Pink Petal Games
Feedback => Bugs and Game balancing => Topic started by: tiamat343 on November 19, 2009, 11:30:29 PM
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One problem with this game is that it's really too easy to max out skills and looks. The ONLY distinguishing factors between girls are a few traits (most of which are just fetishes, which all act the same anyway).
I think it'd be better if a girl's total max skills were capped at a certain amount. For example, one girl might be able to reach a fairly decent max in all skills and looks, while another reaches 100% in a few while the other stats are low and having only average looks. This would also make traits like "psychic" actually useful, because it'd boost the cap besides maxing out magic/sex skills one or two weeks earlier. I mean, as of now, stat boosting traits are prettttty much useless.
I just don't think it's very interesting when all girls have looks maxed at 100% with 100% skills, nor does it make much sense. Morrigan, for example, is supposed to be much more attractive with 100% beauty and charisma, but it only takes a dress, shoes, and a few packages of makeup to take any common girl to that same level.
These maxes don't have to be absolute. Perhaps a regular dress increases looks by 8% or so, but a very very expensive dress will also increase looks max by 5% (making it more cost effective only once you reach the max, obviously). Or training can continue to increase past a girls "cap", but would be more expensive and take much more time. Something to spend all that end game cash on, anyway.
An alternative would be allowing girls to reach 100% as they have been, but make only certain traits/girls capable of going past that 100%. Really, that'd be the same thing I suggested above but I bet people would complain less about being able to go past 100% rather than being capped before it. I just personally think skills going above 100% is a silly idea. But whatever works.
Notice that this also gives more room for customizing brothels to service a few types of sex rather than all of them (perhaps specialize one for bestiality, for example, and put all the girls with relevant high skills in that one) meaning that buying more buildings has more meaning than just more rooms. I think this is an interesting possibility that wouldn't really have any point the way girls are currently set up.
So yeah. I've seen in other threads that custom girl modders obviously don't want to make their girls subpar for sake of game balance. Not trying to force it on anyone. I just think that this would make the game more balanced and fun (because it's more difficult to max, it gives you something to shoot for), and makes each girl more unique. Also, you can still make a girl as unique as you want, as opposed to other proposals such as limiting the number of traits.
Thoughts?
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Some of this has been suggested before, and I'll say here what I said then: something should to be done, for balance purposes. I won't say anything "has" to be done, because the current system actually works fine so long as you don't mind that all the girls are essentially carbon copies of each other in stats and looks, if not traits. Anyhow, what that something that should be done should be is very much up for discussion.
Really, there are three options:
1) change the way stats are computed, as you say here
2) have someone manually alter every girl's stats
3) set up a system to automatically and semi-randomly alter girls' stats
Of these three, I prefer the last option. Number two is by far the worst choice, as it is both arbitrary and time-consuming. Your option, the first one, isn't exactly *bad*, but in my opinion it's a bit tougher to balance, and couldn't really be put under player control. An automatic system would guarantee balance - or at least a pretty distribution of stats - so long as it's done properly, and allowing players to alter values for it would serve as a good difficulty modifier.
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I agree that something SHOULD be done to stop girls from being so much alike. It's not just custom girls though, I've actually seen a good number of custom girls with looks at 60-80% which is fine. But I've run into many many random girls already at 100%.
So yes, I agree something should be done. I don't know what, and i'm not sure how. But stats, looks especially shouldn't be so easy to max or find someone already maxed. Looks shouldn't be able to be maxed to begin with. Maybe add a cap that it can only be increased 20-30% because not even all the makeup and pretty dresses in the world are going to change a womans face or body to make her drop dead gorgeous.
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Of these three, I prefer the last option. Number two is by far the worst choice, as it is both arbitrary and time-consuming. Your option, the first one, isn't exactly *bad*, but in my opinion it's a bit tougher to balance, and couldn't really be put under player control. An automatic system would guarantee balance - or at least a pretty distribution of stats - so long as it's done properly, and allowing players to alter values for it would serve as a good difficulty modifier.
