Java Corrupted Saviors [Release 58] [CSDev]

[Kaitol]

Maybe the option to give one related forsaken to the other permanently, instead of sending her to the breeding pits and pissing her friend/whatever off. Gives a small random bonus to damage, stamina or etc. Occasionally mention them in their daily activity possibly. A small once per loop bonus to one forsaken if her relative sucks doesn't seem like it'd be too much.

 

[SuperSkippy]

CSdev, there is a problem in 39g.

Sometimes, for reasons I've not been able to ascertain, Forsaken are forgetting who their punisher was for T4 breaks. This means that they don't get all the bonuses from those Punishers. It may have something to do with them being Chosen in the same loop that someone suffers a Rampancy Break, as that's the only thing I did differently this loop.

Here's my evidence:

Spoiler: Evidence

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Since I've been keeping my save file size down this time to maintain playability, I don't have a convenient place to test this. I do have saves just before Loop 3, "nowloop3" , on the day of choosing Loop 3, during which I chose the city that had a Superior Forsaken. I have a comparative save after Loop 3 where I am quite certain I used Ritual to complete about 2/3 of the T4 breaks, "loop3training". I am absolutely certain she did both of the T3 breaks on Berserker/Cheer, and she did a significant number of breaks (3 or 4) on Bonecrusher/Paladin (most notably the INJU/Drain T4 CON break, which seems to be reflected in her low Obedience score of 22%, despite having a T4 Obedience break)

However, other bonuses are missing. For example, the thing that made me notice this was that Berserker/Cheer did not have greater than 100% Motivation, and Ritual should be giving her +38.5% from her Impregnation. This is pretty significant in terms of my long-term plans for doing a deep dive into how many loops I can get.

So, I don't really have the time to go in and repeat all these steps and see if things turn out differently or if this problem repeats itself, at least not for a few days. What I remember doing this loop that might be relevant is:

Spoiler: What I remember doing this loop

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Sorry for the lack of step by step. The saves.sav is attached.

Edit to add: I think this may have happened to one of my earlier Forsaken from Loop 2 as well. That's a less challenging Loop to test this in so I'm going to go with that and see if I can confirm. I'll keep saves every 10 days.

View attachment saves.sav

 

[CSdev]

Found a typo during this event, caught me by surprise haha

Spoiler

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.....
to attract more donors, he's overnjoyed. Pretty sure it's meant to be "overjoyed" x3

Coincidentally, this one event touches the subject i was referring to some posts ago. I am dead certain that the very organization the chosen are in have their own agenda in this conflict. The way they treat the chosen is a dead giveaway, but i would not put past this organization for wanting to experiment and harness the power the chosen wield. The more i take a look at these events, the more i wish this had a strategic element to territory capture. In one hand, we have the Demon Lord's faction, our faction. In the other, we have this interesting organization that the chosen are serving under. I wish we could have more choice in expressing how the demon lord rules.

What i mean is, well, ever played Overlord? In that game you have a similar situation. You get to decide how your Overlord rules, will you kill everybody and seek cruelty and destruction? Or will you take a more merciful approach to your conquering? Even if it's a flavor text in the form of a description about how your subjects perceive you, how you treat the cities you conquer, etc. I mean, we are playing as a Demon Lord leading the demon faction in this little game of political intrigue, aren't we? :3


That particular event showed up just after i triggered the negotiation distortion, and it didn't surprise me since i was expecting the chosen to be treated this way by their own faction.

I can't wait to see what CSDev has in store for this particular aspect from the game, the game world is very interesting.

Thanks for the typo report. As for the story speculation, well, I don't want to spoil anything, but more plot-relevant scenes will be coming.

A shame i can't start a campaign with chosen from different species joining in on the first loop. I get that balance-wise they're a more powerful version, so you would need to be strong enough to go against them but still....erhm : /

Not really a big deal, just annoying that in campaign (my favorite game mode) i have to do multiple loops to get a animalistic chosen to pop up, and i imagine that androids are going to be the same...gonna be a pain to get a team of favorite characters from series set up

This is a good point. I imagine that a lot of players have a particular "interaction" in mind as a goal when they create custom Chosen, but for the later species, it can take several nights of playtime before you reach the loop where they can start to show up. And that's just for individual Chosen - once it's possible to tell the game that you want two specific Chosen to show up together, it could take even longer to reach a loop with both species.

