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[Reelya]

your chance of dodging equals your opponent's chance of hitting.  That seems fair.

It is fair, and having all skills be useful is generally good for game balance.

Whoever capped dodge at 9 probably assumed that people were in open terrain, standing still and started trying to dodge a bullet after it was fired.

But that's not how things happen in an actual conflict. People aren't standing still, waiting for the enemy "turn" to fire, then dodging, like in a turn-based RPG.

As soon as a fight starts, people start moving, finding cover and pre-emptively dodging the enemy's line of fire. This is something experience would help with, so dodge should be able to level up as much as targeting.

[IsaacG]

your chance of dodging equals your opponent's chance of hitting.  That seems fair.

It is fair, and having all skills be useful is generally good for game balance.

Whoever capped dodge at 9 probably assumed that people were in open terrain, standing still and started trying to dodge a bullet after it was fired.

But that's not how things happen in an actual conflict. People aren't standing still, waiting for the enemy "turn" to fire, then dodging, like in a turn-based RPG.

As soon as a fight starts, people start moving, finding cover and pre-emptively dodging the enemy's line of fire. This is something experience would help with, so dodge should be able to level up as much as targeting.

Pre-emptive dodge.  I like that.  Cohen the barbarian (from Discworld), at nearly 100 years old, was far too slow to dodge his opponents, so he just tended not to be where their attacks ended up. 
And in Hackmaster, a player character's mental scores gives a bonus to evasion and attack.  Even charisma, cited connected to feints and other deception.
Then of course, D&D, and save vs. death upon massive damage.  A level 20 fighter cannot survive getting shot point blank by a siege weapon, even though the maximum damage from a siege weapon is less than said fighter's HP where the appendices mention HP is not how much damage someone can survive, but a resource meant to quantify their ability to avoid death.

I love the discussion of mechanics and the trade-off between realism/verisimilitude and ease of use.
Oh joy, do I have plans.

[The Cheshire Cat]

Ages ago wasn't the "dodge" skill actually named "tactics" to reflect the idea that it was about taking cover etc. rather than just leaping out of the way?

I think the reason for the halving of the dodge rolls after the fact is mainly to balance against unskilled attackers, since even a few points in dodge can make someone extremely difficult to hit. Weapon skills aren't super common on most of the people the player is going to recruit and training them up is difficult, so a lot of fighting is going to involve making attack rolls from the base attributes alone, which is going to cap your maximum roll around 9 to 12 unless you have very high stats. So it mainly exists as a way to prevent the frustration of having everyone miss a single guy over and over again. That said it does mean that when you're facing off against people who DO have weapon skill (which is going to be most of the dangerous enemies), it renders your own dodge skill pretty useless. Maybe there could be a way to ramp it up a bit so that a small amount of dodge skill doesn't render someone untouchable while still being effective at higher levels?

[SlatersQuest]

I thought dodge was halved because realistically it's easier to shoot someone than to dodge their shots.

I like the idea of dodge being finding cover, too, actually. In melee combat, dodging is dodging, but you can't dodge a bullet - but you can duck behind cover when someone is aiming at you.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'm pretty sure the rework that broke counterattacks is what halved & capped dodge back in the day, and that was my doing, so I can take a stab at what I was thinking.

I'm betting my concern was basically this: If you don't need it to survive in combat, then adding dodge to an already balanced game is like turning on cheat codes; it makes you so hard to kill that you become effectively immortal. If having it doesn't make you overpowered, that implies combat without it is too deadly, and the game is just forcing you to grind dodge. Since neither of those is a good outcome, I tried to reduce the range of its effects, find a happy medium where neither having too much nor having too little breaks the game. Not sure how well I succeeded; in any case, the final formula I came up with accidentally killed counterattacks, so whatever its other merits were, that alone is pretty embarrassing.

[The Cheshire Cat]

I did wonder why in the code there was flavour text for dodge rolls for up to 18 even though the result was halved before it was checked. I guess that was written beforehand and wasn't updated when the calculation was changed that made half the range impossible to reach.

I feel like dodge would probably make more sense if there was some downside to armour other than "rarely works as a disguise". As you mention, stacking dodge when you already have ways to protect yourself just ends up making you invincible, but if it was something that worked as an ALTERNATIVE to armour rather than "in addition to", it would be more balanced. I'm not sure what kind of penalty could be applied to armour that would actually make it a tactical decision rather than an annoying thing you just live with because it's still better than not using it.

