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[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'm not quite following you there: Are you saying that not making you buy materials for t-shirts would fix those things?

[Servant Corps]

Well, er, what I am trying to say is that as long as these exploits are there, people are going to bypass the legal fundraising methods and just move onto speeches. It is very easy to acquire money by conducting speeches, and so that is what most people are going to do.

In which case, not making you buy materials for t-shirts at least discourages people from engaging in these exploits, allowing them to at least acquire money without having to resort to lame stuff like making long speeches and alerting people of the dangers of Godzilla. It's just my opinon.

[beorn080]

Garment making is finally balanced, IMO. You need to think about it and use more then just an infinite stream of garment workers to make it viable.

Honestly, if you put in a bit of effort at the beginning, and recruit 4-5 liberal judges and a lawyer, illegal fund raising is the way to go. Recruit a second layer of hippies using your first batch as recruiters, get the first batch some leadership to increase recruitment and decrease ratting, and you can get a lawyer with several hundred juice in the first year. Heck my lawyer in the current game has about 115 juice after about half a year of brownie selling. May switch over to T-Shirts since everyone now has decent business and, thanks to a pair of fashion designers, decent Tailoring.

[Servant Corps]

I guess I'll back away from my statement. To me, I don't really have much need for money, because I don't spend a lot of money. So, I'm likely ineffienct in terms of income generation, but I have enough money to pay for what I want. If I don't, that where those lame Speeches come in, since they can usually net a ton of cash, rather quickly. That why I didn't like paying money for T-Shirt fundraising, because it penalizes people who decide to use illegal aliens to create disguises in what is essentially a 'flavor' option. As long as you can make speeches, you don't really need an income stream.

(In fact, a high income stream is actually bad...since the more people you set to fundraising, the less you can set to writing for the Liberal Guardian or doing civil disobidence.)

There might be other strats that are in fact money-intensive, but I don't know of any. The only effective strat I know of is the Sleeper Strategy. But meh. I'll drop it.

[beorn080]

Then only strat that I can see being money extensive is an everexpanding set of murders. Then you need cash for bullets and weapons. However, in that strat, you would let the police get into a 1 on 2 off attack rotation, netting you M16's, M4's, and army body armor once you get it going. 20 kills every raid means 20 new guns + clips +body armor.

[mainiac]

I think that in order to fix speeches, you should fix speeches, not tinker with other types of fundraising.

Admittedly, I don't give much concern to fundraising myself.  I recruit a tailor pretty early on, so clothing is never much of a problem.  I don't resort to serious violence until the CSS shows up, by which time I don't have much trouble paying for my elite liberal strike team.  And I'll usually have a couple hackers harassing websites in the background, who can start stealing if my funds get too low.

Idea to limit selling suits but keep it profitable:
Could you make, besides loot, the pawn shop pays less for goods if you aren't buying more then you are selling?  So hypothetically, you've bought a thousand dollars of stuff from the pawn shop over the course of the game so far.  The pawn shop can afford to buy five hundred dollars of stuff back from you at the usual price.  You can sell more then 500$, but the pawn shop owner will start complaining about the bad economy and won't pay you as much.  Hopefully the way it works is, you can sell enough to the pawn shop to unload the nice suits you loot at the start of the game.  And you can sell stuff for a quick cash infusion if you are desperate.  But running an serious business requires finding customers, not selling at a second hand store.

[beorn080]

I have just discovered what else you need money for. Mass surrenders. I went into this surrender with about 3k, been using my sleeper for 100 bucks a throw, and ran out just as I reach this.

Sleeper Veronica Black reads the charges, trying to hide a smile:                                                                                               The defendant, Manuela Scardino, is charged with                                racketeering, 16 counts of felony assault, 21 counts of murder, breaking and entering and resisting arrest.
3 former LCS members will testify against Manuela Scardino.

So theres a lesson for for you. Worked out defending self, even with 0 law skill, but its scary now.

[Neonivek]

With soo many ways to earn tons of cash I always kinda wonder if the game should have some big money purchases (I think building upgrades are expencive, sometimes overly expencive, but that is it).

Though I question if that would be keeping with the LCS theme and feel. They are supposed to sort of be ragtag.

[EuchreJack]

Ever been to California?

[HAMMERMILL]

I dunno. Fundraising could/ should be profitable even if the LCS is virtually unheard of.

I personally know of this hippie couple that can make 200$ in 4 hours just from begging/swindling folks, driving from gas station to gas station. Young dude with cute girlfriend, a sob story about not having enough gas money to make it to (insert distant city here) to attend girlfriend's dad's funeral and a Labrador wearing a hankerchief named 'Dodge' seems to seperate folks from their money rather efficiently.

Maybe make panhandling profitable for people with high persuasion, charsma, intelligence, maybe disguise (for the acting bit) ect. Might be a good way to make some loose change for a founder in the early game, but it should be less effective with mass-donation drives since there are only so many folks in a city willing to fork over change to dirty hippies unless they represent the LCS and are popular enough to warrent public support as such.

[Ari Rahikkala]

See, the problem is that as long as fundraising speeches at the Co-Op or the Court House can get you loads of cash, there is no reason to try and engage in any other fundraising activities. You can't get arrested for making speeches and talking up the glories of the LCS.

I never beat the game until I modded out the ability to get money from talking to people. I'd always end up talking to dozens, if not (with macroing) hundreds, and asking for donations from each, after which I'd feel like a cheater and not want to continue playing. Doesn't help that I'm a bit of a perfectionist about the LCS members I hire so I didn't want to limit myself in how many people to talk with. Removing donations mightn't be very realistic but it made the game a good deal more fun for me.

[Neonivek]

Fundraising can be more then profitable as long as you understand it as less "Santa outside the mll" and more "Priest at the Airport" (Which is illegal now. It annoyed people but it was highly successful)

Aggressive Fundraising/Panhandling techniques can be highly profitable especially if your not afraid to break the law.

-Squat outside a mall as a homeless person and you can earn thousands of dollars in a day.
-Play music in the park and hide the money you earn and the same can happen
-Harass people at the airport for donations by giving them cheap flowers andthe same can happen

It all depends on what the law allows you to do.

Yes I am speaking of real life.

[Servant Corps]

I always saw fundraising as the "Lobbyist at Liberal Univeristy Giving Political Leatures And Showcasing Powerpoint Presenations Telling Liberal Donors Where Their Donated Money Is Funding"

[E. Albright]

When I was an undergrad, I did "environmental organizing" for a week one summer. Door to door work, canvasing for letters and donations. I was good at getting the former, but not the latter. Most of my peers were the opposite. A slick organizer could easily pull in a hundred dollars in an hour of cold calls, regardless of the income level of the neighborhood visited. I always had too many qualms to really go for the throat. The fact that we were paid entirely on commission made the whole affair seem more than a little untoward...

[Soadreqm]

Credit card fraud is highly profitable, but you'll get raided eventually for doing it. Having some high-ranking sleepers at the Corp. HQ embezzling funds is also an excellent source of income. My latest revolution is pretty much funded by a single CEO. This is probably both reasonably realistic and somewhat balanced; to get a sleeper CEO in the first place you need crazy-high psychology skills, and having an international supercorporation sending negligible amounts of its money to you should make you insanely rich. This must be how the CCS gets all its neat toys.