Whore Master Cathexis

[Ctwo]

A lot of game designers perfer using large numbers because it is easier to tweak things. If your basic attack does str damage, how much should a longsword improve it? 2 points? Then a dagger does 1 point? A bastard sword improves by...3 points? How about a short sword? 2 points? 1 point?
If you use larger numbers then minor tweaks are easier. Damage = (str x 5)+weapon mod+skill mod. Now daggers do 10, longswords do 20, bastard swords do 30. A sharp enchanted dagger does (10 base + 1 sharp +3 enchanted) 14 damage. Still less than a longsword (20) but more than a vanilla dagger.
Of course you can achieve the same effect by just using decimal places and displaying them, but whole numbers are easier to understand for players. Also it leads to the question how minor of an upgrade is an upgrade? Do you even consider a 0.01?
The same applies to talking about currency. Have your poor customers still pay in double digets. This allows more room to play with modifiers to how much a customer pays. A 10% modifier looks much better when your talking about 100 than it does when your talking about 4. 100 you get 110, 4 you get...4. Unless you always round up, which would lead to some serious questions when a 1 becomes a 2, but doubling the bonus still results in the same 2.
Again the same thing can be achieved by having a decimal system. Your $2 whore gets a quarter tip. Whooho. That is still a 12.5% bonus!

[graodeareia]

Question: How do a quote a previous post?

Ctwo :
I though about larger numbers and how items would be affected. Here is the thing, currently Health is calculated as 2xCON. So it will go beyond the d20 system. In game it will probabily range from 10 to 30 for most girls. Items might be able to boost beyond that. If I find that thats too little we can make 3xCON. Health and Energy are not like the normal attributes since when they run out its a big problem. The main gameplay system is based on a d20 for rows (any sort of test), but Heath and Energy are not used in tests, that is, you will never make a dice row with you Health or Energy points. So that allows for damage to be a little higher and still be reasonable. Another important point is that while you can raise you damage with equipments you can also raise your armor. The armor will be subtracted from damage so that also gives a little room to make damage higher. Finally damage from items can be a range instead of a single number. For example:

Dagger - Damage 1-2
Short Iron Sword - Damage 1-4
Short Steel Sword - Damage 2-4

So you make a better item that only has a better min damage and that the max is the same. When damage is calculated you add the caracters base damage with a random number in the range of equipment. So for a character with base damage 3, equiping a the Iron Sword from the example would yield damage of 3-7, while a Steel one would yield a 4-7 total damage. Considering an oponent with 3 armor, the damage he would take from the Iron Sword above would be 0-4, and from the Steel Sword  it would be 1-4. So you can see that the final damage aplied in this examples are very little, so advanced items could go well beyond that. But item creators could go well beyond that for advanced items. For instance they may give +1 STR. That would affect many stats other them damage, making the caracter much more powerful.

Right now I'm working on styling the application so that it looks better. The goal for the next version is to add styles to the interface, a better font, and also Characters Classes and Types. That would be version 0.02. Version 0.03 will add Combat. The Combat demo will have a few sample itens and spells so by then you will be able to see how items affect combat. Thats a little spoiler right there. There will be spells in the game. Characters can learn spells from scrolls you find or purchase. Spell will be something like:

Zap: Energy 2, Damage 1-3, Dificulty 0
Fire Ball: Energy 4, Damage 2-5, Dificulty 2

The Energy is how much energy is spent to cast the spell. The Dificulty is a penalty to the Spell atributte when doing a Spell row. Spells cannot be defended like physical attacks. The only way to defend a succesifull Spell row is to use a defensive Spell. Like:

Counter Spell: Energy 2, Dificulty 2 - Cancels a ofensive spell

Well something like that. Anyways, that the reason I wanted to have separate Spell and Combat damage inicially. But for the sake of simplicity I joined them into one. Spell damage will also be absorved by armor so the final damage will not be so big. Some non-wizard characters may also use some spell to give them a temporary buff during combat. For instance:

Crouching Tiger : Energy 2, Dificulty 1 - +1 DEX for the rest of the combat
Hidden Dragon : Energy 2, Dificulty 1 - +1 STR for the rest of the combat

Anyways this are just some ideas for the spell system. Once the system is up we can have an external file with all the spell and modders can experiment with until we figure out a balanced list of spell. Wizards and Warriors of the same Class will need so have equal changes in combat so a lot of tunning may be needed to equipment and spell in order to make than balanced.