I suppose it might be time to prioritize the multi-loop scenario system so that players can make "mini campaigns" where they can still enjoy the cross-loop game of corrupting the Chosen in order to turn them into useful Forsaken, but without the need to play more than 2 or 3 loops before reaching the desired interaction they had in mind.

Suggestions/Questions for CSdev, long-term:
1) Have you considered making a folder of save files instead of of making it all one file, for easier management and performance reasons? I think the saves.sav saves a lot more information than is actually needed, and the game parses this entire file constantly in a way that's very noticeable if you are somewhat of a saveaholic and your saves.sav gets very large, which is the way you suggest as the intended way of playing the game. I suspect it may be storing a lot more information than is needed for a complete game state as well. Adding a new save (on loop 3) added about 80KB to the file, which seems kind of like a lot of information to me (that's roughly 20 pages of text, information-wise). In R38, my saves.sav was 18MB and when an action required parsing the save file (not just saving and loading, it seems to be pulling some gameplay information from this as well) it would take several seconds (3-5) for the virtual machine to respond to certain inputs, and these actions were not just saving/loading. That's the JVM for you.

I know optimization of already-working systems is every programmer's nightmare, but now that there is a working gameplay loop that rewards lots of saves to try doing different things you may want to make this process a bit easier.

2) I find the bait/relationship system kind of hard to use. The benefits of using it seem to be rather small with a large downside. It's a system that primarily affects the flavor of interactions, but it's tied to gameplay mechanics that give it significant penalties. Making a Chosen easier to train is something you can do on your own within the system, and 1-3 extra turns of Capture varies in usefulness between "OK" and "actively bad" at times. But the penalties are much more severe than the rewards.

Let me explain: If I set up a chosen as Bait, I have no way to tell if the Chosen that she starts related to will be in any way "useful" as Forsaken. I don't want to keep a bunch of pages of Forsaken I never use for anything. But if the Bait Forsaken starts with a relationship with one of the Chosen that I don't see a future for, I've now got permanent penalties to training the Bait Forsaken, or a Forsaken in my list that I can't use for anything. A penalty to accepting training seems really difficult to overcome, since the primary way you fix it is... with training... that she won't accept.

For this reason, I find myself not using the Bait position at all. For similar reasons, I rarely try to make a group of Chosen become friends, because usually I'm going to get a replacement for one of them down the line, and I don't want to have to check and remember who is friendly with whom. I'm also generally going to get one Chosen that isn't worth making a Forsaken out of every loop, and while I can let them die in the final battle, I'd rather Sacrifice and get some benefit that way, which has consequences if they're all best friends.

From reading the help files, the penalty for Sacrificing a loved one is up to -50 to training consent, and the bonus for having a loved one Forsaken is up to +20. I think it would make sense for this bonus/penalty to fade, and I'd find it a lot more usable if it did. The bonus to training is mainly useful the first loop or two after you get a Forsaken, and if I wasn't afraid of long-term penalties on my more useful Forsaken, I'd engage more with this system of the game knowing that I wouldn't permanently mess up my Forsaken that I want to keep. Maybe--could the penalty/bonus fade by half every loop? I may be misunderstanding how this system actually works in-game, but it would make sense mechanically and, I think, put the penalties/bonuses more in line with each other. Just a thought as I examine how I play the game for this challenge.

The existing save system is definitely very inefficient. I think it will significantly improve with the relationship system refactor I'm doing right now, however. Up through R39, Chosen and Forsaken keep track of each other with arrays which basically store a copy of the entire relationship partner. Originally, I did this in order to make it simpler to directly refer to the partner, but it's really not sustainable for large numbers of lategame saves. R40 instead uses a very simple hashmap which associates each character's Chosen ID with a list of all applicable relationships. For the sake of save compatibility and bug safety, the old arrays will stick around on old saves, but new saves going forward should be much smaller.

