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[Nienhaus]

So how old can people be before they die of old age? I have a guy who is 59 and one who is 64...

[Jonathan S. Fox]

It varies. They'll start taking permanent health stat damage as they age, and the rate of health loss will increase every ten years or so (but they could lose health any time past 60 or 70 or so). Once their base health stat (not juice adjusted) falls to 0, they die. So characters with a much higher base health will tend to live much longer.

[Nienhaus]

It varies. They'll start taking permanent health stat damage as they age, and the rate of health loss will increase every ten years or so (but they could lose health any time past 60 or 70 or so). Once their base health stat (not juice adjusted) falls to 0, they die. So characters with a much higher base health will tend to live much longer.

Ohh, Thank you very much.

[Kay12]

Some balance stuff:
Persuasion is fast (but tedious for the player) to grind for free, so I think the university training course should be powered up a bit. This may apply to some other skills as well.

Hacking trains computer skill fairly fast and for free until the real hacking begins - to balance the epic power of hacking and make the training a bit more obvious, perhaps this should happen at the U-district like the other skills.

T-shirt income is a bit problematic, because at almost any tailoring level one can make more money by making clothes and selling them. Increasing T-shirt income would imbalance art sales though, and could make legal fundraising too good compared to the naughty ways. T-shirt (as of latest trunk) does have the added benefit of having a small impact on the public opinion though.

[breadbocks]

Counterpoint on T-Shirts: You save the trouble of micromanaging what is being made, the quality, and you get to waive the production costs and having to take a turn to sell them.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

A possible solution would be to nerf the sale price of clothing so that it's less profitable to do it the hard way. I did this before; expensive suits used to be the Ultimate Strategy for making money, and that was when it was super duper grindy, since you had to set the task every time.

[Kay12]

Counterpoint on T-Shirts: You save the trouble of micromanaging what is being made, the quality, and you get to waive the production costs and having to take a turn to sell them.

But this is exactly my point. I may be too pedantic about game design, but I believe micromanagement that has no actual in-game risk should not be rewarded by the game. This way, players are never "forced" to micromanage to maintain their position in the game. Strong strategies shouldn't rely on the player's willingness to micromanage, and by making them micromanagement-free, I believe the game turns out a lot more fun to play.

Nerfing the sales prizes of disguises would be a good idea. 1/4 profit would be enough, I think.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Maximizing the amount of interesting decisions the player makes while playing -- and minimizing the number of keystrokes needed to mindlessly execute on them -- is a valuable game design principle. Choices that aren't interesting, or are just mindless repetition of previously made choices in order to continue a strategy, are bad for any game. They pad the play experience with the player basically not doing anything, and there's no fun in that. Games where micromanagement works are fun because the micromanagement is actually full of interesting, relevant decisions, rather than assigning two hundred planets to all build housing, one by one. LCS is less padded in this way than it used to be, but there are still a lot of times where the game asks you for instructions, even though you're not actually making an interesting decision.

[Kay12]

The future of LCS could perhaps feature some amount of automation to clean up some repetition. Each Liberal could, for example, be assigned to a default activity which they would do automatically in the event they have nothing else to do.

The UI is a major challenge. While I (like most of us, I think) am fond of the current Curses interface, a graphical interface could perhaps help slimline the UI and relax some of our limitations. I don't even want to think about how much coding that would take, though! And the current interface is charming.

[EuchreJack]

I've always like the idea of a regenerating CCS, one that springs back to life unless the secret to their source is discovered.

This would tie the data disk and the existing method of killing the CCS.  Without releasing the data disk, the CCS is never totally destroyed.  Once the disk is revealed, the CCS disintegrates gradually, with a random chance of losing one safehouse per year.  Thus, the disk would allow pacifist squads to kill the CCS, but be required for violent squads to kill the CCS.

[Kay12]

If they took long enough to recover, the disk wouldn't be necessary but useful, which is better in my opinion. It's too hard to get if you're violent anyway, as it's one of those things in LCS that violence can't settle!

