HentHighSchool Development Forum

This thread is for sharing feedback on BK gameplay and balance, including discussing suggestions of modifications or new features.

Please keep these separate from bug reports.

Hi Goldo!

There's one thing I've been wanting to discuss for a while now - the ninja hunt in chapter 2.

Basically, you have to find 3 ninjas, 3 times each. There's always 6 possible places for them to hide. 3 * 3 * 6 = 54 tries required in the worst case.

On top of that, you can only search once per day, so this takes potentially 54 days to complete. Even on average, you need a month, searching every day.

I've started to savescum by now, making me feel like I'm cheating. :(

Could you include something to make finding the ninjas easier? E.g. some item that helps you locate them. Or you pay Suzume and she helps you. I could even imagine this being the hook for all sorts of H-events (from "energy transfer" to "owing favors")

Thanks! Interestingly, ninjas used to spam always in the same location, but someone complained it was too easy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. ^^

First, you should know that the original location is not actually randomized but hard-coded:

Spoiler

Code Select Expand

# First location is set, then it's randomized
        NPC_narika.loc = thieves_guild
        NPC_mizuki.loc = beach
        NPC_haruka.loc = prison

[close]

So if you know where to look, it only takes you a maximum of 3 + 3 * 2 * 6 = 39 tries, and an average of 21 days (three in-game weeks). Granted, this doesn't address your point for a first no-spoiler playthrough.

I like your idea of adding an item or NPC interaction to make it an additional small goal for the player, but I feel at this point like I may be creating more work than necessary for myself...

Let me try to address your point in an easier way. My proposed solution would be: once a location has been used by the ninja, remove it from the location pool to choose from for the next spawn.

This would bring down the max odds to 3 * 6 + 3 * 5 + 3 * 4 = 45 tries, with an average of 22-23 days. And if you know where to look the first time, only 3 + 3 * 5 + 3 * 4 = 30 days max and 16-17 days average which is acceptable I think. Suzume could make it clear in dialogue that it is not worth searching the same location twice.

It's a fun quest on the first playthrough.

However, at least for me, trying to guess some random locations had become tedious already in the 2nd playthrough. Also, it puts a high (random) hurdle in the way if you're trying to speedrun, and there is nothing you can do to speed up the process through wit, strategy, gold or any other means (other than plain cheating).

Your proposal would help some. Also, it would reward at least the most basic form of strategy - not searching the same locations twice.
One more low-effort idea I have is to allow searching for ninjas at least twice per day. Would not lower the total AP cost, but at least lower the duration. (which is my primary concern)

Well, I have to admit that I'm not a fan of games of chance in the first place, especially if there is no way to tip the scales in my favor. ;)

I see your point about speed-running, but allowing searches for a limited amount of times that isn't 1 is potentially very confusing for the player. What I could do instead is allow for one search per district.

The effect would be to incentivize players to follow all three side stories at the same time, which I am not 100% sure is a good idea. But this would triple the efficiency of the chase, so good for addressing your concern.

This idea sprung up while I was putting together a Noi (https://dorohedoro.fandom.com/wiki/Noi) pack. What if we could hire girls as bouncers? Effectiveness scaling off of body, constitution, obedience. They could contribute to security, mood/fear of other girls (depending on how you order them to act) and take on the occasional client during slow nights.

Quote from: doruido on Jun 09, 2022, 10:48 PMThis idea sprung up while I was putting together a Noi (https://dorohedoro.fandom.com/wiki/Noi) pack. What if we could hire girls as bouncers? Effectiveness scaling off of body, constitution, obedience. They could contribute to security, mood/fear of other girls (depending on how you order them to act) and take on the occasional client during slow nights.

I've had a similar idea for a while on my drawing board: Make all menial workers (ad girls, bouncers, maids) individual girls with pictures and stats, requiring the player to hire them one by one instead of using the bar setting. Of course, they would be eligible for a roll in the hay with specific events.

This could even allow for "mini girl packs": girls that do not have enough pictures to pass as a girlpack but could be used as workers with a couple of H events.

While the idea is cool in principle, it is a lot of work and not a priority over developing the story.

I'd like to ask you guys a question: as the difficulty system is now an integral part of the game, are there some other mechanics that it should influence?

Specifically, I'm thinking of:
- Security, and the frequency/severity of security events
- Skill upgrade points that girls receive upon leveling
- Love/Hate and Fear/Trust and how easy it is to build with a girl

This would all contribute to make higher difficulty more challenging. But is it needed?

I look at the other end.   The "easy" end.   And I think that all three would be welcomed for the super-easy mode.   Especially making security events rarer, and disabling the worst of them.

I wouldnt mind it. But it will sure make a lot of "why" on the F95 forum ;D

Quote from: Goldo on May 31, 2022, 03:08 PMLet me try to address your point in an easier way. My proposed solution would be: once a location has been used by the ninja, remove it from the location pool to choose from for the next spawn.

This would bring down the max odds to 3 * 6 + 3 * 5 + 3 * 4 = 45 tries, with an average of 22-23 days. And if you know where to look the first time, only 3 + 3 * 5 + 3 * 4 = 30 days max and 16-17 days average which is acceptable I think. Suzume could make it clear in dialogue that it is not worth searching the same location twice.

Even easier, have "hunt for ninjas" button deactivated in locations previously caught at.

Not a big fan of the ultra-challenging run myself. Coming at it from a "normal" perspective:

I'm not against adding these things, but is it needed is a different question... I don't think it's needed at this time.

We don't know what challenges will present themselves in the later chapters. I hope there will be some more twists and turns which will ramp the difficulty up slightly towards the end. We have no idea how high the final hurdle will be, even on normal mode.

But while we're discussing things difficulty could influence, how about MC starting stats or stat-growth? (Strength, Spirit, Charisma, Speed)

I do typically play on the harder settings just to keep things interesting


- Security, and the frequency/severity of security events

I find these to be far more annoying than challenging.  Particularly those that arbitrarily injure a girl and reduce their stats.  Buying weapons does counter that, but the item system is a bit slow on my machine so I rarely do so.  Having some risk and reward built into them would be more interesting, more of the beating up insane customers and taking their wallets.  Maybe even capturing ninja-trainees during those events and turning them into your slaves would reward the strength style and staying home to guard.

- Skill upgrade points that girls receive upon leveling

The escort tree seems fairly weak, especially early game.  Getting group whores early is (nearly?) impossible and thats a large part of the early escort tree.  Maybe switch the early and late talents there to better align the perks with game phase.  Or a perk that would increase a chance of the girl getting a whoring opportunity when working jobs, an escort turning tricks while acting like an "proper" companion. 

If you were just asking about skill points given per level, those seem fine.  Maybe a bit too much as there isn't much ROI on buying skill boosting consumables from G or the gift shop, but that could just be the cost of those alone.

- Love/Hate and Fear/Trust and how easy it is to build with a girl

I find the Love-Trust to be far more favored in the game.  It more effective to dump points into social, train the girl at her pace and have her work jobs as low rank jobs make more gold than low rank whores.  And that double dips by having happy girls gain skill points faster than angry girls, there needs to be some reason to be an ass for that playstyle to make any sense.  Either by making early game whores more profitable (A good dancer will make 80-100 gold in chapter 1, a good whore will struggle to make 50 with far more player actions invested), or giving some bonus to fear to counter the bonuses from love.  Maybe something like additional customers per job or a reroll of of bad rolls to simulate the girl being afraid of disappointing you.

I do enjoy being the evil sometimes and balance seems to reward good players a lot more.

- Security, and the frequency/severity of security events

I feel a bit similar to SK here. The harsh security events almost forces you into investing into high security. I never buy weapons for my girls because I feel like my only choice is making sure the security breaches never happen in the first place. (To be honest, I don't remember what the weapons even do)
Some events, especially the brawl, can even cause random game overs. This is true especially on higher difficulties (but can probably happen even on normal)

My current strategy is always having enough security to have low or very low threat. Also, I quickly buy the furniture giving you more crazy customers, because your guards will then beat them up and take their money, making security pay for itself.
I think the effects of more/less security should be more gradual and not so highly random, before you start finetuning/balancing security.

- Skill upgrade points that girls receive upon leveling

I think this is basically in a good spot right now. Basically, I recommend to never even approach these two extremes:
*) Having so little points that you can make almost no decisions
*) Having so many points that your decisions do not matter at all, since you end up with all perks, anyway

In general, I feel like the difficulty should mostly come from having to think more about your decisions, and not from having less options.


- Love/Hate and Fear/Trust and how easy it is to build with a girl

I agree with SK that going the Love route seems stronger. At some point, the girls are willing to work almost for free.
Personally, I feel this part of the game system would benefit from an overhaul. I would expect the girls to be less greedy if they're afraid of you, not the other way round.
In general, I think Love might be better off provide moral bonuses instead of reducing upkeep. (You can pull the upkeep slider almost to 0 if they adore you)

To be perfectly honest, I haven't tried going the evil route for years now, so I don't remember what the bonus of going evil even is.

The basis (how fast you gain love/hate and fear/trust) seems fine to me. It takes a while, but is not tedious.

Hello everyone !
So I have been grinding this game for a bit now and I trully love it and noticed some things that were actually a bit frustrating to say non the least.
1) The limited number of actions per day and how they are managed overall and what actions require action points. Mostly everything important requires an action point in the game and it quikcly became frustrating to work my way trough everything with action points being so little specially going into mid game.
   Personally I would set the girl's training and such not to require action points and everything alltogether as weird as it sounds. Making the game in my opinion a bit more free to go trough and it would help focus on exploration later on in the game instead taking in consideration the game has a story playtrough as well.

2) The ninja game is a bit ridiculous as the times you can look for a ninja girl is a bit frustrating to deal with. Had to actually save the game and retry to get trought that bit to advance into the story a bit faster as it felt a hit or miss when going trough.
   I don't feel like it should be completely like that but only one search it makes it a bit hard to go trough. I didn't check if the spawn of the ninja's is random but if it is, increasing the number to 3 or 4 searches out of 6 possible locations will make it a bit smoother with a better hit or miss chance.

3) Training the girls stats: I personally feel like randomness with stats is really weird and being able to completely control the way a girl's playtrough is important. I like the idea of the talent trees but it can become a bit restrictive and annoying as well.

   To give away an example: I had a girl with bride and slut talents going trough but high refinement, low body, low beauty, which was a bit of a hassle to place with the idea that she will either be a slut or geisha or anything like that which made it hard to go trough with that girl.
   A personal thing I would like is that the zodiac ( talents ) should be one random or none at all which would give you freedom to decide the startup of the girl instead. Moving onto different talent trees to be done after you finished the first one so so you can dictate a flow and rng not to be a complete thing in regards to that. RNG in grinding games is a bit of a hassle not going to lie.
   Training the girls also is a bit awkward, while on high stats you can decide a bit how a girl will be within the following stats :
Charisma, Obedience, Libido, Sensitivity, Constitution are easy to go trough stats, Beauty, Refinement and Body are the hardest to go trough to get right and upgrade. And I think at a certain point mid game you could obtain training as a master to directly influence stats as you wish instead of random chances in sexual acts could go a lot better into getting those girls properly trained.

