WM Dungeon Upgrades

[ShiningRadiance]

I hope this hasn't been brought up yet. <3

I find it strange that you have a dungeon, yet doing anything to strong or rebellious girls can cause them to beat you up, cause your gang to come in, and potentially die at their hands, or just beat you up and run away.

I was thinking of... maybe, upgrades to the dungeon.

Some ideas I had were different levels of upgrades, and including different dungeons for each brothel.

First upgrade: Remake iron bars out of the metal they use for slave bands or other such items that sap strength and will. They'll be weaker in fights, so you can fight them and not get the snot beaten out of you. If they're strong enough, or if they're magic-users, they can still fight you off.

Second upgrade: Binding equipment. Instead of letting them walk around in the dungeons, tie them up in a way that they can't resist what you want to do to them. There's a chance she'll get loose and fight you.

Third upgrade: Same as the first upgrade, but nullifies the incorporeal trait, as well, so they aren't so strong.

Fourth upgrade: Magic shackles, to lower their magic stat while they're there.

Fifth upgrade: Torture chamber, giving you the ability to torture more effectively. Filled with all sorts of equipment to that end.

Sixth upgrade: Whore chamber, forcing them to whore for you, completely bound. They wouldn't get paid as much as normal girls, and health wouldn't recover while in here, but there's no chance she'll kill customers, commit suicide, or run away.

Seventh upgrade: Training Chamber. Made out of a material that gives them the quick learner trait.

It would be a pretty big money dump, since you can upgrade several different dungeons several times, and you can put a staff to work there. It would also put a limit on girls, so it would prevent crashing when you have too many.

I hope this hasn't been brought up yet. </3

[Lorde]

Doc's currently working on (finished?) Revamping the battle code. So many of these probably wouldn't be necessary. Also, you can eliminate a lot of the running away stuff with strong guards | Having the girls health in the red by not feeding them. So it would be a bit redundant.

However, I'm all in favor of giving players more to spend our vast wealth on.  So maybe this could be a decent sink. (Also, the idea of upgrading a torture chamber brings out the deviant in me.)

[Dagoth]

Of course, once building room management is in, we could possibly switch the dungeon to being a room which you can build on any brothel, with the starting brothel getting one by default. Dungeons could then have a limited capacity, with upgrades or buying more dungeon rooms increasing the capacity.
It's a thought, anyway.

That does bring up another thought... rooms which require other rooms to exist before you can buy them. We could probably also handle room upgrades (also special accessories/furniture) this way, where the upgrade is only available when the base room is bought, and some upgrades might not even take up any extra space in the building.

[Bluebeholder]

How do the developers conceive the building system working? 

Space setup:
1. Finite slots
2. Volume system (from taking more slots to space units or sqr meters or feet)
3. X-com/Tetris-like where you fit the upgrades into a floor plan

Availability of improvements:
1. Total availability to all buildings
2. Based on core building (eg only shrine upgrades in a church)
3. Quest based (rewards for mission completion/scripts)
4. Girl traits / stats (eg need a girl with dangerous and/or BDSM of 100 to open S&M bar)
5. Tech tree (like most 4x games)

Personally I like #3 for space setup but it's probably a pain to program.  On availability as long as it's not 1 or 5 it should be good for most players and provide some depth.

[DocClox]

Finite slots, and a volume system based on slots. No floor plan management, although I wouldn't rule it out for the far future.

Availability mainly quest based, with the occasional thing that requires a certain stat or skill level to make it work.

GirlVsGang code is done but still needs hooking up to the rest of the game. I'll make that my next task after I finish the named daughter code. (Just the load to do now! Yayy!)

The dungeon upgrades sound like fun. Certainly we could do with elaboration in that area

[Bluebeholder]

Based on previous information, it sounds like the dungeon could be a small building that's tough to make money (significant reduction in satisfaction/customers except maybe S&M), an expansion for the primary brothels or stay the same. (I'm a proponent of the tiny building for unified mechanics)

Another thing will your house become a building too? (I want to pimp my pad and maybe increased walks)

So many ideas...  I need some more info for better direction; what is the primary role for the rooms to serve?
Bonuses: eg Baths, reduce filth, increase visitors, increase maintenance (just mods to base line)
Gates for advanced activities: eg gambling hall for open casino jobs
Manage basic settings: eg Barracks bedrooms 100 max girls, bedrooms up to 10 whores per shift +10 max girls (More business sim style)

Do you intend them to be unique per building/city or stackable?
Replaceable?
Have build times?
Modable!?

(perhaps a bit to excited here)

GirlVsGang code is done but still needs hooking up to the rest of the game. I'll make that my next task after I finish the named daughter code. (Just the load to do now! Yayy!)

Huzzah!

