Update (12-Aug-2022)
Hi All,
I wanted to give an update on my progress, so far. Last week, I finished 2 things:
First, I've wrapped up the update I wanted to make on the sexual stat tracking. I like how it looks now, and I think it will be easier to manage in the future. :)
It doesn't look like a big change, but I made a lot of underlying code changes.
Secondly, I've add the passenger transport scenes to the game, and I'm happy with how that looks, as well. This doesn't include the VIPs yet, just the "Staff", "Contractors", etc... I plan to work on the VIPs next month.
Next week, I plan to add the panty and bra inspection scenes into the game, and test them out.
Hard Mode:
I think the general feeling is that hard mode is too unfun, and it could use some tweaking. There are two issues, but they both stem from the 60% chance of a mission being generated by an officer. The first issue is that stations too often have no missions available at all. That's too punishing, and there's nothing the player can do to prevent it. The second issue is that even if a mission is available, oftentimes there is only one mission available. The player doesn't get a choice of what mission to do, and I think being able to make those kinds of choices is what makes this game fun.
On one hand, I don't really want to change hard mode, for a couple of reasons. One is that it's a reference to what the game settings were in version 0.1, and I'm very sentimental about it. The other reason is that I like how symmetrical the 60/80/100% chances are for hard, medium and easy modes. I don't want to change easy either, because I think of it as a tutorial mode to help the player get a feel for the gameplay loop.
On the other hand, I don't think those are particularly strong reasons, and I do want hard to still be fun, even if it is near unbeatable. Therefore, I propose the following solution to both mitigate the 60%, and to still preserve the 60%:
Captains Are Always Busy:
If all captains on a station don't have a job available, then all captains are re-rolled once. This would be for all difficulty levels. I think statistically, this is much more powerful than 70% mission generation chance for getting at least 1 mission on a station. It's not as powerful as 70% for giving 2 or more mission choices, but it still helps. Here's my math, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Say you have a station with 3 captains (this is for captain missions, only):
- With just 60% chance of mission generation, there is a 6.4% chance of no missions being available. That's like once every 16 days.
- With 70% chance of mission generation, there is a 2.7% chance of no missions being available. That's around once every 40 days.
- With 60% and busy captains, there is a 0.4% (6.4% ^ 2) chance of no missions being available. That's once every 250 days.
This is even more crucial on stations with 2 captains, I think:
- With just 60% chance of mission generation, there is a 16% chance of no missions being available. That's once every 6 days.
- With 70% chance of mission generation, there is a 9% chance of no missions being available. That's around once every 11 days.
- With 60% and busy captains, there is a 2.6% chance of no missions being available. That's again around 40 days.
In fact, in terms of giving captains missions, it's akin to having 84% chance of generating a mission. So, powerful captains early on, but not much help for higher ranking officers. Not much help for generating more than 1 mission, either.
- With just 60% chance of mission generation, there is a 64.8% chance of at least 2 missions being available amongst 3 captains.
- With 70% chance of mission generation, there is a 78.4% chance of at least 2 missions being available amongst 3 captains. This is 21% better than with 60%.
- With 60% and busy captains, there is a 69.0% chance of at least 2 missions being available amongst 3 captains. This is 6.4% better than just 60% without busy captains.
So, not quite as good at solving this second problem, but it still helps. It will also help in medium difficulty, as more morale hurting events are added to the game. What do you think?
Cheers!
Comments
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We will see how the reroll strategy feels when playing. I assume that it is harder than rolling once with 70%, for the following reasons. First, I think the second issue (having only one mission) is more of a problem than the first issue (having no mission). On my runs on medium, I realized how much faster I could unlock the Majors because I had more options w.r.t. chosen Captain and destination. Here, the reroll will not help much. With the morning scene morale sink, having no mission at all is not that bad anymore, because you sometimes need a day off in any case. Of course, it's still annoying if your current location does not offer a good recreation option.
About the symmetry of the difficulties, I'm also not a friend of the 100% on easy. If easy should be tutorial style, you remove a part of the game mechanics here. I think 90% would be a better choice.
I still would prefer the 70% difficulty. It keeps stuff easy and easy to understand. But I can also understand your sentimal arguments. And before having played it with the reroll strategy, everything I wrote are just theoretical assumptions. So implement it, and we will see how it feels.
About this balancing stuff, it might be good to have a non-UI version with an AI interface, so you can write a simple AI that plays it thousands of time, maybe outputing some statistics, and you get a feeling where the game is too easy and where too hard. But I guess this will be hard to include at the current stage of development. Maybe for your next project.
I'm doing some testing now, and I felt what you mean about having 1 option so often. It feels less like a game, and more like flowing helplessly down a river, wherever it takes you. I've implemented the Captains Are Always Busy rule for the next release, but if it doesn't feel good, I could go with 70/80/90 the following month.