Another thing I noticed that masochist girls will end up being hateful towards you and their talk options are really awkward and not optimized.
Normally I would like her to still love me though she is masochistic, but if you push her too much she still ends up hating you instead. I might be doing something wrong but I think when a girl is masochistic, the more you push this trait the more she would end up loving you and dialogue options to be different when she is trully dominated.

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 07, 2022, 07:15 PM1) The limited number of actions per day and how they are managed overall and what actions require action points.

Upgrade your speed on level up.

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 07, 2022, 07:15 PM2) The ninja game is a bit ridiculous as the times you can look for a ninja girl is a bit frustrating to deal with. Had to actually save the game and retry to get trought that bit to advance into the story a bit faster as it felt a hit or miss when going trough.

True, even with a touchscreen there seems to be about 33% chance that a hit actually registers. It is annoying, but it doesn't really cause the story to drag, since you don't actually need all of the ninja interactions to progress right away, and the timing in which I typically do it seems to match with the pacing of my brothel upgrades quite well.

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 07, 2022, 07:15 PM3) Training the girls stats: I personally feel like randomness with stats is really weird and being able to completely control the way a girl's playtrough is important. I like the idea of the talent trees but it can become a bit restrictive and annoying as well.
I think at a certain point mid game you could obtain training as a master to directly influence stats as you wish instead of random chances in sexual acts could go a lot better into getting those girls properly trained.

I think the biggest point of making rng so critical to a game like this is making each girl feel unique and upping replayability. if you can control every stat of every girl and mold her exactly as you like, every girl will feel the same and her personality and traits simply become flavor text. Though I think that you have a decent point about training in the mid game, but I think those traits are meant to be covered with items + class trainings.

I do see your point of view but, I think there's also the possibility of having myself a contrast over the situation itself.

When I see a brothel king, a slaver, and such, I think of somebody in power and capabilities to train and control his slaves. That is my point of view on it.
Though I do agree with you again, on your points of view. They should offer a bit more flavour to the girls overall. But The girls themselves can be random, as my current playtrough the game again I decided to go around making girlfriends so I can see their stats beforehand and make a choice free of money use.

Also because my purpose is to experiment and try different things with different girls, I also went ahead and modified the game files so there would be no fear and love daily modifiers.I thought by itself that is a bit meep as it forces you to spend unecessary time into talking with the girls daily to make sure love and fear at a decent level.

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 07, 2022, 07:15 PMHello everyone !
So I have been grinding this game for a bit now and I trully love it and noticed some things that were actually a bit frustrating to say non the least.
1) The limited number of actions per day and how they are managed overall and what actions require action points. [...]

You are aware of the Master bedroom feature, which allows you to give free training at night, and the farm? Both are AP free. You can also increase your Speed through leveling or items.

Quote2) The ninja game is a bit ridiculous as the times you can look for a ninja girl is a bit frustrating to deal with.

You might be interested in this previous discussion (https://henthighschool.net/index.php?msg=283).

Quote3) Training the girls stats: I personally feel like randomness with stats is really weird and being able to completely control the way a girl's playtrough is important. I like the idea of the talent trees but it can become a bit restrictive and annoying as well.

I strongly disagree with this one, for design and world-building reasons.
Design: Giving players 100% control on girl traits is sure to result in completely identical builds and gameplay for, every girl, with very little incentive for players to get out of their comfort zone and try new combinations.
Realism: A world in which every girl is the same and has no specific quirk or skill set is not really believable. The girls are not blank slates, they have history, and some things they're naturally good or bad at. I think this is important for flavor.

If you do want more control over girls profiles, you may want to use Jman's Headhunter mode (a similar feature will eventually be implemented in-game from Chapter 4, although it will be costly).

Quote4)Another thing I noticed that masochist girls will end up being hateful towards you and their talk options are really awkward and not optimized.
Normally I would like her to still love me though she is masochistic, but if you push her too much she still ends up hating you instead. I might be doing something wrong but I think when a girl is masochistic, the more you push this trait the more she would end up loving you and dialogue options to be different when she is trully dominated.

I'm not sure exactly what you are experiencing, but it could be normal:

Spoiler

Masochist girls enjoy being brought down and will not react well to basic 'Love' generating actions.

[close]

Or it could be the result of some of the new community-made dialogue (not sure about this one). Concrete examples might help us narrow it down.

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 08, 2022, 06:05 AMAlso because my purpose is to experiment and try different things with different girls, I also went ahead and modified the game files so there would be no fear and love daily modifiers.I thought by itself that is a bit meep as it forces you to spend unecessary time into talking with the girls daily to make sure love and fear at a decent level.

You can achieve similar results by providing generous upkeep to your girls, although this may reduce your margins a bit.

Quote from: Goldo on Jul 08, 2022, 03:39 PM

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 07, 2022, 07:15 PM

Spoiler

Masochist girls enjoy being brought down and will not react well to basic 'Love' generating actions.

[close]

Or it could be the result of some of the new community-made dialogue (not sure about this one). Concrete examples might help us narrow it down.

Masochist slave dialogue hasn't been written yet. If they get their lines from others, it might not fully fit their tendencies... but would need to know more specifics

well for me it would be to be able to put a note or description on your girls to remember what you where gunna do with her after you do something with her thats not her normal routine.   ex. have her training as a whore but her main is geisha cuz i be forgetting what i wanna do with them sometimes with 30 girls lol

Quote from: Hareb on Jul 08, 2022, 06:45 PM

Quote from: Goldo on Jul 08, 2022, 03:39 PM

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 07, 2022, 07:15 PM

Spoiler

Masochist girls enjoy being brought down and will not react well to basic 'Love' generating actions.

[close]

Or it could be the result of some of the new community-made dialogue (not sure about this one). Concrete examples might help us narrow it down.

Masochist slave dialogue hasn't been written yet. If they get their lines from others, it might not fully fit their tendencies... but would need to know more specifics

Hello,
so ......
I had a masochistic girl in my brothel and I will be fair that I regularly abused her.
My love was still high for her as she was still in love with me but at a certain point she broke down and started despising me though she was masochistic.
I went away from that save but the issue I was having with masochistic girls is that if you provide them with love they would end up losing fear arguments and keeping it balanced was a bit risky.
In my case I was losing fear on her and I pushed her and then fear went down big time and she started despising me. I don't know how better to explain.
Also don't mind me but the reason I went ahead to look into the files to change the fear / love daily movements to 0 was because I thought it was a bit awkward and funny. The girls had a continous good mood throughout the gameplay and high security as well so fear shouldn't go like that.
love wise, again I think that unless you do something stupid to push them shouldn't go down. But this is a personal opinion and as long as I can modify it in future versions for my own gameplay I am alright as far as that concerns me though I would love to have easier access to it.

In regards to masochistic girl, I will try to get another one and experiment on her and write down again what goes and such and what happens. As a probable feed back !


After a reading of one of my replies I wanted to share and Idea that came to mind. And yes, I do agree with the fact that girls need to have their own specific traits and such feel different one from another.
But the idea that came to mind is traits that build over time with a girl that does repetitive actions such as:
Dancing, Servicing, Anal and so forth as long as she gets comfortable with the actions themselves.

To give more details :
If a girl that works consistently as a dancer would benefit from dancing related traits that would then boost her qualities upwards.
Same for girls that give service:
A girl that does blowjobs a lot would earn a trait that would make her provide even better satisfaction to customers.

As for the initial traits, they should be used to determine the basics of what a girl can do and where she can perform and her different qualities.
Negative traits though should be able to be eliminated trough said performed actions as well.
Sick girl, trough enough training and pushing about she should improve her lifestyle or just die ( sounds really stupid but ) Instead of having a sick girl then you could heal her and make her body better :).
Same for lazy girls, that can be trained trough obedience to get rid of the lazy trait.
but won't burden you guys with too much stuff :D Also I played the last week almost everyday ( the game captivated me too much I would say )

Also What I noticed ( idk if it's because of the mods or not ) but there's a trait called mentor.
Now I think that shouldn't be a trait by itself but rather a girl with higher rank should be able to always provide support to the new girls around to increase their stats bit by bit overall. But that only if the girl goes trough a set of training trough the postings so to say. So if she did loads of dancing classes then she could be a mentor.

Or rather classes provided trough postsings to offer her general traits in regards to the specific actions and at a certain point offer her mentor status over those as well. ( when you go trough a lot of training you are able to train others I would say )

Regarding masochist: I think that intentionally raising fear might be too difficult with the current Community Dialogue. Continued in this topic (https://henthighschool.net/brothel-king/community-dialogue-project/msg988/#msg988).

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 10, 2022, 12:22 AMBut the idea that came to mind is traits that build over time with a girl that does repetitive actions

I'll take this into consideration for Trait King, but I think I would then also want to see the flipside of that: Forgetting certain traits over time. And you run into the problem Goldo was describing; each player has their own gameplay habits so you risk creating lots of similar girls over time.

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 10, 2022, 12:22 AMNegative traits though should be able to be eliminated trough said performed actions as well.

Currently with Trait King you can start to eliminate (or rather, improve) negative traits once a girl has no negative fixations. She'll approach the MC and request special training to get rid of her bad trait/habit. This training needs to be repeated a few times and then the negative trait changes into something else.

I do like your idea of making the process more automatic through gameplay actions. That would be better than the current system, but its also a very complicated system to fully design and implement for every trait (How would "Deaf" or "Blind" girls be cured through repetitive gameplay for example? How would the player know to take & repeat that action?)

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 10, 2022, 12:22 AMAlso What I noticed ( idk if it's because of the mods or not ) but there's a trait called mentor. [...]

This is indeed from a mod. In the vanilla game it's a perk which kind of works as you described -> If a girl becomes high enough level you can eventually give her the "Leading by Example" perk from the Bride perk-tree. Think of all the perk-trees as special trainings/instructions which you can give to your girls. Every girl has the potential to become a mentor, but you'll have to request it from them by giving them the "Leading by Example"-perk.

And in the Trait King mod, certain girls don't need to be told. Maybe they've grown up as the oldest sibling with lots of little brothers and sisters. It's not about being an expert at their field. It's about having the mindset of wanting to help those who have fallen behind, even if you yourself perhaps are barely doing any better.

QuoteRegarding masochist: I think that intentionally raising fear might be too difficult with the current Community Dialogue. Continued in this topic.

Quote from: Unkmess on Today at 12:22 AM
But the idea that came to mind is traits that build over time with a girl that does repetitive actions
I'll take this into consideration for Trait King, but I think I would then also want to see the flipside of that: Forgetting certain traits over time. And you run into the problem Goldo was describing; each player has their own gameplay habits so you risk creating lots of similar girls over time.

Quote from: Unkmess on Today at 12:22 AM
Negative traits though should be able to be eliminated trough said performed actions as well.
Currently with Trait King you can start to eliminate (or rather, improve) negative traits once a girl has no negative fixations. She'll approach the MC and request special training to get rid of her bad trait/habit. This training needs to be repeated a few times and then the negative trait changes into something else.