[ShiningRadiance]

Well, at the moment, the dungeon just feels like it's a room you put all of the girls with no real security. You'd think with enough money, you'd upgrade security past your guards.

Last night, I also thought of different upgrades, in the opposite direction. Upgrades like magically scented metals that would increase, rather than reduce spirit or confidence, in place of the special material that would do the opposite. Branching paths of upgrades for different playing styles.

[sgb]

On the flip side, if you make it essentially impossible for a girl to resist and/or escape there's no longer any reason at all not to brand everyone and everything.  Upgrades that make torturing more effective or something would be one thing, but I don't think security upgrades would benefit an already easy game.  The fixes to the combat code should take care of things in this regard as others said.

[DocClox]

Last night, I also thought of different upgrades, in the opposite direction. Upgrades like magically scented metals that would increase, rather than reduce spirit or confidence, in place of the special material that would do the opposite. Branching paths of upgrades for different playing styles.

Interesting. Do you want to elaborate on that a little? I find it much easier to think up Bad Stuff than to work at the other end of the spectrum.

[ShiningRadiance]

Well, you can upgrade your dungeons and brothels to make them nicer, and raise girls' spirit. Maybe include an upgrade for cameras in the girls' rooms at the brothels, to hasten guards' response, to make them feel safer. Or decorate the place with flowers. You can have "High Class" accommodations, but I've always thought where they live and where they work should be separate. That too can be a gold dump, since you'd have to buy their homes, as well as the brothel.

It would open up several possibilities, at the least.

You'd have an apartment for the girls to live in, and you can send a certain number of them to the brothels. That number will actually work there. You can buy different apartments to allow different accommodations. Before you can get "Adequate", you need to buy it.

Make the costs go up as the levels of accommodations become more varied, and lower the cost of actually setting them there.

It would make a bit more sense than being able to set a girl to high class, then the very next day, to adequate. How would you do something like that? Send in your gang to hammer the place to the ground?

An alternate way of doing this is... to make it, like brothels, that you can buy apartments in better and better parts of Crossgate. But the apartments are basically all the same. The only difference is that you can upgrade the ones in the better part of Crossgate further and cheaper than the ones in the worse parts. In the worst one, you can't even hire a maid for a realistic price, because they fear they'll be enslaved there. In the best ones, you can hire a whole team to take care of the place. The worst ones are much more likely to be attacked, and girls kidnapped, if you don't protect it with your gang. As it goes on, you can include a security system for a very high price on the worse ones. Basically, you'd be paying the builders much more to upgrade it because of fear.

Sorta goes on like that. I sort of went on a tangent there. I get ideas all the time...

___________________________

But keeping with the idea of "good" dungeon upgrades... it would play out essentially the same way. You can include candles, a secured hot springs for them to bathe in, floral patterns... you can even include a job for girls to talk to them instead of torturing them, which will lower their fear and hate of you, and increase their happiness. For each girl you put on that job, they'd do 10 conversations with the first girls in the list that haven't been talked to that day.

Understand, or do you need more?

[d31r3x]

I assume that apartments are for high-accomodation free girls only, aren't they? I mean, historically brothels tend to be both working place and living place for whores girls (from ancient roman lupanaria). I think it's a way of optimization: 1 brothel = 1 guarding gang + 1 spying gang; 1 brothel + 'n' apartments = 1+n guarding gangs + 1+n spying gangs (+unneccessary micromanagement, because I hate micromanaging but only if you don't like micromanagement).

On the accomodation issue, I think one way could be forcing player to "build" or pay for better rooms to have the option to raise girls accomodation. To put it simple: you could pay 5000 for five additional rooms, and beside that you could pay a variable amount to improve all your brothel's rooms 'support' (5000 very poor -> adequate, 10000 adequate-> good...) That's the way to get rid of the 'goon with a hammer' way of lowering accomodation: let's think you don't really change the actual room, but just stop putting fresh flowers every day, change russian caviar and toast for onion soup, do the cleaning / washing / ironing less often (once a day->once a week 'This is not an hotel, bitch') and maybe move that expensive Van Gogh to the cellar.

I think that could be coupled with limited use of external apartments for high class free girls accomodation, or even using them as covert brothel extensions for parts of the city were prostitution is necessary and lucrative but brothels are banned because of hypocresy (Nobb Hill, Northshade), building a brothel is too dangerous so you buy an old apartment and send a few cheap bitches girls just in case they don't return (Spark End), strict religious vows of celibacy make difficult for church's high priests to allow a brothel in their domain (Temple District) or maybe city regulations on business and urbanism don't allow brothels near 'flowrishing trade and touristic interest centers' (Pinchpenny).

