New Version - v 0.2.0 (01-May-2022)


Hi All,

I'm just uploaded the next version of this game, version 0.2.0. I was going to upload a client version of this game, but I found an annoying issue with it. Basically, it can load version 0.1 saves, but then doesn't function well after that. A lot of errors occur afterwards. After I've sorted that issue out, I'll upload client versions, later. For now, I've only been able to deploy the web version of this game.

Change Log:

  1. Added morning scenes in the first few days, to help explain the gameplay.
  2. Added a new bonus system, which add more strategy and thought to the game.
  3. Added difficulty levels, which impact how often officers have missions and how much time you have to repay the debt.
  4. Displayed morale cost for missions.
  5. Displayed officer personalities, which impact missions, obligations and events.
  6. Unlocked almost all obligations for the main character's outfit. The new obligations require a relationship level of 3 or 5 (or above).
  7. Added a new sci-fi themed UI and some sound effects.
  8. Added an option and panel to break down how a mission's pay is calculated.
  9. Added some shortcuts, such as when you enter the plane with a mission, the game will take you straight to the cargo bay.

Let me know what you think! Thanks!

Links:
NewGrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/841741
Itch.io: https://acacgames.itch.io/gid037

Get Delivery Pilot: Dreams and Debts

Comments

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(+1)

Here's my feedback with a few suggestions:

1. These scenes seem useful for a new Player, but become repetitive and tedious after multiple playthroughts.

Suggested fix: make them toggable (with default setting ON, for the Noobs)

2/3. These increase replay value and make the game notably easier than version 0.1.  I hope there will be more bonus options in next patches!

4/5. Both help to understand the rewards. Good to have them.

6. The new outfits look good, but many are bugged. Here are the bugs I've seen so far:

- if the pilot already wears a Skirt and agrees to wear a short Skirt, nothing changes.

- if she is asked to wear her Shirt in a sexy Knot without removing the Jacket, nothing changes, but if when wears no Jacket, it works fine. (unbuttoning the top Buttons to show Cleavage works fine both with and without Jacket)

- if you rotate the body, the Skirts seem to sit much higher on the back side than from the front (the Hem to Waist distance doesn't change, it's just shifted down for frontal view and up for the backside, that's irritating)

- If I decline a proposal to wear some clothes or do lewd things, the Officer asks the same thing again and again until I agree.  It would be much more fun if they made a different proposal after refusing.

7. The new UI looks better and more immersive. A few Suggestions for further improvement:

- change the order of Next/Previous/Finish to either Finish/Next/Previous or Previous/Next/Finish.

- change a few terms to fit the sci-fi setting: use Spacecraft instead of Aircraft, Holo-Movies instead of Movies.

8/9. Both things are helpful.

Summary: It's a good update, I hope you'll fix the bugs with the new outfits soon.

(+1)

Awesome, thanks for the feedback! Yeah, that outfit display bug is a big one for me. I'm gonna work on that next.

In regards to writing, it's something I'm giving a lot of thought. I want to use what I call dynamic scenes, which you can already see in the erotic scenes, like in the cargo bay. The idea is that the same scene scene can have a lot of variations, and new variations could occur if conditions change. But in practice, I don't know if they are interesting (maybe they come off really generic), or if they are sustainable in a development sense. Maybe it's better to use short scenes that don't change much instead, because they can be a bit deeper, and I can write more of them. I'm not sure yet, but I think I'll experiment around a little bit. What do you think of the way the lewd scenes kind of shuffle around?

One thing I would also like to add is a fourth button, that lets you skip to the end of a story. That will be especially nice if like you said, you're slogging through the intro tutorial stuff again. It also would be nice if you just want to know how much you made on a mission, or how much morale you lost in a scene.

(+1)

In this version (and 0.1) there are too few scenes, and the ones that are in are repetitive, but it's OK for a beta version, I expect you to add more scenes in future updates.

The most annoying case are the sponsored Dates. I would expect more stuff to happen, especially with multiple dates with the same Officers, but that would probably require more personality types. BTW, are sponsored dates supposed to be only with female Officers or just unlikely RNG?

A Skip button could be useful for some scenes, but not in this case: pressing Skip every time is more complicated than going to settings and choosing ON/OFF one time.

Okay, thanks. Yeah, the sponsored dates are only from the stern female officers. she's kind of a mama-san, who won't do sexual things with the MC, but she'll send the MC on dates and take the payment for herself. I plan for the dates to escalate later. In the beginning, the customers can't touch the main character, but later they will. Afterwards, they'll be allowed to invite her home, as well.

