Mod QSP Jack-o-Nine-Tails Developer Versions and Mods

qwertyu12359

Jack-o-nine-tails
Game Developer
Aug 1, 2017
1,526
1,647
Perfect. I agree, Easy should not be mindless and even small nudges to the multipliers would help without completely nerfing it. Since your focus both in development and play is Normal - I believe you said you always play Normal - I can understand it would be painful to put much of your efforts into Easy so yes, I would be happy to take over the Easy tweaks and testing since that is more my interest.

I have never collaborated on scripting with anyone so you will need to tell me how you work it so we are not tripping over each other's changes
Good! I noticed Lokplart about it. When he will connect, he will add you to the private group conversation.

I'm not a coder but I will help you and oversee your design idea. Without being too invasive or opiniated, mostly for the sake of collaboration.

About "not tripping over us", you join us at the best moment. The development is going slow and the game dev' version should be in a stable state. About what we plan to do, it's written in the stable version Original Post, inside the Roadmap section. I'll add your name there.

You can already start by downloading the latest dev' version, then tweak it to your liking. Write a list of the changes you make or you'd like to make, and share it with us in the private thread as soon as you receive the invite. You can do it here meanwhile.

Good luck!
 

Swiftyfrog

Newbie
Apr 18, 2018
30
8
Not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask this but. How do you make a cow profitable? Milk sells for a crazy low price. Also i have played recent versions, but now it seems as though devotion is nigh impossible to raise. May have just missed the patch notes. Sorry for any inconvenience.
 

ImperatorAugustusTertius

Well-Known Member
Sep 12, 2020
1,849
702
I was away for a bit and came back to a lot of debate over game design and balance. I'm not sure what are the current "open" questions. I'm a bit baffled that anyone feels that "Easy" isn't easy enough, if I'm understanding that part correctly.

The difficulty setting is (by design) mostly focused on training. Easy makes slaves less likely to refuse and more likely to perform well in their assigned tasks, it makes it easier for them to develop positive attributes and aura stats and harder for them to downward spiral. The assumption is that if it is easier to train slaves, you can convert them into sparks faster, and that gives you freedom to mess around, because there is no time pressure other than running out of sparks. Non-training activities like races, arena combat and Fogs combat are not affected by the difficulty setting.
 
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ImperatorAugustusTertius

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Sep 12, 2020
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As to the difficulty settings, I often find myself starting a new game on Normal, and within ~30 minutes I hit some or other patch of grind, and notch it down to Easy to see/read something different, never to return to Normal.
Thanks for giving examples. This kind of feedback can only be addressed with specifics.

In particular the Combat & Horse Races even on Easy difficulty are often an exercise in constant failure or savescumming. I try to sync up my War Crys, Roundhouse Kicks, etc, to get off good damage, but even with S+ combat skill I often find a well armed/armored MC dead in the Fogs within a few rounds. Maybe I'm missing something.
Races are a puzzle. They are always winnable with a sufficiently capable slave. Occasionally, you either need the right age or a trait to give you the edge. Sometimes the winning strategy may require you to have a chariot with no armor. Sometimes it may require you to have a chariot with a part that will be sacrificed so you can pass a section of track without failing. It is not randomized across save/reload. It will always play out the same way if you pick the same actions and the same chariot configuration. If you talk to the stableman in the arena, you can find out about the track configuration before you set up your chariot.

In combat, one of the most common mistakes is not changing your defensive mode. Click the curved arrow under your avatar portrait. Most enemies only use attacks of two types, so you can choose the third type of defense to deny them a damage multiplier against you. Also keep an eye on their stacked modifiers vs. your stacked modifiers. You can choose to "defend" to clear some negative modifiers from yourself, and you can also use potions to give yourself certain modifiers. In the Fogs, if you don't have healing balm, you'll have a hard time. The design expectation is that players will use all tools available to them. The chimaera gem (forum mission reward artifact) increases your health in combat, which makes it a lot easier. But, every fight is winnable without that artifact.
 
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nononomaybe

Newbie
Jun 6, 2018
79
172
Thanks ImperatorAugustusTertius for the gameplay suggestions. I'll try those techniques and see if I can be even better prepared for the fog fights.

