Serum Revamp Plans

Wow! Seems I'm not nearly the only former patron that feels this way. Vren, wanna pull it back in a little for not much work? Go to Daz3D and buy HOT clothes. There's tons of old stuff and it's cheap. I remember months and months ago, I even offered to buy it for you! Just get that stuff and render, render, render. Players will put up with more BS if they can at least have some eye candy while they do it.

I'm looking at that as well. This is my only $5 tier patreon, and may drop to $1. Not getting the latest build wont matter as much if the tedious grind keeps growing.

Scott Snelling

This

Dude, no one played the first game because they wanted to experience the challenges of counterbalancing work and social relationships. It was fun because you got to mind control girls into becoming preggo sluts for you. Don't stray too far from what people are here for, you can make serums more fun without making people open up Microsoft Excel to plan their Q3 financials. Give serums that affect personality and turn them goth or "Yes, master" empty at the cost of obedience or happiness, or make the girls super-fertile or something. That's at least what I'd like to see over a business management game that spends so much time making you focus on profitability that you forget to fuck sluts.

James Ashcraft

Yeah, this is kinda concerning. This game is starting to feel more like a business management sim than it does a 'Hey, lets corrupt hot girl employees to become fun sluts' kinda game. Lots of little bits and bobs being added that keep pushing away from the sexiness factor, but are increasing the 'pharmacy tycoon' feel. I may need to bow out.

Tim R Mercado

> What's already in place works, it doesn't need much in the way of changes, but instead tweak it. No, it doesn't. What's already in place does not reward the player in a way proportional to the effort it requires. With the current selection of traits that barely interact with one another, it would be better to have a far simpler system where researching a trait immediately gives you access to a serum design with that single trait. As the system is now, designing serum is not actually rewarding.

Bingbong

Having played Lab Rats 2 for a while, I would say if you're going to make changes to the serum system, then keep it simple. You already have a very involved game, the serum system needs to be an area where it should be simple. What's already in place works, it doesn't need much in the way of changes, but instead tweak it. Think of new effects, like temporarily raising love for a couple of time periods (and as a counter drop their love or lust when it wears off).

Castlerook

Looking forward to the changes and interested to see what I'm going to need to change in my mod based on this refactor

FooLord

Is the 'double chin' of the one face type intentional? (I was assuming that the face layer was just too short, but then noticed it happened most of the time with the 'fleshier' body-types)

William Urquhart

Well, I'm not quite sure about the direction this is going. I'm usually starting fresh each new or every other new version of the game, and each time it seems more and more tidious to grind up the stats of the girls and it gets more difficult to get halfway decent looking (at least from my perspective) employes with the right skills. Making serums more unreliable and getting income with your company more repetative will again just slow down progress.

Michael Simon

Lastly, like Dubsington and Scott Snelling above, I'm rather weary of the suggested "decreasing profitability with each dose" mechanic. It's not particularly intuitive, and it sounds like it could devolve into tedious micromanagement. That said, here are some alternative ways to encourage more serum design via economy incentives: - if rival companies ever become a thing, you could make it so that they try to copy your serum designs once they've been in the market for awhile, thus reducing the market value for those designs. One advantage of this approach is that there would be room for the player to interfere with the process by, say, corrupting some of the key employees in the rival companies. - have "special contract orders" for serum with specific specs that pay way over the default market rate. These could be inaccessible early on, and require you to further advance your marketing division to create better business connections, perhaps with some shady secretive sectors of the economy (alternatively, these better contracts could also be obtained via some crisis, similar to the current "investment firm" crisis).

Bingbong

Additionally, a "stick" approach to incentivize serum design that naturally grows in complexity as the game goes on is to make the following changes: -make it so that each girl can only have 1 (or maybe 2) active serum at a given time. Trying to give additional serum would cause an adverse reaction on the girl, and she would be sick for a few days (on that note, if the girl is assigned a "daily dose" she really should only take a new dose once the previous expired). This would give multi-trait serum a clear advantage over single-trait serum. -make multi-trait serum risky early game by having them cause a disproportionate amount of negative side effects until the R&D division knows how to remove those side effects. This would encourage the player to first master the individual traits with single-trait serum before moving on to multi-trait serum.

