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[Sergius]

Probably the title is a bit unhelpful, what I think should be in the game is this:
When you chat a lot of people and invite them to discuss the issues back home, often you just want to tell everyone to B: Casually Chat. But if you also have a date with someone, it's right after this and maybe you'll press B one times too many (same for any other letter actually) so it would be nice if we could see a counter that tells us how many "interviews" we have left. Same for dates.

Like a little number in the second horizontal line, such as 10/50, or just a reverse counter that reads "40 more interviews/dates" or something.

[EuchreJack]

I'd prefer to have all my discussion people meet in one big group, and just select 'b' once, especially when the discussions take over two minutes with the current method.

[Sergius]

So when you got 100 people in the room you'd like to press D and recruit everyone at once? Even the crappy ones?
I disagree. I think it's fine the way it is except that it's too easy to miss the last one and press a key either in your management screen or when having a date, which can result even in a involuntary kidnapping.

[Servant Corps]

A better solution would be to not preach to 100 people in the room. If you have that many people, you should expect for a certain amount of failure.

[EuchreJack]

I'd be willing to preach to 100 people at once, just to build the foundation of a relationship, and to find out a bit about them.  Then, I'd probably start filtering out those I'd actually be interested in recruiting, as opposed to those I'm just gonna ask to donate.

[Yanlin]

No. Just no. A counter is better. Or another option would be making the date buttons different.

[Sergius]

Or at least have a mandatory "press enter" between the interview part and the date part.
But a counter also lets me know how many more I have to interview so I don't lose patience and just hold B for five minutes (sometimes I have 50 people in line and I really wish to check each one but I just don't know how much it is going to take).

[a1s]

well actually, it shouldn't be possible to do 50 personal interviews and 10 dates in one evening. so instead you should be able to do 2 things:
work with groups (this would be inefficient, as you can't tailor your pitch to every person): you can ask groups for donations, you obviously can try to persuade them your cause in noble, and you can ask them to come individually (they will fill the next available place in your calendar).
work with individual people (you can only have (to pick a random number) 3 dates and interviews in one evening): you would be better at convincing them, you can give away books, you can ask for donations, but most importantly you can ask them to join LCS in private. (if you already have 3 dates, the interviews are postponed until you have a free spot)

[Sergius]

Well, anyway that is a gameplay change. What I'm talking about is a change in the interface.

Gameplay enhancements merit their own thread.

[EuchreJack]

Yup, if we required the pressing of 'enter' instead of anything between the interviews and dating, that'd be great, as I could just drop The Liberal Paperweight of Truth onto the 'b' key!

Oh, and I'm all for the counter, at least until group recruiting is implemented.  I've had times where I've just wanted to know the interviews were gonna end sometime.

[Alexhans]

well actually, it shouldn't be possible to do 50 personal interviews and 10 dates in one evening. so instead you should be able to do 2 things:
work with groups (this would be inefficient, as you can't tailor your pitch to every person): you can ask groups for donations, you obviously can try to persuade them your cause in noble, and you can ask them to come individually (they will fill the next available place in your calendar).
work with individual people (you can only have (to pick a random number) 3 dates and interviews in one evening): you would be better at convincing them, you can give away books, you can ask for donations, but most importantly you can ask them to join LCS in private. (if you already have 3 dates, the interviews are postponed until you have a free spot)

Great ideas.  I completely agree.  When you speak to a group maybe someone later approaches you to help, join or whatever if he's interested... the only thing would be how to output the opinions of those groups as we now show the ones of individuals... (He is ready to fight for the liberal cause, seems interested, etc)

[mainiac]

I think it's interesting to note that in the storyfied account of LCS that I've seen, if the player did a whole lot of issues talking, they describe it as their recruiter (usually founder) talking to a crowd of people.  Admittedly, I only know of 2 or 3 accounts, but seeing as this game is an RPG, the way players seem to be thinking of events is important.

So maybe the system should be revamped towards mass recruiting?  You can go to a corner in front of a site, stand up on a street bench somewhere, and start speaking towards the masses.  Depending how good you are, the crowd gets bigger from a handful of people to a teaming mob that blocks the roads and gets you charged with inciting a riot (unless free speech laws are elite liberal).  But to keep these fish on the line, you devote your efforts to "addressing the masses" for the day.  This would be very dangerous if you're wanted, the cops will show up anywhere but the crackhouse/safehouses very quickly to break up your demonstration.  And there's always a chance of undercover cops/agents coming after you if you have juice.  You can only recruit people where they're found in the game right now, "address the masses" at the crackhouse and you'll get a mass of gangbangers and crackheads.  If you want hippies, you have to go into the university district and risk police response.

What addressing the masses does is populate a list of up to 15 liberal prospects.  These recruits represent those your recruiter sees the most promise in and gives special attention to.  Rather then having to go through them one at a time, you can select anyone on this list, see info (with more info if they've been on the list longer, just like right now you get more info if you've been recruiting them longer) and designate them as "potential recruits" "potential donors" or "placeholders".  The placeholders are replaced the next day if you have more prospects.  Potential recruits and donors receive the equivalent of the "chat" treatment until they are willing to fight, at which point they are automatically offered a spot or asked for cash.  The better your recruiter, the better your prospects, i.e. if she's good enough to attract a crowd of thousands, you still only have to look through a list of 15 recruits, but they're the best 15 out of 1000 people, not the only 15 people interested.  Plus, a very large mob means you'll get a few donations from the other 985 people in the mob who are likewise inspired to action.  (or maybe it could shift an issue?  But that would have to be part of a broader balance to make the game still somewhat difficult to win.)

