimally) picking up weapons based on their highest weapon stat.  Including guitars and unarmed, heh.

Liberals automatically reload weapons after site actions, combining bullets.  On site, reloading *swaps* the spent magazine for the fullest in the inventory.
Since all that partial clip management and wasteful reloading is silly.  Shotguns are a bit special, I think it'd be neat to have them load 2 shells per reload and add dual-barrel hunting shotguns.

Let squads carry inventory to sites.
Ammo is stored in this communal backpack too.  After a site action the game attempts to restore the squad to the pre-action state, removing loot and adding/removing ammo.
This lets you carry disguises/armor/stealth suits to people in prison, or even weapons to arm liberated sweatshop workers.  Also helps with ammo management in conjunction with the previous bullet point.

Martial artists try to disarm enemies with weapons
This would be an opposed strength check.  The weapon is knocked away and becomes loot after the fight.

Less lethal weapons, put conservative in wounded state but won't kill.
Light bashing weapons, tasers, martial arts.
I thought of this for pacifist runs, then realized the obvious utility for capturing hostages.  Intimidate them to make them crawl off, leaving their loot.

Not Taking Credit
If nobody sees the squad's faces, you get an option after the action to take credit or not.  Not taking credit means no heat or crime gain, but no political boost since it's just a bunch of criminals.  Kinda a low priority, and precursor to more ambitious ideas I'm thinking about.

Justice Subsection!

Bribery
Conservatives only honor money.  Bribe negotiation is thus an instaneous, risk-free action (the price just shows up next to the option under talk).  Choose the option and the conservative group will happily disappear.  Cheaper if the liberal is persuasive, and if the site isn't yet alarmed.

Bail Fines
Bail's too complicated but I could see the conservatives dropping nonviolent charges in exchange for money.  Maybe prompt when they're moved to the courthouse for trial.

Prison Escape
Your infiltration expert got caught?  No prison can hold them!  Select them on the R-4 (justice) screen and press a button to start the great escape.  Good luck sneaking or bluffing your way out in orange.  Suddenly all those shivs look a lot more useful...  Get a guard uniform and you might have a chance.

Thoughts?  I'm more familiar with scripting languages than C++, but I've at least edited and compiled the project.
(Oddly, this error is still around: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118761.0
The solutions there worked for me before, but then it complained about _exit already being defined in libcmt.lib, so I went ahead and got code::blocks instead.)

[a1s]

Let squads carry inventory to sites.
Not Taking Credit

Those were both in the game at some point (I think all Toady versions had the inventory in fact), but were discarded for one reason or another. I do like bribes (though I think it should force you to take cash with you (which is proportionately lost/becomes loot if your liberals die/get captured in a chase), and also there should be a streetwise roll involved before you know the precise amount needed to bribe people)

[Cheedows]

Bribery would probably have a load of balance issues, but we can work it out. Inventory on the other hand is a game changer.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

The reason squad inventory isn't in right now is because it it was pretty clunky and micromanagey and unbalanced the disguise game. In the old Toady version you had separate squad and safehouse inventories, and how you moved items around was to transfer from safehouse to squad, then transfer squad to different safehouse, then transfer from squad to new safehouse. If you wanted to sell something at the pawn shop then you'd need to be sure to transfer the loot to that squad -- if it was looted by another squad, you'd have to transfer out of the other squad into the safehouse, then jump over to the selling squad and transfer it into the selling squad's inventory.

When body armor and suspicion for being armed with certain weapons went in, it created a situation where the optimal strategy was to micromanage your squad inventory so that all the gear you want to fight with in your squad inventory, and all the gear you want to disguise with is on your squad's equipment. Then you do your thing on site, and when you want to fight, you manually re-equip every person to swap out their weapons and armor slots for the correct gear. This is a cool idea, but the problem was that it was the best way to play deep infiltrations where you needed to get inside a building, activate a special, and fight your way out, and there was no drawback whatsoever to doing it -- it completely invalidated the choice between wearing a disguise and wearing armor. There was no mechanic for "why are these scientists lugging a bunch of guns around the office" or anything like that, and while there was a round of discussion about possible solutions, none of them at the time really fixed the micromanagement issue, just kind of grappled with the balance.

At the end of the day, I don't regret removing squad inventory as a mechanic. Inventory management is a notoriously annoying part of games like this, and having multiple inventories in one location that you're juggling items between just cost the game more in "unfun overhead" than it gave the game in coolness. I can see it coming back, but I think some thought should go toward how to avoid requiring the player to do a whole ton of keystrokes to accomplish routine behaviors. The idea of automatically dumping loot into the safehouse inventory and reloading ammo supplies is a good one -- though you still have to grapple a bit with pawning (do you toggle between safehouse and squad inventory for what to sell from?), and there remains the balance issue where being able to bring guns and armor in your hammerspace inventory breaks the disguise game.

[Rolan7]

Thanks for the reply Jonathan!
I see what you and Cheedows mean about bringing items being game-changing (and tedious)...  It could ruin the choice and being a bit silly.

It's particularly silly in Payday 2, which I had in mind when I suggested it.  Though they even openly wear the armor in infiltration mode and nobody really cares...

The main thing I was looking for was a way to enable sneaking when escaping prison.  What I didn't realize is that prison guard uniforms are sneaking-enabled!  So this actually has multiple solutions, sneaking or disguise, if you can get clothes off a guard without destroying them.

So yeah, I'm dropping that idea.

Also now I see the existing commented-out code for "Stances" which switch between stealth, loud, or anonymous raiding.  Maybe I could use that but I'm more interested in making the ammo system more convenient first.