OK, so I'm about to play around with setting up Lex's quarters...
Which is an issue for me. I don't necessarily like the ideas of different outfits providing different bonuses for different things, and then of course there are the items that you can buy in Tala's shop (pendant, coin, leash)...
HOWEVER, what never really made sense to me is the 'procedure' to use this stuff.
As an example, while it MIGHT make sense for Lex to wear the purple suit when performing upgrades (the purple suit in SU reduces the cost of upgrades by 10%), in my mind Lex would just change into this outfit just long enough to perform those upgrades, then immediately change back into his business suit before the end of the night to maximize income (the suit provides bonuses to income).
Forcing a player to have to do this 'manually' and penalizing them if they 'forget' about this just seems petty/annoying to me.
Same for the items from Tala's shop. About the only one that REALLY seems like an 'either/or' situation to me is the pendant vs coin thing, i.e. do you want to reduce threat level that day, or increase the success rates of capture attempts and heists? The Leash thing is kind of an 'on demand' thing to begin with.
If taking all of the girls for walks each night was 'automated' in some fashion, and if said walks generated income (I've mentioned camshow income before), then it might make sense to have to 'pick' the leash over t he favored coin or pendant.
This also loops back to giving Lex 'action points' each night. On the one hand, tracking Lex's activities for the entire night is more in tune with the 'role playing' aspect, but after doing the same leash walk sequence a few times, it just becomes annoying. Sure, forcing a player to have to 'work' for the extra camshow income could be a thing, but of course my personal goal is to reduce grind in such situations, not increase it...
So, looping back to outfits, Lex has a few, but only three of them currently have bonuses attached to them... for context:
So, interestingly, looking through the scraped code (thanks again
joepe for that!), there are a couple of other outfits that currently do not have associated sprites...
The Lab outfit: Provides a bonus to success rates for cloning and robotics.
- I need to look over the code, but for me at least cloning and robotics stuff is generally 100% successful unless you forget to check in on clones every three days, and Robotics mainly just applies to Darci right now so I'm not sure what the benefit here is...
The Powersuit: Gives a chance to receive unique items from heists.
Those last two are essentially deprecated/never explored.
Bringing this back around to the discussion, in my mind, Lex will just wear whatever is appropriate for the occasion. he probably has a change of clothes ready to go in the Limo, and wouldn't need to run home each time. Also, at this point, a discussion about 'having only one item in effect each night' discussion may be in order.
To recap, in SU Unity:
The Purple Jumpsuit is something that you need to buy for $100,000, and as mentioned before provides a 10% discount to upgrades. Note that I haven't 'coded' this discount into ReImagined yet.
The Green Jumpsuit, again I'm not clear as to what EXACTLY the bonus is if Lex is wearing this suit (he starts out with this one).
The Billionaire suit is automatically added to Lex's wardrobe after you earn $1,000,000, and as mentioned before adds 10% to income. So it's essentially a 'freebie' of sorts. This bonus also hasn't been implemented in ReImagined yet...
Similar to the items discussion, there could be a 'choose which outfit bonus you want to exercise on a given night' rule.
This entire costume thing feels a little too 'gamey' to me though. Also, Lex isn't the one earning the money (the GS/MB girls are) so while looking stylish may impress, unless Lex is having business meetings all night this just seems silly to me...
In MY mind, Lex would just automatically wear the Billionaire suit most of the time (when it becomes available), the green suit when interacting in the Legion Hideout, and the Purple suit during upgrade conversations outside of the GS/MB, if said outfits are in his wardrobe, but of course players may have their own ideas here.
This brings me back around to my point at the beginning. The concept here may have sounded like a good idea at the time, but in my mind this is more of an 'associated tools' thing and not 'magic cloth', in which case the bonuses would just apply all the time regardless of which outfit you are actually wearing at the time.
'Abstracting' which 'activity' Lex may choose to focus on that night (when not interacting with the girls) by 'choosing' an outfit still just seems weird to me, especially if there aren't associated dialogues (i.e. 'Lex dons his purple suit and spends the rest of the evening assisting with the upgrades', or 'Lex spends some time in the Glamour Slam and Meta Bordello hanging out with the customers', or "Lex hangs out in the Legion Hideout for a while..."
And I'm simply not onboard with the bonuses to begin with. Lex just does this stuff already, he doesn't need magic wardrobe and in my mind those bonuses should already 'in effect' and hence not needed...
The magic items I'd be fine if all three bonuses were applied automatically if Lex already owns the items. Of course, I think that 'Leash activity auto-management' kind of needs to be a thing though... perhaps henchwomen could be 'tasked' with doing the leash walks for Lex once he's done the walks a couple of times, which would give the henchwomen 'something to do...'
In any case, I've rambled long enough, does anyone else have any thoughts on all this?