One more important point. Itens and Spell can have minimal required stats in order for a character to use them. This should also help in the balance. Becouse if you could use a super sword with a Wizard character he might become overpowered. The same goes for spell and Warrior characters. For example:

Long Steel Sword: Combat +2 , Damage 3-8, Required: STR 10

Bind: Dificult 3, Required: WIS 10 - Oponent is unable to take action for 2 turns

Hope you like what I'm trying to do here. Sugesting and contructive criticism are always welcome

[crazy]

Question: How do a quote a previous post?

Should be a thing that says quote on the top right of each post.

[graodeareia]

Should be a thing that says quote on the top right of each post.

Nice, Tnx

[DarkTl]

There is a lot of suggestions already, so I just want to add a couple of them.
First of all, molerat's idea to send a party of girls in catacombs is quite interesting. Without player, of course, just 2-4 girls. I don't know how are you calculate battles outcomes, but let's say the more girls in the party, the more enemies they're able to meet in one battle.
Also you may add one more battle class. I thought about such plenty of shadow characters as rogues, ninjas, assassins and so on. For example, warrior's main stat is Strength, while rogue's is Dexterity (or Agility, or something else). They may be able to use different spells (traps, skills, gadgets, maybe weapons), which require Dexterity.

[graodeareia]

First of all, molerat's idea to send a party of girls in catacombs is quite interesting. Without player, of course, just 2-4 girls. I don't know how are you calculate battles outcomes, but let's say the more girls in the party, the more enemies they're able to meet in one battle.

The combat system is turn based so adding 2 girls to a simgle party would mean they would each take their turns for every one turn of the enemy. I thought about party already I'm just not sure of the balance problem. Maybe you party like 4 lowlevel girls they can easy beat a high level one. That would allow the player to send parties to lower levels of the catacomb right at the start of the game. The player would than capture some high level girls too easily. It should be harder the deeper you go so there is a progression. But there are possibilities to address that problem. For instance girls in the catacomb would always run away from fight they cannot possibily win. So when your party does find a battle it will be against another party. That would mean that when you win a party battle you get a lot of stuff at the same time, but you still cant go deeper as a full party of high level oponents would wipe you out. But this system creates other problem. First the player could capture too many girls/items too fast. That could be solved by making party encounters more rare than single encounters. The second problem is a more technical one. The battle AI for party would have to be much more advanced. But its a possibility.

Also you may add one more battle class. I thought about such plenty of shadow characters as rogues, ninjas, assassins and so on. For example, warrior's main stat is Strength, while rogue's is Dexterity (or Agility, or something else). They may be able to use different spells (traps, skills, gadgets, maybe weapons), which require Dexterity.

This might be interesting. I don't know the amount of work involved but I will definetly look into that possibility.

[Froggy]

An idea I had before, and I know this would be really out there in terms of development, but please hear me out:

Integrate SWF into a (optional) paper-doll style utility for creating pictures for random girls.  A basic body (nude), a shorter one for the "lolita" trait too, maybe even a "curvy" body as well.  Overlays for traits such as "big boobs" etc.  A few common anime hair colors (black, blond, red, blue, green, pink, etc).  Now put it into three or four skin tones (ala Sims 2 style).

From there you can have actual graphics for items in the game that can be attached to your girl's paper-dolls.  Dresses, weapons, armor, shoes, etc, could all be easily stapled on (and removed) as needed.  So on and so forth for anything else you may want to add later, such as cat ears, demon girls, etc.

Now this may seem like a lot of work but I feel it has advantages over the current system, which namely revolved around scrounging around the internet for random hentai/ecchi pictures and (this is the part where things fall apart) finding matching pictures for basic, sex, S&M, beast, group, pregnant, etc.  Finding a picture is easy; finding a matching set for all those is pretty much impossible unless you feel like becoming an artist and doing them yourself.

