This game is amazing but also so frustratingly opaque. Is there a wiki somewhere that explains the game systems? It seems like I'm missing so much of the information that I have to be playing really poorly, especially with the economic management side of the game.
Some questions I still have after a few hours playing:
1. Is there any reason not to max out workers and bioreactors? Is there any functional difference between the factory and the bioreactor?
2. Does the hydroponic garden do anything? The tutorial talks about increased growth rates I think, but it's been hard to see any difference.
3. Is there any reason to build storage past the first, which seems to max out your tourist count at 500 anyway?
4. How much milk is my dairy producing? Is it enough? If I have excess is it wasted? How many milk bars can I support?
5. How many maids do I need to assign to clean hotel rooms and fancy apartments? What if I don't? I've not seen any messages about dirty rooms, but it's a little hard to tell. Also, where is the sexy french maid outfit?
6. Do I really need 500 hotel rooms for 500 tourists? They don't seem to be filling them very much. How many do I actually need?
7. How much income am I getting from the brothel? How many of the fancy sex rooms are being used vs. the cheap ones? What's the duty cycle on the rooms?
8. How much income am I getting from the porn studio?
9. Does planet population increase the tax base? How much am I getting from the planets? Does it pay for the constant string of expensive disasters that planets seem to have? Trying to gauge how much population affects my income has been somewhat difficult because my planets seem to attract solar flares like moths to a flame.
10. Is there any reason to increase a slave's fear? I would have expected a high amount of fear to make it easier to increase obedience, but that doesn't seem to happen from what I can tell. But if fear is a bad thing why is there a torture rack you can install in your office that does nothing but increase fear?
11. Is there a way to select slaves based on their stats? Like I want to find slaves with high intelligence without having to click though each one by hand one at a time. Being able to customize the columns in that slave table screen would be really helpful.
12. Why do we program our growth vats to put the slaves through some horrible ordeal so they come out of the thing insane or terrified? Wouldn't it make more sense to give them a lifetime of training for whatever particular job you have in mind for them? Like fight training for the arena, or a constant string of lovers for brothel training, etc...? I get that the PC is a sadist, but that's just poor strategic planning.
13. Is the lethal fighting arena worth it? Having to keep loading it up with fresh slaves is a hassle, and it's really hard to tell how much income it provides over the non-lethal arena. The audience participation pits are also difficult to gauge.
14. The Spa seems to be really slow at increasing obedience. Maybe there should be an option for a torture chamber/dungeon too if you want to increase obedience more quickly and have some headroom on the fear stat? It really seems like the PC would be the kind of person who would install a torture chamber on his space station.
What I'd really like is if the economic report tab looked something like this:
Monthly Status Report:
Brothel:
Stocks: 20% idle, 25% manned unused, 45% in use. Income: 50,000 spacebucks
Cheap Rooms: 10% idle, 15% manned unused, 75% in use. Income: 750,000 spacebucks
Sex Doll harness: 0% idle, 75% manned unused, 25% in use. Income: 5,000 spacebucks
Dairy:
Standard milking machines: 20% idle, 80% in use. Milk produced: 500,000L
Fucking Milking machines: 20% idle, 60% milking only, 20% fully utilized: Milk produced: 200,000L, Income: 75,000 spacebucks
Milking Harness: 40% idle, 30% manned unused, 30% in use. Income: 80,000 spacebucks.
Porn Studio:
(you get the picture)
Bar:
Drink dispensers: 30% idle, 70% in use. Income: 45,000 spacebucks
Milk bar: 200,000L used, 40% idle, 60% in use. Income: 2,000,000 spacebucks
Bar seats: (etc...)
Arena:
(again pretty straightforward)
Lab:
Standard Research tables: 50% idle, 50% in use
AI Research tables: 25% idle, 75% in use
Standard Growth vats: 25% idle, 75% in use
Accelerated Growth vats: 50% idle, 50% in use
Station:
Cheap apartments: 10% idle, 90% in use. Income: 50,000 spacebucks
Standard apartments: (etc...)
Luxury apartments: (etc...)
Cheap hotel rooms: (etc...)
Standard hotel rooms: (etc...)
Luxury hotel rooms: (etc...)
Room Service: 25% idle, 75% in use
Factory Income: 100,000 spacebucks
Factory Expense: (are there any?)
Bioreactor Income: (etc...)
Bioreactor Expenses: (etc...)
Food produced: 10,000
Food consumed: 20,000 (10,000 spacebucks spent on importing food)
Manager stats:
10,000 influence, 4,000 reputation
Change: +100 influence, +50 reputation
Planets:
Planet Fucktar
Income: 75,000 spacebucks
Expenses: 50,000 spacebucks
Metrics: 10,000,000 population, 75 tech level, 90 obedience, 10 fear, 75 happiness
Metric changes: +500,000 population, +10 obedience, -5 fear, +3 happiness
Planet Asston
(you get the idea)