? It doesn't seem to me that semi random stat values is a very good idea. Random girls already have random starting stat values, and the point is that it's far, far too easy to reach 100% in any area (except looks, but pretty much every unique girl can hit that by now). I'm not sure how this option would be put under player control, either, except for the fact that random stats really don't mean ANYTHING beyond +/- another 3 weeks of training, at the most. What it does is make unique girls more generic, by being random (which defeats the point!). I'm not sure how my suggestion is tough to balance. It's simple: all skills, when capped, can only total to a certain amount. For example, with 10 skills (and possibly 1000%) you might set the cap at 700%, so I could have 4 skills max out at 100% and the other 6 at 50%. Now, this would take more time for girl creators if they choose to do this, but only because they're customizing the girls and making them more unique, which I don't think is necessarily a bad (or difficult at all, really) thing. Balance only comes into play when regarding that some stats are more useful than others. Combat? Totally useless. This, however, is more of a problem with how the game is currently set up. And it really doesn't pose a problem, either; more valuable skills can be weighted to be "worth" more, meaning a 1% decrease in cap of, say, regular sex might allow a 5% increase in service skill. Or 5% increase in looks would necessitate a 15% decrease in overall skill cap. However, I don't think it'd take very long and actually would not be a problem once skills are all actually balanced in of themselves.
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While the girl modders may very well be willing to add extra customization to their new girls, I would doubt that they'd be willing to go back and do a lot of editing on their old ones - and the shouldn't be expected to. Since there are already a hundred-ish already made girls, I think that completely revamping stat maximums and making them obsolete would be a bad idea.
I don't want to be too vague, here - by "semi-random", I'm looking at a nice bell curve distribution, meaning that there will be some great girls, some bad girls, and mostly average girls available at the start of the game.
You make a true statement in that it *is* too easy to reach 100% in any area - however, this is a problem with stat gains, not with the stat values. To me, it's a separate issue. It'd be much easier to keep the system that exists, and change how stats are gained to make it harder; plus, simply changing the stat maximums doesn't really fix the issue of stats being way too easy to max out. All you'd do is turn all your super-girls into mediocre-girls. What fun is that? It *should* be possible, albeit difficult, to get all your girls to 100% for those people who are OCD about that sort of thing.
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Really, I think it's all part of the same balance issue. There's too much money in the game at the moment. That means that the PC can afford to train his girls a lot more often than was intended. Once we tighten up the cash flow a little, I think a lot of the problem will go away.
I also agree that random girls are coming in too high at the moment, and that probably something special should be needed to get to that coveted 100%, but first things first. Let's try and get the cash balanced, and then we can see what else needs tweaking.
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Of course. However, as I think about it, I like the idea of introducing a means of stat drain more and more - I just can't come up with a good way to do it without it being completely arbitrary. I don't want it to happen on every rest period, since that would punish the lower constitution girls even further; I don't want it to just be a daily thing; events are too rare and too random to do it properly... perhaps make it a function of how good your matron is? I could see that as being reasonable once regular girls can become matrons. That way, with a truly exceptional matron, you could still get a full brothel off maxed-out women.
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That assumes the player even bothers to use matrons. Although I am against stat degradation as a whole, a better way to implement it would just be to have them degrade due to pregnancy. Realistic, logical, and actually gives you a reason to use protection potions/coat hangers.
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Hmmm... I guess I don't see your logic behind this being 'realistic' and 'logical'. I'm not really arguing the point (yet... ;) ); I'm just not understanding.
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We've already beaten this dead horse quite a bit, but one of the implementations of a level system I thought of could fix the issue. Cap skills and stats at (base skill/stat) + (X * level), where the proper value of X would be determined through testing. Levels should have a pyramid cost in XP, so each additional level becomes harder to achieve than the last. With a small value of X, training could become moot with this system, as girls would almost certainly make small gains in every stat/skill through working in between levels. With a large value of X, girls would quickly hit the hard cap of 100 for each stat/skill.
I'm not a fan of that system, though.
