Monday, May 22, 2017

New grade/caste system

 Hey there. Firstly, next release will likely come out by the end of a week or so and will include new grade system and hopefully gear.




For now I'll explain new upcoming update mechanics. As you might know, in the latest version slave skills has been removed from the game. Now it's time to reintroduce grade system, which hopefully will be complemented by customizable gear.

So, old castes/backgrounds has been renamed into 'grades'. They still serve similar purpose to showcase slave's previous position, affect training difficulties and starting stats, but now they have more to them:

Firstly, grades, unlike backgrounds, are actually changeable. You can alter specific slave's grade at slaver guild service, which will take gold and some time.

Instead of just slave's past, grades now reflect on slave's current expectations and demands. Mental stats (courage, wit, etc) are now capped not only by traits, but by their grade. Slave grade has limit of 55 points, Poor of 65, Royal of 100. Atypical background has been removed for the sake of simpler progression (actually, I had some considerations on keeping it in game as a better version of Rich grade, but it gets in the way of the upgrade system too much, maybe I'll add some 'unique' grade for special slaves later on though).

However, slaves will have certain level of demands according to their  grade. That level can be fulfilled by:  personal room,  fancy gear (clothes and jewellery) and luxury rules. It's a new rules segment which will serve exactly to satisfy those demands and will include stuff like serving higher quality food or daily pocket money. Strictly speaking, it will serve primarily as a late-game money sink. While Poor or Commoner grade slaves will only require fancy dress or nice room, Royal grade won't be satisfied unless presented with nearly full spectrum.

High Grade will also be required for many jobs which previously used skills as prerequisites (managements, escort, mage guild assistant and so on).  Finally, inability to meet those demand levels will cause slave to lose loyalty and obedience based on how much they are missing for their grade.

Speaking of resources, I do want to expand that direction slightly more eventually. I already mentioned some sort of vendor trash items, but we could actually have some other resources other than alchemy ingredients for gameplay purposes. The room management also gives me some minor inspirations to actually give more depth to the possibilities regarding mansion planning, as long as people won't feel it's too much of a complexity.

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Seems fair enough. For now I'm curious onto how these recent updates will affect some of the race traits, as I try to usually try (although often fail) to make one that usually fits a job best. Also I do want to ask, how long does it usually take before a captive to more or less accept their capture. I normally try to have a small list early on but Its astonishingly hard since I personally have not had had a jailer or figured out how to make a head girl, and I'm more on the softer side of things, so I don't really punish. Also there is something weird when they usually ask for more favors they become more restless instead of calming down and usually burn out their energy (and mine) doing so. Is that normally how it goes?

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  2. I've tried playing the recent online version, and this bug repeats again.

    http://strivefopower.blogspot.com/2017/04/story-plans-in-depth.html?showComment=1493975291634#c1070616717111027875

    This time, somewhere around the time it happened, the turns stopped progressing, too. As in, the day counter increases, the gold and food amount changes, but the day report doesn't pop up. Also, everybody restores Energy and HP as normal - except MC and Cali. The stats of slaves increase (due to wearing Kimono, Ninja suit, etc), but in the statistics screen the amount of days owned/in jail stays the same.

    And I can't even send the save, because it's an online version.

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    1. Sadly, I have very little idea what that bug might be and what causes it. The previously reported paying option bug should've been fixed recently.

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    2. I see you have updated the version. This means that the one that was on Newsgrounds is now available for download. I can try to replicate the bug and upload a save somewhere, if you want to take a closer look?

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  3. Hello, it's me again :D
    When you drain all energy from slave and press end day, slave and mc energy doesn't restore and end day log doesn't appear. However day conter works fine.
    Script Error: _on_end_pressed: invalid get index 'text' (on base: 'String') At: res://files/scripts/Mansion.gd:380
    I will send you save via email.

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