The other officers will also have their own niche. The sleazy female officers will be more of an aggressive bisexual. The sleazy male will want to take photos of the MC and circulate them around the station. The stern male will try to humiliate and dominate the MC. That's the general theme, anyway.

(+1)

After trying myself on the first version several times (best run until day 111), I had 2 runs in the new version.

The first run was on medium, bonus for relationship > 3, and I forgot about the second one. 80% mission chance feels good, you sometimes have to work for a Captain that does not help you progressing, but having no job at all is very rare. I could focus on sleazy and stern officers, and had to take several days off in midgame due to morale problems. Still, I could earn more money than required each week, and my funds slowly grew up. After having unlocked several majors and the relationship bonus kicked in, my funds suddenly growed very fast, and it was easy to see that I will win the game. Also morale grew up because (a) I worked for the highest ranked officers, thus often working for friendly majors instead of sleazy Captains and (b) I only had to check the highest ranked officers missions, so there is no morale penalty for lewd scenes with the captains. In the endgame, when interest regeneration is increased to 10, I mostly got +10 morale in the evenings, ending up with over 100 morale.

The second run was on hard, bonus for industrial stations and ranks higher than Captain. In the beginning, I was struggling to earn enough money, and failed one payment. Then, the rank bonus kicked in, and it was suddenly easy. Sometimes, two flights earned enough money for the whole week, not to mention the payments in the endgame. Surprisingly, in this game, I never had morale problems. Due to the industrial station bonus, I often preferred a friendly officer with a mission to an Industrial station. Also the 60% mission chance gives you a higher probability of working for a friendly officer.

As others already mentioned the annoying clothing bug, I will share some thoughts about balancing.

- 100% bonus for rank above Captain is way too high, there is no reason for working for a Captain anymore as soon as you have unlocked his Major. It's mostly better to wait one day when a Major has no mission than doing a mission for a Captain to a station without a major. Moreover, even if there are more Captains than Majors, you will maybe perform more missions for Majors and Colonels in one run than for Captains. I would suggest to reduce it to 50% or even to 25%.

- Colonels and the General give you tons of money even without bonus, and often one flight is enough to cover the debt of one week. Reason is that the subordinate bonus includes also the Captains. You should only consider the subordinates.

- High relationship should pay out more, a high relationship Captain should always be a good alternative to a low relationship Major. Otherwise, your relationship level will rarely go above 3 or 4.

- Above level 3, relationship grows too slow. If you do not try to force it, it will be hard to have more than 2 officers on one starport on level 5. Suggestion: from level 3 on, each new level requires 3 missions.

- When interest regeneration goes up to 2, you suddenly get always every evening a maximum morale boost. This seems too much (and too sudden). Maybe change the system that the regeneration is always 1, but the interest drop is capped by e.g. 6. That is, if your interest for the Stardome is 8 and you visit it, the interest will only go down to 2 and not to 0.

But maybe I will be happy with your current system when your new obligations come in ;-)

I hope you get the balancing well. At the moment, the endgame is too easy, and I'm just mindlessly clicking without thinking. In best case, you get it such that you always have tough decisions: should I visit another Captain and maybe get a better job, or is the risk too high that there is some harassement?

(+1)

Sweet, thanks for letting me know! This makes me really happy, because it shows that the bonuses are really encouraging you to change your strategy. :)

I definitely agree about the balancing. One thing that bothers me is that like you said, once you reach the colonel level or general level, you feel like you're just a few steps away from certain victory. I'm happy with where captains and majors are. But the officers higher ranked than that need to tone down a bit.

My first inkling was to remove the subordinate bonus. It seems too powerful at higher ranks. But I also really like what it does, which is rewarding you for continuing to help lower ranked officers. What I could do instead is reduce the multiplier for the rank of the officer, since high ranking officers will get big subordinate bonuses, anyway. Your idea of the subordinate bonus only going down 1 rank is also really good, and I'll keep that in mind. But, I don't want to punish captains for not having clout 2 levels above (but maybe it makes sense, too).

Awesome, I'm glad you said it. I also had this impression, but I wasn't sure if I was just gaming what I already know about the system. If you and others also feel this way about the high ranking officers, then yeah, it's something that needs adjusting.