The existing bait system is meant to be a bit tricky to use effectively, because it plays into some features that will unlock in later loops. Angel and Devil species (which will start showing up as early as Loop 11) will give you some other "sacrifice" options that clear out the Forsaken roster clutter but with a better gameplay tradeoff.

CSdev, there is a problem in 39g.

Sometimes, for reasons I've not been able to ascertain, Forsaken are forgetting who their punisher was for T4 breaks. This means that they don't get all the bonuses from those Punishers. It may have something to do with them being Chosen in the same loop that someone suffers a Rampancy Break, as that's the only thing I did differently this loop.

Here's my evidence:

Spoiler: Evidence

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Since I've been keeping my save file size down this time to maintain playability, I don't have a convenient place to test this. I do have saves just before Loop 3, "nowloop3" , on the day of choosing Loop 3, during which I chose the city that had a Superior Forsaken. I have a comparative save after Loop 3 where I am quite certain I used Ritual to complete about 2/3 of the T4 breaks, "loop3training". I am absolutely certain she did both of the T3 breaks on Berserker/Cheer, and she did a significant number of breaks (3 or 4) on Bonecrusher/Paladin (most notably the INJU/Drain T4 CON break, which seems to be reflected in her low Obedience score of 22%, despite having a T4 Obedience break)

However, other bonuses are missing. For example, the thing that made me notice this was that Berserker/Cheer did not have greater than 100% Motivation, and Ritual should be giving her +38.5% from her Impregnation. This is pretty significant in terms of my long-term plans for doing a deep dive into how many loops I can get.

So, I don't really have the time to go in and repeat all these steps and see if things turn out differently or if this problem repeats itself, at least not for a few days. What I remember doing this loop that might be relevant is:

Spoiler: What I remember doing this loop

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Sorry for the lack of step by step. The saves.sav is attached.

Edit to add: I think this may have happened to one of my earlier Forsaken from Loop 2 as well. That's a less challenging Loop to test this in so I'm going to go with that and see if I can confirm. I'll keep saves every 10 days.

View attachment 2445007

Thank you very much for uploading the save, it allowed me to very quickly narrow down what was happening and put up another bugfix release for it. Fortunately, the Punisher information was indeed being stored correctly - it just wasn't being referenced when it should. I've confirmed that playing your save on R39h causes your Forsaken to immediately start getting the correct bonuses again.

 

[Cornuthaum]

I've put about thirty hours into this game since saturday since numbers-go-up makes my endorphins go whee, and I like to think I've got a good handle on the basic gameplay of loop 1 right now, having done all Distorts individually and in batches of three to see how they play (rampancy is easily my least favourite because it has nothing you can interact with, rip)

But the Forsaken system just *completely* breaks me. I cannot even begin to understand it since a.) the conditions you go into the system with drastically change on both the Chosen's virtues *and* their end-of-loop gamestate, including distortions, b.) the extra layer of sliding-scale stats and costs to keep track of, and c.) it takes several hours of repeating the really, really boring part of the game (loop 1)

Is there a handhold for "try to get (x) setup of forsaken ready for loop 2, and how to use them" assuming that I will reliably get all three Forsaken in the first loop? Just so I can actually refine my core loop play to build up Forsaken that can deal with the increasingly harsh punishment of later loops? Because no matter how much I stare at the reference file for Forsaken, my brain is too smooth, the information slides right off, it is just too much.

 

[Ragsmu]

I've put about thirty hours into this game since saturday since numbers-go-up makes my endorphins go whee, and I like to think I've got a good handle on the basic gameplay of loop 1 right now, having done all Distorts individually and in batches of three to see how they play (rampancy is easily my least favourite because it has nothing you can interact with, rip)

But the Forsaken system just *completely* breaks me. I cannot even begin to understand it since a.) the conditions you go into the system with drastically change on both the Chosen's virtues *and* their end-of-loop gamestate, including distortions, b.) the extra layer of sliding-scale stats and costs to keep track of, and c.) it takes several hours of repeating the really, really boring part of the game (loop 1)

Is there a handhold for "try to get (x) setup of forsaken ready for loop 2, and how to use them" assuming that I will reliably get all three Forsaken in the first loop? Just so I can actually refine my core loop play to build up Forsaken that can deal with the increasingly harsh punishment of later loops? Because no matter how much I stare at the reference file for Forsaken, my brain is too smooth, the information slides right off, it is just too much.

i asked about that some time ago. go up from my post for a good explanation on forsaken. not sure if it'll be enough for you - but for me it was understandable enough.