It could also be fixed with a level system by handing out skill and stat points at every level and doing away with all other means of gaining stats and skills. Give the player the option to have all girls level automatically and you get rid of the micromanagement problem. If the skill points available through leveling to the max level are insufficient to max out an average girl (and by average, I mean character-pack average), then a) girls become differentiated and b) skill/stat boosting items have a point in the mid to late game.
As an example: assuming the average character-pack girl has an average of 30 for each skill, and levels are capped at 20, then as long as each level gives less than 35 skill points to distribute, an average girl will never max out at 100 in each skill. This could be exploited by modders, as they could simply up each girl's stats to a sufficiently high average to ensure they all max out.
The more I think about it, the more I have to wonder what the point is. Since nearly all the girls are contributed by the community, and the tools to mod them are readily available and easy to use, any system that doesn't ignore the pre-packaged stats will be surpassed by those who want to "cheat" (for lack of a better word). If we make the game ignore those stats by default, what's the point of having them in the first place?
hmmmm.......... (long stretch of thinking to myself)
Ok, new approach. What if we have 3 sets of caps: a cap to each base skill/stat, a cap to the contribution from items, and a cap to the contribution from traits. The net skill/stat will be equal to base + items + traits, with the caps imposed pre-addition. So if skills are capped at 100, items at 50, and traits at 50, then a girl with a skill of 90, +30 from items, and +70 from traits will have a net of 170 (90 + 30 + 50 (capped from 70)). The total would be capped at 200 instead of 100, but girls without the appropriate traits would not be able to reach 200. The goddess of anal sex can hit 200, but the girl next door can't no matter how many times she takes it in the back door.
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Just going to put this out there, but it would be nice to be able to check what the in-game looks value would be while making the girls (and any other trait effects while we're at it) so that it would be easier to balance the girls before loading them, which could make it a lot easier. I've actually got some revisions I'd make if I could do exactly that since some things turned out a but higher than I wanted, but manually tracking down actual in-game changes (such as combat plus adventurer) and changing them is very time consuming to say the least.
Just something like a looks box that changes with traits and stats and a "+/- x" next to each stat that's affected by traits in the included girl maker would do wonders for making balancing my own (and presumably others') girls easier.
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I'm fairly certain the looks stat is just beauty + charisma / 2.
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That's right. Or at least, it was right the last time I checked, which was probably a couple versions ago.
@Bal, you should talk to Solo. He's the one that made the girl editor/creator, so he'd be the one to know how viable that sort of thing would be.
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If charisma and beauty change how a girl looks then why not adjust how much one stat effects it?
.75 for beauty and .25 for charisma ( I think it's .85 for beauty and .15 for charisma? Which isn't all that bad to begin with... but the randomizer doesn't seem to consider this.)
With the new buildings stats may have multiple uses anyways. Even though charisma offers a .5 for beauty it could offer .75 for advertising and something else (possibly even beauty) could add the extra .25
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A limit on stats has to be set or players will not feel theaccomplishment of reaching max stats. Therefore, base stats should becapped to best players enjoyment. On the other hand, to counteract thefact that all the girls are carbon copy of each other, allows skills topush stats pass 100. This allows the players to feel both theaccomplishment of optimizing and the feeling that his favorite girl(s)is unique (players can use editor to give skills to girls he likes andchanges the effect of skills depending on preference).
There's another huge problem in this game: it's way too easy. There'sno satisfaction in either capping girls stats, obtaining mountain loadsof gold, or any other things. There little feeling of accomplishment. Therefore, I suggest several radical changes to gameplay:
1. You should able to assign a girl as captain and make the girlsstats effect the gangs performance. By allowing girls to be captain ofa gang, stats like physical attack and magical attack don't suckanymore. This will also add a strategic element to the game to make itmore exciting and satisfying to win. Plus, this will add a strongfemale element to the game (some people find that sexually exciting).
1.1 That stats of your captains also effect training speed andimprove the gangs stats (bonus stats from captain should allow gangsstats to be over a hundred to make captain still useful when the gangreach max stats
1.2 Add abilities to the game that specifically makes certain girlsmore useful as gang captains. This will add more uniqueness to thegirls and make some better story elements. After all, I heard GuardCaptains, Paladins, Tacticians, etc to the game.
