Unity Strip Club Wars [v1.07] [Total Fluke Studios]

[Logan1377]

seems like playing this update, people are less inclined to apply for my positions, which i never had on previous updates. Even if they're unemployed, and if i get them to hate "Not Working", but it'll say they're happy where they're at when i Consider for Job. Curious what all goes into that algo / if anything changed

I'm in big debt this playthrough in comparison to previous ones so that's the only thing i can think of lol, eco balance is very different (good, was too easy previously).

I've had to wait longer for applicants as well, and my character's sister seems to recommend them at a much slower rate as well.

 

[Magister Crudi]

Curious what all goes into that algo / if anything changed

Pretty sure whether they have attributes likely to get them into the job influences whether they'll accept the interview but there must be more to it because I've had success asking the same NPC multiple times.

I try to time things so I can advertise more than one job type at a time. That increases the chance an NPC will agree to an interview and if their weakness is something you can fix with training you can sometimes hire them for something they wouldn't have applied for.

eco balance is very different (good, was too easy previously).

Agreed, but I find the buggy, inexplicable or apparently random results more annoying when you're budgeting tightly. Success or failure feels more like it hinges on a dice roll than a strategy.

One example is when you're pretty sure an NPC is a good fit for a job vacancy but for some reason they won't respond to your texts for weeks and you don't bump into them around town. In the meantime you're getting nothing from the unstaffed facility.

 

[Logan1377]

I had an issue recently where I finally got my kitchen built, and for weeks afterwards, I had one very unqualified candidate who kept applying and who I didn't like, but absolutely no one else. It took me about a month to actually hire a mediocre cook. I tried to get unemployed people who I had a good relationship to apply, but they all refused. I think that early on, hiring people with around neutral skill shouldn't be all that hard. I just don't want someone with like a -70.

 

[Not YrBroom]

seems like playing this update, people are less inclined to apply for my positions, which i never had on previous updates.

I'm in big debt this playthrough in comparison to previous ones

High levels of debt will stop people from applying. That's not new to this update, I ran into it in earlier versions.

One in particular #00219 is one of the starting characters virtually every playthrough, regardless of which male image I choose to go with.

According to the image documentation, the system uses the average lewdness of the image set to match to the previously generated lewdness of the character. I'm guessing there are fewer high-lewdness sets so you're more likely to see the same ones more often for high lewdness characters. Number 219 is one of the lewder sets and one that I also see in most playthroughs.

 

[Logan1377]

High levels of debt will stop people from applying. That's not new to this update, I ran into it in earlier versions.



According to the image documentation, the system uses the average lewdness of the image set to match to the previously generated lewdness of the character. I'm guessing there are fewer high-lewdness sets so you're more likely to see the same ones more often for high lewdness characters. Number 219 is one of the lewder sets and one that I also see in most playthroughs.

That's very interesting. But does that mean that I'm likely to just never see many of the image sets, no matter how many times I start a new playthrough? When starting a new playthrough, I have lewdness as a low priority most of the time, so it usually ends up in the 10-20 range. Perhaps if I choose it as the top priority (instead of intelligence or honor) I'd get different results?

 

[TotalFluke]

I haven't played in a few months, and was wondering if there was a way to change what image person has? For example, my brother is not a great model, so I went back and reloaded before he was added to my contacts, and it's still the same person. Same thing with the barista, he's not great, so I reloaded before I ever went to the coffee shop, but same model. I remember you used to be able to reload those saves and get a different model, but it seems to have changed, so I was just wondering if there was a way to edit the save to change them? I tried to edit headshot in the save file but that broke my save, even when I undid my changes.

The image of a character gets assigned when another character runs into them (and the images is needed to figure out the attraction between the characters). So sometimes reloading a save game may generate you a new image, but not often, and then only if it's very early in the game. As the game goes by there are more characters and becomes harder for someone not to bump into anyone else.

You can change it by editing the save file, just change the image name (the "scw00111" or whatever to the new value. But make sure you are using an editor that doesn't mess with the control characters used as separators. And make sure you don't mess those up either while applying your change. One of those two things likely happened and that's what broke the save.

I wouldn't call $15 meal and drink prices 'extreme values' but I'm consistently getting a complete collapse of drink sales in response to minor increases around that price. That's been happening in all my 1.0 play throughs. It's similar to what was happening in the $90-100 price range in earlier versions which I would call extreme.



I've tried to reproduce the effect whereby raising meal prices collapses drink sales and haven't seen it again so presumably there was another variable impacting it the first time, though I have no idea what it may have been. None of the charts showed any sudden changes that might explain it, though if it was due to a relatively subtle change in something like satisfaction it may not have shown up against the usual background 'noise' shown on the charts. I'd already inched alcohol prices up to the point just before sales collapse so presumably it wouldn't take much change in other variables to tip sales over the cliff again.

