This is something that I wanted to start for a long time, so here is the first post/discussion of this kind, hopefully there will be many more
SCHEMES
One thing I felt was missing in the game were ways to make certain elements of the game more in depth or fun, both from a diplomatic, economic, as well as conflict standpoint. I felt the world of crime was too creative and my game wasn't able to mimic it in any way.This is where the idea of schemes came in. The schemes are a pretty simple by themselves, closest I could find afterwards was the schemes in CK3, the sole reason why I got the game, to be able to research this idea I had, but my idea was always a more of an in depth one, but CK3 gave me a way to see it in action how a system like that could work.
Basically you have a list of requirements that you have to fulfill for a phase of a scheme, it could be that you need a relationship with specific character, a world event that is currently active, specific item etc(which could be i.e. fake ids, maybe a corpse from someone you killed and you have to get rid of, fake police uniforms etc). Schemes would have a chance of success with outcomes and consequences if they fail.
How it would work
One simple idea I had was this:
Let's say you have some stolen goods/cigarettes or dirty money you want to make 'clean', how could you do them? Well the convenience store nearby would be able to help you out, but the owner is not in a good relationship with you in any way, nor does he wants you to deal with your kind. So now you have to find a way to get into a good relationship with the store owner. But how? Well you assign someone to keep their ear to the ground, and if something pops up regarding this character, you try and help them out? Some thugs making problems? Send one of your trusted lieutenants to deal with it. Money problem? You can help out too. Of course this wasn't the first idea I had about schemes. The first ideas creative ways to kill someone(like living a note in their mouth) and the other was setting up a peace meeting where the main point is not to make peace with someone but to kill them. Other ideas I wanted to emulate were other crime types from that period, like Red Valentine(where you dress up your guys as a policemen trying to raid a local with the main goal to kill members of the opposition), bank robberies, art heists, money laundering schemes etc.
Getting it into the game
Now here is the very tough part. Something like this requires tons of content, balancing, designing and good ideas to make it work, a tiresome task currently with my full-time job, and honestly the only significant problem why it isn't started is the whole murkiness of the whole idea and how to make it work. Everything I think regarding this either requires lots of work/rework just for a single scheme(for the convenience one for example, talk with character, new ui for characters that are on the radar, notifications regarding them, new talk to options and logc, RTS combat part if you want to fight thugs, rework of the inventory system etc) and this is just for a single scheme, which I don't know if it's even particularly fun. I don't know since I was forced to start working something else full-time, I've become wary of putting too much work into something that only slightly improves the game(hence why I had very slow progress lately :( ). Hence this is why I want to start these discussions, to see stuff from different angle, to get ideas, and to make sure this idea will work or it sounds fun to players. Happy to hear your thoughts.