Very little info on this case

[Tom Trustworthy]

I got an age, 31, hair info and the building they live in. I'm not even sure how I can start up on this one. I got into the security room and looked at everybody's age, only one person was close to 31, they were 30. But everybody else is all over the place.

I cannot ask about the person because its too little info. Is there a way to search based on more than a name on one of the computers? like hair and age search?

[Mama Llama]

I don't know what it is about the resident documents but they are not a complete list of who lives in the building. It might be because they can't all fit in one filing cabinet drawer or because it only lists one person from each household but they are not all in the resident files.

If you didn't get the easy hit from the resident cabinet then you're gonna need to go door to door and eliminate each two person household manually by checking both residents profiles and gobbling up all the documents in their personal filing cabinets or boxes. If you had a name you could use the Resident database in the security room, it seems to have everyone most the time, but you don't. There is a way to effectively "harvest" a resident, employee, or even the Gov database but its super exploity and I won't mention it unless you specifically don't mind what I'd call cheating the system. It also requires you to manually print out every single entry in the database which is time-consuming and bloats your save up a bit, too.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Tom Trustworthy:

I got an age, 31, hair info and the building they live in. I'm not even sure how I can start up on this one. I got into the security room and looked at everybody's age, only one person was close to 31, they were 30. But everybody else is all over the place.

I cannot ask about the person because its too little info. Is there a way to search based on more than a name on one of the computers? like hair and age search?

More than one person in that building will fit that exact description. I consider that a failure of case generation. Spare your save file the information bloat and just take another case.

[Tom Trustworthy]

Ahh ok, thanks

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Tom Trustworthy:

Ahh ok, thanks

To clarify, because evidently it's contentious to some people that I think this kind of case is a generation failure:

The only evidence you were given in this case is all the evidence you will ever have- side job missions don't have the same leads and evidences as murders, so what you get is what you get.

That being said, your only evidence can and will apply to multiple civs, with no possible way of determining which of those is the intended target. Because you cannot gather more evidence as to the identity of the target, you simply have to go down a list of people that match that description and click on all of them until the game fills in the blank because you talked to them.

I find that inherently illogical for a detective game, because there's no possible way your player would have that knowledge. By that token, that case is *logically* unsolvable- not LITERALLY unsolvable, as you can indeed just click on everybody in the building until your sticky note gets magically filled out. You just can't rely on exclusively your own intuition or detective work in that scenario.

[DyD&Marina]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

Originally posted by Tom Trustworthy:

Ahh ok, thanks

To clarify, because evidently it's contentious to some people that I think this kind of case is a generation failure:

The only evidence you were given in this case is all the evidence you will ever have- side job missions don't have the same leads and evidences as murders, so what you get is what you get.

That being said, your only evidence can and will apply to multiple civs, with no possible way of determining which of those is the intended target. Because you cannot gather more evidence as to the identity of the target, you simply have to go down a list of people that match that description and click on all of them until the game fills in the blank because you talked to them.

I find that inherently illogical for a detective game, because there's no possible way your player would have that knowledge. By that token, that case is *logically* unsolvable- not LITERALLY unsolvable, as you can indeed just click on everybody in the building until your sticky note gets magically filled out. You just can't rely on exclusively your own intuition or detective work in that scenario.

Add to this in this way you get alot of not correlated informations about people not correlated to the actual case.

This will make the future case alot more easy, because you can already have the information of the suspect, because you encountered it in this way in a precedent case.

When you are forced to manually check all random people of a building you get too much random informations.

If you need to do this in the building with all the office you even get easily fingerprint in this way.

So you get the probability to solve a murder in a second thanks to a fingerprint information you get for "luck".

Actually for side jobs there is too much lack of logic and balance with clues.

This kill the main reason to play, investigation, because you can already magically have all information.

Clues need balance and logical way to investigate them, not go around randomly to every doors in a building.


But i think even the information you get need a logic/realistic way to keep them.

Phisically store them in a file cabinet at your home like the info you find in the various work place for employees.

Only pay for cabinet can be too easy, so maybe pay 25/50$(for example) for each person you want save the information.

Cabine will have a max limit so you need to buy more.

Store in pc can be interesting too, but should be a price to pay too for have a more easy way to store information, not paying only the pc.


Maybe someone do this work for you and you need to pay them.

Someone create each person folder you want store in your cabinet at your house.

And a "cloud service" on pc where you pay for the space you use for save information of people.

Having "magically" all this information on fly is too much easy.

Going back to your house to check informations you have would be more interesting.

This will give even a reason to use your house outside of sleeping.

[Isabelle]

I think there should be a memory system. Obviously, pinned information on case boards will never be forgotten unless the case is closed and archived.

But, yes, accidentally getting too much information is actually the one and only reason I make new saves pretty much every case. To minimize my available info. It's too easy.