So as long as you're going to become an artist, why not go for the method that lets you reuse you art effectively forever through variation & randomization?  Plus your distinct, random girls will actually look a lot more distinct and random.  Because right now if I've got three different bunny girls pulled from the catacombs, it does not matter what their stats, outfits, traits, or gear is - they're all going to look exactly alike because they're all going to be using the exact same picture.

I don't know about you, but I've gotten to the point in the game where I pretty much ignore the art itself.  I get sucked into the "tycoon" aspect & end up overlooking the hentai aspect.  A good paper-doll SWF utility built in might make me notice again, because between the random variables and my own decisions about what to give the girls, they would be changing & evolving into new distinct looks as I'm playing.  I would become a participant in the art and not just an observer - and so would everyone else playing the game, too.

Again, I know this would probably seem like a lot of work, but honestly if you look around (and can stomach) at the innumerable "cutesy/glitter" SWF paper-dolls out there that are apparently being cranked out by every vapid 13 year old girl on the planet... well, let's say the difficulty can't be that hard, can it?

[Froggy]

A few more, stat related this time:


Skills, Traits and Experience: Branch experience and levels into different areas of expertise, similar to before, but a little different.  Instead of "service" have there be things like "masseuse" "bartender" "security" "waitress" etc.  When experience gets full, they raise a level in that skill area only.  Learn by doing.

Ah but here is where it gets interesting: Traits would affect the rate of skill gain.  A high "combat" skill would gain skill in "catacombs" faster.  "Combat" and "charisma" makes for faster learning in "security".  "Beauty" and "Agility" would effect skill gain in "Stripping" and so forth.

So having high traits would not give a girl an instant-profit effect.  Rather, it would make the girl advance in some skills faster.  Having a low trait would not lock a girl out of a job, either, it would simply make her take much longer to get good at it.

Libido: Actually leaving that in but altering it's functionality to keep it interesting.  "Libido" would be a fluctuating stat.  It would continually increase until the girl actually has sex.  Having sex would satisfy her & thus lower her libido in proportion to how good the sex was for her.  Other traits could modify this, too; for example, "nymphomaniac" would increase libido at x5 speed, while a trait like "frigid" would make it lower at only 1/3rd normal speed.  So how does affect the game?  A girl with a higher libido would earn more tips whilst whoring, naturally, due to enthusiasm.  A girl with a lower libido would make less.  Higher libido would be more likely to willingly put out for the player avatar, low libido would "have a headache."  And (this is where things get a bit too realistic) a girl with a high libido for too long may just start boning the customers even if not assigned as a whore.  Which could be a problem when your star waitress, for whom being only a waitress you felt no compulsion to buy anti-preg potions for, starts screwing the customers behind your backs and gets herself knocked up.  Or diseased.  Or both.  Conversely, girls with high libido gain (see "nymphomaniac" above) would naturally make better whores because they'd make more tips per day (since their libido is refreshing faster, they'd enjoy more sex with customers before becoming pooped-out boring lays by the end of their shift).

Magic:  Magic should be an interesting stat, an asset in some girls and a liability in others, depending on how it is treated.  Magic could be used to enhance the effects of items that the girls (not the player) feel have a positive effect (beauty rings, combat enhancers, healing potions, etc) while lowering the effects of items that girls (not the player) feel have a negative effect (slave bracelets, control collars, mind control effects, etc).  So one one hand a high magic girl would be a bonus so long as she is willing to work for the player, but when she decides to get rebellious she becomes a lot harder to control as well.

Bribery: Who says it has to be gold?  Make an option for "government discount"  Your brothel now services the mayor & the cops for free.  Bribe effectiveness is based on how satisfied they are with your girls.  (TMI: This is one way that real professional pimps/madams do it.)

Beasts: Okay I've captured some beasts but what if I, personally, find beastality to be icky & don't want to have it my brothel?  What do I do with these critters?  Well, I could sell them to a zoo ($, positive public image) or I could have animal pit fights for gamblers ($$$, negative public image).

Inventory Management: Highlight girl's traits that are being given/altered by currently equipped items.  Easier to remember which traits are natural and which one's a item-based.