Here's an example where I seem to be stuck in a weird slave training space, where I would drop down to Easy:
Have a highly obedient & tame slave, but somehow I can't inspire Devotion. Before her I successfully trained a few devoted slaves, so I'm not sure what is wrong or how to fix it. I tried punishing her to increase fear, she becomes depressed, no devotion. I tried giving her rewards for good behavior to avoid depression and she becomes spoiled, no devotion.
Attached save file and pic of her Auspex aura.
She also seems to have an absolutely insane sex drive, reaches 5 arousal, and an orgasm brings her down to 4. The orgasms don't seem to help devotion either.

Cheers mate!
 
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ImperatorAugustusTertius

Well-Known Member
Sep 12, 2020
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Not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask this but. How do you make a cow profitable? Milk sells for a crazy low price.
This question was asked and answered a few pages back, I think. See if you can find it with the forum search function.

Here's an example where I seem to be stuck in a weird slave training space, where I would drop down to Easy:
Have a highly obedient & tame slave, but somehow I can't inspire Devotion. Before her I successfully trained a few devoted slaves, so I'm not sure what is wrong or how to fix it. I tried punishing her to increase fear, she becomes depressed, no devotion. I tried giving her rewards for good behavior to avoid depression and she becomes spoiled, no devotion.
Attached save file and pic of her Auspex aura.
She also seems to have an absolutely insane sex drive, reaches 5 arousal, and an orgasm brings her down to 4. The orgasms don't seem to help devotion either.
This slave is spoiled and is not in a good mood (just calm). These factors are working against you here.

This slave is being given fresh food when she is not devoted. When you enable that rule, the description text warns that this can spoil the slave.

Asking her about how she is feeling reveals that she is horny and wants verbal praise. So, those are two potential opportunities to improve her mood. But, lowering her arousal significantly may be difficult if you are also having her do things that increase it (for example, being your bath slave when your arousal is Blazing; I'm not saying you shouldn't use that rule, just be aware of the implications). To drop her arousal quickly, you can use active sex and give her a lot of orgasms.

When you want to increase her devotion, rewards from the categories "spend time together" or "erotic reward" (as long as she likes them) are a good choice.

While she is spoiled, she'll feel more deserving of rewards than usual, which can offset the negative effects of being spoiled if you reward her effectively (see above). You can also use the spell "sententia veritas" to increase her merit (or guilt) if you want to have her do something that she would otherwise not feel any merit for doing, or if you want to give her a higher-tier reward (particularly when she's not spoiled).

If you train her sexually and focus on things that are new or more "daring" for her, you'll get plenty of opportunities to reward her.

Keep in mind you don't need to immediately reward her when she feels merit. If she feels 2 merit and you give her another task that would lead her to feel 3 merit, she'll end up feeling 5 merit.

You've apparently used "put in place" many times, and as a result it's no longer effective. Since she is afraid of you, she'll still become less spoiled over time, as long as you avoid doing anything that would spoil her further (like giving rewards above her merit, too many rewards on the same day, or continuing to give her fresh food). There are some ways to accelerate her becoming less spoiled. You could raise her fear (but not too much, since you want her to become more devoted, and being completely terrified gets in the way of that). You could also starve her, but be careful with that too. Even if you don't do anything to accelerate it, as long as you stop the fresh food, it won't take more than half a decade to see some progress.

Also i have played recent versions, but now it seems as though devotion is nigh impossible to raise. May have just missed the patch notes. Sorry for any inconvenience.
See if any of the above hints help you. Also read through the tutorial lectures (updated for 2.1), and the descriptions of any rules you are using, carefully.
 
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nononomaybe

Newbie
Jun 6, 2018
79
172
Thanks for the feedback!
Really appreciate you taking the time to look through what was going on there.
The exact settings/rules on the particular day were just where I stopped after a few decades of flailing around trying different things, not a configuration thought to be successful. The fresh food was an attempt to help her depression, it sounds like that's causing more problems than it solves.

If you train her sexually and focus on things that are new or more "daring" for her, you'll get plenty of opportunities to reward her.
I tried this with BJ and Vaginal training (she started with 0 sex skills). She was depressed, so she usually had poor performance, seemed like that wasn't working.
How do I tell what is "daring" for her?
 

ImperatorAugustusTertius

Well-Known Member
Sep 12, 2020
1,849
702
I tried this with BJ and Vaginal training (she started with 0 sex skills). She was depressed, so she usually had poor performance, seemed like that wasn't working.
How do I tell what is "daring" for her?
Sex training when depressed rarely goes well.