As I've said, a big issue for me is the almost indiscernible sales response to increased prices until you hit an apparently arbitrary threshold, followed by an immediate complete collapse. In earlier versions that threshold was in the $90-100 range. Now it's in the $10-20 range. I don't consider it much of an improvement.



I now think the response to additional maintenance I was getting was coincidental. Since then the problem of employees often being too unwell to train has returned. That's another one of the 'dumb luck' elements of 1.0 I find unsatisfying. You can consistently waste half of your training opportunities on employees who don't show up and there's no obvious reason it's happening nor a clear way to predict or address it.

If it's happening because they're still too tired from working the late shift - something that didn't happen in my games prior to 1.0 - it should be possible to either give trainees that shift off or schedule training for later in the day; perhaps during working hours.

I didn't say that your $15 price change was extreme! If thought that I would have stopped caring about it. I said that extreme changes will cause the issues you are describing.

The next time it happens, go thru the end of the day to the next morning and then exit the game. Then grab the debug log file (from <YOUR HOME DIR>/AppData/Local/Total Fluke Studios/StripClubWars/Player.log), zip it up and send it to me via private DM. I'm curious as to what's doing that as I spent quite a bit of time yesterday trying to reproduce it with no luck. The only possible explanation is that

I also already pointed out that "unwell" can indicate that they are tired and that's probably what's happening. If they are working all night then will be too tired for the morning training session. That can be worded better to indicate that they are tired, but it's not random or unlucky. And yes, this was changed on 1.0. (Before it would have resulted in them showing up for training and then been too tired to work during their regular shifts).

Managing employee shifts is on the list of things to do but it's extremely complex. Not sure it's worth the trouble. By the time your club can be open late, you can afford to hire enough backups that tired employees or those taking days off doesn't matter.

Actually, after looking over the image packs out of curiosity, I'm actually wrong in what has been happening. I'm not getting an overwhelming amount from the most recent packs, but rather I'm only ever seeing 5-10 girls from each pack, and I think that there are 50 possible in each one. And so there are hundreds of image sets that I'm never or almost never seeing, while a few dozen come back again and again and again.

With the older packs, on older releases of the game I was seeing a higher percentage of them, but now its the same few girls. One in particular #00219 is one of the starting characters virtually every playthrough, regardless of which male image I choose to go with.

There's no preference built in for the more recent images. Believe me I've gotten the same impression before and even listed all the image used in a game and counted how many from each set and it was pretty even.

seems like playing this update, people are less inclined to apply for my positions, which i never had on previous updates. Even if they're unemployed, and if i get them to hate "Not Working", but it'll say they're happy where they're at when i Consider for Job. Curious what all goes into that algo / if anything changed

I'm in big debt this playthrough in comparison to previous ones so that's the only thing i can think of lol, eco balance is very different (good, was too easy previously).

I don't think that has changed in this update. (I sometimes forget changes I make or forget when they were made). Anyway, there's a lot of randomness with that request, so if they turn you down in that situation, you can try again the next day and may get a different answer. (The answers that they just started a new job or they are not qualified for that job won't change randomly though, but will if something else changes). In general they will answer the same way if you ask again the same day.

I've had to wait longer for applicants as well, and my character's sister seems to recommend them at a much slower rate as well.

That has definitively not changed since the first version. You should get a suggestion from her every 15 days or so. At least for the first few months.

Pretty sure whether they have attributes likely to get them into the job influences whether they'll accept the interview but there must be more to it because I've had success asking the same NPC multiple times.

I try to time things so I can advertise more than one job type at a time. That increases the chance an NPC will agree to an interview and if their weakness is something you can fix with training you can sometimes hire them for something they wouldn't have applied for.

Agreed, but I find the buggy, inexplicable or apparently random results more annoying when you're budgeting tightly. Success or failure feels more like it hinges on a dice roll than a strategy.

One example is when you're pretty sure an NPC is a good fit for a job vacancy but for some reason they won't respond to your texts for weeks and you don't bump into them around town. In the meantime you're getting nothing from the unstaffed facility.

If they are not responding to your texts for weeks they probably hate you and wouldn't work for you anyway. Or they are hurt.

I had an issue recently where I finally got my kitchen built, and for weeks afterwards, I had one very unqualified candidate who kept applying and who I didn't like, but absolutely no one else. It took me about a month to actually hire a mediocre cook. I tried to get unemployed people who I had a good relationship to apply, but they all refused. I think that early on, hiring people with around neutral skill shouldn't be all that hard. I just don't want someone with like a -70.

