Sleuth Home - Message Boards - Sleuth Talk

Aug-1-2004 16:36

After the recently released newspaper article so inaproprietly titled 'A Cry For Help' the discussion about more choice in agency offices has disappointingly failed to flare up.
People in the street have been seen whispering about it once in a while. But what they mostly whispered was "What was that all about?"
Here to explain the dire need for more choice are a couple of very extreme examples.
Firstly, a location for an agency has a couple of 'statistics' linked to it. Room for Items, room for cases, room for members, a crime lab, a message board, rent...
At the moment the choice is very limited in that the advantageous points are very balanced in every location. For example every office available for rent has a message board, and of course we are very happy with that. On the other hand there's only one type of office that allows 12 members, it has the slight disadvantage of a high rent and only 5 cases to be filed, but almost all the top ranking agencies are in those abandoned theatres.
What about the agencies with members that only have time in the weekend, but can spare two minutes a day during the week? They would be greatly helped with a place with huge case filing capabilities (16 for example), in exchange for this increadible bonus of so much space for cases there would have to be a penaly of course, no crime lab, an extraordinarily high rent, very little space to store items, maybe even no message board...
What I'm trying to say is, even though probably every top agency will still be in the huge amount of abandoned theatres, it would be nice to have a little more choice in the extremities that the system seems to allow for.
What I propose is an exention of the high rent locations, so that beginning agencies can still get their bearings in what they actually need, but the experienced agencies, and the very rich that just had a lot of luck, can choose between, for example, case storage and number of members.
Let me know what you think.

Aug-2-2004 03:45

But isn't that what Ben has already created??
Abandonned Theater: 12 people - storage space: 5, rent: $1800
Somekind of Bank: 10 people - storage space: 7, rent: $2000

The choice between more storage space or more people?? Or have I misunderstood this completely?? (I probably have :D )

Aug-2-2004 06:06

Although you are kind of right, what I'm asking for is more extreme differences. For example

Forgotten Newspaperstand: members 4, items 10, cases 16, message board yes, crime lab no, rent $1000 (or something like that)

Ye Olde Watering Hoal: members 14, items 8, cases none, message board yes, crime lab no, rent $2000 (I'm not really good at guessing what would be a good rent)

Differences like that. Now the advantages of a message board and a crime lab are available in all the high-rent offices, but maybe there are people that do not need a crime lab, but would rather have more case filing space, or item storage space, or office space for members?
Well, the point is, there could be more choice in my opinion.

Aug-2-2004 07:42

In that way I thought it was a nice touch to the 3 newest office types that agencies were forced to consider what they thought was most valuable to them - more room for items, more room for cases or more members. And in a way I’m wondering if there might not be a limit as to how extreme you can make the difference in choice if you want people to buy a variety of properties instead of everyone getting the same type - although everyone does seem to go for the same kinds :D

You're right in that the crime lab isn't that important to agencies where the whole range of physical experts is covered, and as such those, who are just starting out, could just choose an office space with that capacity for starters and then move to something else when the 4 are secured. But what should take its place – more items, more cases or more members?

As such there wouldn't be much point in an office accommodating 20 members and 0 case storage space since they wouldn't be able to help each other out then ;D - even with a storage space of 2 cases per member, you'd hardly be able to store your own cases if you didn't have time that day, letalone help the others unless a bunch of people were on at the same time.

So we're back to the question of more storage space (or the recurring plea for roll-over cases ;) )

- but to keep it fair on everyone, an office with a lot of storage space should ideally accommodate fewer members, no? (Or else everyone would probably opt for that one :D ). But how few?