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As I get v0.46 tidied up for it's public release in a couple of days I've been thinking about what part of development to focus on in v0.47. Character renders are still high on my to-do list, but I think they're going to wait for another month or two before I dive in and rework the entire system (I'm hoping for bolt of inspiration on how to implement everything cleanly, we'll see if it arrives in time). Instead, I think it's time the business side of Lab Rats 2 got some love and attention.
The game loop for selling serum has been nearly unchanged since the earliest days of LR2: design serum, produce serum, sell serum. The problem is that once you've made one profitable design there's little reason to ever design or produce something else. In fact, once you have a profitable serum you could simply pass time and produce an infinite amount of cash. In other words the game itself rewards tedious gameplay.
So I want to change that, and I've got a few different plans for doing so. First, I want to reward players for producing the types of serums that they would also find fun. That means all of the mind altering, stat altering, corrupting, ect. serum traits will add
more value than more palatable traits (the inverse is currently true). In exchange, these serums will have some level of Sketchiness (Notoriety? Legality? Not 100% sure what to name it). The higher the Sketchiness of a serum design the more Heat (again, not sure of the name) your company will build up. If Heat gets too high you'll have men in suits knocking on your door to confiscate your research, your product, and slap you with a fine while they're at it.
Second, I want to change the way serum designs are valued in the first place. Instead of each trait providing a flat amount of dollar value they will each provide a certain number of Aspect points related to that trait. I'm currently planning on four aspects: Mental, Physical, Sexual, and Medical (Medical being the catch-all category for any trait effect that doesn't fit neatly into one of the other three). Each aspect will have a "market value" which can fluctuate, and the value of the serum is the sum of the value of all of it's aspects added together. Side effects will add "side effect" Aspect points (which have a negative market value), and may also directly lower related Aspects.
Third, I am going to make use of the new Aspect Points to implement a "contracts" business system. Contracts will be offered to your company asking for you to produce a serum that meets or exceeds a certain level of Aspect Points. As an example, you might need to provide 50 doses of 3 Mental, 2 Physical, 2 Sexual, 0 Medical serums, and they are willing to tolerate no more than 1 side effect point. These contracts will offer a significantly better price (per Aspect point) than the open market, but they are all or nothing. Additionally, they pay a flat amount per dose, so using a single overkill design for every contract will result in you earning less.
Finally, I need to solve the problem of playing Capitalism Simulator until you have enough money to do all the fun sexy stuff in the game. The solution to this comes in two bits. First, in addition to reaching a new research tier there will now also be a business policy for each tier. This business policy will be required to produce any serum that uses a trait of that tier. This trait will also have an ongoing flat maintenance cost. Second, employees will generate extra Heat if your company is dealing in serum they find too Sketchy. Corrupting an employee by raising their Obedience (keep them in line), Sluttiness (they don't see a problem with it), or Love (they're happy to do whatever you want) will stop them from generating this Heat.
Putting all of those systems should make the business aspect of the game more entertaining as well as tie it into the corruption system more directly. This is all still in the design phase, so expect details to change and give me some feedback on it!