Cooks are easy. Lewdness barely matters and you can train their cooking skill which accounts for 70% of the job skill. Seriously hire whoever you want and then train them. The skill also affects more how many meals they can prepare which is irrelevant early on. So the only real issue is that the satisfaction will be lower until you get them trained some.

That's very interesting. But does that mean that I'm likely to just never see many of the image sets, no matter how many times I start a new playthrough? When starting a new playthrough, I have lewdness as a low priority most of the time, so it usually ends up in the 10-20 range. Perhaps if I choose it as the top priority (instead of intelligence or honor) I'd get different results?

The lewdness in this case refers to the characters lewdness, not yours. In general the more lewd a character is, the system will prioritize image sets that have more lewd images. However, as someone pointed out this results in some of the more lewd images to pop up more often. I may need to lower the impact of lewdness in that logic.

 

[Logan1377]

The lewdness in this case refers to the characters lewdness, not yours. In general the more lewd a character is, the system will prioritize image sets that have more lewd images. However, as someone pointed out this results in some of the more lewd images to pop up more often. I may need to lower the impact of lewdness in that logic.

OK, thank you for that clarification. Like I said, i get the one girl nearly every single time. And when I went through all of the images yesterday, I was shocked at how many I'd either never seen a single time, or hadn't seen in several releases of the game. In the most recent image pack, I get four or five almost every new game now, and none of the others.

 

[Magister Crudi]

I didn't say that your $15 price change was extreme! If thought that I would have stopped caring about it. I said that extreme changes will cause the issues you are describing.

$15 wasn't the price change it was the average price per drink. The changes were incremental at $1 per change 2-3 times per week. At around $15 (+/- a couple of bucks) at normal drink quality I'm consistently getting a sudden drop from hundreds of sales per day to none at all after a $1 price increase. At at higher quality the threshold prices are higher but the effect on sales for tiny increases beyond it is just as extreme.

And due to the way the game sometimes prevents you from replenishing supplies at current quality levels (not sure why that happens either) you can also get a sudden drop to zero sales after topping up your inventory.

I can consistently reproduce this. The problem I couldn't reproduce was when I slightly bumped meal prices and alcohol sales collapsed but meal sales increased slightly. I'd set alcohol prices just below the collapse point and was trying to slowly bring meal prices up to their threshold.

If they are not responding to your texts for weeks they probably hate you and wouldn't work for you anyway. Or they are hurt.

If by "hate you" you mean opinions in the -5 to +10 range you may be on piste, but many other NPCs seem to have no problems responding in that range. Mostly it's happening with recently spawned NPCs who are yet to develop a strong opinion either way. And of course when I'm asking where they are or requesting a meet up they don't know whether I'm making a job offer or just trying to get to know them.

A good example is in my current play through where the Private Investigator (Opinion 4) hasn't been answering my texts for nearly 2 game months (which covered an entire election process during which I wanted him to check out potential and nominated candidates for me). So if you're right he must have been very badly or repeatedly hurt (goes with the job I guess). If so, this is another example of dumb luck having such an effect on game play it makes me feel more like the game is playing me than visa versa. It's not like trying unsuccessfully to message someone 3 times a day for over 40 days straight is fun. Even the most tedious grinding should serve some purpose.

Managing employee shifts is on the list of things to do but it's extremely complex. Not sure it's worth the trouble. By the time your club can be open late, you can afford to hire enough backups that tired employees or those taking days off doesn't matter.

Not in version 1.0.

Even with the change to law_types.txt I'm routinely getting City Hall passing all the late opening laws before can_open_after_sa. In this play through they were all passed before any clubs had even built a dressing room. As I said in an earlier comment, a change in 1.0 has changed the way City Hall prioritises the laws. That's why the logic error in the original version of law_types wasn't triggering a bug before 1.0.

And of course you can't hire 'backup' employees until you've built/upgraded enough facilities to employ them.

It's not an issue of days off anyway. The problem is selecting an employee for training, immediately getting three consecutive training sessions where they're too unwell and don't show up, switching to another trainee, getting in maybe 2 or 3 training sessions before it starts happening again and so on, with no way of gauging the likelihood an employee will be a no-show until you've already wasted the training opportunity. More dumb luck. It doesn't only waste training sessions, it largely wastes early game selection of skill books intended to improve the MC's employee training skills.

If you're right a workaround would be to close the club during late shifts whenever you want to train someone. But standing down all employees just to train one of them hardly seems worth it. If there's a way to force a single employee to take days off for training so 'backup' employees can take up the slack please tell me how.