I do like your idea of making the process more automatic through gameplay actions. That would be better than the current system, but its also a very complicated system to fully design and implement for every trait (How would "Deaf" or "Blind" girls be cured through repetitive gameplay for example? How would the player know to take & repeat that action?)

I don't know how to post fancy quotes to be honest.

So for negative traits such as blindness, deafness, let's say scars as well. Those would be permanent traits and you would know they are permanent.
Sadly for blindness I see no solution as unless the game suddenly goes into another era of medical practices I wouldn't know. But a work around would be for her to become a whore only ( with a trait called fuck-toy increasing her knowledge about sex ). I legit have no clue to be honest other than that.

While deafness ( with high enough carisma ) you could learn to communicate with her. At the end of the day charisma is a skill for speech. Don't get me wrong, I can go around systems and such that are hard to implement. So I will stop here.

While with the process becoming a bit more automatic, that would be Sill to introduce us to it. We have a lovely slave girl that does all the explaining so using that would be the introduction to it all.

"Over there you can notice a girls traits, over time and working the girl will obtain different skills and traits "

But it's a complicated idea and I agree, I am looking at the code for the game and I find it hard to understand what's going on many times in a row. So I might pick up to learn renpy :)

Again I love the game concept and how everything is implemented.

I am going to look over the trait king mod code to check a bit it's implementation and such.
Maybe if I learn a bit more I could help out with the implementations of certain ideas.

An updated version for city encounter (https://mega.nz/folder/7SAXQADC#SHXzi6N4oA_61-Lr-JbExg) from Mistrun.

And a message from him: You have to deleting your old Encounter file in game\NPC before adding mine, otherwise the old pictures will remain since i converted mine to webp and they are mostly jpgs
As for the rpy files you can just replace the old ones
I recommend a back up in case i missed something while testing, but it should work fine
However i'm pretty sure you'll need to start a new game for it to work properly, can't do shit about that
Enjoy!

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 10, 2022, 01:58 PMI don't know how to post fancy quotes to be honest.

You mean this?
Just select the part of the text what you want to quote and a new option pops up down below with this:  Quote selected text

I think this suggestion is interesting so relaying it here:

Quote from: nahitsnotimportant, post: 8516301, member: 785391Make a gameplay difficulty option where it would be viable and possible to have one girl perform all jobs without restrictions for extra casual play. Less constant clicking and switching around would feel so much better, plus a good way to squeeze out content from some of the extensive girlpacks out there.

Although to simplify the code/design implications I would slightly tweak this suggestion into a "Random"-option (name for it needs some brainstorming), where the girl will decide for herself what job she will perform, and that job can change every night. I implemented something similar in my Fran girlpack and called it her "Free will".

I got a question in regards to energy regeneration:
If you get her better beds does the energy regeneration increase as well ?
From what I noticed the formula is based on constitution
            x = (25 + self.get_stat("constitution")/4) * self.get_effect("boost", "energy when resting") + self.get_effect("change", "energy when resting")

X would be the energy level recovered.

            if self.hurt > 0: # Hurt girls recover half as fast
                x = x//2

            x *= mod

#                renpy.say("", "Changing " + self.fullname + " energy recovery from " + str(x))
#                renpy.say("", "To " + str(x))

            r, case = self.change_energy(x)

            resting_changes += "\nEnergy{color=[c_green]} +" + str_int(r) + "{/color}"

            if case == "recovered":
                if context == "farm":
                    resting_text += "\n{color=[c_emerald]}She is now fully rested and can go back to her training.{/color}"
                elif self.job:
                    resting_text += "\n{color=[c_emerald]}She is now fully rested and can go back to work as a " + self.job + ".{/color}"
                else:
                    resting_text += "\n{color=[c_emerald]}She is now fully rested and is waiting for a job assignment.{/color}"

            return resting_text, resting_changes


Wouldn't increasing the girls sleeping conditions help on improving energy regeneration as well ?

Quote from: Unkmess on Jul 10, 2022, 06:43 PMWouldn't increasing the girls sleeping conditions help on improving energy regeneration as well ?

Currently it only improves mood & customer satisfaction. You could argue that the ranks are more about upgrading their decor & visual appeal rather than about optimizing sleep.

An updated City encounters (https://www.mediafire.com/file/u56ac4kob5zi6ez/Encounters.rar/file). There are a few pic's what Mistrun forgot to change to webp and the game throws error message for them.

This may have been discussed at some point on the old forum, if so I apologize, but the limit on effectiveness for repeated discipline can get frustrating sometimes.
I can understand constant, unnecessary punishment getting less effective over time, but when a girl refuses to work 5 nights in a row, you better bet I'm going to punish her every time.
What I already do, but doesn't seem to have an in game effect (at least not the one I'm looking for, there could be something I haven't noticed), is ramp up the severity of the discipline as the disobedience is repeated.
Scold->remove upkeep->force to go naked->etc.

I think that allowing for increased severity could allow for more concurrent punishments without lowering their effectiveness, especially if it's for something as serious as refusing to work.


Completely unrelated and, again, something that could have been brought up before at some point, is an alternative method for obtaining slaves.

Currently, afaik, the only methods are through purchase and convincing free girls to be enslaved. I remember and old simbro clone, though, that allowed you to hire thugs to basically serve as raiding parties and capture slaves from villages and whatnot. It was still expensive and they were usually especially obedient, but personally I like the idea of enslaving girls yourself instead of just buying them or talking them into it. Not sure if that works with the legality of slavery in Zan, but maybe they could go to foreign lands and take a bit longer?
Alternatively, instead of just raiding parties, potentially getting bounty hunters on the payroll that could catch criminals and give you first dibs at a slave contract. Another fun set of somewhat unique personalities and backgrounds could crop up through that.
Also beneficial is that the old simbro game used this as a method of capturing Monster girls. I think we've got a few packs that fit, and the same style of unique monster girls could be used here.
Edit: Another, less obtrusive option, might be monthly auctions for high-profile slaves.

I get that any of this would be a whole new set of game mechanics so it won't be implemented anytime soon if at all. Idk if this was something specifically avoided for any reason, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Quote from: QuietBob on Aug 26, 2022, 01:29 AMThis may have been discussed at some point on the old forum, if so I apologize, but the limit on effectiveness for repeated discipline can get frustrating sometimes.
I can understand constant, unnecessary punishment getting less effective over time, but when a girl refuses to work 5 nights in a row, you better bet I'm going to punish her every time.
What I already do, but doesn't seem to have an in game effect (at least not the one I'm looking for, there could be something I haven't noticed), is ramp up the severity of the discipline as the disobedience is repeated.
Scold->remove upkeep->force to go naked->etc.

I think that allowing for increased severity could allow for more concurrent punishments without lowering their effectiveness, especially if it's for something as serious as refusing to work.

I will have to double check how it works in the code, but yeah I agree it should be possible to increase punishment and get better returns. Something that can be fixed in 0.3 if it doesn't work as intended.

QuoteCompletely unrelated and, again, something that could have been brought up before at some point, is an alternative method for obtaining slaves.

Currently, afaik, the only methods are through purchase and convincing free girls to be enslaved. I remember and old simbro clone, though, that allowed you to hire thugs to basically serve as raiding parties and capture slaves from villages and whatnot. It was still expensive and they were usually especially obedient, but personally I like the idea of enslaving girls yourself instead of just buying them or talking them into it. Not sure if that works with the legality of slavery in Zan, but maybe they could go to foreign lands and take a bit longer?
Alternatively, instead of just raiding parties, potentially getting bounty hunters on the payroll that could catch criminals and give you first dibs at a slave contract. Another fun set of somewhat unique personalities and backgrounds could crop up through that.

My issue with that is summed up in your last sentence: unless there are some special traits or mechanics that come with it, diversifying channels to acquire girls will not add any depth, and be functionally the same as buying a girl from the slavemarket and deciding in your head cannon "before I bought her, she got enslaved by a raiding party".

The work involved in adding new channels to catch slaves would be significant to be interesting, and then it would still be redundant with game mechanics that already work in-game (the slavemarket...), with no guarantee that it would improve fun. For the time being, I'd rather work on mechanics that need improvement (such as the Farm) or don't exist yet (the vanilla BK equivalent of the Headhunter). If it ain't broke...

With that said, you might want to look at Jman's bonanza mod. I think it had some of the gameplay elements you're discussing.

I love the idea of "exotic" personalities & monsters from foreign lands arriving in your brothel through a special mechanic. To me this sounds like a feature that could easily be added through a mod (See Goldo's instructions here (https://henthighschool.net/brothel-king/resources-writing-events-for-bk/msg1317/#msg1317), the mod creator could add unique girls that could only be obtained through the mechanics of such a mod)

At one point a kidnapping mod did exist on the old forum, although I wasn't a big fan of its mechanics (it was more like a cheaty way to obtain the free-girls of Zan without all the dating nonsense)
With time and effort it could be recreated, but I agree with Goldo that it's not really worth it if it's just for some head-canon (and if it practically circumvents existing game mechanics)

One more thing I'd like to propose, perhaps as a special feature for the non-existent Headhunter, is a monthly mystery-girl subscription. You pay a fixed fee each month and recieve a steady supply of girls in exchange. But you have no idea what exactly you're going to get every time.
I think this could be fun, because I notice myself being too picky sometimes when visiting the slavemarket & the city. Theoretically the Headhunter could go even further in that direction of narrowing the player's mindset ("I must have a girl with these exact traits!") so it would be fun to counterbalance that tendency with something like this.

Quote from: QuietBob on Aug 26, 2022, 01:29 AMIt was still expensive and they were usually especially obedient, but personally I like the idea of enslaving girls yourself instead of just buying them or talking them into it.

Meant especially disobedient. My bad.

Quote from: Goldo on Aug 26, 2022, 04:00 PMI will have to double check how it works in the code, but yeah I agree it should be possible to increase punishment and get better returns. Something that can be fixed in 0.3 if it doesn't work as intended.

Good to hear! It's not a major detractor, but it will still be nice to see some changes when you get to it.

Quote from: Goldo on Aug 26, 2022, 04:00 PMMy issue with that is summed up in your last sentence: unless there are some special traits or mechanics that come with it, diversifying channels to acquire girls will not add any depth, and be functionally the same as buying a girl from the slavemarket and deciding in your head cannon "before I bought her, she got enslaved by a raiding party".

The work involved in adding new channels to catch slaves would be significant to be interesting, and then it would still be redundant with game mechanics that already work in-game (the slavemarket...), with no guarantee that it would improve fun. For the time being, I'd rather work on mechanics that need improvement (such as the Farm) or don't exist yet (the vanilla BK equivalent of the Headhunter). If it ain't broke...

With that said, you might want to look at Jman's bonanza mod. I think it had some of the gameplay elements you're discussing.

