First off, I apologize if this post is a bit long. Secondly, I welcome any suggestions people may have, as I remain unconvinced that my solutions balance the game, at best they apply band-aids. I'm not even sure if they can be called balance issues either.
There are 2 sections to this post: Generators (random girls) and Cashflow (rewards and penalties).
The problem of Generators:
Currently the catacombs is a printing press of cash for me, and I'm not penalized for slaving and selling anything that comes out of it. For the record, most random girls that come out of the catacombs sell for about 1k each, and at 0 to (# of gangs in catacombs that week), I can make quite a pretty penny by selling bodies alone.
This problem is compounded by the girlpacks, which have better stats than any of the randoms. At this moment I have 224 folders, 21 of them randoms and I haven't used all of the add-on packs available yet. This means that all 5 brothels can be filled easily with uniques alone. Expanding the brothels a number of times (+5 spots per expansion) would solve this, but it would make management a nightmare in and of itself. Even without girlpacks, randoms are not really all that needed. This might be fixed with balanced generators, but getting free girls that you can sell with no penalty would fix that cash loss.
As it is, I see random girls as extra cash, and any additional generators of this type would make me even wealther at an alarming rate. The only downside to this is that it makes you evil in disposition, but since disposition is only really used to modifiy the chance of a government bust, there's no incentive not to do it.
The "solution" so far:
Making it so that any girl-generators are not so heavily abused (or have the potential tobe heavily abused). This generally means restricting access and making them conditional.
What I have thought of so far is to:
1) Make the generators hostile the more you farm them. Losses increase and gangs going down there take massive loyalty hits. Limiting the number of girls that the generator produces would also work.
2) Anything caputured from there would rather die than be branded after a certain point. This means they would try to flee the dungeon no matter what you do or do not do. If they do escape, they might also wreck havoc on your business and reputation. They might also be followed out, and would begin attacking your gangs, then your girls and property. This would provoke massive reputation loss and government inquery - perhaps even leading to the sealing of the generator.
4) Make random girls matter. As it is, they really don't do much else and with each new girlpack put out there, their impact grows even weaker. Using the disposition modifier in the game more would go a long way as well.
As a note to the above: I'm not picking on girlpacks - I like them myself. What I am saying is that most girls from the packs have above-average to stellar stats starting out and a faster return than a random girl. Even without swamping your game with girlpacks, it's still rather easy to collect the uniques without a single unsold random having a major impact. Granted, going vanilla (no packs) is more random-friendly, but after the 5th month or so, the number of demons in the dungeon becomes more of an annoyance than a benefit.
The problem of Cashflow:
Cashflow, the perpetual problem of games. I've found myself barely halfway through the year with more money than I know what to do with. I've tested this with vanella and modified (+girlpacks and LSItems) and it's always the same. Girl generators make for quick and constant money - fixing those fixes roughly half or more of the problems. The other half is what to do with the money you do have, or rather do not have.
The only penalty to going negative is you can't buy stuff. The only benefit to having money is that you can buy stuff. No matter what you do, your cash never really has an effect other than waiting a week or two to buy something.
The "solution" so far:
Low on cash, negative cash, shrinking business from previous attacks:
- Your better gangs leave you, and probably taking their payments out on your property and girls - or just taking your girls with them. Maybe also tipping the authorities on your activites? No one wants to be tied down to a business that's not growing, and these guys are only loyal so long
- Girls begin to try to run away as the gangs leave, knowingly tipping off the authorities the worse you have treated them, probably also taking everything that's not nailed down and on fire.
- Rivals will begin to attack more often, sensing weakness.
This should be interesting, having a game-start where you begin with a loan, or in the negative and have to crawl back up.
Positive Cashflow:
- Invest in the growth of Crossgate and the general "feeling" of it, such as if you want to play as the bad guy you can invest in more slave markets and such. Increases the reputation amonst the scum of society and lowers the reputation among the lawful ones. Vice versa if you wish to be the good guy, as the police patrol more often and the city gets cleaned up. Can also be linked to Disposition (or de-linked) so that you can appear to be the good guy while being evil to the core.
- Able to pay your gangs more, to secure higher loyalty. Or even pay patrolling gangs of your rivals for information or to turn a blind eye? Should link better with increasing the risk of farming generators, or with rivals doing the same to you.
- Increase of rival attacks to cut in on your business. You probably should expect raids to steal your girls and bribes to lower your gang's effectiveness (prevents 100% gang stats from steamrolling everything).
- I would put interesting developments here, but that's been done, and better, in other threads - such as the Personalizing Interactions thread.
If anyone has other ideas or extensions on the one's I put here, I'd like to hear them. If the developers already had ideas to do things like this - I apologize for spoiling your fun.
Edit: Spelling errors, changed crossroads to crossgate.