A more reasonable fix would be if you shifted training sessions to working hours so employees aren't too exhausted to train. It would also be a better labour practice than expecting employees to sacrifice their own time for training. Or simply scrap the 'feature' whereby tired employees won't train.

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

Cult event text isn't picking up the string for the leader's name.




EDIT:

Must have left the cult just to start sending selfies.

 

[Magister Crudi]

grab the debug log file (from <YOUR HOME DIR>/AppData/Local/Total Fluke Studios/StripClubWars/Player.log)

I'm using Windows 11 (for my sins) and there's no 'Total Fluke Studios' folder where you say it is.
Is it only created when you enter debug mode or something?

send it to me via private DM.

DM?
I don't have any direct contacts for you. The F95 'conversations' mode allows for private exchanges but I can't imagine why a game log would need to be private.

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

Sometimes the RNG just creates some bizarre little psuedo story lines.

Here, we have the town Doctor drumming up business for herself by trying to mince everyone:




Kind of reluctant to fund her endeavour.

 

[Magister Crudi]

Here, we have the town Doctor drumming up business for herself by trying to mince everyone

"Cobb" has gotta be an alias.
My money's on "Jekyll".

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

I'm using Windows 11 (for my sins) and there's no 'Total Fluke Studios' folder where you say it is.
Is it only created when you enter debug mode or something?

Log file is found here:

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\LocalLow\Total Fluke Studios\StripClubWars


No debug mode required.

 

[TotalFluke]

If by "hate you" you mean opinions in the -5 to +10 range you may be on piste, but many other NPCs seem to have no problems responding in that range. Mostly it's happening with recently spawned NPCs who are yet to develop a strong opinion either way. And of course when I'm asking where they are or requesting a meet up they don't know whether I'm making a job offer or just trying to get to know them.

A good example is in my current play through where the Private Investigator (Opinion 4) hasn't been answering my texts for nearly 2 game months (which covered an entire election process during which I wanted him to check out potential and nominated candidates for me). So if you're right he must have been very badly or repeatedly hurt (goes with the job I guess). If so, this is another example of dumb luck having such an effect on game play it makes me feel more like the game is playing me than visa versa. It's not like trying unsuccessfully to message someone 3 times a day for over 40 days straight is fun. Even the most tedious grinding should serve some purpose.

A more reasonable fix would be if you shifted training sessions to working hours so employees aren't too exhausted to train. It would also be a better labour practice than expecting employees to sacrifice their own time for training. Or simply scrap the 'feature' whereby tired employees won't train.

I have no idea why your PI is not responding to your texts. People will not respond to any texts if they are hurt badly, they are resting (i.e. tired and at home), or are "away" (this is where we put the mobsters for example when they are not bugging someone in their club to prevent you from running into them in coffee shop for example). There's no scenario for the PI to be away so one of the first 2 must be true. If your PI got hurt as part of some major altercation, well that's really bad luck. But it's part of the game. For some other messages like the general greeting, they may also not respond if they are busy or they don't like you enough. But the PI should always respond to the "I have a job for you" uinless hurt/tired/away.

I will add an option on the next version to specify at what time you want to do the training. But note that unless they are managers, they are not sacrificing their own time, they are getting paid for that time.

I'm using Windows 11 (for my sins) and there's no 'Total Fluke Studios' folder where you say it is.
Is it only created when you enter debug mode or something?



DM?
I don't have any direct contacts for you. The F95 'conversations' mode allows for private exchanges but I can't imagine why a game log would need to be private.

Sorry it should be LocalLow, not Local. As for the DM comment, I said that in case you didn't want to post your game log in the public forum.

 

[Jackell100]

Awesome, thank you for that explanation. One more question, is there non-con in this yet? Like, if I convince someone they like being dominant and they like non-con, are they going to become the town menace? No worries if there isn't, I can wait for that, just wondering if I shouldn't waste my time trying to create one.

 

[Magister Crudi]

There's no scenario for the PI to be away so one of the first 2 must be true.

Unless he "rests" during every time period every day for months at a time (alcohol problem?) it must be either a recurring series of injuries or a very bad one. I've progressed that play through nearly 3 game months past the election campaign and he still isn't responding to "I have a job for you" texts.

And as I also hinted in earlier comments, it's not unusual to have, say, 7 unemployed NPCs when new job vacancies come up only to find 4 of them won't respond to your messaging for game weeks even though their opinions of you seem mild. Sometimes I've bumped into them around town even when they won't answer and they've immediately accepted an interview, but mostly not. That happened a bit in earlier versions but I don't think my impression it's happening more in 1.0 is imagination or coincidence. It's also sometimes possible to get someone to meet up even when they won't respond to other sorts of messages.