We don't show obedience thresholds for the various sex training activities, but if she needs more obedience to accept it, it is considered more "daring." So, if she refuses something at first, that's a hint that she will probably earn merit once she's willing to do it. Not always though.

As you are working your way through the training, you can guess whether what you're having her do seems like something she might be more hesitant to do than what she has already done (recently; if you asked her to do something extreme three decades ago, it doesn't count as much).

Conversely, if you have her do something and she doesn't feel any merit, try something different.

The fresh food was an attempt to help her depression, it sounds like that's causing more problems than it solves.
Not a bad approach, if you are in a downward spiral some spoiling may not be a bad price to pay. But, once you get her mood up, you can use other methods to keep it there.
 

sarinee

Member
Apr 12, 2021
290
144
game version 2.0. Pics of interactions with slave, shown in forms like
*p '<div id = "bg"><img src="content\pic\<<$cello[slave_type]>>.png"></div>'
can't really display randomly, even if there are enough pics named by "cello_"hair color"_"hair length"_"age type"_"many numbers of same kind pics".png
I wonder what does "slave_type" mean, and how do expressions like $cello[slave_type] or $bathing_alone[slave_type] etc. track my pics, only track the first one of specific pic sets ?
 

ImperatorAugustusTertius

Well-Known Member
Sep 12, 2020
1,849
702
game version 2.0. Pics of interactions with slave, shown in forms like
*p '<div id = "bg"><img src="content\pic\<<$cello[slave_type]>>.png"></div>'
can't really display randomly, even if there are enough pics named by "cello_"hair color"_"hair length"_"age type"_"many numbers of same kind pics".png
I wonder what does "slave_type" mean, and how do expressions like $cello[slave_type] or $bathing_alone[slave_type] etc. track my pics, only track the first one of specific pic sets ?
We're on version 2.1 now. That image retrieval construct is no longer used. Randomized image selection is handled by the display_pic location, with some hard-coded assistance by the engine to count the number of image files in each prefix set.
 

sarinee

Member
Apr 12, 2021
290
144
We're on version 2.1 now. That image retrieval construct is no longer used. Randomized image selection is handled by the display_pic location, with some hard-coded assistance by the engine to count the number of image files in each prefix set.
OK thank you, I will update my game version and see if i can do some modifications then. I haven't used html or java code before, only python and a little c++, the QSP wiki is not enough for me to start with, there is still many commands、expressions that I cant make sense. I tried downloading the MOO MOD for reference, only to find their files are missing.
 

nononomaybe

Newbie
Jun 6, 2018
79
172
I've been playing around with the Cow/Lactation/Farm area of the game (and looking at corresponding code) and have some suggestions.

1) There is a typo in the Permanent Lactation surgery text: It says 15 days recovery, in fact only takes 10 days.

2) Cow training inevitably makes slaves lose sanity, which makes sense. However, the milk production code penalizes cows (2/3 production) that are mindbroken. It is reasonable that a mindbroken girl would be a bad musician (and other skills), but why should being mindbroken reduce milk production? If anything it seems like it would help, because she's not resisting being a cow.
Code:
if $dynslave_psy_status = 'broken': dynslave['milk_gain'] = (dynslave['milk_gain']/3)*2
3) Milk production gets a weighted random boost that is greatest when milk_summ is about half full, between 40 and 60. This does not make any sense to me. It seems reasonable that milk production would be greatest when boobs are empty, and slow down as breasts become full.

Code:
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 0 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 20: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(0,1)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 20 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 40: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(2,4)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 40 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 60: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(5,6)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 60 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 80: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(2,4)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 80 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 90: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(0,1)
4) I am having trouble making my cow simply break even in sparks. The investment to get a cow going is high (barn rent, slave purchase, initial weeks of training, surgery, cow food, insemination costs), but the savings on milk and profit from selling milk are not enough to balance the significant startup and upkeep.
I believe the primary source of sparks in JoNT should be training/selling slaves, but unless I'm missing something (always a plausible explanation) the current barn/cow balance seems to be a net negative on sparks.
Maybe that's a social commentary on the economic viability of farming.

Cheers mates!
 

qwertyu12359

Jack-o-nine-tails
Game Developer
Aug 1, 2017
1,526
1,647
I've been playing around with the Cow/Lactation/Farm area of the game (and looking at corresponding code) and have some suggestions.

1) There is a typo in the Permanent Lactation surgery text: It says 15 days recovery, in fact only takes 10 days.