[Taberone]

I did wonder why in the code there was flavour text for dodge rolls for up to 18 even though the result was halved before it was checked. I guess that was written beforehand and wasn't updated when the calculation was changed that made half the range impossible to reach.

I feel like dodge would probably make more sense if there was some downside to armour other than "rarely works as a disguise". As you mention, stacking dodge when you already have ways to protect yourself just ends up making you invincible, but if it was something that worked as an ALTERNATIVE to armour rather than "in addition to", it would be more balanced. I'm not sure what kind of penalty could be applied to armour that would actually make it a tactical decision rather than an annoying thing you just live with because it's still better than not using it.

Maybe make armor provide penalties and certain clothing (or lack of clothing) provide bonuses to dodge? You won't be able to dodge as well in heavy combat armor, for example. PAYDAY 2 has this sort of system where heavier armor means less dodge, and going essentially naked (no armor) provides the most dodge.

[Zangi]

There is something screwy with the stat bonuses in the character creation. 
Looking at the file, everything is fine.... but... I'm getting an extra 4 attribute points from out of nowhere.

For example: I pick
D,A,A,C,B,E,A,E,B,D
and I'll have:
11 HRT, 9 INT, 1 WIS, 9 CHA, 5 STR, 9 AGI, 9 HTH
Extra 2 points into both INT and CHA out of nowhere.

[IsaacG]

There is something screwy with the stat bonuses in the character creation. 
Looking at the file, everything is fine.... but... I'm getting an extra 4 attribute points from out of nowhere.

For example: I pick
D,A,A,C,B,E,A,E,B,D
and I'll have:
11 HRT, 9 INT, 1 WIS, 9 CHA, 5 STR, 9 AGI, 9 HTH
Extra 2 points into both INT and CHA out of nowhere.

I've tried it a few times, and I'm getting the correct values.
11 7 1 7 5 9 9
Odd.
There might be something wrong with how it interprets line endings.  Dependent on your operating system.

[Taberone]

After losing a safehouse to the CCS (abandoned warehouse turned into a toy factory), I hacked the CIA supercomputer and exposed the CCS backers. Once the FBI finally took down the CCS, I expected to get my toy factory back. Instead, it completely vanished, and I never got my safehouse back. Bug?

[IsaacG]

After losing a safehouse to the CCS (abandoned warehouse turned into a toy factory), I hacked the CIA supercomputer and exposed the CCS backers. Once the FBI finally took down the CCS, I expected to get my toy factory back. Instead, it completely vanished, and I never got my safehouse back. Bug?

That merits investigation.

[Taberone]

After losing a safehouse to the CCS (abandoned warehouse turned into a toy factory), I hacked the CIA supercomputer and exposed the CCS backers. Once the FBI finally took down the CCS, I expected to get my toy factory back. Instead, it completely vanished, and I never got my safehouse back. Bug?

That merits investigation.

Does this version ever fix the CCS-related bugs? Or is recapturing CCS Safehouses through violence or exposing the CCS to the FBI still impossible?

[IsaacG]

After losing a safehouse to the CCS (abandoned warehouse turned into a toy factory), I hacked the CIA supercomputer and exposed the CCS backers. Once the FBI finally took down the CCS, I expected to get my toy factory back. Instead, it completely vanished, and I never got my safehouse back. Bug?

That merits investigation.

Does this version ever fix the CCS-related bugs? Or is recapturing CCS Safehouses through violence or exposing the CCS to the FBI still impossible?

I wasn't aware of those bugs.  If they existed in 4.10, they definitely still exist.
I'll see if I can fix them.

[Jboy2000000]

I haven't played the newest version for long, but I've noticed that a few things are odd. The Liberal Guardian stories you get from the CEO's safe were Loot.CEOLoveLetter and Loot.CEOTaxRecords, or something similar, when I had the option to run them, and I seem to be getting raided when the police station, court house, and army base are closed down, even though closing those down used to make police/army raids impossible.

[SlatersQuest]

1. On the CEO safe - yes, CEO love letters and CEO tax papers are among the possible loot from the CEO safe. It's not clear from your sentence if this is what seems out of place to you, but if it is, then this is not a bug.

2. Shutting down the police station should (albeit temporarily) stymie police raids, at least insomuch as the police can't find you. It doesn't hamper other types of raids, though, so if you're getting raided by corporate mercenaries because you published CEO files, then shutting down the police station will not stop them.

If you can give me more specific details about when you shut down the police station, and when you were raided by police/national guard/army/navy, then I might be able to determine if a bug is happening and try to fix it.