On 'good' dungeon upgrades, I reaaally like the 'talker girl' job -because I tend to think about it as psychological warfare (wicked mean bastard I am). Iron Will, Fearless girls!!! Oh, crap, torture doesn't seem to work!!! Calm down, dungeon owner: just put a mean and intelligent psyops bitch in the same cell, let her fake she's just another prisoner to gain the victim's trust and watch as that insidious cunning (linguist) slut gets the job done!

Oh, shit, that was intended to be a 'good' upgrade.  Sorry.

[DocClox]

Maybe include an upgrade for cameras in the girls' rooms at the brothels, to hasten guards' response, to make them feel safer. Or decorate the place with flowers. You can have "High Class" accommodations, but I've always thought where they live and where they work should be separate. That too can be a gold dump, since you'd have to buy their homes, as well as the brothel.

I can think of other benefits from cameras in the bedrooms, too But yeah, the building management stuff (which I'm going to get to right after the lua code) includes nicer apartments, so you can pamper your girls as well as subjugate them. Separate housing ... Hadn't considered it, but I don't see why not. A bit of a coding challenge to separate non-work accomodation form work only bedding from work and accomodation combined, but it fits with some of the other ideas I had in mind.

But keeping with the idea of "good" dungeon upgrades... it would play out essentially the same way. You can include candles, a secured hot springs for them to bathe in, floral patterns... you can even include a job for girls to talk to them instead of torturing them, which will lower their fear and hate of you, and increase their happiness. For each girl you put on that job, they'd do 10 conversations with the first girls in the list that haven't been talked to that day.

Understand, or do you need more?

I got the basic idea of positive upgrades. Having (in effect) gilded cages where your chat sessions were more effective is basically sound. The thing that blew my mind was what you said about scented metals. I mean are we talking about manacles with the fragrance of jasmine and rosewood?  Steel bars infused with the essence of apple and cinnamon?

It's an intriguing idea, but I think I have too many Y chromosomes to just run with it given only the basic concept...

[Lorde]

On 'good' dungeon upgrades, I reaaally like the 'talker girl' job -because I tend to think about it as psychological warfare (wicked mean bastard I am). Iron Will, Fearless girls!!! Oh, crap, torture doesn't seem to work!!! Calm down, dungeon owner: just put a mean and intelligent psyops bitch in the same cell, let her fake she's just another prisoner to gain the victim's trust and watch as that insidious cunning (linguist) slut gets the job done!

Oh, shit, that was intended to be a 'good' upgrade.  Sorry.

Oh torture works on them, It just takes a loooong time. Using the interact menu speeds things along of course. But yeah, having someone in the dungeon slowly perverting the girl is just to cool not to have. 

I got the basic idea of positive upgrades. Having (in effect) gilded cages where your chat sessions were more effective is basically sound. The thing that blew my mind was what you said about scented metals. I mean are we talking about manacles with the fragrance of jasmine and rosewood?  Steel bars infused with the essence of apple and cinnamon?

Just think of them as working on the subconscious level. You basically build the brothel with scents that relax and calm the girls. This being a setting steeped in magic, you can always have better more effective scents down the road, they of course being way more exotic. (Remember Sucubus Milk?  ) or am I missing something in the concept?

[DocClox]

Just think of them as working on the subconscious level. You basically build the brothel with scents that relax and calm the girls. This being a setting steeped in magic, you can always have better more effective scents down the road, they of course being way more exotic. (Remember Sucubus Milk?  ) or am I missing something in the concept?

Yeah. I just want to make sure that I understood the idea correctly. Also I was hoping for some ideas about metal/effect/scent combinations, aromatherapy not being my strong suit. Although it might be easier to develop the idea of having fixture and fittings for rooms, and implement these as an XML addon.

[Lorde]

Yeah. I just want to make sure that I understood the idea correctly. Also I was hoping for some ideas about metal/effect/scent combinations, aromatherapy not being my strong suit. Although it might be easier to develop the idea of having fixture and fittings for rooms, and implement these as an XML addon.

The gist of aroma therapy is that it works on a subconcious level to relax ya. It's not my strong suit either but psychology (and coincidentally pop psychology) is. What people that practice Aroma Therapy fail to realize almost wholesale is that it's not the aroma but the memory that aroma can induce that makes you happy or sad. So things like Lavander or Jasmine might have 0 effect on a person. However, if for example, someone where to have happy childhood memories and associate those memories with rotted fish...

However, in context of the game, I don't think you have to go that in depth into it. Aromas might be a good jumping off point (Brainstorm wise) for magical building materials that create the same effects. Cheaper|mundane materials have no bonuses or even have negatives. More exotic | Pricey materials give bonuses with some penalties for balance. With the really rare stuff giving big bonuses to both whores and customers, but you would probably go bankrupt trying to build a wall from the stuff much less an entire brothel.