1.23 Examples of skills: Drill Instructor- increase trainingboost; Quarter Master- reduce gangs cost; Mary Sue- the captain cannotbe killed in the gang; Battle Craze- doubles attack and casualty rate;Adventurer- increase gold and items find; and etc.
2. As a result of making gangs more important to the game, the gangs need more to do something to do.
2.1 Create several different levels of the catacombs with differingaward quality and monster quality. This will also get rid of thecurrent catacomb imbalance by requiring higher gang stats to adventurein the lower catacomb with higher catacomb giving smaller rewards. Players will now need a balance of recruiting good girls to lead thegang and good gangs to advance to lower to get more powerful items andmore gold. A need for progression will make the game more enjoyable bygiving more accomplishment. Add superboss that makes player focuseverything they have to get the gangs and girls needed to win. (thiswill add replay values since players should not be able to optimizegangs/girls captain and the harem at the same time)
3. Suggestion #2 leads to my third point, an aimable goal to the haremgame. Greatest World Harem? Most Beautiful Woman in the world? Etc.
3.1 Much more upgrades to the brothel and allow only one brothel.Let me explain. More than one brothels is just unfun micromanagement(moving form one brothel to the next doesn't take much but doing it acouple hundreds time certainly gets old; making the game different eachday is where it's all at; more points on this later). Instead, allowmore options to upgrade your brothels. Instead of adding more rooms,the upgrades should have path: rundown shack > poor flat > smallhouse > etc.
3.2 Allow more costimization. You can purchase different terrainsaround the brothel that will have various effect (you can't have allterrains; you have to choose). You can upgrade/buy things likelighting, alcohol, food, music, magic show, etc. All these to increasefame and make your brothel famous. The more fame, the more customersand the more high class customers like kings,princes, celebrity, famousscholars, etc. that will improve your girls happiness or some otherbonus
3.3 Create a goal that can only be attained if the players put theirfocus to it. Make a story like element where your whorehouse (at ahigh enough fame) becomes the Forbidden Palace and the you just conquerthe world/country/city because your courtesans are too amazing. Generals too exhausted from sex to fight? Kings addicted to yourcourtesans and gave you the throne? Whatever you want the story to be,make the players work for it.
3.4 Ultra expensive items and bonus optained from mission/quest. Both for gangs captain and courtesans. Add the goal of creating theworld most alluring woman or the world saving captains.
3.5 As the prostitude ability increase, she should drastically gainmore gold per customers. This will encourage quality over quanitywhich will improve the game in several ways. Players can more easilyattach themselves on girls they work hard on improving. They will gainmore satisfaction in the accomplishment if they are attached to thegirls. Second, the lower number of girls that the player will managewill lower the micromanage so the players will feel less tedius. Taking care of 10 high stats girls are more statisfying more and lesstedius than taking care of 20 girls and so on. (currently, thedifference between a max stat girl and a girl straight from the slavemarket is rather small)
3.6 Allow the prostitude to gain skills. More feeling ofaccomplishment. (some skills can be gain from random events to addunpredictablity which lowers tediousness)
4 The brothel should have random events (customer accidentally burning rooms, wife looking for their husbands, etc).
4.1 This will reduce repetitive nature of the game and add unpredictable elements that give a challenge to the players.
5 Girls should have personality and events corresponding to them.
5.1 Increase chances of girls breaking out/running away/causing ariot/attacking you/etc based on their feelings toward the player, theirpersonality, and their obediance/loyaty/rebellious (whatever the gamecalls it)
5.2 On the opposite spectrem, girls that loves will you will getjealous, buy you gifts, give you some meaningful bonus, etc based ontheir feelings, personality, and other stats
On a side note, if you decide on adding jobs likewaitress/stripers/dealer/etc., make sure the jobs are actually useful. In 1.29, the strippers and dealers suck as a job. The whore joboutclass both of that in every single way.
