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Release 3.20 as 3.20

6 (14.3%)

Release 3.20 as 4.00

22 (52.4%)

Release 3.20 as 4.10

14 (33.3%)

Total Members Voted: 42

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I think, in hindsight, I should have made LCS 3.10 be LCS 4.00.

Why?

Because it's the first version since 3.09. It was the first release in two years, and the first time I modified the game. At this point, it makes sense to draw a clear distinction between the stuff since my first release of the game (whether by me or by others after that first 3.10 release) and what came before that. At the time, I figured it was a minor addition, and it was audacious of me to even assume the title of a new release number.

But now there's a problem. It's unclear what releases were Toady's or from that era, and which ones were mine or from this era. And I'm not even using the version numbers the same way Toady did. Instead of living in the (major release).(minor release) world that Toady's releases were in, I've been releasing in a 3.(relatively major release).(minor release) world, with a looser definition of major release, and no definition for what would change the number 3. To put this in context, in version 3.09, the source code for LCS was roughly 40,000 lines. Now the source code is around 60,000 lines. And a lot of stuff has been changed, not just expanded.

So, I think 3.19.2 should have been 4.09.2.

But then, I say, it's a little late for that. I already have been doing 3.xx.x for the last two years. And after all, I keep telling myself, maybe none of my revisions have, in themselves, been sufficient to justify a new "big number". But the truth is, I don't even know what LCS 2 looked like, or the original release. I haven't played them. I only ever played LCS 3. And I know that's the case for most people who play LCS.

So I'd like to get a sense of what you guys think I should do next:

1) Continue releasing as 3.20 and beyond
2) Instead of 3.20, release 4.00 and start from there
3) Instead of 3.20, release 4.10 for next release -- retroactively calling the previous releases 4.00 through 4.09

Please feel welcome to vote in the poll and provide your opinions in the comments.

[Capital Fish]

You probably already knew this, but some information about the older versions can be found be reading the old forum threads. Some of them go back quite a ways, and they do reveal some useful information.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I do, but it's unfortunately it's only a couple of threads with vague references to features that were cut, or systems that I don't really understand. Nothing like having the actual samples in front of me. I asked Toady for an old copy once, and he was kind enough to try to find one for me, but he doesn't have them anymore.

[EuchreJack]

Personally, I'm not quite sure when the game jumped from "3" to "4", but it obviously has done so.  We're playing a better game than the 3.09 LCS, and that should be recognized.

I'm all for the next release being LCS 4.10

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Spoiler: Original 3.10 Changelog (click to show/hide)

3.10

--- COMBAT & FIGHTING:
- Ballistic vests that provide the strongest armor yet, and can't be made or bought, but are carried by military and some police forces
- Raids conducted by special Police SWAT units with machine guns and body armor (Trivia from the SWAT entry on Wikipedia: In the SLA siege, the police eventually assaulted the building with teargas and SWAT units armed only with semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, and no body armor. The building burned down, all of the SLA members inside were shot multiple times, and despite over three thousand rounds fired and the police not using body armor, not a single police officer was injured.)
- Back ranks during a siege are less effective (must pass an agility check to attack)
- Assault rifles can hit more than once per round
- Just a little less likely to hit Liberal bystanders on accident... it's not really fun to have to always be holding your fire when fighting
- Shotguns are easier to hit with, but do reduced damage on a "barely hit"
- Mere pistols no longer blow people's limbs apart with a single bullet (I lost one too many main characters to security guards BLOWING MY BODY IN HALF with the first shot from their .22 revolver), but may still get other critical hits ("heart is blasted!" and dead at the end of the round, broken neck and paralyzed, all those other uncool other things that don't involve decapitation, exploding bodies, or outright dismemberment that is vastly out of proportion to the power of the weapon used)

--- SLEEPERS:
- Sleeper system overhaul -- eliminating the early News Anchor/Radio Personality win without making them useless, by having them all influence the normal background moves of public opinion, rather than have their own independent effect
- Make almost all sleepers good for something, except like, police dogs and mutants
- Police department sleepers can give advance warning of police raids and leak police records
- CEO sleepers may warn of imminent corporate attacks and leak corporate documents (corporate managers can also leak documents)
- Agent sleepers may warn of imminent CIA raids and leak intelligence documents

--- LEGAL SYSTEM:
- Hiring a good attorney costs $5000 instead of $1000
- Getting away with murder (literally and metaphorically) in court is generally harder; prosecution is stronger, and how many (and how bad) the charges are influences the difficulty
- Sleeper judges always reduce the sentence, and never order executions
- There's always a chance of conviction, even if you're really good; you're guilty, it should never be a sure thing to get away with it. Instead, emphasis should be on avoiding that position in the first place.

--- HACKING:
- Harder to get a "major event" in hacking
- Can cause a scare by hacking into CIA networks (don't get data disks, but you do influence the intelligence issue)
- Can deface conservative websites
- Credit card fraud is less lucrative for lower level hackers

--- DATING:
- Law enforcement officers and agents sometimes identify wanted Liberals on dates, and try to arrest them
- Kidnapping soldiers and other dangerous targets can sometimes backfire

--- COMMAND STRUCTURE:
- Liberals stay in contact when their boss is only arrested, and only disappear when their boss gets sent to jail or dies
- High juice, high heart liberals might come back after their boss is released from jail (so maybe you're sent to jail for twenty years, and awhile after you're released, one day your old top general just shows up at the homeless shelter, weapon in hand... everyone else has abandoned you, but she's a veteran with too much put into this... even after twenty years, the man can't keep her down)
- Color coding on the promotion screen to show which liberals are arrested, in jail, or in hiding due to their superiors being in jail