2) Cow training inevitably makes slaves lose sanity, which makes sense. However, the milk production code penalizes cows (2/3 production) that are mindbroken. It is reasonable that a mindbroken girl would be a bad musician (and other skills), but why should being mindbroken reduce milk production? If anything it seems like it would help, because she's not resisting being a cow.
Code:
if $dynslave_psy_status = 'broken': dynslave['milk_gain'] = (dynslave['milk_gain']/3)*2
3) Milk production gets a weighted random boost that is greatest when milk_summ is about half full, between 40 and 60. This does not make any sense to me. It seems reasonable that milk production would be greatest when boobs are empty, and slow down as breasts become full.

Code:
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 0 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 20: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(0,1)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 20 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 40: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(2,4)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 40 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 60: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(5,6)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 60 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 80: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(2,4)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 80 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 90: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(0,1)
4) I am having trouble making my cow simply break even in sparks. The investment to get a cow going is high (barn rent, slave purchase, initial weeks of training, surgery, cow food, insemination costs), but the savings on milk and profit from selling milk are not enough to balance the significant startup and upkeep.
I believe the primary source of sparks in JoNT should be training/selling slaves, but unless I'm missing something (always a plausible explanation) the current barn/cow balance seems to be a net negative on sparks.
Maybe that's a social commentary on the economic viability of farming.

Cheers mates!
These all look like fair points. I added a link to your post in the main OP's roadmap so we take a look at it (y)
 
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ImperatorAugustusTertius

Well-Known Member
Sep 12, 2020
1,849
702
I've been playing around with the Cow/Lactation/Farm area of the game (and looking at corresponding code) and have some suggestions.

1) There is a typo in the Permanent Lactation surgery text: It says 15 days recovery, in fact only takes 10 days.

2) Cow training inevitably makes slaves lose sanity, which makes sense. However, the milk production code penalizes cows (2/3 production) that are mindbroken. It is reasonable that a mindbroken girl would be a bad musician (and other skills), but why should being mindbroken reduce milk production? If anything it seems like it would help, because she's not resisting being a cow.
Code:
if $dynslave_psy_status = 'broken': dynslave['milk_gain'] = (dynslave['milk_gain']/3)*2
3) Milk production gets a weighted random boost that is greatest when milk_summ is about half full, between 40 and 60. This does not make any sense to me. It seems reasonable that milk production would be greatest when boobs are empty, and slow down as breasts become full.

Code:
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 0 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 20: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(0,1)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 20 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 40: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(2,4)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 40 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 60: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(5,6)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 60 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 80: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(2,4)
        if dynslave['milk_summ'] >= 80 and dynslave['milk_summ'] < 90: dynslave['milk_summ'] += rand(0,1)
4) I am having trouble making my cow simply break even in sparks. The investment to get a cow going is high (barn rent, slave purchase, initial weeks of training, surgery, cow food, insemination costs), but the savings on milk and profit from selling milk are not enough to balance the significant startup and upkeep.
I believe the primary source of sparks in JoNT should be training/selling slaves, but unless I'm missing something (always a plausible explanation) the current barn/cow balance seems to be a net negative on sparks.
Maybe that's a social commentary on the economic viability of farming.

Cheers mates!
Pianocat may have a different opinion, but here is my take:

2) Mindbreak is not an inevitable outcome of cow training. It is a possible outcome, but can be avoided with careful treatment of the cow. Retaining sanity is more difficult, therefore it makes sense in gameplay terms for it to be more rewarding. Happy cows producing more milk is intuitive, and also reflects what we observe in the real world. Stress hormones - e.g., cortisol - interfere with milk production. See

3) I agree, this struck me as odd also. Milk production in reality is slower as the milk glands fill.

4) I did some analysis on profitability earlier, coming up with a potential profit per decade of over 150 sparks (https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...ntsman-community-development.390/post-4693902) ... I did not factor in barn rent, slave training costs, surgery, or insemination, but I did factor in food; also note that insemination is an optional cost, because you can perform those duties yourself. Once you have a well-trained cow, you can keep them for as long as you want, and you can even have the cow also participate in arena events for extra income to further offset initial training costs. And finally, you can sell a fully trained cow, for profit, which also offsets the initial training costs. So, all in all, it seems to be quite profitable.
 