If you're going to add waitress,security, dealer, etc. give a reason for the players to have that job. Here's some way:
1. Remove the abilities to hire goons, forcing the players to give girls waitress, barmaid, etc.
2. Girls working as waitress, barmaid, etc. can gain an exclusive skills/trait
There's some other comments I want to make but the todo list isn't clear so I'll keep quiet.
Hope my suggestion helps.
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Without trying to be a jerk, here are a couple comments, mate:
Point the first: making a giant first post is, by no means, a bad thing. However, starting it with "I suggest several radical changes to gameplay" is. You immediately put people off by assuming that we don't know what the problems are, that we don't know how to solve them, and that as a completely new face you're the person best equipped to make judgements.
Point the second: many of your ideas are already suggested, and in some cases, going to be implemented. Check the whole forum, get an idea of what's going on, and only then do your megapost.
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Without trying to be a jerk, here are a couple comments, mate:
Point the first: making a giant first post is, by no means, a bad thing. However, starting it with "I suggest several radical changes to gameplay" is. You immediately put people off by assuming that we don't know what the problems are, that we don't know how to solve them, and that as a completely new face you're the person best equipped to make judgements.
When I said "I suggest several radical changes to gameplay" that means "I suggest several radical changes to gameplay" and not "I know the problem and you don't cause you all suck."
On the second point, if my ideas happens to agrees with others, then great. Reinforcements. If my ideas are new, then great. Fresh ideas.
And I did indeed read some of the other suggestions and some of my suggestions does coincide with others. However, in my post I did not suggests several different ideas. I suggest one idea with several possible details. Perhaps I did not make myself clear with my previous post (I was running on too long anyway so I had to stop). I want this game to have replay values. All my suggestions is geared toward forcing to the player to choose. They can't do everything in one game. (to avoid the pitfall in my last post I'm just going to sum up)
1. Give multiple endings (gangs ending, catacombs ending, brothels ending, girls ending, player's family/happiness endings, etc.)
2. Each ending unlocks a small perk in a new game (more incentive to replay and adds some feeling of accomplishment)
3. Add a scoreboard: this still gives player a sandbox mode while giving incentive to optimizing their gaming and adds massive replay values
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Option one, we've been discussing and will probably happen.
Options 2 and 3 - nice ideas. Unlocking things for future games has potential, so long as we don't nerf the starting game too much, anyway. And a scoreboard is a nice idea, and a good motivator.
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I mentioned unlocking things for future games in another thread.
It certainly has potential and specific unlockables can be restricted from gameplay in some game modes. Such as "start with a rare item" wouldn't be available for Hard mode. But would be fine for Normal or easy. That kind of thing.
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That's right, you did. It's been a long day, this one :)
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One reason the characters all end up being so similar is actually pretty simple; girls packs are made by users. Users are not going to look through and put together image sets for characters that are unattractive and untalented. Try making a girl with 0 charisma and beauty and using her in-game. Not that easy to get her up to 100% looks, is it? Most people end up making characters who already start at 70%+ looks, and is thus a short jump to 100%. On a similar note, I dislike stat caps in any game as it implies it's impossible to do something. Nothing should be totally impossible in fiction. There is no reason a weakling can't eventually train to be a martial arts master when they don't have minor real-life details to worry about like jobs, chores or families. Is it unlikely a homely mortal could ever surpass the beauty of a succubus? Sure. Is it impossible? No.
Further more, keep in mind that with multiple girl packs is it entirely possible to have 100+ girls working for you. Do you want to micromanage 100+ girls and make sure they occasionally take training classes or whatever to break stat caps? Sometimes oversimplification is a good thing.
The only thing that should be looked at is combat skills rising from simply working in the brothel. I'm pretty sure they're not learning how to throw fireballs while screwing people all day.
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The only thing that should be looked at is combat skills rising from simply working in the brothel. I'm pretty sure they're not learning how to throw fireballs while screwing people all day.
Extreme S&M?
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Stat caps would go by level. So eventually all of those things are possible, it's just limiting their stats till they gain a level. Once they reach the max level the cap would no longer be in effect. I wouldn't worry about it though, I doubt we'll be using levels.