--- OTHER STUFF:
- Armor can only be sold at the cost of manufacture (can't sell expensive suits to raise money)
- The keys '/' and '\' can be used to page forward and back instead of brackets or pageup/pagedown, by typing "slashes" into the init file

3.10a1

- I re-doubled the selling price on armor, so that it's now twice the manufacturing price, rather than merely the manufacturing price. So now you can still make a profit from making expensive suits, it's just much less attractive than it used to be -- $300 per suit profit is less useful than $1200 per suit.
- No agility check to give cover fire in sieges
- / and \ support in init file removed; AZERTY support added

3.10a3

- General balance changes.
- Police now search for safe houses differently.
- Added a prototype system for writing articles for the Liberal Guardian.
- Added various new weapons.

3.10a5

- A pause before you get into encounters
- Stuff appears in restricted squares
- New law: Gun control
- Pawn shop now sells more guns, but only if they're legal
- You can now cause alarm by the weapon you're carrying
- You can now cause instant alarm as soon as anybody sees you if your weapon is totally illegal, like walking into the police station with an AK-47 and a clown suit
- You can get thrown in jail for openly carrying an illegal weapon in public
- You can disguise yourself and get away with holding an illegal weapon
- "Massive Conservative Response Imminent"

[Zangi]

Doesn't really matter in the end.  Just roll with what you got now, less confusion is good.

[beorn080]

I don't know what you have planned for the next non bugfix release, but if it finishes up most of the changes you've started, the sleepers, issues, and such, the big things, that version should be 4.0. The reason is that 3.09 and the changes from 3.00 started in that direction, and finishing them off should bring it to 4.00. Now if there is more planned for the major upgrades in these past releases beyond simple balancing, you should continue with the 3.** method until those are done and you start working on a different part, say liberal activism or inputting a GTA 1 clone for car chases instead of the choose an option to escape from the cops now.

In essence, if your finishing up sleepers and combat for the next release, it should go to 4.00, if not, stay with the 3.** until the major parts other then balancing are done.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Well, the difficulty there is that I'm all over the map; I tend to chaotically work on whatever strikes my fancy at the time. I honestly don't know what I'll do for next release until I do it, half the time.

[Yanlin]

Personally, keep it the way it is. In my opinion the time to advance to 4.x.x is when we get some serious upgrading done. Such as implementing the Stalinist comrade squad. Or adding some more features such as assassination and REAL jury tampering. I've always wondered why we can't just tamper with the jury when they are deliberating about busted LCS members. It could easily be arranged with a sleeper ANYTHING in the court. Surely they know what case is on when! Surely they can report when the jury enters deliberations!

[Jonathan S. Fox]

In my opinion the time to advance to 4.x.x is when we get some serious upgrading done. Such as implementing the Stalinist comrade squad. Or adding some more features such as assassination and REAL jury tampering.

Okay. I get that you're just saying leave it as it is now, then increment to 4.x.x next time I make some major changes.

However, I still feel compelled to point out that the sum of the changes I've made in the last two years do easily outstrip these proposed changes that would bring us to 4.00 in seriousness of change.

Off-hand and from memory, I added the Conservative Crime Squad. I made AK-47s and M16s fire more than one shot per turn. I overhauled the interrogation system. I rebuilt the activation screen as we know it, and added nearly half the options on there. I made hacking and prostitution real options, instead of things that just happened if you told certain types of people to cause trouble. I gave you the power to order sleepers. I built the new recruiting system. I added recruit caps, skill caps, the skill screen, and many new skills, weapons, and issues. I added gun control and the black market. I coded the bouncer at the gentleman's club. I made it so Conservatives will insult you or respond with issue-specific rebuttals when you try to chat them up about politics. I created the Massive Conservative Response system, the fact that SWAT teams will show up if you dally on site after causing alarm. Heck, I made the SWAT teams themselves. I added body armor, army veterans, MP5s, M4s, martial arts, melee counterattacks. I made two more character creation options for every question. I started using the concept of heat and crime severity to induce site raids, instead of just a search timer that starts automatically the second you commit even the most basic crime. I created the ability to break away or get tackled in police chases. I added guitars and music, molotovs and fire, spraypaint and graffiti, and age and gender.

It's a big list and there's some big stuff in there. Not to mention mountains of bugs fixed, and not just the tons of post-3.09 bugs that I introduced in the process of coding new features and changing things, but older ones as well.

Maybe I'm stroking my ego too much here, but I honestly suspect most of the players of LCS today don't fully realize how many of the features they take for granted are things I've added over the last two years. I mean, how many who weren't around when 3.09 was the latest version know that M16s and AK-47s used to fire a single shot each round, and there was no gun control? Even I sometimes forget things weren't always this way, since guns were one of the very first things I worked on, even before I planned to share my changes with anyone.

[Little]

I say go 4.0.

I played 3.09.

[EuchreJack]

As I tried to say previously, go at least 4.0, as I've also played 3.09.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Sorry if that seemed to be questioning people's Elite Liberal credibility -- that post was flamboyantly stroking my own ego, and was not intended to diminish anyone in the process.

[cowofdoom78963]

I played 3.09, I think you should stay with 3.20, as thats what it is. But then again its really not a big deal, I would probably play it even if it was 4.00(grudgingly of course).

[Rezan]

I honestly don't care that much. I agree that enough changes have been made to make this version 4.x.x already, though. There is a possibility I am biased, considering I have some strange hatred for the number 3.