Current recruiting could exist in parallel to this system, but it would be limited.  Talking issues with someone on site can add them to your list of prospects if you have a slot left.  But you can only keep a couple of people on the line if you aren't actively addressing the masses.  So, on a raid you talk to 15 people and they agree to come by the next day. But if you go on a raid the next day, you only have time to talk to 2 of them and have to pick 13 prospects to let go.  You could just address the masses at the homeless shelter though, this would allow you to keep all 15 prospects and be too low profile for the cops to notice.  But even addressing the masses at the homeless shelter means giving up the ability to do anything else for the day.  Also, you don't gain skill at debate unless you are talking to the masses and doing it somewhere risky (outside the homeless shelter and crackhouses.)  No pain, no gain.

I started reading C++ tutorials on the side a whole 3 days ago so I doubt I could implement this idea myself, although I'd like to at least take a look at the source code and give this the old college effort.  And I don't really know how much work a change like this would entail. 

But if anyone else thinks this is worthwhile, I think it would be a cool addition to the game because:
1) It would be cool to give fiery speeches to the masses, like a true revolutionary.  Wouldn't it be awesome to stir up a mob that starts overturning cars and torching buildings with your speech about how how much CEO's are payed?
2) It would reduce micromanagement for the player by letting a good recruiter get good recruits without needing to search through huge lists of bad recruits
3) It would eliminate "grinding" of the debate skill, whereby you can just go talk to everyone at a site for 5 minutes and get a good debater; this way gaining debate skill has risk and takes time
4) It would create a system where balancing money is at least theoretically possible.  Right now, balance isn't much of a priority for the game.  If balance did become a concern, recruiting would be a problem because currently you can recruit an infinite number of people to farm them for cash.

[E. Albright]

Depending how good you are, the crowd gets bigger from a handful of people to a teaming mob that blocks the roads and gets you charged with inciting a riot (unless free speech laws are elite liberal).

Lacking L+ Free Speech, you should run the risk of getting hit with loitering just for being there, even if you're ignored. And if Free Speech is in the C to C+ range, you should risk worse than loitering.

If the LCS is held in low esteem by the masses, this would be a fine occasion for angry citizens to attack your recruiter as well... or for a CCS (or Police Gang) squad to attempt a hit.

However, having said the above, I'm not sure moving to a strictly mass-recruitment model is appropriate. It's... um... very high-profile. It might be nice to add it as an option, but a lot of the LCS framework is geared towards underground resistance/revolution/terrorism. Most of the time, you don't want to publicly recruit in those instances. Admittedly, you also don't want to mass-recruit, as it's not just about convincing them to join but also making sure you can trust them. I think it would be good to cap the number of people you can string along with recruitment pitches at any given moment; it doesn't directly address the trust issue, but it at least keeps mass recruitment under better control.

How about capping the number of potential recruits attached to a specific recruiter as a function of their Persuasion and/or Leadership? I.e., if you have a Persuasion of 10 you can string along 5 people at once, and if you have a Leadership of 3 on top of that, you can string along 3 more? O/w, when you ask more people to come by, they will, but only the most enthusiastic will stay, where enthusiasm is determined by an individual's Heart, profession, and how long they've been in the recruitment queue (IOW, if your queue is full of Hippies and you bring in a Moderate Doctor, they're unlikely to stick around long enough to hear you out. If you've already been talking to them for a week before bringing in 5 Hippies, the Doc is more likely to stick around even if it means a Hippie goes home ignored).

And to double back upon myself still yet again... with a system like the above, mass recruitment would suddenly have a clearer role to fill. Let people go to a site and mass-recruit a crowd with the attendant risks. Let them bring home a large crowd to influence en masse (to stick with my above limits e.g., ((Persuasion + Leadership) x 2) so the above example recruiter could pack in 26 people at once). They could do a general, less effective one-shot appeal for funds, and/or try to pull out a few individuals for one-on-one recruitment (or swindling for cash) according to their individual recruiting limits. But publicly calling for random people to come to the safehouse like that would shoot heat through the roof, and possibly result in an immediate siege/raid if the LCS has the rap sheet to warrant it, though this would be less of a risk if you made your appeal in a crack house than at a public park.

[mainiac]

Yeah, I don't think giving a speech to the masses should even be an option at a safehouse, unless you're speaking to those already on the hook.  If you've got prospects, you might bring them to the safehouse as happens right now.  But anyone who's not a prospect is way too much of a security risk to speak to at a safehouse.

Going with this idea?  Maybe it would be a good idea to add a heat gain when you lead someone back to a safehouse?  So you can go ahead and fleece 100 people for donations.  But it's a guarente that the cops will find you.

[Little]

It'd be awesome to muster crowds into a riot. Maybe that should be the use of crowds, protests and riots, not recruiting.

Because LCS seems to be styled on an underground movement, not really mass-recruiting.