We'll see what happens with the new update and go from there.
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One reason the characters all end up being so similar is actually pretty simple; girls packs are made by users. Users are not going to look through and put together image sets for characters that are unattractive and untalented. Try making a girl with 0 charisma and beauty and using her in-game. Not that easy to get her up to 100% looks, is it? Most people end up making characters who already start at 70%+ looks, and is thus a short jump to 100%. On a similar note, I dislike stat caps in any game as it implies it's impossible to do something. Nothing should be totally impossible in fiction. There is no reason a weakling can't eventually train to be a martial arts master when they don't have minor real-life details to worry about like jobs, chores or families. Is it unlikely a homely mortal could ever surpass the beauty of a succubus? Sure. Is it impossible? No.
Further more, keep in mind that with multiple girl packs is it entirely possible to have 100+ girls working for you. Do you want to micromanage 100+ girls and make sure they occasionally take training classes or whatever to break stat caps? Sometimes oversimplification is a good thing.
The only thing that should be looked at is combat skills rising from simply working in the brothel. I'm pretty sure they're not learning how to throw fireballs while screwing people all day.
A 0% charisma can be turn into 100% in around 10-15 turns. Girls with 70% plus charisma isn't the problem.
The problem is a combination of the ease of training girls, the uselessness of traits, and the lack of incentive to play quickly.
Stat cap gives players both a goal and a sense of achievement once the goal is met. Removing stat caps all together reduce game length and some achievement and attachment factor in the game since the players will no longer tries to have a perfect game.
Besides which, I'm guessing the stats have a cap at 255 anyway.
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You seem to be confusing this with a single character training game. In Slave Maker maxing your slaves stats was an achievement, but it was also the only character you had to manage. If I have 40+ girls working for me, I do NOT care about them individually anymore. If a get a new girl at that point, I want to have them up to speed and making money quickly. Then move on.
What needs to be balanced is the ease of making too much money in this game, as this makes maxing out stats too easy. Yes, training with multiple girls raises stats a bit fast. However, pulling off 3-4 girls to train the new one quickly should be a MAJOR drain on my income. Right now, I can load up a fresh character with items and train her for a couple months without putting a dent in my cash reserves. This is the real balance problem.
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You seem to be confusing this with a single character training game. In Slave Maker maxing your slaves stats was an achievement, but it was also the only character you had to manage. If I have 40+ girls working for me, I do NOT care about them individually anymore. If a get a new girl at that point, I want to have them up to speed and making money quickly. Then move on.
What needs to be balanced is the ease of making too much money in this game, as this makes maxing out stats too easy. Yes, training with multiple girls raises stats a bit fast. However, pulling off 3-4 girls to train the new one quickly should be a MAJOR drain on my income. Right now, I can load up a fresh character with items and train her for a couple months without putting a dent in my cash reserves. This is the real balance problem.
Actually, in terms of net gold gain you are better off using girls as is without bothering to train them. Training girls to good stats actually causes you to lose gold.
Here's a generic analysis:
Given
new girl: gains 40 g per customer (on average)
new girl: gets 3 customer per week
trained girl (for say 2 months): gains 100 g per customer
trained girl: gets 8 customer per week
Number of shifts in 2 months: 4 weeks * 2 months * 2 shift/week = 8 shifts
Girls work 7 shift and rest for 1 shift
At least 2 experienced girls pulled off work to train new girl
Calculations
Don't Train New Girl
new girl: 40 g/customer *7 shift * 3 customers/week= 840 g (gold earned)
2 experienced girls = 100 g/customer*2 girls*7 shift * 8 customers/week= 11200 g
12040 gold gained total (if you trained new girl for 2 months, that's how much you are missing out on)
After two months of not training new girl, you can buy 12 new girls which will added 1440 g to your incomer per week (12 girls * 40 g/customer * 3 customers/week) (ignoring the fact that you buy the new girls steadily which actually makes the profit margin even bigger)
After two months of training new girl, the trained new girl will add 800 g to your income per week (100 g/customer * 8 customers)
Feel free to tweak the number for both trained and new girls to fit your experience but you'll still end up with the fact that training actually costs you gold.
