The Headhunt action is the first and only action available to you right at the start of the game. You use this action to gain a new member to your faction, whom you can then call on to do other actions for you.
This action requires the use of a conversation game. You will be able to find out more about the conversation mini-game on other areas of the site, but for a full walkthrough of how it works in this instance is available below.
Depending on who and what you choose as variables to the action, what you see on screen may well differ from my screenshots. This walkthough shows you how the action unfolds - for specific game help and hints about actions see other parts of my site or the manual. The ingame tutorial will also help.
All thumbnails are "clickable".
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You open into the game looking at your HQ. Notice the screen layout around the sides. |
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Clicking on the picture of you in the bottom right hand corner opens up these screens, from where you can choose an action. Holding the mouse over each action display's a brief explanation of it, as well as its cost in terms of force (red), power (blue) and money (yellow). The XP number shows how many experience points the person doing the action will achieve upon succesful completion. |
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Clicking the action to confirm it will bring you to the map screen, where we choose the rest of the variables for the action. The first thing we need to do is choose one of my old buddies to join me. |
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If I "mouse over" one character, Joesph Nasarov, we will find he is already fairly aggreeable to my political view. The green "+20%" means it will be 20% easier than normal to win over this guy. |
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For similar reasons, this guy is fairly middle of the range, and therefore is medium difficulty to win over... |
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And this guy will be 20% harder to reach because of his views. |
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Let's go for the first guy. Clicking on him adds his name to the variables section in the bottom right hand corner. |
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We now need to find a place to meet him. I am required to choose the district which the chap lives in (may as well be helpful!). Notice the red dot at the top? This is a specific place in this district which I know of. Let's click on it to take a look... |
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... and doesn't this chicken place look nice. Well... maybe not, but it's a fairly slummy area and there is not much I can do about the matter! Later in the game I will have a wide variety of places to choose from and many factors, such as location secrecy will have to be taken into consideration. |
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All the required information has now been given, and clicking on the green tick finalises the action and places it in the next available slot for my character, which you can see from the scheduler here. |
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Having previuosly bookmarked the action (not shown) I can now view it. I could also view it by double clicking on the character in question at the time of the action. Here I am waiting for my future faction member (hopefully) to turn up. |
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Looks like our character is getting impatient... it is rather a slow paced action after all. |
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Ah - here's my guy now. |
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A little head scratching... and various other little things which make the world seem believable. We watch a small chat as two old friends greet each other again. |
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Enough chit-chat. Let's get down to business. Our two guys walk into the cafe and choose a free table. |
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Here is the tricky part. I now have 30 seconds (large red number counting down indicates how long we have left) to spread my pool of 15 points (red words: "15 remaining") amongst my four "arguments", which are all currently set to "0: Self Depreciate" which doesn't sound good. The computer can also choose these for me. |
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By left clicking to increase and right clicking to decrease, I have started to disperse my points available over the four arguments. None of them are very high powered arguments, although I could if I wanted to have one argument at a very strong level (like 10 or so) and leave the others at very low levels. Our aim, as you will see, is to gain a level of 42 in the game to follow. |
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OK - time to start playing. I choose one of my arguments to go against his. If the number of my argument is higher than the argument he returns, I win. Each argument is used twice, so in effect there are eight mini-mini-contests, with points ranging from 5 to 20 being awarded to the winner of each one. |
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1/4 way through and I'm doing well... I have played two cards and won 15 points (the two green points numbers in the middle). You can see that I have highlighted my best card to play next - a level 6 card... |
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But oh no! After playing all eight rounds I have not reached the target I needed to. To be perfectly honest, more skill on my part may have gotten me through, but for many newcomers to the game, this may well be the outcome. A brownish bar appears below my name... indicating I have not been successful. |
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With this knowledge, watching the next sequence of footage where I hand over my signature form... |
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... only to get it turned down... |
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... is rather depressing! |
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When the action has finished... a little note reminds me yet again of my failure! But that only encourages me to have another go... |
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I decide to go after another person, in another district. He looks a nice kinda guy, to be fair. |
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After going through the motions chatting with him outside the cafe I walk in with him. It's a rather nicer setting this time! |
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I'm trying a different tactic this time. Knowing there is only 5 points for the first round, and 20 for the fourth, I am not wasting any of my high cards there, so I leve one card at level 0 which I can effectively throw away at the start... |
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... and this time I win! If you notice, he also played the same tactic. He choose one card to be very very high and used this at the end where he was sure to win. But luckily I won the other rounds, and as I only had to get 35% of the total this time, I won by getting 50, even though my opponent also got 50. Guessing which cards he would play in which order during the last four mini-rounds was a big part of winning. |
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The short sequence of my new recruit signing his life away was unfortunately hidden by a nearby lamp post, but not to worry - he's in my faction now... |
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... and his two new actions will help me spread my wings. |