Legitimate Front: Money laundering effectiveness should be based as a percentage of legitimate income the place is bringing in.  Meaning that the Bar (and anything else innocent business you feel like adding) should have it's income create the first variable that effects how much of the income of the Brothel (and other not-so-innocent businesses) can be laundered.  A very profitable Bar (and Gambling Den, if gambling is considered legal in your game) could launder more money from the shady end of your income flow.  Likewise, if your Brothel is bringing in twice as much money as your Bar/Gambling Den, then expect to be able to launder a lot less - and gain more Suspicion from the government as well.  (TMI: Again, this is how reality tends to work.)

Jealousy: Having six different girls thinking that you're "their true love" should (at least potentially) cause problems -  just ask any musician.  Higher love should require higher upkeep/pay/gift bribes/etc to maintain as the number of girls that like you increases, otherwise is begins to decay back to indifference.

Philanthropy: Okay so you've got the mayor in your pocket, but what about the general public?  Well, there is obviously advertising, but what about your image?  Donate some money to the temple, or the orphanage, or a homeless shelter, etc.  Your good/evil ratio in the public eye will improve, and possibly even make it easier to recruit new girls because of it.  Again, in real life, look at how many soup kitchens Al Capone sponsored "out of his own pocket."  Why did he do this?  Because a bum who relies on you for his next meal is not going to tell the cops squat when he sees you sticking a large bag into your trunk.

Monster Girls vs Human: Give your brothel an "Exotic" rating based on the ratio of how many of these two types of girls you employ.  Then assign a similar rating (random) to customers who come in.  Some people may find your circus to be great, while others may be freaked out.  Over time, that random variable in customer tastes will change to whatever your brothel's rating is (basic economics of supply & demand), but the change would indeed take some time.  Completely changing your staff overnight may have negative consequences.

Legality: Akin to a "difficulty" setting, but more tailored to the game.  When starting a new game, decide what kind of city you're in.  Is it a wild freeport where prostitution, gambling, beast fights and slavery are all perfectly kosher?  Or is an uptight temple-dominated area where everything is considered a crime, there is no slave market, and the government is always up in your grill?  Or is it somewhere in the middle, for instance, gambling is legal (so your Gambling Den would never get raided by the cops) but the Brothel itself is still verbotten (and thus at risk)? 

This would, naturally, effect everything from bribery to public opinion to how many customers you get per day.  Before writing either side off, though, consider that the "anything goes" town is going to require you to have a lot more girls doing security & gangs stuck on guard duty as well, while in a strict town one you've spent enough to put the mayor in your pocket then you're now on easy street & pretty much immune to acts of violence from the opposition.

[jozsi1]

Hi again!


Graodearia


I understand your idea about stats, but I have an another point of wiew. An 20 range system, a lowest grade girl has avarage 7 points to her basic stats. To make my problem simple, take the idea, the girl have 4 basic stat, 2 of her sexual job, 2 of fight. If we give her the normal avarage score to her sexual job related stats, it means, the girl will have 2 stat with score of 10, and 2 stats with score of 4. So the girl will have a normal looks, and sex drive, but mentally and phisically will be extreme week. That means, she will be tired from a very few work, and will get back her work ability slowly. Thats why I recommend to use a bit higher scores. If the lowes grade is 9 avarge points to basic stats, it means a normal look and sex drive can be combined a close to normal stamina and mental stat, so that char can work about avarage amount.


The other problem is the randomity. If the number of points are too low, and the stats have randomoty, then it can be easily some characters, whose are totally useless. For example 9 and 6 with her job related stat and 7 and 6 of the other jobs.


The problem is the beginning. At start, I guess the players wont be able to get higher grade girls, only lower ones. And there can be a problem, when a player dont find any girl for rounds for an important job, because the randomity gives him only girls who arent able to do that. So an unlucky player must hack the game somehow (restarts, overwrites, etc...) to survive the first rounds, or have to abandon the game. While he probably done all well, just did not get the required resources for solve the situations.


But there are an another way. You can give all girls about the same number of points (maybe avarage 11). The difference of a grade F and an A girl is the traits. Low grade girls dont get too many positive traits, and almost all of them compensated by negative traits. High grade girls can have advancement by their uncompensated positive traits, so they can do their jobs on a better way by their special abilities, not by their basic stats.