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nononomaybe

Newbie
Jun 6, 2018
79
172
2) Mindbreak is not an inevitable outcome of cow training. It is a possible outcome, but can be avoided with careful treatment of the cow. Retaining sanity is more difficult, therefore it makes sense in gameplay terms for it to be more rewarding. Happy cows producing more milk is intuitive, and also reflects what we observe in the real world. Stress hormones - e.g., cortisol - interfere with milk production. See
When she's in the barn being a cow, she loses Ego and Temper every day unless she's S+ trained. Are you suggesting frequently pulling the cow out of the barn to try and train Ego & Temper back up?
The code section that handles these decreases seems to be right after this line:
Code:
!barn_custom determines how slaves react at time spent in barn - Pianocat
Cow training quickly depletes Ego and Temper:
Code:
            if slave['cowSK'] < 1:
                slave_rate['pride'] -= 1
                slave_rate['temper'] += 1
            elseif slave['cowSK'] < 3:
                slave_rate['ego'] -= 2
                slave_rate['pride'] -= 1
                slave_rate['temper'] -= 2
            else
                slave_rate['ego'] -= 3
                slave_rate['pride'] -= 1
                slave_rate['temper'] -= 3
Impregnating the cow yourself has similar ego and temper decreases.
I also believe that the activities that raise Ego & Temper undo Cow training (e.g. Gladiatrix).
So unless you can get super lucky by purchasing a slave who already has enough cow training that you can get to S+ before she becomes mindbroken, it looks to me that having a sane S+ trained cow is impossible in practice... And impregnating her yourself will eventually break her.

3) I agree, this struck me as odd also. Milk production in reality is slower as the milk glands fill.
That is my intuition as well.

4) I did some analysis on profitability earlier, coming up with a potential profit per decade of over 150 sparks (https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...ntsman-community-development.390/post-4693902) ... I did not factor in barn rent, slave training costs, surgery, or insemination, but I did factor in food; also note that insemination is an optional cost, because you can perform those duties yourself.
Once you have a well-trained cow, you can keep them for as long as you want, and you can even have the cow also participate in arena events for extra income to further offset initial training costs. And finally, you can sell a fully trained cow, for profit, which also offsets the initial training costs. So, all in all, it seems to be quite profitable.
As far as my gameplay testing has gone the theoretical maximum milk production you assume does not seem to be achievable in-game. It also relies on a fiend and fiend-milker, which require additional investment and upkeep. Do you have a save with a profitable cow?
As to the Arena events I'm not sure what you are talking about.
- A high milk production Cow is Mature and Chubby, which makes her a terrible racing pony.
- Gladiatrix and Cow training appear to be mutually exclusive, so she isn't winning any fights.
Selling the fully trained cow does not make sense to me. From what I understand, the point is to get her to produce more money than she costs and thus eventually earn back the large initial investment and make money from milk (or net saving if you avoid buying it). If you sell her you just have to start over with another initial investment of slave purchase/training/cow gear/etc.
 

ImperatorAugustusTertius

Well-Known Member
Sep 12, 2020
1,849
702
When she's in the barn being a cow, she loses Ego and Temper every day unless she's S+ trained. Are you suggesting frequently pulling the cow out of the barn to try and train Ego & Temper back up?
B+ cow "skill", with a farmhand, is the minimum to have a cow not incur negative mood impacts from staying overnight in the barn. There's no reason not to continue training the cow up to S+, and until that time, you don't need to leave her overnight in the barn. Expectation is that you will take the cow out for training, as needed, yes. The fact that the cow each day has a full energy bar and spending a night in the barn doesn't have severe negative effects when the cow is trained means that the cow is really an extra "active" slave that you can train, who also happens to be a cow. At S+ the only negative of overnights in the barn is intellect drain. Intellect is not a factor in milk production nor in the value calculation when selling a cow. So, you can ignore that, or you can take her out periodically and give her lessons to build up her intellect again (clerical, rhetoric, etc.) if you want to keep a smart cow. If you take her out at the end of every decade and have her take care of the accounting, that alone will make up half of the intellect drain.

Impregnating the cow yourself has similar ego and temper decreases.
If I recall correctly, assuming S+ master penetration skill, you only need to impregnate her once every couple of days to maintain optimal milk production. So, -5 ego and temper per decade. She can gain +10 ego and temper by winning a battle in the arena once per decade. Being mature and chubby doesn't preclude arena victories. You may find it helpful to equip her with some good armor for the battles. Of course, if she gets injured, that's another cost, but you can use healing balm from alchemy or let her heal naturally (farmhand medical skill contributes). Scarring doesn't reduce the value of a cow.

