The Gang topic.

[laverinthe]

What if you put in a racial aspect to the gangs?  Like having gangs of werewolves or a gang composed of demons?  They could be predisposed to specialize in certain tasks, like a group of orcs who get a bonus in smash n grab jobs, like sabotaging.  Or if you hire vampires they'd be good at luring and kidnapping girls.  It would also affect how fast or slow skills advance.  Brutish races improve physical aspects faster and so on.  Could something like that be done, or is that going to far?

Another idea I had would be to create an arson job, where your gangs focus more on destroying rival businesses instead of looting.  Casualties would probably be unavoidable, since you're dealing with flames and stuff that goes boom.  I thought that would balance things out somehow.

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.                             

Maybe you should add sliders instead to change what percentage of your "forces" would be dedicated to each task.  Being unable to control specifically how many troops are assigned could lead to problems (and more whiny bitches pissin and moanin about it on the forums)

[Mehzerz]

What if you put in a racial aspect to the gangs?  Like having gangs of werewolves or a gang composed of demons?  They could be predisposed to specialize in certain tasks, like a group of orcs who get a bonus in smash n grab jobs, like sabotaging.  Or if you hire vampires they'd be good at luring and kidnapping girls.  It would also affect how fast or slow skills advance.  Brutish races improve physical aspects faster and so on.  Could something like that be done, or is that going to far?

I liked the ideas of monster gangs being suggested some time ago. I never thought about it that deep, but more so having the option between monsters or humans. Monsters could have higher battle stats with a small bonus to catacomb searching, while humans would have higher stats for snatching girls, charming them, and other town related activities.


That's not to say you couldn't use monsters for thefts or sabotaging other gangs. You can do either for both, you'd just get a higher increase of suspicion if you use monsters in town than if you used humans. (I don't think a band of monsters stealing and harassing citizens is too common)

[laverinthe]

I liked the ideas of monster gangs being suggested some time ago. I never thought about it that deep, but more so having the option between monsters or humans. Monsters could have higher battle stats with a small bonus to catacomb searching, while humans would have higher stats for snatching girls, charming them, and other town related activities.


That's not to say you couldn't use monsters for thefts or sabotaging other gangs. You can do either for both, you'd just get a higher increase of suspicion if you use monsters in town than if you used humans. (I don't think a band of monsters stealing and harassing citizens is too common)

That's waaaay more practical than what I suggested.

[DocClox]

Who was it who mentioned Chaos Overlords a while ago? I think that's the way to go on this. Lots of gangs with specific strengths and weaknesses, and with weirdness to match up to their names.

Hmmm...

[Lorde]

What if you put in a racial aspect to the gangs?  Like having gangs of werewolves or a gang composed of demons?  They could be predisposed to specialize in certain tasks, like a group of orcs who get a bonus in smash n grab jobs, like sabotaging.  Or if you hire vampires they'd be good at luring and kidnapping girls.  It would also affect how fast or slow skills advance.  Brutish races improve physical aspects faster and so on.  Could something like that be done, or is that going to far?

This reminds me of the werewolves from Dragon Age Origins. Lead by the lady of the forest. (Makes grey alien look so hot)

Another idea I had would be to create an arson job, where your gangs focus more on destroying rival businesses instead of looting.  Casualties would probably be unavoidable, since you're dealing with flames and stuff that goes boom.  I thought that would balance things out somehow.

Could just have sabotage do this instead of robbing the rivals. Alternatly the gang keeps all the money. 

Maybe you should add sliders instead to change what percentage of your "forces" would be dedicated to each task.  Being unable to control specifically how many troops are assigned could lead to problems (and more whiny bitches pissin and moanin about it on the forums)

Bawwwing never stops. So trying to stop it just leads to insanity. However I was trying to think up the easiest way this could be implemented  without to much repetition. Repetition, more than anything else, is what pisses people off. Sliders would fit into the less repitition catagory definitely.

[Bluebeholder]

Other species may be well represented by a leader bonus.  Like werewoleves get +x% effect in combat and -y% on social jobs.

[laverinthe]

Maybe give the gangs traits, like with the girls?

[Mehzerz]

Maybe give the gangs traits, like with the girls?

I don't think it's needed. I believe giving leaders bonuses to specific activities was the idea.
Say you have Naruto as your gang lieutenant. He'll give them a +5% to agility and a small bonus to kidnapping and spying on girls.

[DocClox]

I agree. We don't need traits because we don't need consistency across gangs. We could add named bonuses though and capture some of the atmospher traits bring:

Code: [Select]

<Gang name = "Sleaze Street Wolves">
 <Bonus name="Lycanthropy" >
  <Effect name = "Damage Reduction" factor = "10%" />
  <Effect name = "Magic Vulnerability" factor = "20%" />
 </Bonus>
 <Bonus name = "Savagery" desc="Bloodlust means these goons bring in fewer captives">
  <Effect  name = "Blood Lust" capture_chance="-10%" />
 </Bonus>
</Gang>

Hmmm... that's a bit over complicated now I look at it, and the effects would probably need to be expressed as lua functions. Still, there's the germ of an idea there...

[edit]

Tidied up the XML a bit. It's still too complicated for what we're talking about at the moment, however

[Lorde]

Why not have traits for the gang leaders? And those trickle down to the gangs? (or 1 gang you split up into multiple teams. Hint hint  )

[Mehzerz]

Why not have traits for the gang leaders? And those trickle down to the gangs? (or 1 gang you split up into multiple teams. Hint hint  )

That's kind of what Doc proposed already. (The trait suggestion, not the gang one) even though I don't think it's completely necessary whether you call the leaders benefit a bonus or a trait. The fact of the matter is, you recruit a lieutenant and he/she provides additional stats or bonuses to your gang.
Whether you call them traits, bonuses, or what have you seems to be pretty unnecessary. Much like how I feel about the various traits girls have. I don't really NEED a description for big boobs, or fleet of foot. I know what they mean, I just want to know what stats they alter and by how much.


lol You're really pushing this one gang thing... a single gang that you split into multiple? Sounds pretty redundant. If the gang system is already in place why bother re-writing the entire code that'll essentially do the same thing? It's not really a simpler solution IMO. It seems to me to be essentially the same solution, gone about a different way. Instead of multiple gangs... you have one... that splits into several "groups"(gangs) you change the percentage of who does what and check off where you don't want them to go.
Yeah, same solution different way to do it. With that slider though, I'd have to split all my gangs up evenly into the categories I want right? But what if I wanted 75% of my gang to sabotage while the rest do guard duty? and explore the catacombs?


Maybe I just don't completely understand your idea, which is completely possible. I've done it before. But I don't really see a need to overhaul the entire gang system in place.

[Lorde]

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. 

[Mehzerz]

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. 

lol you don't have to stop. i'm just trying to understand the idea better. I have no say as to what goes and what doesn't, the idea just doesn't do anything for me. However, you're right to say this thread definitely helped bring out some gang ideas and I'm sure there's more just waiting to come out.

[Lorde]

Yeah but I realized, the more I try to explain it, the less sense it is making(to me even. And I came up with it.) So I need to collect my thoughts and come up with a unified version of it.

[drake]

This may help or it may not, but the way I saw the one gang idea was to have a set of sliders for each task that the gang can do.  So for example
 
Guarding-25%
Sabatoge-30%
Kidnapping-15%
Catacombs-20%
Recruitment-10%
 
Guard-min-15 men
 
That way you have control over how much effort your gang puts into different activitis as well as a safety factor to prevent your gang from being comepletely wiped out.
 
So if you had 100 men each % would be one man/50-2%each, etc.
 
That was just my perception of it