 

[SuperSkippy]

Less serious crash report to report this time. Turning off portraits fixes the issue, so I'm sure that helps you narrow it down.

In this save: "duringloop4", doing a Negotiation with Moppet crashes the game if portraits are on. Turning them off allows the game to proceed.

 

[DMoney1000]

Okay, there's a non-zero chance that I'm just very dumb, but I'm not understanding much of anything at all. The guide has also mostly just confused me, but I don't mind playing more to try to figure things out. I have some questions, though.

1. Are you supposed to run the .exe or the .jar ? Does it even matter? Both seem to work?

2. How do you save, or where do the saves go? I go to save my game, it asks me to name the save, and when I click on load...there isn't a save anywhere, at least not where the game (or I) can find it. It asks which slot to load, but there's just nothing there.

3. Is Observe bugged? Now that I have 2 Chosen, when I click on one to Observe the other, both of them become the 2nd Chosen, both in portrait and how they interact with each other. When there are 3 Chosen, they both become copies of the 3rd Chosen, regardless of who I Observe. This happened with both R39 and R39g.

EDIT: New weird Observe behavior. I reinstalled, and now when I have 3 Chosen, having the 1st Chosen observing the 2nd, or having the 2nd observe the 1st, results in the 3rd Chosen replacing the 2nd.

 

[Eski]

Confused on how to see the newest vignette, "Guilty Desire". I think I've satisfied all the conditions. If curious, you can see my attached save. It's the slot on day 29 named "exter_rush". The Chosen I'm trying to trigger the vignette with is Freedom. She has already experienced "Guilty Service" and she's ready for negotiation if I so wish. How I interpret the checklist txt file is that I approach her, don't negotiate and leave.

Has anyone been able to trigger this vignette?

 

[CSdev]

Less serious crash report to report this time. Turning off portraits fixes the issue, so I'm sure that helps you narrow it down.

In this save: "duringloop4", doing a Negotiation with Moppet crashes the game if portraits are on. Turning them off allows the game to proceed.

I wasn't able to reproduce this one, even with portraits turned on. The scene proceeded normally and it return to the shop screen at the end with no issues.

1. Are you supposed to run the .exe or the .jar ? Does it even matter? Both seem to work?

The .exe is included because it will work even for people who don't have Java installed.

2. How do you save, or where do the saves go? I go to save my game, it asks me to name the save, and when I click on load...there isn't a save anywhere, at least not where the game (or I) can find it. It asks which slot to load, but there's just nothing there.

Some other people have run into this as well. My best guess is that it's related to your antivirus program preventing an unrecognized game from creating the saves.sav file that stores your save data. I'd recommend downloading one of the save files uploaded here, putting it in your Corrupted Saviors folder, and seeing if it loads properly.

3. Is Observe bugged? Now that I have 2 Chosen, when I click on one to Observe the other, both of them become the 2nd Chosen, both in portrait and how they interact with each other. When there are 3 Chosen, they both become copies of the 3rd Chosen, regardless of who I Observe. This happened with both R39 and R39g.

EDIT: New weird Observe behavior. I reinstalled, and now when I have 3 Chosen, having the 1st Chosen observing the 2nd, or having the 2nd observe the 1st, results in the 3rd Chosen replacing the 2nd.

I wasn't able to reproduce this bug either. Normally, I'd ask you to upload your save file so I can take a look, but I suppose the save issue would have to be solved first.