Why do you people train then? Attachment and/or achievements. That and managing 100+ girls is tedious. Which is why I believe the game give for players to manage a smaller number of girls (incentive like events/and unique quality in girls to attach players to the girls, increase the scaling between girls stats and gold gains, and etc.)
Micronmanagement is only fun to a certain point. Afterward, it's just repetitive.
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Why take experienced girls off their shifts to train new ones? The training progresses just as fast if you get more new girls to train. You lose the opportunity cost of what the girls could have made while training, and gain a huge amount when they come off training. Given that the training algorithm is currently broken (the last girl training always trains by herself, and when training more than 5 girls, all others have the maximum number of partners regardless of how it would break down if they were formed into groups), as long as you have 5 or more girls training, you get the maximum increases. Constantly add new girls or rotate the girls in the list so that one girl isn't always the one getting hosed by the last-girl-in-the-list bug (or leave as is and accept that she will take longer to train than the others).
Also, you calculation misses out on the fact that the girl will eventually make up the cost of her training in the long run.
Untrained = 40g/customer*3 customers/week = 120g/week
Trained = 100g/customer*8 customers/week = 800g/week
net gain for training = 680g/week
Cost of training (assuming using trained girls to speed training instead of other untrained girls) = 12040
time to recover costs = 12040g/680g/week = 17.something weeks
It only takes trained girls 4.5 months to make up the costs. Less than 2 weeks if you use untrained girls to boost training.
These calculations are rough approximates and don't take into account the fact that untrained girls will gain stats over time, but it takes a long time to gain them without training. Someday I might run a simulation to test the training theory, though I think it will have to wait until 1.29.3 comes out, with the XML supported files (as I no longer have the older girl editor that saves in the non-xml format, and I would want to create test girls on a level playing field to eliminate as many other variables as possible).
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I ran the test, starting with 5 girls with 0's in every skill and stat, except Looks, Happiness, and Health, which started at 100.
I ran 2 simulations through 1 year. Both had the following:
1 gang on guard duty
1 matron
1 staffed strip bar
100g/week advertising
auto buy protect potions, healing potions, and alcohol
All girls freed, with 95% house take
Simulation A ran with 5 girls working in the brothel from day 1. Simulation B ran with 5 girls training from day 1, shifting over to working in the brothel when they maxed out their stats and skills.
After 1 year: Simulation A had ~3000g total; Simulation B had ~34000g total.
It is important to note that part of the difference is because working in the brothel only improves skills, it does nothing to raise stats. Training raises both stats and skills, at about the same rate. I might run another sim where the girls have maxed stats with skills of 0 to see if that helps the untrained girls any.
[Edit]
Ok, I ran the simulation again with all stats maxed except for Spirit and Confidence, with skills at 0, and what a difference it makes. It looks like skills play nearly no role in determining how much money a girl brings in. The only difference I was able to discern is that higher skills mean the girl enjoys her work more, the customers enjoy their experience more, and there are tips on occasion (though I suspect those are fetish-related, not skill based). Constitution (and maybe Libido) determines how many customers a girl can service, looks determines the base compensation per customer, additional compensation appears to be related to how much XP the girl has (either that or it takes very little skill [maybe 10%] to boost compensation to 100/customer with maxed out looks).
I think this needs to be changed. I'm fine with looks playing a role in the compensation a girl receives, but even a balls-achingly hot girl can only earn so much if she is totally unskilled. When I go to a restaurant, I'll tip the waitress a few extra bucks if she's hot, but if her service sucks, she's getting a shitty tip regardless of hotness. Granted, waitress does not equal whore (though some of them I've seen might as well be whores, the way they act towards their customers), but in sex, skill still trumps appearance every time. You can always turn out the lights if the Grand Mistress of Tantric sex is a butterface, but sex with Angelina Jolie would suck if she didn't know what she was doing (the bragging rights would be awesome, though).
