PyTFall > PyTFall: General information
Fun game, but I seem to have some issues with it..
Sarabada:
Hello,
First off, I am glad to see that development on this game appears to be ongoing judging by recent posts. I previously played a bit of Blue Wind's brothels.im (as far as I can tell, both version 1 and the version 2 revamp) but eventually wanted to try something else because I felt I had 'beaten' the game. It's been quite some time since then, so perhaps it's worth revisiting, but on a whim I did some searching a few days ago and came across PyTFall here. I grabbed the v0.45 alpha off the stickied thread and went off to see how it was.
At present, it's pretty fun, and despite the similarities, I enjoyed the wider 'cast' of characters I could employ, though Blue Wind's writing and story is somewhat more immersive.
However, as I continued playing, I noticed some issues that seemed to strike me as strange: I never seemed to have enough money, and the taxes would almost always very nearly bankrupt me. I wasn't sure why, but perhaps that was simply this game being 'difficult' and I searched for ways of generating more money to cover it. I felt like doing the chain battles in the arena every day was almost the only reason I could stay afloat. I checked the balance sheet for the whole-game summary, and it did show that the arena (and item sales from that) were a large part of my income - around 2x what I got from the Brothel.
Discovering this, I wanted to try and make the Brothel itself more profitable, so I spent about two in-game months sending virtually my entire cast into training programs to dramatically boost their stats, relying on the daily arena fights as sole income during this time frame to keep me afloat until the 'investment' was done.
When everyone returned, the income generation was definitely noticeable - gross income went from about 9-12k per week up to around 30-40k per week. Still, for some reason I felt like after the taxes hit, I was only enjoying about 3k net profit every week, which seemed even less than the amount I'd make in the arena in 7 days, though still better than struggling at about 1k a week initially.
At some point, I decided to just load up all the library files in SublimeText so I could do whole-folder searches and do some digging. The first shock was that the income tax would shoot up to an astounding 45%! The second is that it seems to be 10-45% of your total income, completely ignoring all the expenses you incur naturally, which explains why there was never any real profit week to week.
To confirm my suspicions, I decided to run a test just now: I kept track of my income and expenses for one week in order to doublecheck how the numbers worked out.
In my current (first) game, I'm coming up on the end of the first year, so I tracked the last week of the year. It's Day 366 right now and I have 260k gold on hand, and enough items to push over 300k if I sold them, but I'm holding on to them as 'emergency' cash.
I also own the 10-person Brothel, the House in the City. My current staff consists of 6 prostitutes, all rank 3, 1 guard, 2 service girls and 1 stripper.
Over the course of the week I ran 1 chain fight in the arena each day (Amazon Tribe) which nets me an average of 2100 gold a day.
By the end of the week, I was informed that my taxable income for the week was 65,730, which meant I had the 30% tax rate, deducting 19,719 gold. This leaves me with 46,011 gold of revenue. The next part is property taxes of the brothel and slaves, which came to a total of 4,974 gold (3k for the house since it's 4% of 75k.) I'm now down to 41,037 gold revenue, which is still not too bad... except that doesn't take into account the expenses: In that week, my total expenses (consisting of Wages, Upkeep and Pro Cleaners) came to 35,664 gold. Once that is also deducted, I'm left with a meager net profit of 5,373 gold for the week. Even if we don't count the Pro Cleaners (since it's a service, perhaps that makes sense to pay out of your own pocket) that only comes to a total of 4,166 gold added to that net profit stat (which I'd still have to pay anyway.)
In running the calculations, it also appears that (contrary to what I had thought,) the gold you get from the arena is not taxed, as it's not considered here as part of your taxable income. The total amount of gold I got from running 7 days of Amazon Tribes fights came to 14,773 gold, not including extra gold that would come from selling the items they reward. This disparity is a bit...insane. I earned almost triple what I got from the brothel just running that chain fight. For a brothel simulator, it's strange that the best way of generate wealth is to....not run a brothel.
If I do a quick extrapolation to a higher income (say, double this data to 131k) you would still end up with roughly the same weekly profit, if not less, due to the higher tax rate then, along with the higher wage and upkeep costs you incur to presumably generate that much revenue (based on the numbers, you would have roughly another 10-13 members of staff running at an average 'upkeep' cost of ~350 gold each, which also means slightly higher property tax from using the first mansion to fit them all.)
Apologies for the length of that story, but I'm simply wondering how the heck I need to be playing this game to actually feel like I'm getting ahead with the investments I make, because it feels like the game is designed to keep you at a specific level of income no matter how well you do. The majority of my income is currently still coming from the arena and sales of the items I get there.