You're completely right. I was thinking as I was writing it out about how to turn it into an actually useful and unique mechanic beyond head cannon. The best I came up with before were the monster girl and auction girls.
Like neronero said, the 'exotic' personality types could work really well here. Monster girls from raids and from auctions, basically girls similar to the ones Kosmo is always gloating about. Famous pirate queens and thieves, destitute nobles with royal blood, maybe even famous bards or artisans.
Honestly, I'd also be happy with an option to let you keep the thieves you sometimes catch breaking into your brothel that you usually just let security use for the night.
I'd be willing to look into how to mod things myself, but I have the coding skills of a dry, crisp, autumn leaf, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Another idea that might make it more viable, probably after the completion more imminently viable features like the Farm, would be to make the raiding parties more of a gamble. You might get a normal girl with low stats and obedience, you might get a diamond in the rough with at least one gold attribute, you might get nothing, or you might even get a big fat fine because your goons raided the wrong village.
But I agree this still doesn't make it worth much compared to the already existing slave market unless the idea to use individual girls for advertising, security, and cleaning is implemented.
In that case you could assign specific security girls to your raiding squads to alter success chances and experience gains etc. But that's another big change reliant on another big change.
I do still like the monster hunter, auction, and thief enslavement ideas, though.

Last thing sorry, I didn't mean to write a book today lol. I'm not sure where to find the Bonanza mod since the old site was lost. Does anyone still have a link?

Quote from: QuietBob on Aug 26, 2022, 10:40 PMI'm not sure where to find the Bonanza mod since the old site was lost. Does anyone still have a link?

Most likely Jman have it. But i didn't seen him write anything here so far.

I think can add a dynamic balancing mechanism to the number of customers, such as decreasing reputation for each unserved customer.that can make some mechanism more effective

I'm not a native English speaker, so I use translation software to help me

Quote from: vadi92 on Aug 27, 2022, 07:19 AMMost likely Jman have it. But i didn't seen him write anything here so far.

When we had the changeover to the new site, JMan said he was mostly tired of BK and was not going to participate in discussions here any more.   That said, he's been unable to stay away from the BK discussions over on F95, and still contributes to those discussions semi regularly.   But not over here any longer.

Quote from: QuietBob on Aug 26, 2022, 10:40 PMI'd be willing to look into how to mod things myself, but I have the coding skills of a dry, crisp, autumn leaf, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Honestly, the coding is not the hardest task here, and I could lend a hand to get around the tricky parts: most of the work lies in writing events and designing special traits/backgrounds for the girls. There should obviously be enough variety to them too, so that the mechanic doesn't feel overtly repetitive. In comparison, the coding challenge is trivial.

Quote from: tili on Aug 27, 2022, 08:21 AMI think can add a dynamic balancing mechanism to the number of customers, such as decreasing reputation for each unserved customer.that can make some mechanism more effective

That mechanic is already there AFAIK, the effect might not be very noticeable, but I wanted to avoid brutal swings in reputation and customer numbers so the changes are kind of slow.

Quote from: Leortha on Aug 27, 2022, 02:11 PMWhen we had the changeover to the new site, JMan said he was mostly tired of BK and was not going to participate in discussions here any more.   That said, he's been unable to stay away from the BK discussions over on F95, and still contributes to those discussions semi regularly.   But not over here any longer.

If I recall correctly, he said he was tired of H games in general. I hope he didn't get burnt out because of BK.

Quote from: Goldo on Aug 31, 2022, 04:08 PMIf I recall correctly, he said he was tired of H games in general. I hope he didn't get burnt out because of BK.

Not BK, as far as I understand.

He had a mod for a different game - kinda similar to Bonanza, a supermod that offered a completely new experience. It was very popular and a portion of its 'fans' on F95 were hostile/demanding/entitled which sucked all the joy out of it for Jman.

Quote from: neronero on Aug 31, 2022, 09:19 PM

Quote from: Goldo on Aug 31, 2022, 04:08 PMIf I recall correctly, he said he was tired of H games in general. I hope he didn't get burnt out because of BK.

Not BK, as far as I understand.

He had a mod for a different game - kinda similar to Bonanza, a supermod that offered a completely new experience. It was very popular and a portion of its 'fans' on F95 were hostile/demanding/entitled which sucked all the joy out of it for Jman.

One thing I've learned over the years developing BK is how little the average person understands about game development and design. There are lots of well-meaning commenters who don't realize when their suggestions would break fundamental mechanics irreparably or require overhauling the game from the ground up. Now I cringe a lot when I read forums for other games, seeing completely unrealistic demands from some players ("Why don't you make the game massively multiplayer? With random world generation, destructible environments and a cameo by Elon Musk?").

It's not their fault really, unless they act overtly entitled, most of the time they're well-meaning. I am very comfortable picking and choosing what I like about player suggestions and leaving the rest aside. But I can see how someone like Jman would feel burnt by it, as he has always been quite intense when engaging with strangers on the Internet (https://xkcd.com/386/)... :(

Sad to hear the JMan is no longer active. While we were not always agreeing on some subjects, he was a big part of the community.

On the topic of "changes without breaking the game", I updated the job-selection-mod locally, and with some more testing could put it online. (provided I have enough alone-time, which is not certain)

i've had some ideas floating around in my head for a while but before i start throwing out any suggestions for additions or potential mod ideas, i got a few questions.  main one is, what's the intended reward of the farm and fear actions compared to the risk that it seems like it brings over just being nice to your girls?  having girls run away seems... not great?  and maybe i just haven't gone 'evil' enough to see the benefits but every time i try to play that way it ends up feeling just... suboptimal and i go back to being "good."
some of my ideas and suggestions involve figuring out some ways to make the farm and other evil/fear based actions more "tempting," but me avoiding it could be just me not getting it and i wanna make sure i understand what the purpose is supposed to be first.   

No.   You're getting it.   Both those options have been sub-optimal for a long time.   Getting them to be desirable options is far, far from an easy job, which is a good part of why they have languished.   There's always been something more important (and much easier) for Goldo to do.

This is the kind of thing, if you come up with a good idea, and especially if you come up with a good implementation, there's a non-zero chance that Goldo would take it into the core game.   I cannot speak for him, and until you actually propose an idea there's not much for him to say, but it's something to think about as a possibility if you come up with something that he approves of.

well, i think a solid place to start would be a resource/currency that you can only get from training girls at the farm.  small amounts for soft training, higher amounts for sexual training, maybe making the gains scale up with the girl's fear but scale down with time spent at the farm so you're not just buying girls and leaving them at the farm specifically to generate the resource and forgetting about them.  then you can trade that resource to Gizelle for either furniture-esque brothel upgrades or unique items. 

like, maybe one of the upgrades gives mood bonuses to counteract fear on non-masochists or one of the items is a collar you can equip to a girl that's talking about running away that either tracks them to make finding them later easier or stops them from escaping?  mostly stuff that'd be for that "evil" and fear-based gameplay, and gives some actual rewards to help outweigh the risk, but have some of them be powerful/generally useful enough that even "good" players might want to at least interact with the farm even if they otherwise treat their girls well.

So, Chapter 3 will have a completely new mechanic tied to the Farm and geared towards evil players (but not entirely useless for neutral and good players). Suggestions are welcome but the design is advanced already so no promises.

Story progression ruins all of the investments made in a brothel. This is bad, unfun design imo.

Problem: When you move from one chapter of the story to the next one (i.e.moving from slums to the city) you lose your previous brothel and all the upgrades and money invested in it.

How the problem affects gameplay: Knowing that in the next chapter the profit margins will be better, the player does not want to invest in the current brothel and instead is expected to make the bare minimum of money to finish the chapter mission. The player has to either prioritize the story or avoid the story to have a more rewarding management gameplay.

Solution: Let the player keep their previous brothel, move the upgrades at some reduced cost or sell it and refund a percentage of the investment back. (Arguably since this is magical universe the player's brothel could be located in a pocket dimension and change locations based on current rank)

Quote from: Veien on Mar 24, 2023, 11:16 PMSolution: Let the player keep their previous brothel, move the upgrades at some reduced cost or sell it and refund a percentage of the investment back. (Arguably since this is magical universe the player's brothel could be located in a pocket dimension and change locations based on current rank)

You already get a certain percentage back by selling the brothel. You can pretty much move to the next chapter for free. The only downside that you lose the rooms and for a few days you dont make any profit. But by the end game you make so much money that you cant even spend it. (You can make millions in just a week)

I am having an issue where after 10 or so minutes, the transitions between areas becomes slower and laggier. Is this an issue where my girl packs are too high in quantity? Is there a recommended size for the girl packs as well as number of packs present in a run? 

Quote from: Congressman Weiner on f95zoneStill enjoying this game; updating my girl packs and so on.  But I still haven't figured out what goes in the "Misc." box on the girls' items.

The honorable Congressman Weiner raises a valid point. It doesn't really make sense to display the equip slot for one-time-consumables. Or is it reserved for unreleased items/mods?

Quote from: neronero on Apr 02, 2023, 08:42 AM

Quote from: Congressman Weiner on f95zoneStill enjoying this game; updating my girl packs and so on.  But I still haven't figured out what goes in the "Misc." box on the girls' items.

The honorable Congressman Weiner raises a valid point. It doesn't really make sense to display the equip slot for one-time-consumables. Or is it reserved for unreleased items/mods?

The 'Misc' slot is the last light from a long-dead design idea and will disappear in 0.3.

Quote from: turbotator on Mar 31, 2023, 11:27 PMI am having an issue where after 10 or so minutes, the transitions between areas becomes slower and laggier. Is this an issue where my girl packs are too high in quantity? Is there a recommended size for the girl packs as well as number of packs present in a run? 

Step 1, make sure you are using the latest version release; the number will show on the startup menu screen.
Step B, move girls folders out until you have about 40 remaining (which is what I use when my hard drive isn't crashing) and see if it helps. Best to start a new game after moving girl folders.

But really, lags have only been seen during Monday weekly processing with over 100 or so girl folders, and possibly by people who change to allow large number of brothel girls.
Let us know after trying these tips.

Quote from: kokmaker, post: 10793580, member: 5598178Is there any way to turn off the level up notification (preferably for specific girls)? Often happens when you spent all your perk points but are limited by rank so you can't spend it until possibly a lot later. It's not a huge deal, but it does irk me like having a pebble in your shoe.

Quote from: Gutsandguts, post: 10794649, member: 324734Yeah I kinda wish the game had an auto-levelling system, seeing that little icon annoys me when I can't be assed checking each individual girl every day, especially when the game starts getting a bit slow.

^ Interesting idea, reminds me of a mechanic in a gladiator management game called "Age of Gladiators", where you can start a playthrough with an option called "Let the Gods Decide", that takes leveling control away from you. I really liked that feature, it adds to the replayability of the management game and forces you to adapt & hedge bets (probably not as fun for min-maxing playstyles, but that's why it's an option)

Quote from: kokmaker, post: 10793580, member: 5598178Is there any way to turn off the level up notification (preferably for specific girls)? Often happens when you spent all your perk points but are limited by rank so you can't spend it until possibly a lot later. It's not a huge deal, but it does irk me like having a pebble in your shoe.