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That does indeed sound like a bug. I'm deep in XML stuff right now, so I can't get right to it, but I'll take a look as soon as I can :)
Ok, I ran the simulation again with all stats maxed except for Spirit and Confidence, with skills at 0, and what a difference it makes. It looks like skills play nearly no role in determining how much money a girl brings in. The only difference I was able to discern is that higher skills mean the girl enjoys her work more, the customers enjoy their experience more, and there are tips on occasion (though I suspect those are fetish-related, not skill based). Constitution (and maybe Libido) determines how many customers a girl can service, looks determines the base compensation per customer, additional compensation appears to be related to how much XP the girl has (either that or it takes very little skill [maybe 10%] to boost compensation to 100/customer with maxed out looks).
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I ran the test, starting with 5 girls with 0's in every skill and stat, except Looks, Happiness, and Health, which started at 100.
I ran 2 simulations through 1 year. Both had the following:
1 gang on guard duty
1 matron
1 staffed strip bar
100g/week advertising
auto buy protect potions, healing potions, and alcohol
All girls freed, with 95% house take
Simulation A ran with 5 girls working in the brothel from day 1. Simulation B ran with 5 girls training from day 1, shifting over to working in the brothel when they maxed out their stats and skills.
Add another condition to your simulations. For both Simulation A and B, buy new girl as soon as you have the gold. For A, have the newly bought girls start working. For B, train them and then set them to work.
All girls starts with the same initial stats.
Keep track of the income for A and B in a year.
How are you doing the simulation by the way?
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Best way would probably be to back up your Characters folder and then remove all .girls files and all but one rgirls, and then put in that a single girl with the starting stats you want for your simulation. Then all the girls start identical.
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Add another condition to your simulations. For both Simulation A and B, buy new girl as soon as you have the gold. For A, have the newly bought girls start working. For B, train them and then set them to work.
If you run it under the conditions of the first set, the income gap gets larger in favor of trained girls. In the second set, the income gap gets larger in favor of untrained girls.
How are you doing the simulation by the way?
I created the 5 girls with the appropriate stats for each set of tests, then I chuck all my other girl packs and start a new game. On turn 1, I set up the brothel (buy strip bar, hire staff/gang/matron, auto buy potions, etc.), save the game and quit. Rename the save files to "Test.gam" and "Test.gam.mast" (enables cheat mode - which does many things, the only relevant one being that you can take an unlimited number of walks in the city each turn and each one gets you a free girl). Take 5 walks to get 5 girls, save the game, and quit. Load save under the brothel name (the game always saves under the brothel name, so the "Test" files don't get overwritten here - all cheats are now disabled), set house percentage to 95% for all girls, and assign girls to their appropriate duties (run A gets brothel duty, run B gets training duty). Let time pass, interfering when the matron screws up, the guard gang gets the shit kicked out of it, etc. Save frequently so you can go back in time if one of the girls dies on you. In run B, frequently check on the status of the girls training; it takes about 8 months for a girl with 0's across the board to get to max out all skills and stats (training time doesn't vary between sets). The 5th girl in the training runs will max out after the other girls. Put girls on brothel duty when they max out.
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it takes about 8 months for a girl with 0's across the board to get to max out all skills and stats (training time doesn't vary between sets).
How long does it take with a maxed out person helping things along? They're supposed to give a boost.
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To my knowledge, fully trained girls don't, and have never, given a bonus to other girls training. It is one of the ideas that has been thrown around the forum, but it hasn't been implemented.
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Then someone needs to change what it says for the training option, because it's said so from day 1.
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I never noticed that line in the description, though it has been some months since I actually read any of the descriptions, so maybe I just forgot. In any case, I'll run a test to see if a fully trained girl will accelerate the training of others.
[Edit]
I take it back - fully trained girls provide a HUGE bonus to training other girls. 4 girls with 0's across the board + 1 fully trained girl (placed in the last roster spot, so it doesn't matter that she gets the penalty for training "alone") equals 5 fully trained girls in about 3 months, instead of 8.