[Elodie Hiras]

I have an alternate idea to clean the CCS: how about considering them as a reverse LCS? They could have a finite number of vigilante, dead vigilante having a random chance of being replaced each mounth, and a random chance of expanding. They could also try to abduct or kill random obvious LCS members (Obvious as in have done some remarquable activism) during daily, triggering a fight just like the Police/Death quads arresting you, and, in case of a kidnapping, giving you a few days to rescue them before they talk to the CCS about your safe houses, which would then send booby traps expert who have a good chance to disarm traps along with Elite Vigilante. The CCS could be forced to disband by clearing their leaders by any way you can think of (Dating, abduction, guitar/talking attacks). They would be special spawn, identified only with good street sense skill or through dating. Also, CCS vigilantes enlightened or turned Liberals via guitar or talking attacks could never be used as sleepers. Sleeper CCS vigilantes would have Advocate Liberalism replaced by Sabotage the CCS efforts, decresing their efficiency and defense. Before having on site actions in their safehouses, they could be ordered to either conveniently "forget to lock" doors, "store" weapons (putting them in storage, meaning the CCS have to spend a few turns before getting some real weapons), "maintaining" the electronics (no lights, stealth and disguise bonus), having chances to get caught and executed depending on their efficiency level and the job asked, or just walk away to a Liberal Safehouse while taking equipement with them (CCS safehouse under equiped for the fight). And you have a complete map of traps, allowing you to avoid them entirely. Characters would have a chance to spot traps using Intelligence (and a few jobs would have bonuses to it: namely Agents, Soldiers, mercenaries CCS booby traps experts) whether they are Liberals storming CCS safehouse or Conservatives storming LCS safehouses.

How's the idea?

[thatkid]

Hey there. I'm trying to compile this in Ubuntu.
I'll admit that I don't know much at all about this sort of thing, so I'm probably missing something important buuut...

./configure results in
bash: ./configure: No such file or directory

./configure.ac results in
./configure.ac: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `2.6'
./configure.ac: line 4: `AC_PREREQ(2.6)'

./bootstrap gets me
./bootstrap: 2: autoreconf: not found

and ./Makefile.am: line 1: SUBDIRS: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 2: datadir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 2: lcsdir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 3: lcsdir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 3: artdir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 5: dist_art_DATA: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 9: dist_man_MANS: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 10: EXTRA_DIST: command not found

'make' just nets me
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Kay12]

I dislike random chances of losing a member, especially high-juice ones. Even if the member could be rescued, the random hit could be too devastating. On the other hand, lower members of the LCS could have a chance of being kidnapped.

I'd like the idea of CCS having powerful agents that you'll have to destroy. LCS is good the way it is, but it lacks a clear antagonist - sure, you have the CCS, but everyone there is a relatively faceless peon instead of the powerful leader. And yeah, LCS is more about movements than people but I think dividing the CCS to a few cells with powerful bosses would be nice. KISS principle applies, though, so it shouldn't introduce too much new fumbling and rolls to dodge.

Hey there. I'm trying to compile this in Ubuntu.
I'll admit that I don't know much at all about this sort of thing, so I'm probably missing something important buuut...

./configure results in
bash: ./configure: No such file or directory

./configure.ac results in
./configure.ac: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `2.6'
./configure.ac: line 4: `AC_PREREQ(2.6)'

./bootstrap gets me
./bootstrap: 2: autoreconf: not found

and ./Makefile.am: line 1: SUBDIRS: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 2: datadir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 2: lcsdir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 3: lcsdir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 3: artdir: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 5: dist_art_DATA: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 9: dist_man_MANS: command not found
./Makefile.am: line 10: EXTRA_DIST: command not found

'make' just nets me
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Ubuntu, being marketed towards less hardcore computer geeks, lacks building tools by default. If you haven't installed any by yourself, you'll need to do so now. The bootstrap part, at least, seems to need autoreconf, so install it: $ sudo aptitude install autoreconf should do the trick.

[Bdthemag]

What if there's a CCS founder, who is like your character. They randomly generate the beggining background choices and then start recruiting.