I also believe that the activities that raise Ego & Temper undo Cow training (e.g. Gladiatrix).
Yes, non-cow lessons will erode her cow training, but you can also train that back up. It's a balancing act. The other skills do not degrade. She won't lose her gladiatrix skill after learning it. Cow training isn't "forgetting other skills", it is "acceptance of being treated like a cow and living like a cow".

So unless you can get super lucky by purchasing a slave who already has enough cow training that you can get to S+ before she becomes mindbroken, it looks to me that having a sane S+ trained cow is impossible in practice... And impregnating her yourself will eventually break her.
Even if you skip arena battles (which allow you to enter multiple slaves each decade, with high enough reputation, so it's practically expected that you will take advantage of the opportunity to have your cow compete), there are other ways to build up nature (ego) and temperament. Orgasms raise temperament, for example, and presumably she'll have some when you inseminate her. Assuming she orgasms at least once every time you inseminate her, you should break even on temperament that way.

As for nature (ego), again assuming you are skipping arena battles (why would you?), sending her to the golden cage as a reward three times per decade, or giving her five martial arts lessons, will make up for five inseminations per decade. Or you can take her to spar (and win) at the colosseum five times per decade, which will raise both temperament and nature. In short: if you simply take the cow out for arena battles and not otherwise, that's enough to keep up everything except intellect; if you dislike arena battles, you can still keep everything up by taking her out of the barn now and then. Also note that low nature improves the value of a cow, so if you plan to sell the cow and you're skipping arena battles, you can just let it go down. She won't mindbreak if her temperament stays high, even if her nature drops all the way to F-.

As far as my gameplay testing has gone the theoretical maximum milk production you assume does not seem to be achievable in-game. It also relies on a fiend and fiend-milker, which require additional investment and upkeep. Do you have a save with a profitable cow?
Fiend doesn't require much upkeep and lowers costs for other slaves too, if you're feeding them from it; it more than pays for itself in cost savings. It also gives you alchemical ingredients that further lower your costs and allow you to win consistently in Fogs battles, which gives you another source of income.

Selling the fully trained cow does not make sense to me. From what I understand, the point is to get her to produce more money than she costs and thus eventually earn back the large initial investment and make money from milk (or net saving if you avoid buying it). If you sell her you just have to start over with another initial investment of slave purchase/training/cow gear/etc.
The point is to make money from milk, yes, but you can also make money by selling cows. You can wait to sell her until you have another slave trained up enough to take her place. At the upper end, a cow can be worth more than 5000 sparks, which is equivalent to 33 decades of milk profit assuming my 150/decade profitability figure is accurate. Clearly you can make more sparks faster by selling a great cow than by keeping her for milk. Of course, a great cow could be even more valuable in the regular slave market, depending on other skills etc., in which case you might make even more sparks selling her at auction or directly to a client. Or you can just keep her, probably make less sparks in the long run by only having the profits from her milk, but save yourself the effort of training another cow. In the end, as long as you can make more sparks per decade from her milk than it costs to keep the cow, you will eventually bring in more than whatever amount you invested up front. If you take advantage of the arena too, the break-even point will happen sooner.
 
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Ragnarok20

Newbie
Feb 10, 2018
47
42
I don't know if this is something the devs would be interested in showcasing or even allowing but I decided to post first and face the consequences later. lol

So, recently I started dabbling with cheat engine and made this CT(cheat table) for this version of the game (2.2). I actually don't know if it will work for anyone else as I have not tried it on another PC, but if anyone wants to try go ahead and do so.
Actually feedback would be appreciated, what works?, what doesn't?, is this of interest to you?. Should I update at some point?.
 

qwertyu12359

Jack-o-nine-tails
Game Developer
Aug 1, 2017
1,526
1,647
I don't know if this is something the devs would be interested in showcasing or even allowing but I decided to post first and face the consequences later. lol

So, recently I started dabbling with cheat engine and made this CT(cheat table) for this version of the game (2.2). I actually don't know if it will work for anyone else as I have not tried it on another PC, but if anyone wants to try go ahead and do so.
Actually feedback would be appreciated, what works?, what doesn't?, is this of interest to you?. Should I update at some point?.
Neat (y)

Can you give a screenshot of the actual table please? So that people without cheat engine (like me) can see if this is of interest to them before downloading.

For exemple, instinctively I don't know what more does it do than the cheat menu in-game.
 