On this point, part of me is wishing to try and mod this income tax to make more sense: I don't want to simply reduce the tax rate, but rather have it apply the tax on the net income after taking into account expenses. On the other hand, I feel kind of stubborn in thinking 'I can make this "hard mode" work!' particularly because I am still generating gold... just really slowly. However, there are a number of other issues I want to 'fix' and considering its been over a year at least (it looks like) since v0.45 alpha was released, I doubt the next version/beta will be coming anytime soon to alleviate these issues. At the same time, I don't want to have simply 'made it easier.'
At the least, I feel like if the 'taxable income' value was first deducted by the amount of wages + upkeep paid (we can leave pro cleaners out, I guess) before applying the tax rate, it would make a lot more sense, and simultaneously be not as punishing. Alternatively, you could even exempt upkeep from this step, and only deduct wages as a way of encouraging the hiring of 'free' characters - they may cost more to 'maintain,' but they mean you pay less taxes.
Using the data from my previous week, with a 65,730 gold gross income, if we deduct the 35,664 in expenses first, we end up with 30,066 net income that, if taxed at 30%, leaves us with a more reasonable 21,046.2 gold. From there, deducting property tax as normal would leave us with 16,072.2 gold - slightly better than one week of arena fights in raw gold. If we also throw in the arena income as taxable in this way, we would end up with 65,730 + 14,773 = 80,503 - 35,664 = 44,839 * 0.7 = 31,387.3 - 4974 = 26,413.3 gold net income (as opposed to 16k + 14k = ~30k using this proposal if it wasn't taxed, and 14k + 5k = ~20k in the existing system.) As it stands, it really feels like I might as well just shut everything down, live alone in the shack that I only have to pay 200 gold a week for, generate income through the arena, and basically end up about the same as currently with a brothel.
I could theoretically push the rank 3's up to rank 4 and even rank 5, but my brothel currently does not have enough reputation to draw in the higher ranking customers, and I'd end up starting to turn the beggars away, which based on the code, will tank reputation quickly as they badmouth us for turning them away. The text in the code claims the damage would be 'insignificant' but it looks like it's a 50% chance to reduce reputation. It's only by 1, but this leads to the next issue: I can't reliably raise the brothel's reputation.
Fame is apparently quite easy to do, but reputation... So far I've only found that service girls working the bar will boost it randomly by +1. The problem, though, is the stripper, and the amount of fatigue the combined workload causes. I have two service girls (each with over 80 Charisma and Service, as well as 20-40 agility, which are the breakpoints I found in the code) trying to share the load, but the single stripper (75 Charisma/Strip, maxed reputation, unknown fame since that stat isn't listed) completely inundates both of them with 40+ clients. The very moment I set them to service alongside the stripper, both immediately max out on fatigue. Sure, Sakuya can handle most of them and even get something like 3k gold all at once, but then they're out of commission for the next 2-3 days recovering fatigue while I pay her 600 gold a day in wages. This means my reputation is stuck at like 15. This is also the reason I have to rely on the Pro Cleaners so much: my service girls are literally never available to clean. I'm scrambling to find more service girls, but none exist in all the girls I've talked with, so I'm going to just have some of the prostitutes change jobs over to service girl when I move to the first of the three mansions. This also means that 50% chance of -1 reputation is terrible for me.
Logic and theorycrafting aside, I would like to ask if it would be okay to ask here for some help when it comes to making these changes. I'm sure you guys have already gone over balancing for the next version of the game, but I imagine it's a long way away still, so I want to make what changes I can to 0.45a so I can enjoy it more in the meantime. (I poked at the character pack stickies, but I'm under the impression that they won't work for this version? Some are also missing data files.)
I assume I can simply edit/make changes to the *.rpy files in the library folder. Unfortunately, I don't really know Python and its syntax, so that's where most of the help I'll need is. I've made mods for Civilization V which uses Lua instead; I never did anything for Civilization IV which I believe used Python. The gist is that I can figure out the logic and rough code, but I'll need some guidance on the proper syntax, and what data I can call from the game.
Alongside this, I feel I want to 'fix' a few other niggling issues I have with the game's numbers, in no particular order:
* Guards are... very awkward. They hardly earn any experience for what is supposed to be a very important task. They have some gains, but pretty much only when they manage to successfully put down an aggressive customer. This doesn't seem to happen anymore in my game when my security rating is at 1000, so they end up just twiddling their thumbs forever gaining 20 experience every couple days.
*
* For a task like security, I feel they should get some experience for every customer that arrives in the brothel - they have to presumably clear everyone before they can head inside, and then patrol routinely, rather than sit in a cubicle until someone calls for help.
* Optionally, they could have a very small chance of 'confiscating' illicit items from customers, to act as a perk for getting a guard early on - This chance would decrease per-customer as brothel reputation rises (I imagine it as people take the establishment more seriously.) This guard activity could also provide a bonus to said reputation.
