Author Topic: balancing girls  (Read 18639 times)

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Offline letmein

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #15 on: November 25, 2009, 12:39:55 PM »
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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Offline lordyar

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #16 on: November 25, 2009, 02:54:55 PM »
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

Offline DocClox

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #17 on: November 25, 2009, 03:34:32 PM »
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.

Offline Mehzerz

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #18 on: November 25, 2009, 04:45:43 PM »
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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Offline DocClox

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #19 on: November 25, 2009, 05:58:16 PM »
That's right, you did. It's been a long day, this one :)

Offline sgb

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #20 on: November 26, 2009, 04:00:47 PM »
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.

Offline Alugere

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #21 on: November 26, 2009, 06:41:50 PM »
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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Offline Mehzerz

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #22 on: November 27, 2009, 01:09:45 AM »
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.
Starter girls image additions progress:
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Offline lordyar

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #23 on: November 27, 2009, 08:37:42 AM »
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.


Offline sgb

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #24 on: November 27, 2009, 05:10:38 PM »
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.

Offline lordyar

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #25 on: November 27, 2009, 06:42:23 PM »
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. 



« Last Edit: November 27, 2009, 06:44:21 PM by lordyar »

Offline zodiac44

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #26 on: November 27, 2009, 07:29:49 PM »
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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Offline zodiac44

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #27 on: November 28, 2009, 12:39:16 AM »
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).
« Last Edit: November 28, 2009, 01:14:57 AM by zodiac44 »
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Offline DocClox

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #28 on: November 28, 2009, 05:18:54 AM »
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).

Offline lordyar

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Re: balancing girls
« Reply #29 on: November 28, 2009, 11:43:00 AM »
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?
« Last Edit: November 28, 2009, 12:08:58 PM by lordyar »