I know, I show a different statistic system than you use, but as I pointed to you, the fantasy game based stat system focuses on battle system, but the game will be a brothel simulator, not a conquer the world and kill the dragons one.


So thats why I recommended you the stamina - mental - beauty - nymphomania based statistic system.


Gl for developing!

[DarkTl]

First the player could capture too many girls/items too fast. That could be solved by making party encounters more rare than single encounters.

Well, you can limit amount of girls which can be captured in one turn (after all, 2-4 girls can't guard more than one or two prisoners). Even if you don't use party system, low level girl still can't guard even one prisoner well enough.
You can also allow only one party on each catacomb level, or just one party at all.

And about AI, it would be great to have a good one, but perhaps it isn't necessary. Perhaps it would be more interesting to send into catacomb an organized group of girls, even if you need to use more simple battle calculations. Or maybe not, I'm not sure.

[CeeBod]

The combat system is turn based so adding 2 girls to a simgle party would mean ... The player would than capture some high level girls too easily. It should be harder the deeper you go so there is a progression.

Well one possible workaround could be to have the party reduce in size by one for every level descended - someone has to stay up top securing the rope-ladder/trap door/path back to safety/whatever excuse you can think of.  That way a party of 4 low level girls would be overpowered against the first level, and would give the player a reliable way of getting basic loot and the lowest level monster girls with less risk than just sending one girl, but if they try to reach the fourth level only 1 girl will be able to actually fight down there (and she'll definately get her arse handed to her, alone at that level!), as the rest are keeping the exit route clear.  Another option - same principle different excuse, with more wiggle room for balancing would be to have a requirement for prisoner guarding or loot hauling reduce the number of fighters.  You can even have it done as a player decision made each level:  "Your party clears the first level capturing 1 monster girl, xxx gold, and items x, y, and z.  Do you wish to descend to the 2nd level with 2 girls? (2 are needed to guard your captures & loot)".  Either way you can then set the max party size and balance to make sure that only a group of fairly high level girls has the chance of being able to get 1 or 2 of their number down as far as they need to be for a chance at capturing one of the elite girls.

[DarkTl]

Btw, if AI for party battles will be too much trouble, then the first girl can fight, second one (with high dexterity) can search for traps (hidden doors, items), third one can guard prisoners and so on.

[Ctwo]

So is this going to be a combat oriented game? While I think it is an important aspect of WM it isn't really the main focus. Too much control over it would detract from running the brothels I would think?

[Shilo]

Yeah, the game should not be all about combat. It should rather be like the original Sim Brothel games and their enhancements with additional focus on optional combat (and potentially gangs). And the ability to enhance it with custom girl packs, which has always been a strong point of this game compared to similar ones.


Maybe some of the features of this Sim Bro iteration might give you some ideas:

Played the latest SimBrother v2 version and it's really good. Maybe we can grab some ideas from there.

-The game has a big part of it's gameplay devoted to the player's interaction. Every day do you get a fixed number of Action Points (AP). Actions of the player in town require one AP each, for instance visiting the shop, the slave market, visiting locations (you can search several places in a location and sometimes find a bit of items and gold there, but it's more like a gamble since in 2 of 3 cases won't you find anything) and interact with girls.

-Instead of instantly hiring the girls in town for your brothel, you first need to romance them. Every location of the town has different girls available and the girls change their location every week. You start as stranger and have to lure them with smalltalk, jokes, insults, money, gifts from the shop, touching and kissing to become your girlfriend. Afterwards you can have sex with them and/or try to hire them for your brothel.

-Each girl has different characteristics that decide what kind of things she likes and what she doesn't. Attributes are "religious", "nerd", "slutty", "meek", "stylish", "lolita", their hair color and many more. Slutty girls will like it if you insult them to be a slut, religious girls don't like it if you talk dirty and lolitas prefer jokes on a "kids" level rather than the more complicated adult ones.