Bingbong

The main problem with the current serum system is that there isn't much reward or incentive to try complex serum designs. There's really little reason to have a single 2-trait-serum that increases both slutiness and obedience instead of two 1-trait-serum each of which increase slutiness and obedience only. The price difference is minimal, and other than that you only gain the convenience of needing less clicks to administer those serum. The result is a system that gives the player a lot of freedom, but not much payoff for creativity. The ideal really would be for there to be some pairs of primary serum traits whose combination can produce effects that can't be achieved by using the two traits separately, but that may be too hard to design. Barring that, one really should have a more robust set of auxiliary traits (with increased duration being currently the only one). Here are some suggestions: - right now you can just "try to give serum stealthily" with no preconditions. It's rather mysterious how exactly the MC supposedly does this, but in my mind he tries to find an opening to slip the serum into the girl's drink. It would make a lot of sense if the chance of success for this depended on the taste/color of the serum, and there could be auxiliary serum traits to improve the odds of succeeding when doing this. -you mentioned the idea of serum that increase the gains from oral sex, meaning that there might be serum associated with specific actions. Let's call such a trait the "oral trait". How adding an auxiliary "opinion trait" which, when combined with the "oral trait", creates a serum which can slowly change the targets opinion towards oral sex in some kind of hate -> dislike -> neutral ->like -> love -> addicted/obsessed pattern?

Bingbong

Absolutely agree with this. Not only does decreasing value sound dangerous, but it also sounds like more micromanagement. One of my least favorite things about Something Unlimited is having to "rotate" your dancers every few days. That's just pointless clicks to avoid not making maximum money. This change is just "added action tax" that requires the player to remember it is happening. Gotta remember to make a new serum design (that you have never made yet!). Then research it (preventing you from progressing research anywhere else). Then remember to set it as the new production-for-sales production line. And don't forget to raise the stock limit from 'none' to '0' so it'll get auto-sold. To me, that all sounds like a headache and a chore, when I want to be playing not just a game, but a porn game. I like that this could give a reason for more scientists. But I really don't like the idea of diminishing sales value unless sales values start higher, and have a reasonable minimum% they decrease to (so refreshing formula increases compared to current, and not refreshing is not a significant loss to players who just want to be lazy with a standard sales).

Scott Snelling

One source of frustration with the current setup is that the effects ("ornery", "bliss") are not always obviously mapped into game impact. For example, "ornery" clearly means something negative about obedience, but what exactly? Everything about serum lends itself to minmaxing (as does the whole game, really), so it is a nuisance to have to try to decode the flavor text or actually take notes in order to see if something is temporary. Another headache is that the UI shows no distinction between temporary and core values for anything but sluttiness. That combined with recent changes to the sex mechanics and time management have made it extremely difficult to manage Obedience scores; the only way I have found to do it is to avoid sex with the girls (which invariably results in a net drop) and let the business burn to the ground while I spend all day alternating between insults and compliments. Re your planned changes: The 'decreasing profitability with each dose' mechanic sounds dangerous and certainly counterintuitive to anyone who expects realistic market behavior. Don't forget that we are here to progress with the girls first and foremost; that should provide the motivation to develop new serums. If it doesn't, I humbly recommend improving the carrot rather than beating us with a stick if we do not constantly fiddle with our serum designs.

Dubsington

Hi, noob here:P New Serum Revamp looks good! Picked up Lad Rats 2 last weekend and have been playing it all week, love it. Played the first one to death and I think Lab Rats 2 is well on the way to being a classic. Love the clothing system and the sexy time is very good. Just want more:P Looking forward to new map locations opening up, curious as to what you have planed for the gym! Early days, I know. I remember some events in the first game, the cafe and the bus come to mind. Are you planing anything like that in Rats 2?

phalicobject

Your ideas sound really good! This will probably also add a reason to have more than 1 or 2 scientists, because right now there is not. :)

waffel

If you are redoing the serum system could you add in the fetish traits that some of the mods add? I found that a lot of fun and helpful. Made it so I didn't have to constantly reroll at the hiring screen, well I mean to do less rerolling.

Andrew Goebel