The Gang topic.

[Bluebeholder]

Following the unified gang format as I understood it you have X Goons and you put them into different jobs as needed like.

So for an example:

Security Detail: Neutral, 5G, Moderate risk,  "Your basic personal protection you loose this and you're on your own"

Robbery: Suspicious, 15G, low risk, "Robbing stores and civilians is an easy way to get items and some cash."

Kidnapping: Very suspicious, 20G, low risk, "Kidnapping takes time and causes a lot of resentment but every girl kidnapped you don't have to pay."

Patrols: Suspicious, 10G, moderate risk, "Having your goons wander your teritoury protects your girls and businesses but raises your profile a bit."

Bribery: Reduce suspicion, 100G, low risk,  "Greasing the public trust is expensive but they'll overlook some things."

Recruitment: Suspicious, 25G, no risk, "Recruiting more goons means there's more you can do.  Too bad that the more you've got the harder it is to find more."

Just insert a goons per task and off you go



I really like the concept too; to bad it would require a major overhaul of gangs.

[sgb]

I don't think gangs should ever have anything to do with increasing disposition or lawfullness.  These should generally be the LAST people you want acting as your PR team.

Although I forgot about Spy on Girls and how useless it is currently.  Knowing how much money the girls have really isn't useful enough to have a gang on it full time.  It needs to be expanded, like maybe once the beta stages are over and most of the extra stat information is removed, have it re-enable this information if you have a gang on it.

[Lorde]

I don't think gangs should ever have anything to do with increasing disposition or lawfullness.  These should generally be the LAST people you want acting as your PR team.

I don't think you can do much about the lawfulness side. Unless the police force of crosgate are completely inept. Or there is no Media there as we know it. Or you have scared people so much that they refuse to speak ill against you.
People are going to know that the gang belongs to you AND that they aren't doing nice things.

[Mehzerz]

I'll take role of the opposition then.

After reading both this thread and the more is less thread the main argument for keeping gangs is increased interactivity and depth.  (Correct me if I'm wrong here.)

In that vein I propose that absorbing gangs into the girls will create opportunity for more interactivity and depth.

Merging the two systems creates a single system that has the depth of both without the additional programing, balance and micromanagement costs two systems.  For example currently there are two ways to raid the catacombs if someone wants to improve that job they have to do so twice and balance both in order to keep both the gangs and girls in order.  The reduction in overhead allows the programmers to make the girls system reach a greater potential faster.  Like how while we're close to getting recruitment scripts for girls there's is nothing like that on the horizon for gangs. There are a lot of thing that are on the table to fix(movie making), make meaningful(accommodations/STDs) and to add(customizable brothels, town walk scripts).  What gets neglected to expand gangs to where they're as interesting as the girls?

What do gangs add? Gangs add complexity but they do not add depth.  As it stands there is nothing a gang does in-game that cannot be co-opted by the girls.  All gangs are are a collection of stats, a few jobs and a pool of consumables.  Girls have all of this already with more options, customization and detail.

In addition a girl is more relateable with a picture and a bit of history rather than a faceless mob.  I'm unhappy when one of them dies but couldn't care less when a gang bites it.

Personally, I find both systems too simplistic and would like to have a more nuanced system with greater depth.  Rolling them together seems a logical step to have one great system.  Where as maintaining gangs entails recreating certain activities robbing potential depth, storytelling and interactivity from the girls side. So, unless gangs get an overhaul that makes them interesting and truly distinct from girls I say trash them and make brothel customization the sub-game.

By the way it's a great game and I only take this position because I really do think it will make a better game in the long run.

This is actually a pretty decent proposal. No one seems to care for the gangs anyways, they're pretty bland as of now and if girls can already do what they do with more defined stats. Why not have girls do that for you?

[sgb]

I frankly wouldn't mind either way if the gangs are expanded or simply removed myself.  The problem with them, conceptually, is that the gangwar part of the game feels like a seperate game from the brothel.  A seperate part of the game the some people don't have any interest in.  I guess it boils down to what you want Whoremaster to be; is it a brothel sim, or a criminal organization sim?  Some people here would clearly like it to be a straight brothel sim, and I can't entirely blame them as looking at the girls is far more interesting than a bunch of faceless gangs.

And that right there is the #1 problem with gangs currently.  For any overhaul of gangs to be worthwhile, gangs need to have personality.  The player needs to care about their gangs, or they will forever seem like a tedious chore you need to deal with from time to time regardless of usefulness or game difficulty.

[Mehzerz]

And that right there is the #1 problem with gangs currently.  For any overhaul of gangs to be worthwhile, gangs need to have personality.  The player needs to care about their gangs, or they will forever seem like a tedious chore you need to deal with from time to time regardless of usefulness or game difficulty.

I agree with that, which is why I suggested leaders to be the "face" of the gang. It'd only be a single image, you wouldn't need multiple, unless maybe you wanted a profile and a "battle" image. But I don't know if that'd be completely necessary.


But that wouldn't change the fact that they're pretty separate from the game. I suppose the question is, how do we make the gangs seem like they belong in the game? Are you a brothel master or a gang leader? Perhaps there just isn't anything to tie the two together. But why do they really have to be?

[DocClox]

Faces for gang leaders would be good. Maybe have a leader pool and give them some abilities, so one of them has bonuses for raiding, another reduces the chances of customer rape if he's assigned guard duty. That sort of thing.

Maybe see about some gang based events as well. we could have the occasional scene when a gang encounters a girl in the catacombs, customised to the personality of the leader. Not every time, of course, or we'd go nuts. Just occasionally as a bit of spice. Same for burning down an enemy brothel, wiping out a rival leader, stopping a customer rape... lots of stuff we could do. Probably do it the same way as with girl events - xml and lua.

