The Gang topic.

[Bluebeholder]

Well I made my case for it. I guess I'll stop 

However, if anything,   the gang leader idea that came out of this thread made making it   worthwhile. 

Odd, I started off disliking gangs in general and fell in love with this concept (although since I'm not one of the programmers...).

I still feel the gang system is just a stripped down girl system that either should be truely different like Lorde's idea or rolled into the primary girl system for the reduced overhead.  Otherwise it just seems you have two arbitrarily parallel systems.  In this same vein adding gang leaders is just catching up gangs to the girls something that may have to happen over and over again to keep the gangs up.

[Lorde]

Ok I threatened this, but here is my unified 1 gang proposal.

• The one gang will be the players Only gang and subsequently if it is destroyed assume player has lost. (Kinda like how rivals have one gang.)
• Players should be able to name their gang whatever they see fit. We can name our brothels in game so this shouldn't be to hard.
• Player is considered the Grand Master | Grand Puba | Grand One Eyed Wonder Weasel | Grand Whatever of his gang. This should make the player feel like he is in control of a criminal cartel, not just a job posting board for street thugs.
• Players can have a bonus for their gang, chosen at player creation. They are the head of the gang after all.
• Players can hire, find and|or turn girls into lieutenants of the gang.  These grant the gang further bonuses.
• The one gang should have a cap on membership equal to what we have now. 8*15 = 120 so figure on that many members. This cap can, of course, go up or down as the need arises. Also should be configurable from the config file.
• The One gang should have jobs parceled out through a check box set up in the gang management screen. check off which jobs you want the gang to do. The game will auto allot members to each task. Subsequently, choosing to much for the gang to do to early can be dangerous.
• Sliders can be present as well to adjust how much of the gang concentrates on what task.
• A safety option can be set up in the config file for a Gang member cut off. If it goes under this number, all Member switch to guarding automatically and don't change unless it goes back over that number.
• Training should be removed in favor of a learn by doing system as well as the number of members in the gang. The more members, the higher the stats become. However, without practice these stats should fluctuate. Doing a job these stats are associated with would lower how much these stats fluctuate by. So in other words, lets assume Sabotaging is based off strength for a moment. And the gang is at 100 members so it's base strength stat is fairly high. (lets say 100) but they have never done sabotage before. So there stat actually has a random value of between say a floor of 50 and and a ceiling of 100. The more they sabotage however, the more this random value shrinks, so after say 25 sabotage jobs, the stat fluctuates between a floor of 75 and and a ceiling of 100 now.
• Losing gang members should drop your stats. As well as drop your stat floor.  So losing 5 members in the above scenario would drop gang strength to 95 and and the stat fluctuates now between 70 and 95. Gaining new members increases your ceiling. (95 to 100) but not your floor (still 70 till they do more sabotaging.)
• Conversely, Recruiting missions should be removed as well, but a handful of gang members should be auto  added every week.

And that's everything I can think of. In all honesty most of this can be implemented with the gang system we have now. As I mentioned however, it would feel more like you where the head of a criminal organization if you had one gang. So I guess that is the only real reason I'm pushing for it.  Note that I do know we can mod names already for gangs, but if we do go the 1 gang route, being able to chose your gang name at the start would be a nice touch.

[DocClox]

My principle reservation about the One Gang idea is that it needs a fairly complex interface to work properly. Without the sliders, it's a bit clumsy, requiring you allocate your goons equally among all tasks . With sliders it's more or less equivalent to what we have now.

I can see where you're coming from with the idea, but I'm not convinced it's the best solution.

I agree about casualties dropping gang stats, and they way gangs recover their numbers needs looking at. (I might take it down to 50% chance a turn, going up to 100 if recruiting, and maybe allow bonuses as gang bonuses, for instance).

[Lorde]

My principle reservation about the One Gang idea is that it needs a fairly complex interface to work properly. Without the sliders, it's a bit clumsy, requiring you allocate your goons equally among all tasks . With sliders it's more or less equivalent to what we have now.