[Kyle]

late but unless this is an arrest case, a good lead is hunting down the job poster and checking out their work and neighbors as it's often someone they know

these leads are very workable to me
you know the building, you can check residential files or do the groundwork (too tedious for me)
no match?
you can check cctv and investigate people with the hair info for the apartment building
no match?
you can investigate the job poster and figure out if it's someone they know

can even just chill in the lobby and investigate people who walk past

there is also a bug currently that fills out the name of 'unknown citizen' once you find their name

[Dr. Sinclair]

If you think that's bad...
(I don't play the game but i watch it and a friend told me his story)
A steal envelope mission, only info on the target: large build, they work in X building, and they like music.
So... literally nothing to go on since employee records dont tell you if they like music or not, he would have to note down every single large build person working in the 300 companies in that building, and then ask all their neighbours about them, and probably figure out which one of the 30 matching people has the envelope.

[Kyle]

i feel like any case that directly gives you a guaranteed location is not a bad case

bad cases are like
'fingerprint, shoes, likes music' where you literally have nothing to go off of except brute force or job poster connection

those other cases will be more miserable when it stops auto-filling the targets name upon reading employee files

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by Dr. Sinclair:

If you think that's bad...
(I don't play the game but i watch it and a friend told me his story)
A steal envelope mission, only info on the target: large build, they work in X building, and they like music.
So... literally nothing to go on since employee records dont tell you if they like music or not, he would have to note down every single large build person working in the 300 companies in that building, and then ask all their neighbours about them, and probably figure out which one of the 30 matching people has the envelope.

I'd check first if there are sales records of people buying music-related stuff, pay them a visit, and check if their workplace matches (that info is usually easily available, as their employment contract is usually in an easily recognizable place in their apartment). Unless they are at home and I can rule them out by their body size.

Not sure if this would work since I don't know if the game tracks sales of music-related products, but if so, then this looks like a more efficient procedure to me.

Personally I really like cases that seem impossible at first, but _can_ be cracked by finding the most efficient (or, well, least inefficient ;) ) approach and doing some legwork. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, though. And having several people match the description, with no other way of determining the correct target than seeing objectives or profile cards update, is definitely a problem.

[Dr. Sinclair]

Originally posted by Psyringe:

Originally posted by Dr. Sinclair:

If you think that's bad...
(I don't play the game but i watch it and a friend told me his story)
A steal envelope mission, only info on the target: large build, they work in X building, and they like music.
So... literally nothing to go on since employee records dont tell you if they like music or not, he would have to note down every single large build person working in the 300 companies in that building, and then ask all their neighbours about them, and probably figure out which one of the 30 matching people has the envelope.

I'd check first if there are sales records of people buying music-related stuff, pay them a visit, and check if their workplace matches (that info is usually easily available, as their employment contract is usually in an easily recognizable place in their apartment). Unless they are at home and I can rule them out by their body size.

Not sure if this would work since I don't know if the game tracks sales of music-related products, but if so, then this looks like a more efficient procedure to me.

Would be cool if the game does that. If not tho it honestly needs a lot of improvement on the case generation to give you *something* to work with.

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by Dr. Sinclair:

Originally posted by Psyringe:

I'd check first if there are sales records of people buying music-related stuff, pay them a visit, and check if their workplace matches (that info is usually easily available, as their employment contract is usually in an easily recognizable place in their apartment). Unless they are at home and I can rule them out by their body size.

Not sure if this would work since I don't know if the game tracks sales of music-related products, but if so, then this looks like a more efficient procedure to me.

Would be cool if the game does that. If not tho it honestly needs a lot of improvement on the case generation to give you *something* to work with.

I think the game is _supposed_ to do it because it does track purchases in the sales ledgers of many stores. You can check respective books lying around in stores, or access sales records in their computers. I just don't know if this is working correctly in the current version (it might be bugged), and if music-related purchases get tracked (there are no music stores in the game, but perhaps the pawnbrokers sell related stuff).

Also, I think I remember reading sales records getting deleted after a week, which could become a problem in such cases.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Psyringe:

And having several people match the description, with no other way of determining the correct target than seeing objectives or profile cards update, is definitely a problem.

I genuinely appreciate seeing this comment as with our previous interaction I thought you didn't understand that aspect of what I was talking about. Not being sarcastic.

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by Isabelle:

Originally posted by Psyringe:

And having several people match the description, with no other way of determining the correct target than seeing objectives or profile cards update, is definitely a problem.

I genuinely appreciate seeing this comment as with our previous interaction I thought you didn't understand that aspect of what I was talking about. Not being sarcastic.

I'm happy to hear that. I think I did actually write an "if that happens, then yes, that's a problem" comment somewhere in our previous conversation, but it's absolutely possible that I wasn't clear enough. Or that it got lost among the other points in those long posts that I keep writing, which is a flaw that I can't seem to get rid of. ;) In any case, that's water under the bridge, at least as far as I'm concerned.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Psyringe:

Originally posted by Isabelle:

I genuinely appreciate seeing this comment as with our previous interaction I thought you didn't understand that aspect of what I was talking about. Not being sarcastic.

I'm happy to hear that. I think I did actually write an "if that happens, then yes, that's a problem" comment somewhere in our previous conversation, but it's absolutely possible that I wasn't clear enough. Or that it got lost among the other points in those long posts that I keep writing, which is a flaw that I can't seem to get rid of. ;) In any case, that's water under the bridge, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Frankly I don't have nearly strong enough reading comprehension when angry.