[Mehzerz]

Faces for gang leaders would be good. Maybe have a leader pool and give them some abilities, so one of them has bonuses for raiding, another reduces the chances of customer rape if he's assigned guard duty. That sort of thing.

Maybe see about some gang based events as well. we could have the occasional scene when a gang encounters a girl in the catacombs, customised to the personality of the leader. Not every time, of course, or we'd go nuts. Just occasionally as a bit of spice. Same for burning down an enemy brothel, wiping out a rival leader, stopping a customer rape... lots of stuff we could do. Probably do it the same way as with girl events - xml and lua.

That's pretty much how I imagined it. I figured leaders would be harder to come by though, as in... we wouldn't have filler randoms and you'd definitely wouldn't be able to put one in EVERY gang. Then I thought sons could be potential leaders as well, so I guess in that case they'd be "filler randoms" so I'm really not sure. I like the idea that they're harder to come by. Perhaps I'm just used to having so much handed to me in the standard WM and think it'd be a nice change of pace to have to work for something lol.

[DocClox]

That's pretty much how I imagined it. I figured leaders would be harder to come by though, as in... we wouldn't have filler randoms and you'd definitely wouldn't be able to put one in EVERY gang. Then I thought sons could be potential leaders as well, so I guess in that case they'd be "filler randoms" so I'm really not sure. I like the idea that they're harder to come by. Perhaps I'm just used to having so much handed to me in the standard WM and think it'd be a nice change of pace to have to work for something lol.

Oh, I'm all in favour of having to work a bit harder to get some things done. I've always thought of a gang as being basically the leader, plus the goons he recruits but I like the notion that they're slots that you can fill. Maybe have some generic low-bonus leaders (the goon equivalent of the random girls) that fill the slots by default, just so we have something to hang some events on. Then we can have the good ones turn up in response to events or objectives being met.

Hmmm.... I need to think about objectives, too. They're way too easy at the moment.

[Mehzerz]

Sounds solid. I'm interested to see what you come up with.

[Lorde]

I still like the idea of one gang 

However, finding leaders lieutenants and "Mid Bosses" for your goons is a great idea.

Oh, I'm all in favour of having to work a bit harder to get some things done.

Please do, Even with the config file set up to make the game harder, it still eventually devolves into "Hitting the next week button for the sake of hitting the next week button". Rivals Killed, Whores maxed out, brothels full of all the uniques, and a small army of whores to go along with your gangs to the catacombs to try and farm rare items... that do nothing for your girls at this point but make new random girls maxed out on acquisition.

Anything not handed to me instantly would be a great change of pace at this point. 

[Mehzerz]

I think a compromise and some tweaks could work here:
-Reduce the number of gangs the player can control.  Maybe like 4 at most.
-Recruiting should lower stats, as you're replacing trained gang members with fresh recruits.  Combined with the lower gang limit, this would encourage the player to avoid reckless assignments.
-Have a cap on training.  After a certain point, you should have to give gangs real experience to improve.  This would eliminate players from parking gangs on Training until they are invincible.
-Instead of assigning girls to a gang, have certain jobs give a % boost to success like advertisting currently works.

-Theft assignments needs a major balance overhaul.  At the moment, sabotage brings in WAY more money and eventually removes your rivals from the game.  Some things off the top of my head;

Petty Theft should be extremely safe and have a chance to get the player common type items

Grand Theft should have the same risk as now, but have higher average gold rewards a chance to get uncommon to rare level items as well.  This would make the gains worth the risk compared to sabotage.

I agree with everything here, except I'd like to see some potential for death for all events. Even if it's a tiny percentage like 0.5 shit happens man. You never know.
I don't disagree with the 1 gang idea Lorde I just don't really get how it'd work, there's so many events gangs can do that if there's a check option for what they can and cannot do they'll just do a random one am I right? Though as a bonus, if you could only recruit one gang leader for your entire gang it'd make events easier to personalize. (IMO) 
Besides having lieutenants offers more modifiability for the fans of that. What would be cooler than having Guttz and/or Dante running your gang? NOTHING I SAY. NOTHING.

[Lorde]

I agree with everything here, except I'd like to see some potential for death for all events. Even if it's a tiny percentage like 0.5 shit happens man. You never know.
I don't disagree with the 1 gang idea Lorde I just don't really get how it'd work, there's so many events gangs can do that if there's a check option for what they can and cannot do they'll just do a random one am I right?

Actually no. Since it would be one big gang, you could split up the tasks between the one gang. We have now what? 6-8 gangs of 15 people? You send 1 gang to the catas one on guarding one sabotage and that's 45 people right there. What I am proposing is you select things for the larger gang to do, and it gets split up amongst the current pool. So if you have a larger gang of 45 people, and do the same things, the game would split the gang up into 3 groups of 15 each and send them out.

Simple and the game could have cut offs for minimum amount of goons needed for a task. Defaulting to guard duty if it drops to 15 or below.

[sgb]

Unless I'm reading that wrong, isn't that pretty much just the same thing we have now, only with the added micromanagement of assigning numbers instead of whole gangs?  It would prevent you from sending 6 full gangs on one assignment, which would certainly help balance, but the same policy could be set for the current system (ie there can only be one set on sabotager, one kidnapper, etc.) without the extra complication and work for the devs.

[Lorde]

Unless I'm reading that wrong, isn't that pretty much just the same thing we have now, only with the added micromanagement of assigning numbers instead of whole gangs? 

No, this would be auto-allotted based on the current pool of gang members. So if you had 100 members in the gang, and checked off guarding only, 100 members would be guarding. If you had Catacombs, Guarding, Sabotage and acquire territory checked, then the game would auto-assign 25 members to each job.