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[Jonathan S. Fox]

I hope business can still increase the profit, and think that liberals without tailoring/art should not be able to actually make money off these tasks.

I can do that, certainly. I just don't like how it actually loses money if you aren't skilled enough. Players don't always expect it and it can really hurt you.

[Little]

It'd be cool if being in a safehouse with a buisness front got you more moeny from selling t-shirts/art.

[jasonred79]

Yeah. Firstly, how much tailoring skill does it take to produce a tie-dyed T-shirt?
Secondly, the numbers. This is the huge problem. Firstly, other than Fashion Designers, Sweatshop Workers would be the most logical choice for candidates for this. BUT... the average tailoring skill for these guys is 2-3. (I think musicians and such have similiar). 4 and higher is pretty exceptional. In other words, most people would expect 2-3 tailoring to be sufficient to make money, right? ... WRONG. The average sweatshop worker loses you money here? You have to be a fashion designer or elite tailor to make a decent tie-dyed t-shirt?
Secondly, there must be something wrong with the buy and sell prices for those shirts and materials! Even with like 7 tailoring, it's something like 300 in costs and 350 in sales... er. WTF. The profit margin on these things is like 900% in real life, not 10%. (you probably expect to pay $5 for something that cost 50c in materials... most of the cost is probably labour and stuff)
Also, real life T-shirt sellers can make quite decent livings. Selling clothes should be LCS most profitable business, not it's least profitable one. (artists, admittedly, are well known to make it hard to make ends meet and do it for love of art, not profit)
Third problem is that you don't realise you are losing money usually until the end of the month, (cause your cash might go up from donations+music) and if you had multiple workers assigned you can only guess which ones were losing money and which were making.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

As I said, I'm planning on removing materials costs from both art and shirts.

I'm also thinking to remove groceries costs, use some other money sink that's more fun to mess with. Of course, that will make cooking even more useless than it already is, but maybe I'll make it a bigger factor for brownies. Heh.

[jasonred79]

Don't really like the idea of money sinks. Early game, money is a huge problem for the LCS. Late game, if the LCS is doing well, once you've finished outfitting everyone, money will become a non-issue.
Money USED to be useful in the late game... via the process of kidnapping then using massive amounts of money to convert the hostage. Ie, have a massive stockpile of money and nothing to spend it on? Use it to make the endgame go a lot faster.
Groceries and T-shirt materials and rent make the BEGINNING of the game harder, but barely effect the late game. The only effect of the current money sinks is to bankrupt inexperienced players.
Would be cool if you could buy REALLY expensive weapons... like LAWs and stuff. Ridiculously powerful but cost thousands per shot. ... then again, having enemies use those against you would be bad...

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Money USED to be useful in the late game... via the process of kidnapping then using massive amounts of money to convert the hostage. Ie, have a massive stockpile of money and nothing to spend it on? Use it to make the endgame go a lot faster.
...
Would be cool if you could buy REALLY expensive weapons... like LAWs and stuff. Ridiculously powerful but cost thousands per shot. ... then again, having enemies use those against you would be bad...

This is the kind of money sink I want to put into the game...

Don't really like the idea of money sinks. Early game, money is a huge problem for the LCS. Late game, if the LCS is doing well, once you've finished outfitting everyone, money will become a non-issue.
...
Groceries and T-shirt materials and rent make the BEGINNING of the game harder, but barely effect the late game. The only effect of the current money sinks is to bankrupt inexperienced players.

...this is the kind I want to remove.

In other words, I want to reduce the demands for money in the early game, and increase the use of expensive stuff you can voluntarily pour your money into for some special but non-critical benefits.

[Capital Fish]

Would more ways to get money be of any use? This might not be of any use to the actual game (even I'll readily admit that it's a little on the pointlessside , and maybe a little over-powered), but I've been programming a useable "loan shark" character into the version of the source code that I downloaded. The code isn't complete yet. So far all I've got is the character and the conversation options, but when it's done it should allow you to borrow needed money in a pinch. There's a deadline for paying it back, however. And you've gotta pay back double the amount you borrow.

Here's a shot of what I've got, if anyone's interested:

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Sounds interesting. So this a loan shark character you can talk to? How were you thinking you'd pay them back?

[Capital Fish]

I was going to copy and modify the apartment-renting code to have the money deduct itself automatically from your funds. If you couldn't afford to pay back the loan, I was hoping to set it up so that you'd get random events happening for a period of time. For instance, if you sent one of your liberals to sell brownies, you might get a message saying they've been jumped and beaten by thugs, and that you suspect your loan shark was behind it. Little things like that would keep happening.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Cool, sounds good.

[Capital Fish]

Glad someone likes it. Is there a way I could submit it when it's done?

[Neonivek]

The largest issue I forsee with the loan shark is it could be by far used as a quick boost to the early game and then easily paid off in the mean time, unless all goes wrong.

In many games loans are often supposed to be a serious drain to make you consider not getting one

In otherwords, be careful balance wise.

[Capital Fish]

The largest issue I forsee with the loan shark is it could be by far used as a quick boost to the early game and then easily paid off in the mean time, unless all goes wrong.

In many games loans are often supposed to be a serious drain to make you consider not getting one

In otherwords, be careful balance wise.

That was my worry when I mentioned that it could be overpowered.

If, during testing, I find that to be the case, I have some ideas on how to tone it down.

That said, I'm certainly open to feedback from anybody who's got any ideas of their own.

[jasonred79]

Unfortunatly, I think the loan shark is a good way to make life harder for yourself playing the game. I can't think of any situation where taking the loan would make your life easier, and it seems to me that the loan would ALWAYS make your life harder.
Borrowing from loan sharks is only useful to players if they have a chance to use capital to generate profits. OR possibly if you need money today and you're confident of earning even more in the future, you just have an emergency right now.
It's a cool idea, but it will probably just turn into a trap to sucker inexperienced players, who will never touch the thing again in subsequent playthroughs after getting conned the first time.

Edit:
Ooh, looks like neohas the opposite idea from me. Interesting.
Hmm... in other games, like trading games and such, loans are designed to give you a quick boost to the early game... unless things go wrong and you can't earn the money back, in which case it turns into a severe penalty instead. For instance Tradewinds charged 5% per month, but if you knew what you were doing you could use the money to buy cargo which would earn even more in one trading journey.
LCS though, can you name me a situation where you are better off taking $10,000 and paying back $20,000 in 6 months, rather than just waiting 3 months to spend your $10,000?

[Capital Fish]

Unfortunatly, I think the loan shark is a good way to make life harder for yourself playing the game. I can't think of any situation where taking the loan would make your life easier, and it seems to me that the loan would ALWAYS make your life harder.
Borrowing from loan sharks is only useful to players if they have a chance to use capital to generate profits. OR possibly if you need money today and you're confident of earning even more in the future, you just have an emergency right now.
It's a cool idea, but it will probably just turn into a trap to sucker inexperienced players, who will never touch the thing again in subsequent playthroughs after getting conned the first time.

They are loan sharks. borrowing from them isn't supposed to be pleasant.

If it's a serious concern, however, I could add a few warnings, something along the lines of (Bob McLiberal has a really bad feeling about this. Are you sure there aren't other ways the LCS could get the money?)