If you're not afraid to get your hands a little dirty, open 'BKscreen_home.rpy' in notepad or a code editor, look for line 197:
            if girl.perk_points or girl.can_spend_upgrade_points():
                b = True
                break
And comment out 'b = True' by adding a hashtag (#) in front of it.

Building structures should waste more time and cost more and maybe more structure to build

Currently 64 cleaners struggle at times to clean up after less than half that many staff so i feel cleaners are not efficient enough. (is there any way to edit files to either adjust cleaning done each or increase limit on cleaners?)

Also i feel weapon shop sells to many MC items, 8 of the 14 inventory slots are currently angel staffs or death dispensers

Quote from: Iconic9875667 on Aug 05, 2023, 08:22 PMCurrently 64 cleaners struggle at times to clean up after less than half that many staff so i feel cleaners are not efficient enough. (is there any way to edit files to either adjust cleaning done each or increase limit on cleaners?)

I assume this is with all the furniture upgrades?

Random suggestion: I'm not sure if this would be minor change or require sorting through a lot of spaghetti, but I'd like to suggest separating "group" from "sex" in terms of the the game's assumptions.

Make the type of group acts produced depend on what other acts the girl has active.
i.e. If she only has Service active then it's a blowbang, etc.

The reason I mention it is that as it stands, you can have a virgin girl with service and anal active and sex inactive but if you want her to get spitroasted, the game forces her to have vaginal intercourse to do it.

Quote from: GMWinters on Sep 01, 2023, 09:07 PMRandom suggestion: I'm not sure if this would be minor change or require sorting through a lot of spaghetti, but I'd like to suggest separating "group" from "sex" in terms of the the game's assumptions.

Make the type of group acts produced depend on what other acts the girl has active.
i.e. If she only has Service active then it's a blowbang, etc.

The reason I mention it is that as it stands, you can have a virgin girl with service and anal active and sex inactive but if you want her to get spitroasted, the game forces her to have vaginal intercourse to do it.

This is already the case when whoring, virgin girls with group assigned should not have sex (unless they are assaulted).

Currently a girl will lose her virginity during group training, and special group events. Although there are other ways to raise her group preference, I guess I could add an option for virgin group training.

I'm kinda new into the game, but I'm surprised how detailed the raising stats system works. Feels like a Fire Emblem game but for degenerates, LOL. Although, I do have a suggestion, which could make training certain stats easier.

I've noticed that certain jobs raise certain skills. For example, waitress raise charm, while dancer raise body. But sometimes, other stats go up, too, and it feels pretty random. It would help greatly that the jobs remained consistent on the points they raise, so that you can work on traits your girl needs to focus more.

After giving the forum a glance, I assume that the story after chapter 3 (where you can't catch the kunoichis, anymore) is still a work in progress. If needed be, I could give some ideas for the story to progress, too, however I could.

Quote from: rioma_03 on Sep 03, 2023, 09:50 AMI'm kinda new into the game, but I'm surprised how detailed the raising stats system works. Feels like a Fire Emblem game but for degenerates, LOL. Although, I do have a suggestion, which could make training certain stats easier.

I've noticed that certain jobs raise certain skills. For example, waitress raise charm, while dancer raise body. But sometimes, other stats go up, too, and it feels pretty random. It would help greatly that the jobs remained consistent on the points they raise, so that you can work on traits your girl needs to focus more.

After giving the forum a glance, I assume that the story after chapter 3 (where you can't catch the kunoichis, anymore) is still a work in progress. If needed be, I could give some ideas for the story to progress, too, however I could.

Jobs are consistent, but they have major and minor stat boosts:
Waitress will always (attempt to) raise Charm, often raise constitution, sometimes raise obedience/beauty/body and sometimes lower sensitivity.
Dancer will always raise Body, often raise libido, sometimes raise constitution/charm/refinement and sometimes lower obedience.
Masseuse will always raise Beauty, often raise sensitivity, sometimes raise refinement/libido/body and sometimes lower constitution.
Geisha will always raise Refinement, often raise obedience, sometimes raise sensitivity/charm/beauty and sometimes lower libido.

Note that I say 'always attempt to', but there is a random roll and the higher a stat gets, the harder it becomes to raise it.

Here is what it looks like in details:

Spoiler

(https://i.imgur.com/LNvQDHQ.png)

[close]

You may argue on the specifics of which skill raises what, but the key features are:
- Although it's more efficient to swap jobs regularly, you can specialize your girls in a couple of jobs and not do too badly (which would be hard if only a couple of stats were raised for each job)
- Jobs have more impact on the first 4 skills, sex acts have more impact on the next 4 skills
- Overall, it's balanced, and all skills have the same number of jobs or sex acts that may increase or decrease them

I think the system works fine for it's intended purposes, but I welcome feedback on whether it succeeds or not on its own terms.

Quote from: Goldo on Sep 05, 2023, 08:42 AMJobs are consistent, but they have major and minor stat boosts:
Waitress will always (attempt to) raise Charm, often raise constitution, sometimes raise obedience/beauty/body and sometimes lower sensitivity.
Dancer will always raise Body, often raise libido, sometimes raise constitution/charm/refinement and sometimes lower obedience.
Masseuse will always raise Beauty, often raise sensitivity, sometimes raise refinement/libido/body and sometimes lower constitution.
Geisha will always raise Refinement, often raise obedience, sometimes raise sensitivity/charm/beauty and sometimes lower libido.

Note that I say 'always attempt to', but there is a random roll and the higher a stat gets, the harder it becomes to raise it.

Here is what it looks like in details:

Spoiler

(https://i.imgur.com/LNvQDHQ.png)

[close]

You may argue on the specifics of which skill raises what, but the key features are:
- Although it's more efficient to swap jobs regularly, you can specialize your girls in a couple of jobs and not do too badly (which would be hard if only a couple of stats were raised for each job)
- Jobs have more impact on the first 4 skills, sex acts have more impact on the next 4 skills
- Overall, it's balanced, and all skills have the same number of jobs or sex acts that may increase or decrease them

I think the system works fine for it's intended purposes, but I welcome feedback on whether it succeeds or not on its own terms.

My feedback is that this chart needs to be included with the game download or in the readme thing. Super useful and I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to remember where I'd seen it.

I think it would rather belong on some kind of wiki like that (https://wiki.anime-sharing.com/hgames/index.php?title=HGames_Wiki). If we include tips on game mechanics in the readme then 1/ not many people will read it and 2/ it's pretty random to include just this one.

That's fair.

Also, I'm guessing it would probably break the visually appealing staircase effect, but assuming that training for something and working it have the same effects, do you have a version of this that includes Naked, Bisexual, and Group? (Or does Bisexual/Group just run with whatever other act the customer selects?)

Quote from: GMWinters on Sep 27, 2023, 02:12 PMThat's fair.

Also, I'm guessing it would probably break the visually appealing staircase effect, but assuming that training for something and working it have the same effects, do you have a version of this that includes Naked, Bisexual, and Group? (Or does Bisexual/Group just run with whatever other act the customer selects?)

Yes, bisexual and group run with the main act, while naked is not used as a specific act during night events but instead provides a 5% bonus to tips.

Hi,

Been playing Brothel King for a while. For my play style I don't necessarily like the mechanic of limiting the girls love and fear stats based on rank.

I feel like I am sometimes pushed to advance to the next chapter to be able to increase the love/fear stats further.

Is there a way to remove this limitation, so I could max these stats on previous chapters?

Also is there a way to "train" positive fixation. So the girl would acquire a new positive fixation (the same way you can remove a negative fixation).

Quote from: advancedas on Oct 01, 2023, 09:20 AMHi,

Been playing Brothel King for a while. For my play style I don't necessarily like the mechanic of limiting the girls love and fear stats based on rank.

I feel like I am sometimes pushed to advance to the next chapter to be able to increase the love/fear stats further.

Is there a way to remove this limitation, so I could max these stats on previous chapters?

Well, it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't, as previously there was no limit by chapter and it was requested to pace the progression.

You can disable it if you're ready to dig in the code.

Open BKgirlclass.rpy, look around lines 4109 and 4155 for the definitions of the change_love and change_fear methods.

Add the following line of code at the beginning or the function, taking care to use the same indentation as the code below it:
min_cap = max_cap = None
Your function should look like this after you're done:
def change_love(self, amount, min_cap = None, max_cap = None, silent=False): # Cap is the limit above which love won't go with this action (used for free girls only)

            min_cap = max_cap = None

            if self in game.free_girls:
                [...]
Do the same for change_fear.

QuoteAlso is there a way to "train" positive fixation. So the girl would acquire a new positive fixation (the same way you can remove a negative fixation).

No, there isn't, I suppose it could be done with a mod. It needs to be balanced so that you can't just bombard all your girls with new fixations until they love everything. I guess we could introduce a new farm power that gives positive fixations, the sanity mechanic would prevent overuse.

Quote from: Goldo on Oct 11, 2023, 04:19 PMNo, there isn't, I suppose it could be done with a mod. It needs to be balanced so that you can't just bombard all your girls with new fixations until they love everything. I guess we could introduce a new farm power that gives positive fixations, the sanity mechanic would prevent overuse.

It could even be two separate powers if you want to increase the variety of the deck:

The first could be modeled after the currently existing spell that swaps out one negative trait for another with the supercharged version giving you some control over what you get. So the net total fixations remains the same and the sanity cost can be mild?

And the second one could then add a net new fixation and have a commensurately higher sanity cost?

@Goldo
I think the bank should be accessible early game making the bank more useful and more mechanics could be add in
like having interest, lesser tax and tax is auto pay by the amount of money to the bank
- taxing buildings: the whore room should be built, it doesn't make sense that's already there since most girls in early game won't do whoring
- the more interest you have the less you have to pay for the rooms you have to build
- unlock level cap for mc

Quote from: Yasaki74 on Oct 17, 2023, 05:01 PM- taxing buildings: the whore room should be built, it doesn't make sense that's already there since most girls in early game won't do whoring

On this particular point: There is no whore room, the girls are actually using their bedrooms for whoring (Edit: And the room quality affects customers, too).

Quote from: Goldo on Nov 14, 2023, 11:39 AM

Quote from: Yasaki74 on Oct 17, 2023, 05:01 PM- taxing buildings: the whore room should be built, it doesn't make sense that's already there since most girls in early game won't do whoring

On this particular point: There is no whore room, the girls are actually using their bedrooms for whoring.

