So, i was delaying posting in order to get more intel on the matter, but how long can you pretend to be doing something when no new intel trickles in anymore? This one is going to be about H-compatibility and the "mystery mechanic" (if you dont know what that is - see previous pages):
1. H-compatibility - a number of pages back ive mentioned that i feel like im being cheated on those points. I wasnt exactly right on this, but i was not wrong either. A few examples:
a) You have two sex friends, and you fuck one of them until they reach perfect compatibility. Great, right? So you move on to the second sex friend and bang them. What happens here? You dont need QtEdit - just take a peek at the statue. You will realize that all of your compatibility with the first sex friend completely dissipated. And i mean ALL OF IT. After one or two sex sessions with the second sex friend.
b) You are in a legitimate relationship with one chick, but keep a sex friend on the side - you bang your GF till perfect compatibility, then move on to the sex friend. Your sex friend reaches perfect compatibility too, so you return to your main girl... and after a few sex sessions with your main girl, you will notice your compatibility with your sex friend is at 'difficult' again.
c) You are in two (or more) relationships simultaneously - you bang each of the chicks when you can (as in, to not let them discover the others existence...) and they all reach perfect compatibility. And it seems to stay there... wha...?
In short: compatibility decays rapidly if you are not in a relationship with a sexual partner. And by 'rapidly', i mean by a few hundred points per sex session with a different partner than the first. Having more than two sex friends satisfied is virtually impossible. No idea why the devs thought this was a good idea, but you can forget about having a harem thats content. You either get into a relationship and get cucked (or cuck someone else) or you dont get compatibility.
Someone make a mod to murder this mechanic, burn its family at the stake and to gain access to their children, so we can eat them...
2. The mystery mechanic (from here on out abbreviated to "MM"):
The MM seems to hit in waves, and those waves all hit in the second part of the first week - so starting on thursday and continuing throughout the rest of the week - as long as an interaction takes place - a number of NPCs (and the player - will get to that) gain love count towards each other without 'proper' (love/sex talk, contact, etc) interaction. This will instantly give some people an idea to wait it out until it stops and then look for a partner, right? You can, of course, but do you want to be first to take the girls virginity or come in later for sloppy seconds...? Heh heh...
Anyways, it cant really be stopped, but MM seems to die out once points reach a certain level. The first wave hits with 8 love count, and then each interaction (or even a rumor) coming in will increase it first by 3 points, and up to 10 (which seems to match my first observation a few pages back), with the goal of reaching the relationship threshold (21). The dumb-as-bricks AI can handle it from there, especially when two NPCs end up love struck and start confessing and groping each other, which will increase love count further.
MM does NOT, however, affect all NPCs the same way. A little example:
The situation in this pic would be hopeless, if the target of MM was a pure hetero, lean hetero or bi chick. It all depends on where MM "spawned" and who its intended targets are. If MM spawns on a NPC that gets no penalties to love count, they will get the full amount (21 love count... maybe up to 30?) of what MM imparts on them. But if the NPC has inherent penalties to love count gain (depending on where it spawns, but means either lean hetero or lean homo characters with "bad" traits, like asexual, bad with x [girls/guys], and such), the penalty will be both applied to love count gained, while the rest of the missing points (cut by the penalty) will be turned into like points. At most, my girls LLDH showed 7 love count and 23 like count towards some of the guys. The imparted count seems higher than what a different NPC would get, but she also happens to have the "affable" trait, which increases like count gain significantly... meaning she has turned some of this LLDH gain into like count. So, if she had 30 love count imparted on her (thats too high, i think, but its just an example), she has turned that into 15 love and 15 likes, but then, her lean homo penalty kicked in, turning 15 love into 7 love, and then AGAIN, her affable trait kicked in, turning 15 likes into 23 likes (about a 50% gain/loss of each, due to orientation and the trait).
We can assume, that MM is subject to both sexual orientation and traits. The black chick in the middle, bottom position, is a good example - nothing going on with her in this game, and thats partly because she wasnt affected by MM. On the other hand, if she were to be affected by it, shes got the "bad with guys" trait, so realistically, she would only gain love count with other chicks, while acting like a "lean homo" chick, for the purpose of MM working with guys - guys would get a lot of likes with her, but not a lot of love points. Actually... guys would hardly gain any points with her, since "bad with guys" kills both love and like count, but then due to her being lean hetero - she would modify MM incoming from some chicks and cut their love count by 50% - seems to add up, given how she is, for the most part, singled out in class.
Now... how MM affects the player. On the right side of the roster, second from the top, is that damned pink haired chick. Someone must have made her as a joke, because shes got all of her sexual preferences marked, so shes easy to gain compatibility with. Shes also exploitable, so you can literally fuck her at game start, though she probably wont like it... thats beyond the point. My only interactions with her were 6 love talks - shes pure hetero, so she doesnt gain like points, and i wanted a few points in, in case i thought about doing something later. If we assume that she didnt have any other traits modifying love gain, 6 love talks would amount to... 90 partial love points. That translates into 3 love count. So thats all the points shes had with me since the beginning of the game. After the first week, though, she became fucking unbearable. Effectively, shes turned into a broken record, with her vocabulary literally becoming limited to 3 or 4 interactions:
1. Become lovers
2. Go out on sunday
3. "I love you so much!"
4. Talk about how great i am (i hate praises IRL... so that annoyed me even more).
She kept gaining love count with each of those interactions, even though i kept rejecting all of them. In the end, ive had to completely murder her LLDH with a flurry of 10 or 12 insults. Only then has she finally shut her trap. So, as you can see, as long as characters interact, regardless of their response, MM will increase their love count. Horrible mechanic, to be sure, but after having some time to think about it, it is for the best: the AI is too dumb, but i think this is a better solution to the problem of bad AI, than having an NPC who likes you come over, and talk to you exactly 6 times, every break period, about love and sex... isnt it? Just imagine "inverting" the game - if you were the NPC, and a player did the same thing the pink haired chick did, you would fucking go crazy.
EDIT: One more thing - the popularity rating at the statue indeed shows love count amount from the class, so if you found yourself a girl and feel proud of yourself, and then found out shes the top of the class in popularity - expect trouble.
