not only that, i've been considering lowering the limit to around 20. rival limit is 10. sooner or later there gonna be top contractless freelancers floating around.
anyway, i've made dificulty option at the start and you can pick 20, 100 or unlimited.
CONTRACT LIMIT
Damn, I didn't see that option at the begininng, thanks for pointing it out.
I'm sure you've realised this already, but I can only imagine putting the limit down to 20 would mean an overhaul of all other game features. Forget about contracted photomodels for example, I guess, since they provide no financial advantage unless you have at least 10 or 15 of them for photoshoot contracts, because of the diversity of models it requires.
Also, the player doesn't systematically steal all non-contracted girls from all the competitors (it's a total time-consuming nightmare for a human being), so the game engine would have a totally unfair advantage over the human player.
The competition has 10 contracted girls each, but they operate with the speed of the godot AI engine. Having 100 contracts means we fight on equal terms with 10 different competitors basically, and it's already "unfair", since any non-contracted girl already gets automatically stolen from the human player the day her contract ends (literally, or maybe 1 or 2 days later), and the player doesn't have an AI (eg, personal assistant), and before long, the money, to immediately steal all non-contracted girls from other companies.
Even as it is, with 100 contracts, this system would be fair to the player if his models are stolen occasionaly, on a rotation basis, for example, i.e. if the rival companies spend most of their time stealing each other's models, preventing them from immediately stealing yours the day they're free. If one company tries to steal a honey of mine once a month, on average, I would ideally get a warning, and have the possibility to put her on contract again. That still means spending money, so it remains challenging, in my opinion. This would compensate for my limits as a human player (and would save me from reloading anyway, which is what most players, I'm sure, do, especially once we've taken the time to change their looks and train them).
These are just problems I see, which you may already have solved, so dunno.
And the problem with these top contractless freelancers you mention, is that we can't change their looks. To be blunt, this would make this game an insane and totally depersonalised race against an AI engine, with no visual gratification anymore. Sure, I could still have a few contracted honeys I can change to my liking, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has no interest anyway in dealing with cross-eyed, ugly looking dogs with warts on their noses (which is what most models initially look like, because of the well-done, but deliberatly diverse combos of art sets generated). Even if the game says they're level 10...they're still ugly-looking dogs, who I ignore, unless I can change their looks, i.e. put them on contract. I must insist this game's top advantage is the ability to possess, to acquire, to keep models, not simply use them around, as if I were an AI myself.
OTHER
By the way, I also wanted to say you've found a brilliant way to solve the "how am I gonna spend my millions" problem, once you start making them, with the rival system. Fight the game by trying to destroy all competition, and become a porn autocrat, it really makes keeping on playing in the late game worth it, thumbs up.
The only thing which makes me a sad perv
is the deactivated skin color in the surgery options. Perhaps you've already thought about what I suggested, about keeping models inside their own ethnic group, but still allowing to change the color inside each group, just for visual gratification purposes (this is a porn game after all
)?