I still think there should a room built for whoring like the how's the room quality?
and while they are slaves the rooms should made in 2 part
1 for whoring and 1 for storing slaves

*1st part slave storing
- it make sense where you can call the girls to your master bedroom, when every girl sleep on the same beds or bunk beds
- you can also make the girls sleeps on the floor when you have no beds left which eliminates the need for buy more rooms for slaves to stay though it could lead to health problems(just a quality of life changes)
- you can skip night trainings when they sleep on your bed and you can make them wake you up as an alarm clock for more events

*2nd part for whoring
- the part for whoring could make the customer able to choose which room to whore, how good is the room quality for whoring and does the girls in that room has any sex toys they could use or they could borrow the girls sex toys
- the clothes that you buy could affect how the customers like the girl(basically I'm saying that the items in the game like clothing, sex toys, panties, weapons could change how the whoring room works)
+ weapon for self-defense even though there's only 1 way of doing the security events I think there should  more security events occur like in the whoring room
+ clothing, panties are their for attractiveness, could affect how the customers want the girls clothing should be(though this one should be optional)
+ sex toys for improving fetishes, sex types and also affect how customers pay too(for more options)

Edit:
Allow the mc to be able to train a girl more than once

Been playing this game on and off these past few months and was finally able to beat it on Bk difficulty, have some thoughts:

1. Really looking forward to events/story on the last three stages, I felt that after clearing the 3rd area there wasn't much impeding me from continuously scaling up.

2. This maybe the fact that I only played wizard, but I wasn't compelled at all to use the farm or "go to class" system, as I had food and clothing to satisfy stat needs.

3. I like the random events that occur (seemly randomly) when you approach certain areas (lake or waterfront), start or end a day. Hope to see more variance added to them.

Thanks for the great game Goldo!

Some feedback from my side after a 32 x-rank-girls-run on Brothel King difficulty (lvl 25 Trader, "kind" owner, year-2-month-10, BK0.3) :

Concerning perks, I gave :
all my 32 girls slut (for work&whore and energy)
all my 32 girls courtesan (for short-rest and more bi)
28 girls player (1 gold for each reputation, +1 to results and better naked-bonus)
19 girls bride (only 4 points each, until "train other girls at night". HUGE help to max stats)
19 girls model (some full 6 points, but most only 1 point at lvl 25 from the remaining bride-points)
11 girls escort (is a good trait, but little nonbo with work&whore, short-rest and my preference for seeing different images, so I don't like putting girls on only 1 activity)
3 girls already had Fox (if a girl had it at the start, I put 6 points in it)
4 girls already had Maid (all empty of points, useless tree)


With the above described distribution, the girls make about 150k every night, with 40k upkeep costs. So ~100k gain every day. However since most income goes into taxes, I have yet to equip the girls with weapons (18 +10 defence weapons for now) and cloth (only what I got from city events).

The game difficulty was mostly ok with my setup, I was able to get almost all off my girls to minimum wage thanks to max love. Only the "half-income-moon" was scary, where I had to pay huge taxes with half income, but I managed to make the necessairy sum on the deadline by compleating the contract and selling the girl for triple her price. (The only girl I sold on the playthrough)

Here is what I take away from this playthrough :
- Taxation was a great addition to the game, I remember swimming in gold and not knowing what to do with it as early as the 3rd/4th district. Now making money is still possible even on BK difficulty, but you can't just buy every item and upgrade at once.
- The free-girl dialogue based on the 32 personalities feels awesome, especially when you realize what actions to take/avoid for each girl to increase her love. Thanks again to the community!
- Having a level 25 girl that has maxed out 4 perk-trees sucks... She has 1 perk-point left over but can't put it anywhere, since unlocking a 5th tree costs 2 points! So I have 15 girls lvl 25 indicating "level-up possible" where I can't do anything about it. I propose reducing the unlocking cost of trees to 1 point.
- The Maid-tree is useless, even in early game other trees are better. Give it a very good final ability (+5% brothel income similar to the "magnetic"-trait) and it could be interesting, though even then wasting 5 points to get that final bonus might not be worth it.
- The final perk in Bride is useless on 99% of girls. A pity, since the tree is nice for training. Adding a little extra would be welcome. An extra flat "+10% tip for non-sex-acts if non-virgin" for example. The customer won't know as long as she behaves as though she was a virgin.
- Some golden traits are useless, which is a pity for players like me that want original girls. I feel like anything that is just "+x% to preference" or "-x to target" like the Playful, Loose or Dedicated could as well be textless. If these traits had a simple +5 to stat or +5% income on specific activity, it would already reduce the feel-bad when chatting up a girl in town and find out that you'll have to wait until she is generated anew before she becomes usefull to a BK-dificutly-brothel.
- The carpenter takes toooo long to build stuff. I'm almost at the end of the 3rd year, and the carpenter still has 10 buildings to build. I propose a very expensive building (20 of each resource at 3rd, 5th and 6th district) that says "building times are reduced by 1 day". Or alternatively a second forge that allows to build a second thing at the same, though that might be harder to code/interface.
- The ninja-hunt takes tooooooo long. Stuck at 2nd (or 3rd?) district with 8 full-leveled girls because I can only hunt 1 ninja per day... Please allow multiple hunts a day, maybe making successive hunts more tiresome (1AP -> 2AP -> 3AP) or allow hunting in each district every day. As it stands save-scumming until you find the ninja "first-try" is way faster than normal play, and that is never a good sign.
- Oh, and allowing girls to work at dynamic jobs (similar to whoring where you just allow what job she is allowed to do) would still be a great addition for not seeing the same images every night ;D Maybe if there were a job-selection-mod that implemented something similar that could be integrated to the main game...


That's today's wall of text. I want to highlight that all above-mentioned points are ideas of improvement, and that the game overall is great as it is. I just want to see it become even better. And even tough I played on BK 0.3, most if not all points also regard 0.2, so I posted it here and not in the 0.3 thread.

Happy brotheling everyone,
A&O

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Feb 12, 2024, 10:09 AMHere is what I take away from this playthrough :
- Taxation was a great addition to the game, I remember swimming in gold and not knowing what to do with it as early as the 3rd/4th district. Now making money is still possible even on BK difficulty, but you can't just buy every item and upgrade at once.

Gameplay-wise it might be good, but flavor-wise it still doesn't sit right with me. Taxation isn't funny or sexy. But in BK's world, I feel like that's what it's going to have to be. My idea: Keep track of the insane total amount of taxes that the player contributes, and give kosmo (or a lobotomized version of kosmo, or kosmo's older brother/sister) a second arc in which he runs an organisation that runs entirely on your taxes. Let him brag about his charitable deeds, or how they made a beautiful 100ft tall gold statue of him thanks to MC's tax contribution. Just make him brag about bigger and bigger things depending on how much the player has been taxed.

edit: Perhaps Kosmo's sister should show up representing a charity in memory of Kosmo, that naively rewrites the past and glorifies him as a messianic figure. Not to gloat in a mean-spirited way, but to tell MC (one of Kosmo's best friends!) about how lovely Kosmo was and how his memory lives on through the charity's deeds. (Otherwise, if act 2 is just mean-spirited again, that'd necessitate a 3rd act where MC finally wins)

Quote from: neronero on Feb 12, 2024, 01:30 PM

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Feb 12, 2024, 10:09 AMHere is what I take away from this playthrough :
- Taxation was a great addition to the game, I remember swimming in gold and not knowing what to do with it as early as the 3rd/4th district. Now making money is still possible even on BK difficulty, but you can't just buy every item and upgrade at once.

Gameplay-wise it might be good, but flavor-wise it still doesn't sit right with me. Taxation isn't funny or sexy. But in BK's world, I feel like that's what it's going to have to be. My idea: Keep track of the insane total amount of taxes that the player contributes, and give kosmo (or a lobotomized version of kosmo, or kosmo's older brother/sister) a second arc in which he runs an organisation that runs entirely on your taxes. Let him brag about his charitable deeds, or how they made a beautiful 100ft tall gold statue of him thanks to MC's tax contribution. Just make him brag about bigger and bigger things depending on how much the player has been taxed.

I am 100% with you, that something funny could be done with the tax-collectors. Also, I modified the following tax-annoncement line in my BKevents.rpy from :
            taxgirl "According to our accountants, you owe us {b}[tx] denars{/b} for last month. [text1]"
to for some more context/feedback :
            taxgirl "According to our accountants, since you made {b}[income] denars{/b} last month, you owe us {b}[tx] denars{/b}. [text1]"

It helped me to know how much I can spend each month for items and stuff. Of course, it could be formulated a bit better.

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Feb 12, 2024, 10:09 AMSome feedback from my side after a 32 x-rank-girls-run on Brothel King difficulty (lvl 25 Trader, "kind" owner, year-2-month-10, BK0.3) :

Concerning perks, I gave :
all my 32 girls slut (for work&whore and energy)
all my 32 girls courtesan (for short-rest and more bi)
28 girls player (1 gold for each reputation, +1 to results and better naked-bonus)
19 girls bride (only 4 points each, until "train other girls at night". HUGE help to max stats)
19 girls model (some full 6 points, but most only 1 point at lvl 25 from the remaining bride-points)
11 girls escort (is a good trait, but little nonbo with work&whore, short-rest and my preference for seeing different images, so I don't like putting girls on only 1 activity)
3 girls already had Fox (if a girl had it at the start, I put 6 points in it)
4 girls already had Maid (all empty of points, useless tree)


With the above described distribution, the girls make about 150k every night, with 40k upkeep costs. So ~100k gain every day. However since most income goes into taxes, I have yet to equip the girls with weapons (18 +10 defence weapons for now) and cloth (only what I got from city events).

The game difficulty was mostly ok with my setup, I was able to get almost all off my girls to minimum wage thanks to max love. Only the "half-income-moon" was scary, where I had to pay huge taxes with half income, but I managed to make the necessairy sum on the deadline by compleating the contract and selling the girl for triple her price. (The only girl I sold on the playthrough)

Here is what I take away from this playthrough :
- Taxation was a great addition to the game, I remember swimming in gold and not knowing what to do with it as early as the 3rd/4th district. Now making money is still possible even on BK difficulty, but you can't just buy every item and upgrade at once.
- The free-girl dialogue based on the 32 personalities feels awesome, especially when you realize what actions to take/avoid for each girl to increase her love. Thanks again to the community!
- Having a level 25 girl that has maxed out 4 perk-trees sucks... She has 1 perk-point left over but can't put it anywhere, since unlocking a 5th tree costs 2 points! So I have 15 girls lvl 25 indicating "level-up possible" where I can't do anything about it. I propose reducing the unlocking cost of trees to 1 point.
- The Maid-tree is useless, even in early game other trees are better. Give it a very good final ability (+5% brothel income similar to the "magnetic"-trait) and it could be interesting, though even then wasting 5 points to get that final bonus might not be worth it.
- The final perk in Bride is useless on 99% of girls. A pity, since the tree is nice for training. Adding a little extra would be welcome. An extra flat "+10% tip for non-sex-acts if non-virgin" for example. The customer won't know as long as she behaves as though she was a virgin.
- Some golden traits are useless, which is a pity for players like me that want original girls. I feel like anything that is just "+x% to preference" or "-x to target" like the Playful, Loose or Dedicated could as well be textless. If these traits had a simple +5 to stat or +5% income on specific activity, it would already reduce the feel-bad when chatting up a girl in town and find out that you'll have to wait until she is generated anew before she becomes usefull to a BK-dificutly-brothel.
- The carpenter takes toooo long to build stuff. I'm almost at the end of the 3rd year, and the carpenter still has 10 buildings to build. I propose a very expensive building (20 of each resource at 3rd, 5th and 6th district) that says "building times are reduced by 1 day". Or alternatively a second forge that allows to build a second thing at the same, though that might be harder to code/interface.
- The ninja-hunt takes tooooooo long. Stuck at 2nd (or 3rd?) district with 8 full-leveled girls because I can only hunt 1 ninja per day... Please allow multiple hunts a day, maybe making successive hunts more tiresome (1AP -> 2AP -> 3AP) or allow hunting in each district every day. As it stands save-scumming until you find the ninja "first-try" is way faster than normal play, and that is never a good sign.
- Oh, and allowing girls to work at dynamic jobs (similar to whoring where you just allow what job she is allowed to do) would still be a great addition for not seeing the same images every night ;D Maybe if there were a job-selection-mod that implemented something similar that could be integrated to the main game...


