Serum Creation System Update

This actually creates a new issue in the game that I mentioned in a prior post: You basically never need more than 1 person handling marketing. Because serums are sold 3 times per day, one person with decent stats will sell between 10 and 20 serums (depending on their exact stats). Even with an excessive number of people working in supply & production (enough that names were "off the top of the screen", and producing very minimalistic serums, I could only produce 15-25 serums per day. I was making plenty of money with that approach, but it felt rather weird to only have 1-2 people in research (nothing to do once you max serums out - also a good thing to improve), 1 person in HR, 1 person in marketing, and 10+ people each in supply and production. Really weights which skills are important to hire for :(

Scott Snelling

Really curious as to how this will all play out. Keep up the good work!

Alternatively, have a simple low $ producing serum to start with to avoid the whole week of research grind at the beginning.

Good to see you're thinking in terms of net dollars per production point, since that is the (invisible but easily calculable) stat that really drives player behavior. Suggestions for making the "click research a bunch of times then go to bed, repeat about seventy times" grind less tedious in the early (pre-employee) game: * The most obvious would be to take a page from the real world: to allow the player to get a line of credit from "the bank". Let's say you are able to get a large lump sum provided you make payments (say, 0.5% interest per day) until you return the principal in a lump sum. If the lump sum is large enough, you could afford to hire some staff right off the bat and get the game off to a running start. It would also give you a tangible near-term goal of generating profit > the daily interest payments. * Have the player stat with a single dose of heavyweight loyalty serum that he stole from the lab, and he starts out with one free interview batch (which you might want to jimmy to ensure that each candidate has a '5' in a different field, so players don't need to restart). When the single hire is picked, the super-serum is consumed as the player slips it to the new employee with the suggestion that they will work for only a token salary for the first month. They gain no sexual stats, but the player does get free labor for the starting period so you can at least do actual management/interaction stuff. At the end of each month, they request their salary raised by $X/day until it is an appropriate number. The starter employee will quit if they don't get the raise (they gotta eat), but will never randomly quit due to unhappiness mid-month. * You simply massively increase the amount and duration of debt you can carry. The current "-$1 for 3 days" thing is absolutely brutal and, at least for me, makes it impossible to hire anyone until I've done a ton of solo research. (This is probably realistic, but not fun.) Maybe make it so that you can carry up to $1000 debt for the first 30 days, then $500 debt for the next 30, and after that your "investors" are done coddling you and the old rules apply.

Dubsington

The kissing thing is definitely an issue. It's a PITA to make a girl come before you do during sex, since your arousal generally goes up higher than hers. One could argue, of course, that this is not an unrealistic issue, but in that case we should be offered the same solution that works in real life-- some foreplay options such as fondling/fingering/oral that get the girl going much faster than it does us. (What I'd really love to see, in the distant future where Vren has infinite render time to burn, is girl/girl stuff so you can sic one slut on another and get them both heated up while you can enjoy the show in the meantime.)

Dubsington

Actually, the best serum has three traits. The basic serum sells for $2 and has a cost of 10 supply. The best trait (Slow Release Dopamine) sells for $20 with a cost of 20 supply. But adding only that brings the price/cost to $22/30, a ratio of 0.73. There are two other ingredients with a price/cost ratio higher than 0.73 (Futuristic Serum Production and Basic Medical Application, both at 0.80), so adding them improves the serum's price/cost ratio. Adding all three gives a serum that sells for $70 and costs 90 supply, for a total price/cost ratio of 0.78. The higher cost also means a single marketing employee can keep up with the sales. The newer system does sound better. But there's still the issue of starting up. Right now, it doesn't make sense to hire anyone until you've spammed research by yourself enough to start producing a viable serum. Employee happiness also seems to be a problem, and the only viable way to increase it is currently (be better at kissing and make them orgasm a whole lot) both unrealistic and makes character trait selection largely pointless.

Thanny

Well think about implementing the production engineers job, and that those should provide a % bonus for production ;) Edit: but require a hefty compensation ofc :p

waffel