Sounds very promising. You could consider developing the oligarchy angle a bit more? I'd like some specific events/decisions where the oligarchy makes a demand from you (e.g. "Legalise slavery!") for their own interests.

I'd also be interested in an expansion to narcotics. I quite like the idea of making all drugs free (literall, opium for the masses). The internet could also be developed in more detail, particularly if you go for transhuman augmentation.

Originally posted by Name Withheld:

Sounds very promising. You could consider developing the oligarchy angle a bit more? I'd like some specific events/decisions where the oligarchy makes a demand from you (e.g. "Legalise slavery!") for their own interests.

I've considered making oligarchy-specific events, like handling disputes between different oligarchs (such as one who controls an agricultural corp and another who handles manufacturing or some such), but I'll have to improve my understanding of modding events/decisions first.

Originally posted by Name Withheld:

I'd also be interested in an expansion to narcotics. I quite like the idea of making all drugs free (literall, opium for the masses).

Keeping your population passive with futuristic bread and circuses (future drugs and hyper-entertainment) is very fittingly cyber-punk, but I'm not sure how to implement it more interestingly than just a simple cash-for-happiness policy.

Originally posted by Name Withheld:

The internet could also be developed in more detail, particularly if you go for transhuman augmentation.

Augmentation is definitely going to make Internet Crime and Cyber Warfare worse, as both become far more lucrative and destructive when you can literally hack into people's brains and bodies (see Ghost in the Shell and Deus Ex for examples.) And I have a few policies planned to act as potential counters to this.

Originally posted by mouseshepherd:

I've considered making oligarchy-specific events, like handling disputes between different oligarchs (such as one who controls an agricultural corp and another who handles manufacturing or some such), but I'll have to improve my understanding of modding events/decisions first.

Fair enough. Not an easy thing to implement. I guess the easiest way might just be to grab a whole bunch of events from another mod (Such as superpowers), and just change the text?

Augmentation is definitely going to make Internet Crime and Cyber Warfare worse, as both become far more lucrative and destructive when you can literally hack into people's brains and bodies (see Ghost in the Shell and Deus Ex for examples.) And I have a few policies planned to act as potential counters to this.

That sounds good. You could also consider "kill switch" type policies? Giving the police much more power, at the expense of seiously pissing off liberals.

Originally posted by Name Withheld:

Fair enough. Not an easy thing to implement. I guess the easiest way might just be to grab a whole bunch of events from another mod

But where would the fun in that be?

Originally posted by Name Withheld:

That sounds good. You could also consider "kill switch" type policies? Giving the police much more power, at the expense of seiously pissing off liberals.

I like the concept of a kill switch policy (in the game of course, not reality), but I'm not sure that it would make sense in a cyberpunk setting.
Telecommunications networks in the modern U.S. are sufficiently decentralized that many technical experts argue such a killswitch would be impossible in practice. (It was somewhat possible in certain Mideast countries during the Arab Spring because their networks were more centralized.) And in cyberpunk the Internet is generally even more decentralized, practically becoming ambient, so I'm not sure that it's quite in keeping with this particular setting (though I could certainly see it fitting with a general Internet policies pack.)

The policies currently planned that impact cybersecurity are:
-Augmented Law Enforcement (intelligence/security agents can jack directly into cyberspace)
-Join Cybersecurity Alliance (an international alliance sharing cybersecurity assets)
-Oppose Megacorp Conflict (instructing your security forces to stop turning a blind eye to the shadow wars between the megacorps)
-Support Cybersecurity Education (the slow and boring but steady method of ensuring that people keep up to date with cybersecurity threats and how to counter them)
-Public Encryption Initiative (funding people to work together to develop and publicly spread effective encryption techniques--to the delight of liberals and annoyance of your intelligence services, patriots, and oligarchs (just about the only time patriots and oligarchs will agree on anything))
-Cyberdefense Taskforce (the simple and direct method of building a government agency to stop Internet Crime and Cyber Warfare with some side benefits to Technology)

Hmm, okay, those sound interesting. They do sound like it'd make things easier rather than tougher though, if only by giving you more options. Are you balancing this somehow?

Originally posted by Name Withheld:

Hmm, okay, those sound interesting. They do sound like it'd make things easier rather than tougher though, if only by giving you more options. Are you balancing this somehow?

Oh, they'll all have their own costs and drawbacks I assure you...

One policy that I would enjoy seeing in the mod would be Gene manipulation. It would increase health and technology until it reached a certain point on the slider but would always improve the GDP and make Liberals happy while the conservatives would be upset.

Originally posted by Classy Salmon:

One policy that I would enjoy seeing in the mod would be Gene manipulation. It would increase health and technology until it reached a certain point on the slider but would always improve the GDP and make Liberals happy while the conservatives would be upset.

This is actually rather similar to how I'll be implementing the general policies on Transhuman Augmentation and I'll be wrapping gene manipulation together with cybernetic and nanotechnological enhancement.