That's today's wall of text. I want to highlight that all above-mentioned points are ideas of improvement, and that the game overall is great as it is. I just want to see it become even better. And even tough I played on BK 0.3, most if not all points also regard 0.2, so I posted it here and not in the 0.3 thread.

Happy brotheling everyone,
A&O

Thanks a lot for the detailed write-up, this is very helpful to me.

I will take action on most of your points, except the 1-point tree unlock which would imbalance the perk tree too much. I will find another workaround, maybe by giving one more perk point by level 25.

In the meantime, have you considered investing in some Wyvern eggs?  ;) 

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Feb 12, 2024, 10:09 AM- The Maid-tree is useless, even in early game other trees are better.

...What, you hate free maintenance and lower upkeep? Those are, IMO, the first- and second-best C-rank perks, maybe after free items in Fox.

If we're talking useless trees, I think Courtesan is strictly a win-more tree. Almost all of its perks are "If you're winning, win more" and are useless if you're not already winning.

Hey, just realised that there have been replies, must have missed them.

Quote from: Goldo on Feb 23, 2024, 04:00 PMThanks a lot for the detailed write-up, this is very helpful to me.

I will take action on most of your points, except the 1-point tree unlock which would imbalance the perk tree too much. I will find another workaround, maybe by giving one more perk point by level 25.

In the meantime, have you considered investing in some Wyvern eggs?  ;) 

+1 point at level 25 would solve my issue perfectly, didn't think about that solution. EDIT: I modded my game to include this change on my next playthrough

What the heck are Wyvern Eggs ?
If it is related to the farm, I have not used the farm at all, since I don't like mind-break, monster etc as content.

Quote from: Calob on Feb 23, 2024, 07:15 PM

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Feb 12, 2024, 10:09 AM- The Maid-tree is useless, even in early game other trees are better.

...What, you hate free maintenance and lower upkeep? Those are, IMO, the first- and second-best C-rank perks, maybe after free items in Fox.

If we're talking useless trees, I think Courtesan is strictly a win-more tree. Almost all of its perks are "If you're winning, win more" and are useless if you're not already winning.

I like the Courtesan tree for following reasons :
Staring with +50% bi-chance is nice, both for energy management and the images.
Then Half-shift-bonus is my 2nd favorite perk in the game (after work&whore from Slut). I put all my girls on half-shift, and given their constitution and energy-bonuses, I add full-shifts into their shedule as the game goes on. It helps to keep a steady flow of customers, never having too many clients for the chairs in the rooms etc.
Also IIRC half-shifting is a bonus income for working, since the income is not linear the more clients there are. So doing a massage for 2 clients on 2 days gives more than 1 massage for 4 clients followed by a full rest (might be wrong, please correct me if I have missed an interaction/change on working).
Add Work&Whore to that, my girls care for 1/4 capacity while working and 1/4th capacity while whoring every day, with a nice spread of pictures for all jobs and all sex-activities besides group.

At level 10, almost all my girls have 2 points in Courtesan and 4 points in Slut, allowing for a chill brothel management.


On the Maid :
Since I play with a quality-over-quantity approach (almsot no Group, much bi, half-shifts, etc), I always have a brothel that is clean at the end of the day with the normal maintenance slider. So contrairy to extra security or extra healing, I don't feel the need for more maintenance.
And all my girls are full love and no fear, so they are at minimum wage almost as soon as they start their contract, so again I don't feel like their upkeep is too high.
Though I might give Maid another try as my final 1-pointer at my standard level 25 branch (Full Cort, Full Slut, Full Player/Model, 4 Bride, 1 X )

Would be interesting to see if +3 points at level 25 would make me shift to another standard-build in the future due to the extra perk-point

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Mar 19, 2024, 02:00 PMWhat the heck are Wyvern Eggs ?

(https://i.imgur.com/bpaUECD.png)

Quote from: Goldo on Mar 22, 2024, 09:19 AM

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Mar 19, 2024, 02:00 PMWhat the heck are Wyvern Eggs ?

(https://i.imgur.com/bpaUECD.png)

Ive been playing this game for well over a year and haven't seen this in the game LMAO how does one acquire?

Quote from: AlolanNinetales on Mar 26, 2024, 09:57 AM

Quote from: Goldo on Mar 22, 2024, 09:19 AM

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Mar 19, 2024, 02:00 PMWhat the heck are Wyvern Eggs ?

(https://i.imgur.com/bpaUECD.png)

Ive been playing this game for well over a year and haven't seen this in the game LMAO how does one acquire?

My bad, I see I actually disabled that item for normal shop generation. I will add a couple of ways to get it in the new update.

As far as game play and balance goes, the single biggest issue that stands out for me is completing the first chapter.

To complete chapter 1, you need 1k gold, and you probably won't have much saved up other than that. Your girls are rank 1, so weak in various ways, so not big money makers. You only have 4-6 girls, and until you make an upgrade, only 4 can work, and one or two of those will likely be resting. You have limited upgrades on your first brothel, so you don't get much money from selling it. Upgrading your new brothel in terms of rooms costs quite a bit. And then various things can happen, like an injury, so you're suddenly down a girl and revenue drops. Or one of those fire/bar-fight events, which adds 100 to messiness to your place, and it costs a ton of money to clean it up. Also, there's no warning that girls are set to work in rooms that you had in the old place, but no longer exist in the new one, which can result in another day of lost work. And, of course, you lose all your customer base and have to build that back up.

It is a situation where you likely have low cash on hand, a high need of cash, a low ability to earn it, and are very much at risk of a random event ending everything. It wouldn't surprise me is this is one of the most frequent points at which a newer player will stop playing the game.

If you have experience with the game, it is less of an issue. You know to save a bit more before-hand. You know what to invest in to get your revenue back up the fastest. You know you can harvest the three resources and sell them to provide the income your brothel isn't giving you, though this then eats up your actions, which sucks for a less speed focused character. You know to max out the advertising budget the first couple of days. But it is, overall, the worst/hardest point in the game, even with experience, and subsequent change locations are trivial in comparison.

Some suggestions to help:
1) The clean up costs should be considerably lower for the earlier brothels, increasing as time goes up, and/or the amount of dirtiness added by fires/bar brawls should also be dependent on where you are in the game.
2) The costs to upgrade that 2nd brothel could stand to be a bit lower, Especially for unlocking each working room at rank 1, just to make it easier for the player to get back to rank 1.
3) The upgrades to your bedroom (how many girls you can have assigned there) should carry over.
4) A pop up warning when you have a girl assigned to work in a room you don't have, similar to how threat level ones work.
5) And maybe a bit more cash given to the player to start with. Perhaps requiring a raising of the 1k amount to 1500 or so.

And that said, not a big fan of the cost to unlock a new zodiac sign for a girl. It takes two points, which often, combined with the rank caps, leaves you with 1 point lingering, and a constant "you have girls to level up" indicator. And also that annoying indicator when you are just saving the point to get the 2nd point you need. And once you invest those two points... you get nothing. You need a third point before you can finally get some benefit. I'd rather only get 1 point at level 5, 10, and so on, and have the unlock cost 1. Also, some minor benefit to having the sign unlocked.

Quote from: Calob on Feb 23, 2024, 07:15 PM...What, you hate free maintenance and lower upkeep? Those are, IMO, the first- and second-best C-rank perks, maybe after free items in Fox.

I find the tree pretty bad overall as well. Part of it is because a chunk of the tree is faster skill gains. That's all well and good, but ultimately, once a girl caps her skills, dead perks. Same deal with Loyalty, except that loses value even faster. And while +1 maintenance is not bad, it also loses value as you progress through the game. So in the tree, there is a lot of rather small and short term benefit, rather than a long term one that scales nicely.

But another big part is that I generally play wizard. That means two things. First, I get the Magic Servants spell. That's -50 dirt per point of spirit per day, which is insane even if it provided half of that. Needless to say, once you have this spell, dirt is not an issue. Second, there's Magic Shield, another spell, which means the first instance of a girl getting hurt is negated. Which cuts heavily into the Survivor B rank thing as well. When you combine that with the skill gains being a short term thing, it doesn't leave much value left to the tree.

That said, it isn't necessarily bad that, as a Wizzy, I have less value to this sign or that sign. Helps differentiate the player classes. But even so, I think the Maid could stand to be a bit better. For example:
1) Maid Training could give +1 to Brothel Maintenance per rank, so at rank B, it would provide 2 points of Maintenance, 3 at A, and so on. Alternately, have it provide +1 Maintenance for every point spent in the Maid tree, so that the benefit reflects the training in maid stuff, rather than just the girl's rank. Or, as a third option, it doubles every time you reach a new rank within the tree. So 1 to start with, 2 once you get your first B rank Maid skill, and 4 once you have Strive for Perfection. Any of these would help this trait scale as you move through the game.
2) I'd rather see Hardworking provide an income increase to waitressing, rather than a JP increase. Or perhaps in addition to it. Bring on the maid cafes!
3) Loyalty needs something. A chance of love gain (an inverse Spiteful), maybe? A reduction in the cost of using "Clean up" in the Brothel menu, to make it cheaper to bounce back from bad events, as her loyalty to your establishment means she helps in the cleanup? Perhaps her cleaning extends to the other girls' rooms, adding to their comfort value?
4) Strive for Perfection could double the bonus of Maid Training. She's not in training anymore. She's a master. If the third option for #1 isn't used, of course.

I think your two points may be more linked than you realize.

The 'Maid' tree is specifically designed to help with the early game, and the bottom perks can really help your finances (free clean-up, less upkeep, better obedience to achieve more reliability in the beginning). If you bypass the Maid tree, you will struggle more in the beginning (although it shouldn't be game-breaking).

The thinking is that if you later want to min-max things, you should ditch your early Maid girl and switch to girls with more late-game trees. Or you could keep her and use the evil ritual to reset her perks. Or you could not min-max (but I know that's not an option for everybody  ;D ).

Some more specific points:

Quote from: Mudpony on Apr 12, 2024, 04:23 PMAlso, there's no warning that girls are set to work in rooms that you had in the old place, but no longer exist in the new one, which can result in another day of lost work. And, of course, you lose all your customer base and have to build that back up.

That sounds like a bug, if you mean girls are set to work in rooms that do not exist. Are you talking about 0.2 or 0.3 test? I distinctly remember fixing that, or at least I thought it was fixed.