* Additionally, when their assistance is required by the staff, they should be able to try and peacefully defuse the situation first: A check of their Charisma + Character (+ Intelligence + Refinement?) should have a chance of talking them out of it. If that fails, a check of their Character + Constitution should have a chance of getting them to back down as well before they resort to checking for a fight. This would allow the raising of stats on a guard to be meaningful (as right now my guard is just a walking attack+defense stat.) They could then apply a hefty fine to the customer for causing issues when they are successfully defused, similar to how you get gold when the guard 'wins' the fight.
* Strippers also feel like they get the shaft for experience gain. Their primary purpose here is to attract customers into the brothel, so I feel their success should be measured largely in how many people they managed to draw, long with their satisfaction, but if I'm reading the code correctly, their experience is currently only calculated with respect to their own stats.
*
* Their tips I feel could also use some adjustment to account for client satisfaction divided by their reputation/fame. (In other words, people should tip a bit more if they weren't expecting anything due to low rep/fame but got a very good show, but on the other hand, they won't be as generous if the stripper is known for putting on great performances regularly anyway.) This probably isn't quite as important considering their role, though, as they're mainly there to draw people into the other services.
* Service girls apparently have a bonus to the number of clients they can manage depending on their agility, but that stat seems to not really be used anywhere else.
*
* Agility should not only be the measure of how swift one is, but also how well they can weave through crowds - For this, I feel agility should additionally reduce the amount of fatigue they generate servicing each customer. As it currently stands, I think I kind of shot myself in the foot because raising their agility to rake in more gold/customers means their fatigue instantly goes from zero to 300.
* At the same time, refinement should reduce the amount of dirt generated - more grace means less spilling...maybe? Or perhaps roll these two together into a single modifier for both fatigue and dirt.
* Along these lines, I feel agility should help Strippers too (since it is a dance-related skill) but their fatigue generation seems quite low compared to the service girls, so perhaps only dirt reduction..
* In terms of cleaning, since service girls are also responsible for that, it looks like agility already factors into how much they can clean, but as above, it should also reduce the overall fatigue generated by this (presumably, being more agile and dexterous, you would have an easier time reaching certain places.)
* Constitution should be a factor in determining how much fatigue the girls recover when they rest, alongside the garden upgrades and such.
* For the rank disparity check, I feel rather than it being a flat penalty, it should scale depending on the amount of the disparity, and the customer's own rank.
*
* For slaves, instead of a flat -10 Joy, it would be less if it was 'only' 1 rank beyond what they want, but get worse as the rank disparity grows.
* For girls rejecting the customers, instead of a random 50% chance to lower the brothel's reputation, I feel it should be a 1-in-4 chance of -1 for the beggars, 1-in-5 for peasants, 1-in-6 for merchants, etc. as higher ranks would probably have too much pride to want to tell people they were turned down at a brothel. At the same time, it might also have the same chance to provide +1 instead, as people may recognize that your establishment is kind of exclusive.
* I haven't quite figured out how I want to scale the customer-rejecting-the-girl bit, though.Sorry for the super long post, but I had a lot of comments I wanted to put down, lol.
As an aside, I did notice that the main hall upgrade is broken in the code, assuming I'm reading it correctly:
--- Code: ---elif self.brothel.upgrades['mainhall']['2']['active']:
--- End code ---
Is written twice in the logic, so I believe if you only build the first main hall upgrade, it will never provide the prostitution payout bonus of 1.1, as you can only ever get 1.2 at the earliest with two upgrades.
Xela:
--- Quote from: Sarabada on October 06, 2016, 10:18:14 PM ---As an aside, I did notice that the main hall upgrade is broken in the code, assuming I'm reading it correctly:
--- Code: ---elif self.brothel.upgrades['mainhall']['2']['active']:
--- End code ---
Is written twice in the logic, so I believe if you only build the first main hall upgrade, it will never provide the prostitution payout bonus of 1.1, as you can only ever get 1.2 at the earliest with two upgrades.
--- End quote ---
It's possible. The trouble is that this code has been completely rewritten and I can't even revert to it because we went from mercurial to git at some point with part of project history lost.
=======================>>>>
To play without arena grinding, you need a good girl (usually a slavegirl) to start with. With a lot of constitution... She should get 3AP per day instead of two. If she doesn't, a couple of days in school should fix that. With that she should start earning a bit of cash. Decent items, training dummy till it's no longer useful and stuff like that will gradually increase profit, in the meanwhile a free girl can be talked into joining the brothel.
Most of the other stuff is no longer applicable to the working dev version, game looks similar but there is too much new logic with parts of the game completely rewritten for anything from the Alpha release to matter for upcoming Beta.
Sarabada:
Oh wow, didn't think I'd get a response so quickly, haha.
I was wrestling with this forum's formatting to make that wall of text slightly more readable, but it looks like you snuck in a response while I was doing that.