Point taken, I'm kinda having second thoughts on the idea. Really what it all boils down to for me is ascetics. And while I was thinking of this list I realized you could do everything here with the gang setup we have now.  So instead of reinventing the wheel it's probably better to put the  engine on next. 

[fixet]

would it be possible to have the turn report for all gangs in a single page?

if not, could you get rid of the "this gang is guarding/recruiting/exploring the catacombs" panels and make the actual report the first thing you see when you select a gang?

[DocClox]

I'd like to have all the reports on one page. The trick is working out how to do it and still leave room for the girl's pics.

The message ordering seems like a good idea. Anything to make it easier to follow gang activities

[Mehzerz]

I'd like to have all the reports on one page. The trick is working out how to do it and still leave room for the girl's pics.

The message ordering seems like a good idea. Anything to make it easier to follow gang activities

I don't know about everyone else but I'd prefer a more seamless report system with smaller pics than one with huge pics that I have to scroll through. Have you played Sim Brothel? Maybe we should do a report system like that. Shows a single pic (random) but lists all the things the girl did to the side.
Any dangerous reports would be in red. Of course, this way you can't see a picture for each event that took place, but do you really need to? There's the gallery for that.


Maybe we can find some generic images for the gangs as well... it'll take some searching but I'm sure it's possible.

[sgb]

I'd like to have all the reports on one page. The trick is working out   how to do it and still leave room for the girl's pics.

I don't think there is a trick here.  Either you have one big summary, or you have what you have now with a pic of each action.  The best you could do here is to have one big summary with the option to browse through the individual actions.  Or make it a selectable option that could be changed before end of turn if that causes too much clutter.

[Thought Crime]

Have you played Sim Brothel? Maybe we should do a report system   like that. Shows a single pic (random) but lists all the things the   girl did to the side.
Any dangerous reports would be in red. Of   course, this way you can't see a picture for each event that took place,   but do you really need to? There's the gallery for that.

My vote is against the single random pic option.
And yes! I do need to see a pic. for every event that took place. I need this for managerial purposes of course.
IMHO the gallery is if you're just being lazy.

(sgb may have just made this suggestion about using a filter, but i'll mention it anyways)

What about adding in a filter option?? Have one big summary then on screen have the ability to filter out what you don't want and what you do want to see.
For example:
if you just want to look at what the gangs did for the turn simply check just the gangs and nothing else.
Or something like girl activity --filter-> warnings
or even by brothel like this: (Brothel #3) --filter-> girl activity --filter-> BDSM
The filters will let the player have the option to only view what they want to see but still have the option of viewing the entire summary by turning off the filters.

[Mehzerz]

My vote is against the single random pic option.
And yes! I do need to see a pic. for every event that took place. I need this for managerial purposes of course.
IMHO the gallery is if you're just being lazy.

(sgb may have just made this suggestion about using a filter, but i'll mention it anyways)

Wow, well excuse me. That was my fault for assuming everyone played the way I did. I just look to see what girls are highlighted in red.
I still think the option I suggested is the simplest most effective way for a quicker summary screen. I vote ease of use over naked pictures any day.

[fixet]

personally, I don't even see why we have so many pictures for each event

just one good pic per category would be more than enough, and it would make room for more categories, like the aforementioned angry/sad/etc.

[d31r3x]

Oh, crap... I was working on pic expansion packs.

[fixet]

Oh, crap... I was working on pic expansion packs.

I started doing girl packs

then I came here and saw the thumbs thing
now, I wait

[DocClox]

Well, the thumbs stuff is pretty theoretical for the time being. I'm definitely going to do it, but there's a chunk of stuff to do first, and nothing is going to break if the pics aren't there.

If you've got a pack in mind, go for it

[fixet]

is there an explanation on how the specific stats affect things?

I found one by zodiak44, but it's pretty vague, and I think it's outdated