With Transhuman Augmentation done, whats next? :)

Not sure. I was actually considering a new scenario set in India after war with Pakistan went nuclear, adding a new feature of Background Radiation, which contributes to the situation Radiation Sickness (which destroys Health and contributes to Post-human Cults--people who've used technology to gain radiation immunity which they see as a sign of their superiority.)
The thing is that representing such a shaky society which has to rebuild its infrastructure might actually work better in Democracy 3 Africa, so I might just build it as a new mod for that.
Thoughts?

Originally posted by mouseshepherd:

Not sure. I was actually considering a new scenario set in India after war with Pakistan went nuclear, adding a new feature of Background Radiation, which contributes to the situation Radiation Sickness (which destroys Health and contributes to Post-human Cults--people who've used technology to gain radiation immunity which they see as a sign of their superiority.)
The thing is that representing such a shaky society which has to rebuild its infrastructure might actually work better in Democracy 3 Africa, so I might just build it as a new mod for that.
Thoughts?

How about a normal India mod, combining a poor economy with all the radical technological transformations going on? It would be much more achievable and I suspect more fun to play. I am Indian so I could give you pointers if needed.

Originally posted by v1t:

How about a normal India mod, combining a poor economy with all the radical technological transformations going on? It would be much more achievable and I suspect more fun to play. I am Indian so I could give you pointers if needed.

v1t, I appreciate the offer for help, but there actually already is a very nice mod for modern India (put together by gikgik, if I recall), and users could just combine that mod with this one for a cyberpunk India probably not too far off from what I understand you to be proposing.
That said, I would also like to do a post-apocalyptic scenario and I don't have anything against India, but the sub-continent is probably the single most likely place to become embroiled in a localized (as opposed to global) nuclear conflict in the next few decades (except maybe Korea, which I've already modeled in the KTSR scenario.)
Don't feel too bad, everywhere else in the world has collapsed or gone to hell in the cyberpunk future.

It's your mod, and I don't grudge you at all your wish to add that feature in. If you choose to implement it, I hope it is successful.

However, there would be some problems (which you have probably already considered):

India, like China and the USA, is an Empire. A shrunken empire with democracy, but an empire nonetheless. Empires never survive cataclysms. Therefore, you would likely have to implement some sort of localised union. Like the Marathi Republic, Punjabi Union, Mughal Resurgence, Hindu alliance etc.

If there were to be a nuclear holocaust, China would get drawn in, so the conflict would not be localised.

Even if the country were to be totally irradiated, outsiders would vie immediately for control of the country's vast thorium reserves, and therefore local government would not last very long. Therefore, if you are vying for realism, the mod would fail on that account.

Further, the effects of a few hundred nukes, many of which are hydrogen bombs, going off would create a nuclear winter and likely create a Fallout 4 environmental scenario.

Therefore, to be fully realistic, if that is what you aim for, the mod would have to have some flashpoint that was totally destroyed and a world that had economically and environmentally collapsed as a result of the nuclear exchange.

Finally, global trade would collapse due to the nuclear winter, the death of agriculture for several years and mass extinctions of humans. The only people left would be scavengers and globalists, creating a Fallout 4 type political situation.

Regardless, I wish you the best and I look forward to anything you come up with. I have thoroughly enjoyed playing the cyberpunk mod. :D

Originally posted by v1t:

It's your mod, and I don't grudge you at all your wish to add that feature in. If you choose to implement it, I hope it is successful.

However, there would be some problems (which you have probably already considered):

India, like China and the USA, is an Empire. A shrunken empire with democracy, but an empire nonetheless. Empires never survive cataclysms. Therefore, you would likely have to implement some sort of localised union. Like the Marathi Republic, Punjabi Union, Mughal Resurgence, Hindu alliance etc.

If there were to be a nuclear holocaust, China would get drawn in, so the conflict would not be localised.

Even if the country were to be totally irradiated, outsiders would vie immediately for control of the country's vast thorium reserves, and therefore local government would not last very long. Therefore, if you are vying for realism, the mod would fail on that account.

I was indeed thinking that India would be fragmented into smaller states, and I haven't decided on a name for particular state that I'll be focusing on, though the Marathi Republic sounds good.

China's current nuclear policy is to not intervene unless fired upon, so if the conflict between Pakistan and India were quick (say less than an hour), there wouldn't be much time for them to get involved and the damage would be done.

The thing about the nuclear winter is that this setting already implies really drastic global warming, so disruptive that it caused global economic disruptions contributing to the collapse of the North American governments (hence Cascadia and the NAF), the balkanization of Russia (hence Novgorod), and the rise of the Oligarchs--so a touch of nuclear winter actually slightly rebalanced things.

And yes, outsiders are vying for control of India's resources--that's where the Foreign Aid and Foreign Investment come in, much like in real African countries today.

May I suggest some way to become a Monarchy/Dictatorship, like having a 100% approval in the everyone group so you win every election. It should piss off Liberals and Oligarchs a like, and the slider bar would be varying degrees of authortarianism. From just spreading propaganda to banning the oppostiton.