Ragnarok20

Newbie
Feb 10, 2018
47
42
Sure, here you go. (Didn't know there was a cheat menu in-game already lol, also tried to find the value for clothes but couldn't.. yet). This is what's present at the moment. jackf95.jpg


Edit: Dont have the game open at the moment that's why the values appear as '??' but they populate as soon as you attach the table to the game.
 
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Pianocat

Member
Oct 14, 2018
115
74
Hey,
Late answer to your post nononomaybe, sorry, just saw ImperatorAugustusTertius tagged me. He already made great answers (thank you !), so I will just add a few things :

2) Cow training inevitably makes slaves lose sanity, which makes sense. However, the milk production code penalizes cows (2/3 production) that are mindbroken. It is reasonable that a mindbroken girl would be a bad musician (and other skills), but why should being mindbroken reduce milk production? If anything it seems like it would help, because she's not resisting being a cow.
2) Mindbreak is not an inevitable outcome of cow training. It is a possible outcome, but can be avoided with careful treatment of the cow. Retaining sanity is more difficult, therefore it makes sense in gameplay terms for it to be more rewarding. Happy cows producing more milk is intuitive, and also reflects what we observe in the real world. Stress hormones - e.g., cortisol - interfere with milk production. See
Imperator summurized it, but I'll juste add a thought: the idea behind the "mindbroken penalty" was to keep the mindbroken status as something negative, in any case. BUT, I wanted to give something to do with a mindbroken slave, and you can make a broken slave used to be a cow. You should rank up her cow skill by putting her in the barn, but she'll never be as productive as a trained and healthy girl (and you still can sell a broken cow to the public farm!)

3) Milk production gets a weighted random boost that is greatest when milk_summ is about half full, between 40 and 60. This does not make any sense to me. It seems reasonable that milk production would be greatest when boobs are empty, and slow down as breasts become full.
3) I agree, this struck me as odd also. Milk production in reality is slower as the milk glands fill.
Yep, the goal was to encourage the player to milk her at the right time: if this right time was the first day, the player should have milk the cow every day, to maximize his profit. With this boost at 2/3, an observant player could understand that milking during the first (or the last) days is not the best thing to do.
But I understand it could looks unlogical :)

When she's in the barn being a cow, she loses Ego and Temper every day unless she's S+ trained. Are you suggesting frequently pulling the cow out of the barn to try and train Ego & Temper back up?
It is true that negative effects on Ego and Temper are perhaps a bit too harsh... My objective was to make it difficult to train a girl to be a perfect cow without breaking her. I think, however, that A+ cows could have been spared by the Ego and Temper depleting.
Eg., the code could looks like:
if cow['barn_custom'] = 6:
if farmhand_state = CONST_INT['slave_exist']:
cow['pos_cow'] = 1
cow['pos_barn'] = 1
cow_rate['intellect'] -= 2
else
if cow['deprivation_attitude'] > 0: cow['pos_barn'] = 1
cow_rate['intellect'] -= 3
end
elseif cow['barn_custom'] = 5:
if cow_escape = 0:
cow_rate['cowSK'] += 10
cow_rate['pride'] -= 2
if farmhand_state = CONST_INT['slave_exist']:
cow['pos_barn'] = 1
cow_rate['temper'] -= 1
cow_rate['intellect'] -= 2
cow_rate['ego'] -= 1
else
if cow['deprivation_attitude'] > 0: cow['pos_barn'] = 1
cow_rate['temper'] -= 1
cow_rate['intellect'] -= 3 2
cow_rate['ego'] -= 1
end
end
elseif cow['barn_custom'] = 4:
if cow_escape = 0:
cow_rate['cowSK'] += 8
cow_rate['pride'] -= 2
if farmhand_state = CONST_INT['slave_exist']:
cow['pos_barn'] = 1
cow_rate['temper'] -= 1
cow_rate['intellect'] -= 2
cow_rate['ego'] -= 1
else
if cow['deprivation_attitude'] > 0: cow['pos_barn'] = 1
cow_rate['temper'] -= 2
cow_rate['intellect'] -= 3
cow_rate['ego'] -= 2
end
And take away this decrease during personal training, for A+ cows, could be considered too.
The thing is, I do not like the idea to pull out a girl from the barn to make her fight in the arena, or teach her a random lesson, just to increase her ego or temper. I like the idea of some consistency in the trainings, furthermore for a very specific like this one^^
 
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