Confused on how to see the newest vignette, "Guilty Desire". I think I've satisfied all the conditions. If curious, you can see my attached save. It's the slot on day 29 named "exter_rush". The Chosen I'm trying to trigger the vignette with is Freedom. She has already experienced "Guilty Service" and she's ready for negotiation if I so wish. How I interpret the checklist txt file is that I approach her, don't negotiate and leave.

Has anyone been able to trigger this vignette?

I probably should have worded the requirement better. Guilty Desire will only display when the subject hasn't ever undergone a Negotiation yet. So, after her first Negotiation, the vignette can no longer show up.

 

[Eski]

I probably should have worded the requirement better. Guilty Desire will only display when the subject hasn't ever undergone a Negotiation yet. So, after her first Negotiation, the vignette can no longer show up.

I haven't actually negotiated with her yet, but it still hasn't shown up.

 

[Cornuthaum]

Are the swappable starter items always the same eight, and if so, which ones do y'all prefer? I'm trying to make the miserable part (the first 8-10 days) of each loop less miserable here.

 

[Kalloi]

I haven't actually negotiated with her yet, but it still hasn't shown up.

I'm looking through your save and while the vignette didn't show up in a couple of your current saves it did show up in your scene archives, meaning it did show up in your campaign it seems, I reloaded your older saves and it fired off in your day 22 save so try reloading that one, make sure to meet freedom with one of your bodies or ambassador and pass a few days to see if it shows up on your end

 

[Kalloi]

Are the swappable starter items always the same eight, and if so, which ones do y'all prefer? I'm trying to make the miserable part (the first 8-10 days) of each loop less miserable here.

It’s the same 8, and personally I enjoy the orgasm in the can or scwizzer (the instant INJU item) since I typically go for negotiation in my campaigns and the utility of it I feel gets even better when you take animalistic chosen into account. I’ve also had really good results with unicorn lard since early on in a campaign there isn’t many options to force the first appearance of the other 2 chosen outside of a rampancy forsaken or really Really low cost forsaken, it also really synergizes with spending days training your forsaken. However the utility of it does drop off a bit in later loops once the deadlines get to the point where the chosen show up back to back regardless.
I think depends a lot on the type of play style you employ

 

[Ragzul]

CSdev
I don't even have complaints about the game, I'm just impressed by the amount of attention you've poured into it's creation. Bravo.

And Kalloi Thank you for everything that you do as well. Bravo to you too!

 

[SuperSkippy]

Are the swappable starter items always the same eight, and if so, which ones do y'all prefer? I'm trying to make the miserable part (the first 8-10 days) of each loop less miserable here.

Yes.

I feel like any of the 4 that bring a circumstance to 10k are the most useful long-term, while Unicorn Lard is probably the most useful for your first loop. Tomorrow's Newspaper is probably the least useful as it is immediately supplanted by getting a good Forsaken.

 

[DMoney1000]

I wasn't able to reproduce this one, even with portraits turned on. The scene proceeded normally and it return to the shop screen at the end with no issues.

The .exe is included because it will work even for people who don't have Java installed.

Some other people have run into this as well. My best guess is that it's related to your antivirus program preventing an unrecognized game from creating the saves.sav file that stores your save data. I'd recommend downloading one of the save files uploaded here, putting it in your Corrupted Saviors folder, and seeing if it loads properly.

I wasn't able to reproduce this bug either. Normally, I'd ask you to upload your save file so I can take a look, but I suppose the save issue would have to be solved first.

I probably should have worded the requirement better. Guilty Desire will only display when the subject hasn't ever undergone a Negotiation yet. So, after her first Negotiation, the vignette can no longer show up.

Got a winner here. I just use Windows Security, but running the .exe as Administrator fixed both the inability to save and the Chosen overwriting other Chosen issues. Thank you.

 

[Cornuthaum]

Supplanted by getting a good Forsaken.

What *actually* makes a good Forsaken? I have a decent forsaken candidate right now, I *think*, but you're the one who I've seen talk most about Forsaken in the thread.