I understand that most of these points and balance issues are no longer applicable to your development, but I can't gauge when we'd be able to play said beta, so in the meantime I was thinking of tweaking up the alpha to fix some of these issues I have - some of the stuff really bugs me since it doesn't make much sense, or isn't very fair. If the beta is only a couple days or weeks away, I'll probably wait, but if it'll be months or another year, I'd probably just edit the alpha until then so I have something to play in the meantime.
As far as the starting suggestion goes, I'm quite far from that point right now.
It's Day 366, so I just completed the first year of gameplay, and am ready to move on to the first of the large mansions, but I felt it's taking a lot longer than it should be due to the income tax rivaling my upkeep on 10 girls leaving me with very little if I don't spam the arena.
FWIW, every single one of my girls right now has enough constitution for 3 AP, with two having 4 AP already. 8 of 10 are also slaves, Sakuya and a random Leafa character being the only two 'free' girls I've hired so far. I do, however, have 5-6 other 'free' girls at maxed disposition waiting for me to hire them when I make the move to the mansion, though. The slave market no longer has any attractive options (too high upkeep cost for too low stats.)
Also, one thing that I haven't been able to track down: The random Leafa character is and has been my only guard for a long time now. The problem is that very randomly she will just end a day with less than 5 health, even though she was not involved in any guard events. It doesn't even appear in the section that details what the girls did each day - it just suddenly appears in the summary page when it lists the wage she was paid. I've gotten used to just assuming she accidentally stabbed herself and needs another potion at this point, but it's aggravating that I have no idea why it's happening. Could it be the 'silly' trait she has?
Xela:
--- Quote from: Sarabada on October 06, 2016, 10:56:21 PM ---Also, one thing that I haven't been able to track down: The random Leafa character is and has been my only guard for a long time now. The problem is that very randomly she will just end a day with less than 5 health, even though she was not involved in any guard events. It doesn't even appear in the section that details what the girls did each day - it just suddenly appears in the summary page when it lists the wage she was paid. I've gotten used to just assuming she accidentally stabbed herself and needs another potion at this point, but it's aggravating that I have no idea why it's happening. Could it be the 'silly' trait she has?
--- End quote ---
They do try to train if everything is quite in the building, there should be a report about that. I don't recall any Silly trait having such an effect.
Sarabada:
--- Quote from: Xela on October 07, 2016, 03:08:27 AM ---They do try to train if everything is quite in the building, there should be a report about that. I don't recall any Silly trait having such an effect.
--- End quote ---
Right, that makes sense, but I can't figure out why it's happening.
According to the code, the function post_job_activities() says at the bottom, when I have no guard buildings:
--- Code: --- if dice(50):
self.txt.append("She spent time relaxing. \n")
#display rest only if they did not fight
if not self.girl.guard_relay['bar_event']['count'] and not self.girl.guard_relay['whore_event']['count']:
self.img = "rest"
self.girlmod['fatigue'] = self.girlmod.get('fatigue', 0) - random.randint(7, 12) * self.girl.AP
self.girl.AP = 0
else:
self.txt.append("She did some rudamentory training. \n")
self.girlmod['attack'] = self.girlmod.get('attack', 0) + random.choice([0,0,0,0,0,1])
self.girlmod['defence'] = self.girlmod.get('defence', 0) + random.choice([0,0,0,0,0,1])
self.girlmod['magic'] = self.girlmod.get('magic', 0) + random.choice([0,0,0,0,0,1])
self.girlmod['joy'] = self.girlmod.get('joy', 0) + random.choice([0,1])
self.girlmod['exp'] = self.girlmod.get('exp', 0) + random.randint(2*self.girl.level + self.girl.AP*2, self.girl.AP*2 + 4*self.girl.level)
self.girlmod['fatigue'] = self.girlmod.get('fatigue', 0) + random.randint(15, 20)
self.girl.AP = 0
--- End code ---
None of that deals with health at all, so I'm stumped as to how to prevent her from, uh, stabbing herself.
It just happened again, too. I attached two screenshots of what I see, and these are the only two places she even appears in. Nothing hints at her being damaged in any way, yet her summary page tells me she just randomly lost 111 health for no reason, leaving her with 2 left. Curiously, she is the only character I've had such issues with. Whether it's just her, or related to guards somehow, I'm not sure yet. I'm currently training a second warrior to help her guard in preparation for the move to the Mansion on the Main Road, so whenever she's ready I can have her guard as well and see if she gets afflicted with the same tendency to randomly stab herself.
For reference, the game claims my security rating is 1000 out of 1000 with just her guarding at 20% presence. Also, her traits are currently: Not Human, Puffy Nipples, Long Legs, Abnormally Large Boobs, Magic Gift, Silly, and Well-Mannered.
I guess for now I'll toss her another potion...
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