How to make gang not terrible

[yodaman888]

Currently gang is pretty bland and honestly feels like a lackluster reskin of rev and here is what I propose to make it maybe not great but at least decent.

Rename influence to respect and have a single gang.

Remove tagging as main method of gaining respect and add a variety of "gangly" actions to earn respect such as vandalism, theft, selling drugs, gang pawn shop, intimidation actions on crew members, torture such as breaking legs, getting buff with weightlifting equipment, and serving jail time that scales upward with amount of time spent in a cell. Feel free to suggest more items for this list. Furthermore add some passive ways to earn respect such as wearing special gang items and colors.

Each member would have his own respect score to buy stuff with and a percentage going to a global pool that the leader and lieutenants spend or gift as they see fit repeated actions would earn less and less amounts of respect that go into the zero and possibly negative range except for intimidation, torture, and jail time spent this makes is so that the gang has to strike a balance between recruitment and harassing the regular crew.

Make it so gangs actually lose respect when they kill people unless the gang leader or lieutenants sets a special contract to mark someone for death (if a head or captain is marked for death and killed it earns a large amount of respect) that is only unlocked once every so many respect points.

If an ordinary crew is straight up murdered for no reason by the gang the gang loses a percentage of respect points if they get to low the gang loses. The gang leader can mark the murderboner for death preventing the imminent loss state though the points will however not be refunded, if a gang member is marked for death all his gang items stop working.

To stop the gang sec and the crew should be focused on capturing gang members instead of killing them attacking and killing a gang member outright would earn the gang a large amount of respect for being a martyr.

Sec would get all new items that they can use to interrogate a gang member at the cost of dealing massive damage that inexplicably only heals inside a jail cell that heals slowly or by using special gang items, sec will have to be careful not to accidentally kill the gang banger so as not to create a martyr and they cant just leave them to rot in the cell forever because of the ever increasing amount of respect they would earn if not put in a cell at all interrogations will not be effective.

After so many interrogations the identity and general location of the gang leader would be revealed if sec or crew can successfully put him in a jail cell for a set amount of time gang loses if the leader is killed by sec or crew a new gang leader is picked. If gang leader suicides then gang possibly loses but i think this is more of a bannable offense.

If the leader is captured by crew early they do not win because of lack of evidence they can attempt to interrogate the leader but every time they do so a large amount of respect is earned towards the gang and he takes even more damage that heals slower than normal gang members. It will always be more efficient and safe to interrogate regular gang members.

If all the gang members are killed anyway make a bunch of "tourists" that are actually new gang members pulled from ghosts, interrogations will not work at all unless they have performed at least one "gangly" action.

As for how gang wins I'm not so sure about. The dominator is REALLY boring imo maybe make it so that after enough respect is earned the gang has to hold a mega rap concert with so many attendees be they gang members or normal crew.

Have an alternative win state for gang that involves x amount of martyrs or maybe EXTREMLY large amount and I mean MASSIVE respect score that sends an unlimited surge of armed gang members into the station killing everybody or something perhaps a gangly god?

Gang recruitment would need to be reworked as well make it so ordinary crew can be converted with respect having different crew members cost different amounts an assistant would be cheap but a scientist not so much.



I did not mean for this to drone on this long but these are my thoughts on actually making gang a unique more fun to play game mode.

[InsaneHyena]

We have this thread every week, but no changes to gang happened for a long time, because no coder wants to touch it.

[TheNightingale]

Sec would get all new items that they can use to interrogate a gang member at the cost of dealing massive damage that inexplicably only heals inside a jail cell that heals slowly or by using special gang items

Special gang items to heal someone who's been interrogated... stitches for snitches?

[Cheridan]

These are good ideas. I find the concept of getting benefits for having members jailed interesting, and I like that there's a deterrent to people just killing them off (which is basically the solution/goal of most other modes)
That said we don't really have a very good "X killed Y" tracking system because there's so many ways you could go about it. For the purposes of stat-tracking/achievements when killing megafauna we just go off of who was on the same screen at the time.

Similarly, tagging as a method of tracking gang control of an area and gaining influence is an efficient way of doing so. "a variety of "gangly" actions to earn respect such as vandalism, theft, selling drugs, gang pawn shop, intimidation actions"... That's great, but how do I track all that code-wise?

That said I'm working on some major changes to the mode, with an emphasis on gang/crew interaction(beyond everyone just killing each other), with the biggest change being a switch away from forced conversion.

[PKPenguin321]

ive had an idea that's been sitting in my todo list for a while, but i don't know how good it actually is.

22. gang pen that costs more but can be used by any gangster not just bosses. JUST the injector, no pen disguise, looks all weird and mechanical and is a dead giveaway
24. dominator drop item. instead of buying a dominator directly, you buy an item that you can carry in a pocket that anybody in your gang can use. give one to a random gangster so if the boss dies the gang doesnt instalose

22 would make it so you can delegate your lackeys to convert for you, instead of running around until you pen somebody who's already in a gang (which you often have no way of knowing about beforehand), getting killed, and your entire gang losing. it's also somewhat balanced by being a dead tell item, which indicates that the person wielding it is 1. definitely a gangster and 2. likely not a boss. it also costs more, so it's still cheaper to get your conversions yourself.

24 would simply solve the problem of "a gang of 20 people loses because their boss got caught by another gangster when he penned said other gangster."

[Dagdammit]

What if each gang member's delinquent actions were contributing to a shared "respect" score, and each gang had a population cap (a point at which they can't recruit new members) that was tied to total accumulated respect?

So I can convert a 4th gang member when the gang reaches 50 respect, a 5th at 100 respect, a 6th at 200, a 7th member at 500, etc. and the upside is that more gang members = more sources of Respect.

Some actions that game could recognize:
-Time spent in jail/police custody
-Damaging/incapacitating enemy gang members when they're on your turf (rooms count as your "turf" once they've had your tag for at least 60 seconds).
-Trashing structures on enemy turf (breaking glass+screens, mainly? Stuff that isn't too hard for an engineer to come by and fix)
-Openly wearing gang outfits while in main station hallways.

It would be interesting if there was some way to give non-gang, non-sec crew a regular chance to like, choose to be "protected" from one of the three gangs and that giving the gang in question more respect. Gang members can see who their gang considers "protected" and basically have an incentive to make station members want to be protected from them instead of the other gangs. Could be tied to gang colors or something?

[Wyzack]

That is the dream dag. Would require massive moderation though, would probably never happen here

[Dagdammit]

That is the dream dag. Would require massive moderation though, would probably never happen here

Can you elaborate a bit? Which part's the dream, and what about it would require massive moderation?