Neutron
Deployment cost: 190 Evil Energy
Sympathetic Breeder (+38% victim Resolve damage from Threaten)
Instructive Hypnotist (+38.0% victim PLEA damage as Forsaken)
Memorable Harvester (+38.0% victim INJU damage as Forsaken)
Smearing Publicist (+38% victim Resolve damage from Taunt)

She's currently well underway for a Negotiation Distortion but should I get one of the others to really really high Deviancy (t4 break at a minimum) so i can get a cheap early Forsaken? because any forsaken that costs more than like, 40-50 EE is something I can't see myself using in a loop until I've essentially already won the loop by being in that phase of hte game where you click Continue each battle until you rack the t4 break counters to 1000%//whatever distortions you are doing

Like, I suppose, that's part of my problem: If I want a cheap (5-7 EE) Forsaken that I can use in lieu of an early Commander how do I actually target them during a run to build up their stats in the right way (distortion, which breaks to get/not get, that sort of thing)

 

[Kaitol]

Like, I suppose, that's part of my problem: If I want a cheap (5-7 EE) Forsaken that I can use in lieu of an early Commander how do I actually target them during a run to build up their stats in the right way (distortion, which breaks to get/not get, that sort of thing)

How the stats play out once they're forsaken sort of makes rational sense if you think about it, it seems partially based on which breaks they had and maybe their personality? Disgrace depends on how the public sees them. So if you expose them or turn them into violent mass murder machines, their starting disgrace as a forsaken will be high. So going for a T4 EXPOSE and/or HATE break would be a good way to have a girl start with high Disgrace.

If you can hack it loop one, a Rampancy distortion can be both an early game and late game forsaken due to their variable cost. Forsaken that only cost a handful of EE with have poor damage, but if you train them to target HATE/EXPO or LUST/EXPO or maybe even just one of those CIRCs, they should let you juggle and still do enough damage to get you started. Basically you mostly want them for the unlimited 5ish turn captures early on, their damage is gonna be marginal.

Overall, the best advice I can give you is to just play. Even if your forsaken are garbage you can just feed them to the breeding pits, regular commanders are still perfectly fine for quite a while, so just play, see what works and what doesn't. Also, the earlier you finish a loop, the more bonus time you get to train your forsaken before the next city. So don't wait until turn 50, push to finish as soon as you can.

 

[zargal]

Like, I suppose, that's part of my problem: If I want a cheap (5-7 EE) Forsaken that I can use in lieu of an early Commander how do I actually target them during a run to build up their stats in the right way (distortion, which breaks to get/not get, that sort of thing)

EE cost is proportional to disgrace (not deviancy) which is tied to the dignity vulnerability. To minimise cost, you want high disgrace. To get high disgrace, you want dignity completely broken. The two distortions which target dignity are temptation and rampancy. Personally I recommend temptation as a first distortion- it's the easiest one to actually pull off and subsequently manage, the 1/4 motivation cost means you can use them repeatedly, you can have them switch to pleasure damage mid-capture and you don't have to worry late in the loop about decaying motivation (as with rampancy.) Also, I personally like 4EE (80 disgrace) forsaken, they can still do T2 breaks if you manage them well.

Of course I recommend trying out rampancy, even if it's in a stand alone scenario, you might find you love them. I've just always been underwhelmed and eventually let the tentacles have them.

I like Neutron as a future high cost punisher, the pleasure/injury bonuses are tasty.

 

[Cornuthaum]

I've already done all the distortions in my various loop 1 runs to familiarise myself with the gameplay (and what I wish the game told you was "don't try to do Negotiation in a run where you do any non-Negotiation temptation") but it took me until today to realise that the cor/sig/min vulns on a chosen ALSO influence their starting Forsaken stats. It's just a lot of mechanics and setup that feels very unintuitive to use or learn how to use (because most forsaken will have a crushingly high EE cost that you would spend an entire loop's worth of days training down if you so desired).

Imo that's my main issue with the forsaken, it's just three layers of complexity that only kick in after you already have spent multiple hours working through a loop

see what works and what doesn't.

so far it has been completely "forsaken don't work for me at all and I don't even know where to start unfucking this" for me, which is a shame because I can see the appeal of the system, I just feel like I'm seperated from it by a pane of glass