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Micromanagement & Big Question

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Tweaker69:
Hi all, I had a couple of questions and maybe some feedback.

First let me say that the game has really come a long way, and is shaping up to be a pretty addicting little game. This is all advice from a non-coder, so my apologies if I suggest something that simply isn't feasible or worth the effort.

The micromanagement is getting better, but still could use something to allow someone to "skate through" some time without everyone dying in the dungeon or slacking off completely after one tough week ^_^ Perhaps a settings table/chart with min/max %'s for tiredness, happiness, health, rebelliousness (With standard default %'s in place, but adjustable).

-When they get too tired or unhappy, they rest to below the min % chosen (have an option to have these give popup notices), then return to the job they left. If that would be too hard to code, perhaps have another dropdown box with their "default job"

-When they get too rebellious, have a popup saying so, and/or auto-toss them in the dungeon. When inmates' learn their lessons well enough, give a popup of that and/or auto-release them.

-Have a checkbox for "Save from Starvation" or another min/max input box that will start feeding prisoners again, should they fall below %health (and perhaps start starving them again should they get really healthy.

I'd understand if most folks didn't want the "auto-detect/auto-fix" idea implemented, thinking this is a lot of the actual gameplay... But please still consider at least the OPTION of simply having these types of notices right out in the open. Right now, not everything I've stated will even flag a mention in turn summaries, and one has to search through nested "results buttons" or even individual character screens every turn to find out who's depressed, pissed off or almost dead.

The Matron Idea is cool, especially once we choose one of our girls to choose the role... But perhaps she could be more in charge of "rallying the troops", you know like morale and driving the girls to work harder for less. If I have a stat-based (i.e, likely somewhat prone to mistakes) AI taking care of my micro, I'll end up just doing it all myself... and then rapidly getting bored ^_^ I'm a bit of a perfectionist... Or extremely anal if you prefer the term.

Lastly, my big question. I wasn't sure if it was a bug in my particular savegame or if I simply hadn't quite played enough turns. I had a few girls give birth, and wondered if the offspring simply bugged/disappeared or if they simply have no info screens until later in the game. If that is the case, then how many weeks pass after birth before they reappear ingame?

Thanks much for your time,
Tweaker

letmein:
Last part first:  offspring don't show up for... ah... I forget the actual amount of time ATM, but it's something like 30 weeks, or so.  They mystically age 18 years over that time frame, too.

Now, combining a lot of what you said together, you're giving off a couple of different competing vibes... you say you don't want something doing a lot of micro for you, but most of the rest of what you say is anti-micro!  Weird.  :p   Anyway, I don't know what necno will end up doing with matrons when all is said and done.  I do think that the current system *isn't* all that bad.  If you want to micro, you can micro, and if you don't you don't have to (plus you save 200 gold/turn, not that it means much).  Once matrons become actual girls, though, I suspect the option to not use them will be much less appealing, but until that happens I think the issue can be ignored for a while.

As for the rest - matrons are *supposed* to return girls back to their job once they get rested up.  Tha was bugged for a good long while, but I thought necno had fixed that for 1.29...

I'm not quite sure what to think about your chart suggestion - part of that is because I'm not exactly positive I understand what you're saying, but mostly because I think it would chance the game a lot.  Perhaps too much.  Once you throw in that chart, the game basically becomes a spreadsheet - not that it isn't like that already, but there's enough glitter and pseudorandomness to disguise it.  Your suggestion would, to me, make it too much of a game that "played itself", and worse, a spreadsheet that simply recalculated itself again and again with no player input.  Not fun.  Again, though, I might just be misinterpreting what you said a little.

I see that you'd make it optional, so that might help.  On the other hand, a lot of the issues could be fixed without creating an entirely new screen.  I think necno's planning to mess with the interface a bit (although his list of "things to do" always seems to get longer, never shorter), and if all the necessary information was in one place I think a lot of this would be moot.  There was a thread a few days ago discussing a possible change to the turn summary screen, which would serve as that requisite source of info.  In a perfect world, the TS screen would basically encompass the current brothel screen, the staff screen, and more besides, everything would be tab-selectable, basic girl info would pop up right in front of you, and going to an individual girl would need only one click.

Anyway, love the comments.  There have been a lot of newbies showing up the past couple days...  even better, ones that *talk*.

Tweaker69:
Thanks a lot for answering my question. Might be nice to have some mention somewhere of them, even if simply a "# sons" and "#daughters" on the street-level screen or someplace.

Sorry about the mixed message. I get extremely bored with all of the micromanaging, but I simply can't "be happy enough" with letting an imperfect AI make those decisions. IOW, unless she had UBERstats I would end up doublechecking everything she did anyways, so it wouldn't save me much time or boredom.

Yeah, I was talking about having a separate spreadsheet-like "settings screen" for when someone wanted to allow girls to get more or less tired than the default settings, and what have you. Something that could be left all on defaults if the player didn't want to tweak anything.

I understand some people actually enjoy this level of micromanagement, so if they wish to not have ANY auto-pilot for the details... I think the game's fun points are getting a large harem, expanding by opening new brothels,  messing with the girls with both gifts and fear ^_^ and that there is more potential for an engaging experience with protecting territory, politics and rival gangs, gaining influence in the city and such. Once the actual system mechanics get more hammered out, there's great potential for interesting events to trigger quests and even I've heard some mention of having something of a dungeon crawl in the game. That's why I think the current gameplay needs micromanagement more than anything... In order to open it up and allow the player to be more immersed in the world than the numbers. This world has got a LOT of potential, both dark and light.

Anyways, thanks again for your response and nice welcome. I just joined here but I'd been piping up now and then on hongfire, previous. Have a good night!

Tweaker

DocClox:
What I think about micromanagement: I don't think people mind the micromanagement at all. That is, after all, the fun part of any sim. What I think people don't like is not being given the tools to conduct that micromanagement efficiently. And when they don't have those tools, that's when the cry goes up: "there's too much bloody micromanagement in this game".

As an example, look at SimBrothel. That's a perfectly lovely little game marred by the absence of proper management tools. No one minds the business of controlling every aspect of the girls' lives - that's a large part of the appeal, or at least why it has greater appeal than the latest Slutty McSlut adventure on Newgrounds. The trouble is that the it lacks good reporting screens, which means that it takes a lot of work to find the girls that need managing, and then once you've identified one, you need to go to a different screen and find her again before you can do the actual managing.

Letting the game AI make the choices for you, incidentally, doesn't help at all. They made that mistake with Master Of Orion 3. The game was insanely complicated, but had exceptionally good management AI.  The trouble was that you ended up A) not really understanding what was going on, and B) not needing to do anything anyway, since the game was quite capable of playing itself. This left most people feeling "why bother?". Which was a shame, given how awesome a game MOO2 was in its time.

Anyway, welcome to the forums. Pardon my random ramblings.

letmein:
Good point, Doc.  There's also the consideration of scale:  there is a huge difference between having 10 girls and 100.  You want the tools to be able to play at both levels.

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