-When customers come to the brothel, each of them has an exact desire that he hopes to get pleased. Usually those are in the form of "Customer A wants a [handjob] from a [religious][nerd][blonde][none] girl. Whether or not the customer will be satisfied after his visit and increase the reputation of the girl and building depends on how many of the desired attributes a girl fulfills that is working there at the time of his visit and how good her skill points are at the chosen discipline (handjob). The more attributes match, the better the outcome. However, the girl still has a random chance to make the customer happy with her charm, depending on the amount of skill points for that.
You can assign one specific style to the advertising of each individual building, allowing you to control a bit what the customers want that will enter a particular brothel and thus making it more efficient to group girls of the same style in the same building.

-Girls also have a skill tree. Gaining XP and leveling up will occasionally award a point for that skill tree to the girl, so she can choose special abilities like "Naturally wet: Never needs lube", "Super tight: Sex with customer will always give at least a satisfied rating", "Lucky: May randomly find money when taking her time off work", "Girl is friendly and gains +1 charisma", "Nurse: Other girls in the same building heals faster". This is additional to stat points that can also be spent freely and are earned with every level up.

-Projects: Big projects like creating a book, calendar, photo session or movie cost a lot of time and money and need the player to work daily on them, as well as occupying a certain number of girl for the time of their creation. The stats of the involved girls influence the quality of the result.

-Not all brothels are equal. The first is just a wooden shack and has space for maximum of two bedrooms and a bathroom, which needs to be build separately. Later will you buy a cave which is suitable as dungeon for BDSM sessions. Before that can't you satisfy the [Fetish] demand. Once rooms are added to the building, they can be further equipped with better furniture. The old shack has only straw beds available and a bucket of water in the bathroom for slightly increased hygene level, but later houses allow more expensive furniture and more rooms like bars, casinos and so on. You can also buy way more buildings in that game than here, but they start off really shabby and you need to work your way up instead of starting with a real house like here. And things become really expensive in the end, but that guarantees a long endgame.

-It even has some kind of story goal: pay back a depth to some mafia guys. The dept is $500k and you have 5 years.

[Ctwo]

Since we're talking about combat anyways...
I think parties of girls is a bad idea. If you allow a chance for girls to be killed and/or injured during catacombs trips your increasing the chances of not just the girls in the party getting killed, but the girls your hunting too. Also ballancing how a party of girls interact with encounters vs a single girl gets complicated. I think its better to judge each girl invidivually though you might give a small bonus to combat if there are multiple girls of the same grade exploring the catacombs. In effect they form a party but the outcome is determined per girl, so having other girls there gives a minor bonus but doesn't override the basic senerio.
Also hitpoints. I think it might be better to offer a base number + con/str modifier. So HP = 20 + [10 x (level-1)] + con + str for example. Weak girls are at a slight disadvantage but there isn't a huge difference between them and high str/con girls. This is good since low str/con girls will also have lower natural defenses. If girls have naturally high defense and HP vs girls with naturally low HP and defense then you'll always win against lower str/con girls but never higher without an exceptional amount of equipment and luck.
That also bring up the question: Are girls always injured after combat? How many rounds are fought in each combat? Pre-determined number or some kind of give-up mechanic? There might be a second pool similar to HP used when a girl enters combat. Lets call it Will for now. Will = (beauty+wis+dex)/2. Each girl can take Will damage before any HP are lost. This way girls with high non-combat stats have a chance to be captured before they get beat up too much. Girls with high str/con will have higher defense too so they will take less damage per attack so their lower will lasts longer than a low defense/high will girl.
The A to E rating system for girls is a good way to introduce girls, but that system shouldn't limit girls you have from advancing stats or skills. I'd propose that there be a method to train girls to exceed their current ranking. It should be a slow process so it is faster to seek girls of a higher rank normally instead of training girls up. It might even be linked to gaining enough XP before you train the girl. For example lets say girls are capped on how much skill they can achieve based on their stats. Max skill = (stat1 + stat 2 +level)x5. Once a girl reaches max skill and has at least 1 level they get an option at a trainer to increase stats. After 4 weeks the girl looses a level but gains 0-3 points in stat1 and stat2. This way a girl has to have a lot of work before they can begin to climb ranks and the player is loosing a lot of work income from one of his best girls to get an improvement. Without this kind of system you won't see any girls from most series being introduced before B rank, with a huge number of S class girls. Not having any unique girls until the eng-game would be booring and very disappointing.