I really like this game...
but...
Most of the time I have no fucking clue what the game is doing or what the consequences of my doings are...
For instance staff-happiness.
It seems to me completely random.
I'm raising their payment constantly. But even if I keep them at "Ecstatic" sooner or later happiness drops to zero and they quit!?
Female staff I can call to office and give them a few days off or a bonus. But that does not have any observable effect.
For male staff there is no such option, only the salary.
At one point I checked the staff. Two had a happiness in the 20s. Most were well beyond 50.
The VERY next day quite a bunch (maybe about 8?) had a happiness of ZERO. Another bunch had a single digit happiness. Many of them were "ecstatic" about their salary, only a few of them were less than "happy". I raised all of them to ecstatic. To no avail, I lost almost all of them.
Another time: a staff member with average happiness and more than happy about their salary, I sent her to training.
A few days later I've got a notice, she's about to quit! dafuq?! Why? She was, no is, still happy?
It did not need much to raise her salary to "ecstatic". A few days later her happiness was well in the 80s. She did quit anyways. Why??
This makes no fucking sense!
I will try to answer the best i can and maybe give some tips ( please forgive my 4am english)
Every day they work, your staff loose some happiness. For exemple, if you plan 6 scenes a week (one every day), the happiness will drop to 0 or close to it.
If i had to give you an approximative idea :
A staff at 80+ happiness can do 4 scenes on a week
A staff at 65+ can do 3
50+ can do 2
You can (for exemple) prepare your week on monday, prepare scenes for tuesday thrusday and saturday.
Obviously this is not an absolute truth. I can be wrong but i am pretty sure that big scene (gangbang or FFFM) get staff more tired than a boy-girl or solo scene. But let's say a day with a shooting cost around 15 to 25 happiness and a day off get a +10 or +15 (do not quote me on this, it's just the global idea).
Also, a staff member with the positive trait help a lot your staff. I am not completely sure if it applys on the studio he works at (i think) or to everybody, but it helps. You also have a personnal assistant that can do human ressources to get more happiness (click on one of your personnal assistant, give him/her the "job" on the top left when you click on him/her, then go to empire and personnal assistant to pick the bonus)
You also need to gave your crewmembers jobs they like ! And it is not the job that they are actually doing, but the job that is indicated when you click on their profile on the bottom right. The +3 happiness is super powerfull, because some staff can have a "slighly annoyed" salary and still keep 100 happiness. I would recommand to go at least "indifferent" for every crewmember assisgned to a studio, or "happy" if they just like the job (+1)
Some pornstars have negatives traits that can affect crewmember. If you do a FFFM scene with 3 annoying pornstar, your staff will not be happy.
About training : your staff will naturally grow over time, fast or not depending or their stats (and they can be capped with potential). But if you send a crewmember on training, you need to raise him/her immediatly. Because the game will consider he/she is a lvl above staff now. So a lvl 2 staff going on a training become a lvl 4 staff, so he wants a raise.
The day off you can give on a "call in your office" is more for the "relationship" point of view than the pure happiness management of your staff. What it means : if you do not want the staff to become your girlfriend or a pornstar, it's quite useless, except maybe for staff members that are already about to leave you. But it should almost never happens.
Bonus tips : You need a director, it's a requirement for a scene. But the most "powerfull" job is actually the helper. Because they are cheap, they grow fast if they have a decent fitness, so you can easily have a lvl10 helper for less than 2k a month (i think the best outcome is around 1450 per mounth), it boosts your overall crewmember level on a studio.
I hope i made myself clear and i did not write too many false informations but that should be it ! Have fun