(+1)

Wow - so it's going to be a long one:

Regarding changes - While small, they have big impact - managed to finally beat a game on medium with over 2~ milion spare on my account

1. As a 'Veteran' morning scenes didn't really add much for me personally :P

2./3. Made game actually beatable though the bonuses appear too strong currently

4./5. Greatly appreciated - big fan of seeing how are things calculated

6. Loving the new clothes, hoping for even more :)

7. Liking the UI changes and sounds

8. For me this option was ON for full playthrough :P

9. Shortcuts are appreciated there's loooooot of clicks when debt doesn't kill you first - but as I've said before it's part of games charm

Now a few things not polished:

1. Indicator from 'Station view' and 'Officer Quarters' view on personality of officer; because it matters way more now and switching between station/officer view and finding certain officer takes a lot of time

2. Might want to also indicate from 'Station view' which personal deals have been taken from which officer; especially compensated date one.

3. Some indicator whenever your relations allow you to take missions from someone/relationship allows for deal (So that you can see from which officer you may request mission); Maybe indicated as lamp in front of name (not lit when not introduced/green when can give mission/red when relation not allowing to take mission)

4. Furniture missions getting transported vary widely in payed cash - perhaps change naming convention to basic/antique/luxury/custom furniture etc.

5. Inrease of relationship to level 5 takes quite some time, and also cash is quite abundand - So I thought if you could make delivery for free (+ morale loss due to working without earning) you could get additional +1 relationship level. Especially since paying out debt makes you unable to further grind officer rleations

Minor bugs:

1. I believe there's mistake in "Promenant makeup"

2. There's no day/night art for yellow stations

3. Probably not a bug because not yet implemented - Crew missions are better than material ones because you don't get potential morale penalties from loading/unloading

4. Probably not a bug because not yet implemented - 4th tier relationship deal is empty for all personality types

And finally the Big bugs (all outfit related visual fortunately):

1. It appears that when there are multiple deals for one slot (let's say shoes) only the first deal gots displayed overriding all the other ones like if you have flats deal 1st, then heels deal would still display flats

2. Insanity check for outfit deals - Sheer bra/Sexy bra deal at the same station ? Unless made conciously to make MC decide which officer she wishes to appraise

3. Midriff knot deal appears to also include cleavage deal - which I believe should be separate

4. Insanity check for evaluating deals - (sheer/sexy panties) each officer demanding either deal have separate comments for each panties type.

5. If for example one officer has 'Make out/wearing sheer panties' Only one of them will fire.

6. Insanity check for current outfit - like MC commenting on removing pants while presenting her panties if she took no bottoms deal...

Overall pretty solid release without game-breaking rules ;)

(+1)

Awesome, thank you for taking the time to give me that feedback. I've got a lot on my plate now, lol.

I think the only thing that bugs me is how multiple obligations for the same slot are showing wrong. That's definitely a bug. In your example, it should be the heels that get shown, not the flats. I'll take a look at the code, thanks! This makes me think, I need to build a test harness to better test the obligations in the game. It's only going to get more complicated from here.

Those are great UI suggestions. I'll definitely take a note of that!

In regards to the difficulty, okay good. I'm pretty happy with where it is, for two reasons. One is that I'll start adding more lewd scenes later on (after gameplay and bugs are ironed out), and that's going to make the main character lose morale faster. This way, the game will become harder later on. The second reason is that, I want to make the game approachable enough. People can feel that they can beat the game. But it might be a fun extra challenge to see - as the player - if you can twist fate enough in time, to make the main character fall further into the clutches of some of the officers. So, it might be a fun balancing act. Maybe not, but let's see. I think I'm happy if not everything is seen by the player in a quick playthrough. So, it becomes more of extra side content if the player can take their time and level up some officers.

I'm glad you brought up those bugs and issues. Everything you mentioned are things I'm thinking about, too. You're totally right about transporting crew. That will later have its own scenes, and I want to get that done as soon as possible. About the RL4 obligation, that and the other even number relationship levels are actually going to be specific obligations, based on the officer's personality. I don't have any scenes for these obligations yet though, so I decided to block these obligations for now. These will be the obligations that escalate scenes from molesting to beyond. 

Going back to multiple deals for the same slot, my design choice is to keep the more extreme obligation. In that case, if she has the sexy bra deal with one officer, another officer (or the same officer) can ask for the sheer bra deal, and if she accepts, then the sexy bra deal gets cancelled/superseded. I think this will make the game simpler, so that you (or the game itself) doesn't have to juggle too many conflicts. Additionally, an officer can also ask for the sheer bra even if there was no previous sexy bra deal. The latter is not a prerequisite for the former. Once the MC has the sheer bra deal, the sexy bra shouldn't come up anymore, for that station.

Alright, thanks again for the feedback, and the chat! Cheers!

(+1)

No issues, thanks for clarifying some stuff.

If possible for obligations I'd prefer humiliation content progressing non-directly, with molestation being the most severe physical content for some officers.

Also I'm glad to make this project even better with feedback :)