QuoteIt is a situation where you likely have low cash on hand, a high need of cash, a low ability to earn it, and are very much at risk of a random event ending everything.

Security events are not random and having enough security working should be quite foolproof at the beginning. If not, it may be a balance issue. I'd be interested in more feedback on this.

Quote1) The clean up costs should be considerably lower for the earlier brothels, increasing as time goes up, and/or the amount of dirtiness added by fires/bar brawls should also be dependent on where you are in the game.

I will make the clean-up costs increase gradually, although at the beginning one or two cleaners should be enough to keep a single-girl brothel clean so you shouldn't need it.

Quote2) The costs to upgrade that 2nd brothel could stand to be a bit lower, Especially for unlocking each working room at rank 1, just to make it easier for the player to get back to rank 1.

Do you have some ideas about how much they should cost to be more balanced?

Quote3) The upgrades to your bedroom (how many girls you can have assigned there) should carry over.

They are reimbursed in part when you sell the brothel, which should help building up to that next level. You could also spend what you have and take the banker's loan if you're really struggling.

Quote4) A pop up warning when you have a girl assigned to work in a room you don't have, similar to how threat level ones work.

Sounds more like a bug.

Quote5) And maybe a bit more cash given to the player to start with. Perhaps requiring a raising of the 1k amount to 1500 or so.

This will be a NG+ option, but I think I like the balance I found with 500g at the beginning and don't want to break too many things.

QuoteAnd that said, not a big fan of the cost to unlock a new zodiac sign for a girl. It takes two points, which often, combined with the rank caps, leaves you with 1 point lingering, and a constant "you have girls to level up" indicator. And also that annoying indicator when you are just saving the point to get the 2nd point you need. And once you invest those two points... you get nothing. You need a third point before you can finally get some benefit. I'd rather only get 1 point at level 5, 10, and so on, and have the unlock cost 1. Also, some minor benefit to having the sign unlocked.

I guess the stat increase you get with every Rank C perk could be given when unlocking the tree instead, but that would make Level 1 girls a bit stronger as they have one or two trees unlocked. That may help early game, so you might say it's worth it.

I don't think the maid thing is that related. The cost of +1 cleaning is pretty low, gold-wise, so that isn't that much savings. And you get the cleaning spell relatively early in the game (as a wizzy), so the maid never really gets a chance to pay out. Overall, for early benefit, I'd rather get The Player, for Party Girl, which is great early and late.

As to Obedience, I'm sure that can be helpful for a newer player, but it is a very short term benefit, and one with alternate solutions. You can send the girl to the farm for a bit. You can invest the points from an early level into obedience. You can buy an item or two with +obedience on it and put it on the newest girl for a tad. Once you start training a girl, you gain a lot of obedience. Sometimes, one skill will be an issue, if the girl dislike it, but you can usually swap to a different skill, train that, and by time you return, no problem, or, once you do succeed once, you're usually fine.

That said, I do like the -15% upkeep reduction, if the girl in question has expensive on her. But, again, that 2 point initial cost to invest in a tree is painful, so unless the girl has expensive and a maid unlocking trait...

QuoteThat sounds like a bug, if you mean girls are set to work in rooms that do not exist. Are you talking about 0.2 or 0.3 test? I distinctly remember fixing that, or at least I thought it was fixed.

This is in 0.3. I had all 4 working rooms when I went on to chapter 2, and after that, only had 1. The girls all kept the jobs they were set to, but, of course, by switching to the new brothel, I no longer had all four rooms. So they couldn't work those jobs, but were still set to them.

QuoteI will make the clean-up costs increase gradually, although at the beginning one or two cleaners should be enough to keep a single-girl brothel clean so you shouldn't need it.

It isn't the cost per cleaner that's a problem. Daily maintenance is fine. It's the cost of cleaning up a bad event, when suddenly your bar goes from clean to a bunch of dirt. So naturally you want to call in the outside cleaners to get rid of 100%/%50% of that. That's the cost that feels too high for me early on, that makes it painful to recover from events like a fire.

QuoteDo you have some ideas about how much they should cost to be more balanced?

Hmm... hard question. You really need user metrics to answer it. Cost-wise, they could probably be reduced to a third or by half? But then add a modifier in the difficulty setting to the brothel upgrade costs, so that by Brothel King setting, it is back to where it is now?

One exception to that: the upgrade cost of the girl's rooms. That's one that I think is just too expensive, overall. Part of that is because you might go from 4 to 8 rooms before you upgrade them, which doubles the cost. Part of that is because you probably aren't making enough from whoring in chapter 2 to make the upgrade cost effective. I think this particular upgrade could benefit from a reduced cost compared to everything else, as well as having a "bulk purchase" discount... a cost of X + (num_rooms * Y) rather than straight up (num_rooms * Y).

But I think net income is probably a bigger factor. Even with reduced upgrade costs, if you are struggling to break even, for an extended period of time, then you can't afford stuff. And this ties into other things as well... no profits means you set security lower, so more events, which hurts your money. Go bankrupt, get bank loan, now you have to pay that back with interest.

And there, upkeep is probably the single biggest factor. Perhaps adjusting that a tad for rank 2 might be the best way to go about it. But that might not be necessary, because, by default, we pay too much as is. Automatic is a bit wasteful at the default level. Just some quick testing with how it currently works, for neutral mood mods (at least as shown in the UI):
1) New slave with 11 default cost. Can drop down to 7 while still keeping mood mod neutral.
2) I sold one of my best slaves in one of my games, bought her back...73 initial value, 64 is the bottom of white.
3) One of the other girls can go from 42 down to 25.
4) Looking at my wizzy game, which is further along, it is still a 15% savings when I drop the allowing from the base amount to the lowest amount that is still white.
Note that #2 and #3 are both maids with -15% upkeep reduction (trying a game with all girls as maids), while #2 has the Expensive trait.

Just tweaking automatic to default to the lowest amount for a given mood modifier would seem like something that would greatly help address the issue, especially as this cost gap seems to impact lower level girls more.

You could potentially overhaul this system a bit, to focus on mood modifier rather than gold cost. Have it show the mood modifier and gold cost. Lose the "A" as automatic won't matter anymore. Have - and + jump to the next tier of mood modifier, and you always pay the lowest cost that mood mod takes.

QuoteThis will be a NG+ option, but I think I like the balance I found with 500g at the beginning and don't want to break too many things

The starting gold is fine. I'm talking about how much gold the player has going into chapter 2. Like if completing chapter one required the player to stockpile a bit more gold, thereby giving them a bit more buffer in chapter 2. Alternately, the reimbursement rate could be cranked up for selling that first brothel.

That transition from chapter 1 to 2 is the main thing I'm focusing on, just because, in my experience, it is the hardest and most grindy time in the game by a considerable margin. Just strikes me as something that could be a major drop off point in player retention.

Quote from: Mudpony on Apr 23, 2024, 05:58 PMAnd there, upkeep is probably the single biggest factor. Perhaps adjusting that a tad for rank 2 might be the best way to go about it. But that might not be necessary, because, by default, we pay too much as is. Automatic is a bit wasteful at the default level. Just some quick testing with how it currently works, for neutral mood mods (at least as shown in the UI):
1) New slave with 11 default cost. Can drop down to 7 while still keeping mood mod neutral.
2) I sold one of my best slaves in one of my games, bought her back...73 initial value, 64 is the bottom of white.
3) One of the other girls can go from 42 down to 25.
4) Looking at my wizzy game, which is further along, it is still a 15% savings when I drop the allowing from the base amount to the lowest amount that is still white.
Note that #2 and #3 are both maids with -15% upkeep reduction (trying a game with all girls as maids), while #2 has the Expensive trait.

Hello,
Just to make sure, when you calibrate your girl's wages, do you look at the colour of the upkeep slider (red = underpaid, white = just fine, green = overpaid) or do you look at the direction of the mood-arrow next to the girl's name (arrow goes up = mood-increase at end of day ; arrow goes down = mood decrease at the end of day) ?

From my experience, it beacomes very fast rewarding to have some chats with the girls ("getting along with other girls" especially to encourage friendships) to bring up love and reduce distrust.
Just tripple-talk to the girl after the purchase, and you often can reduce the slider by a nice extra amount.
That works because both love and trust give modd bonuses that counteract mood-reductions from low upkeep. Also it feels like the moodreductions from low upkeep become weaker the more the girl loves/trusts you. And each dollar saved on allowance is a dollar more income the girl makes.
Of course keep an eye out for the masochist girls, their mood lessens when they trust you (but still increases with love)

@Goldo :
How hard is it to make the dirt from uproar-event dependent on the amount of bedrooms and/or working-rooms the hotel currently has ?
Instead of fire event = 40-60 dirt, it could be along the lines of (Number of Bedrooms * 2 + level of work-rooms * 5)
With maybe an upgrade "unflameable laundry" or "studry furniture" to make those costs go down.
After all, if the brothel is only 1 bedroom and a single bar, it would be far smaller to clean than a 4 bedroom brothel and all 4 workrooms installed.


Alternatively, the cost of outside cleaning (clean 100%/50%) could include the size of the brothel in addition to the district. Though I rather have dirt depending on the size, and not the cleaning cost.

Quote from: Alpha_and_omega on Apr 24, 2024, 12:19 PMJust to make sure, when you calibrate your girl's wages, do you look at the colour of the upkeep slider

Yeah, that's what that stuff you quoted is... where they start at by default (which is a white +0 mood modifier) to the lowest possible point that is still white. Even without any change to the girl, there's usually around a 15-20% gap there, and, well, girl #3 can have her allowance dropped by 40% and still be in the white. Basically, by default, even before you increase the love/trust, you can reduce the amount given.

And that said, when it comes to saving money on allowance, room upgrades also helps in that regard. Since, if you get +2 mood due to the quality of the girl's room, that means you can lower her allowance to a -2 mood modifier and it'll balance out.

But all that stuff is a bit more advanced play, something more for higher difficulties when income is reduced, girls are harder to raise, and so on.

QuoteAutomatic is a bit wasteful at the default level.
[...]
Just tweaking automatic to default to the lowest amount for a given mood modifier would seem like something that would greatly help address the issue, especially as this cost gap seems to impact lower level girls more.

Okay I think there's a misunderstanding regarding the upkeep UI I will need to clarify.

Automatic does not mean the slider will adjust to the most cost effective level. It just ensures that as your girl's upkeep needs grow, the slider keeps up with it to maintain the same mood modifier overall. If you push your upkeep to the max and keep upkeep automatic, it will always remain at max level, same goes for low upkeep levels.

In fact, there is no obvious 'most cost effective' level. With careful micro management or a fear-based build you can afford to keep upkeep modifiers slightly in the red, while sometimes you will want to be well in the green to compensate for some other mood penalty (such as having subpar rooms).

To improve the UI, I'm thinking of displaying the mood bonus next to the bar (and include a digit after the decimal point to avoid threshold effects), and removing the automatic option completely (in fact leaving it enabled by default at all times, because there is no real use case for disabling it I think).