Edit: I just played through a few more days with precisely the example above (6 Singer vacancies, 3 Waitress vacancies, 7 unemployed but only 3 of them responding to texts.) After a few days of that I ran into one of the 'no response' unemployed at the gym and she agreed to a job interview. When I texted her after that, selecting any of the "Send A Text" options except "Nevermind ..." dropped me straight through to "Do you want to keep texting ..." without telling me what her response was. It stayed like that until the interview (I didn't hire her), after which she started responding normally to texts.

If text responses aren't buggy then given the frequency of injuries and the time needed for recovery SCW 1.0 must be set in some very unhealthy cities.

It's now been about four months since PI Felix Crosby stopped responding to texts, appearing at locations or posting to social media. An unemployed woman named Lily Baker went missing without a trace at around the same time. Her only known associates are me and my stalker. How do you drag the lake in this game?

that's really bad luck

My experience is that luck is a considerably bigger factor in 1.0. When it's against you it's frustrating, when it's for you it offers no sense of achievement in meeting game goals.

Sorry it should be LocalLow, not Local. As for the DM comment, I said that in case you didn't want to post your game log in the public forum.

The attached log file is continued from a save just before the signup deadline in the election campaign I spoke of. By this time I hadn't been able get message responses from the PI (Felix Crosby - Op 2) or Lily Baker (Op 0) since the election was announced or one of the two challengers (Sally Brown - Op 4) since she nominated. That didn't change for the duration of the campaign and, in the case of Felix and Lily, for close to 3 months afterwards (which is as far as I've got in the game).

If you can use the log to offer any insights as to what's going on with Felix, Lily and Sally I'd appreciate it. Felix and Lily are still missing and their families must be worried sick.

The log begins at week 14, so drink transactions are only around 30 per day but I think that suffices to show what I'm talking about. The effect is the same but more spectacular later in the game when 100s of drinks are sold per day.

Drink quality is 8.99, so the price triggering the sales collapse is higher than for normal quality. At the start of the log prices are $21 and sales around 30/day. When I increase the price to $22 sales immediately go to 0 and stay there.

At this point the game isn't allowing me to increase the alcohol inventory at above 'normal' quality, so topping up inventory will also trigger a collapse in sales to 0 by dropping the quality below 8.99. Let me know if you want a rerun demonstrating this.

As I've said, this effect is absolutely consistent and also happened in earlier versions, though the prices triggering the collapse were much higher, in the $90-100 range. If there's a change in sales at price changes below the trigger price it's too subtle to spot in the noise of normal sales fluctuation, even in previous versions when you could bump the average price from $4/drink to $94/drink in a single day without noticeably affecting sales, but once you hit that threshold ...

 

[TotalFluke]

Unless he "rests" during every time period every day for months at a time (alcohol problem?) it must be either a recurring series of injuries or a very bad one. I've progressed that play through more than 3 game months past the election campaign and he still isn't responding to "I have a job for you" texts.

And as I also hinted in earlier comments, it's not unusual to have, say, 7 unemployed NPCs when new job vacancies come up only to find 4 of them won't respond to your messaging for game weeks even though their opinions of you seem mild. Sometimes I've bumped into them around town even when they won't answer and they've immediately accepted an interview, but mostly not. That happened a bit in earlier versions but I don't think my impression it's happening more in 1.0 is imagination or coincidence. It's also sometimes possible to get someone to meet up even when they won't respond to other sorts of messages.

Edit: I just played through a few more days with precisely the example above (6 Singer vacancies, 3 Waitress vacancies, 7 unemployed but only 3 of them responding to texts.) After a few days of that I ran into one of the 'no response' unemployed at the gym and she agreed to a job interview. When I texted her after that, selecting any of the "Send A Text" options except "Nevermind ..." dropped me straight through to "Do you want to keep texting ..." without telling me what her response was. It stayed like that until the interview (I didn't hire her), after which she started responding normally to texts.

If text responses aren't buggy then given the frequency of injuries and the time needed for recovery SCW 1.0 must be set in some very unhealthy cities.

It's now been more than four months since PI Felix Crosby stopped responding to texts, appearing at locations or posting to social media. An unemployed woman named Lily Baker went missing without a trace at around the same time. Her only known associates are me and my stalker. How do you drag the lake in this game?



My experience is that luck is a considerably bigger factor in 1.0. When it's against you it's frustrating, when it's for you it offers no sense of achievement in meeting game goals.



The attached log file is continued from a save just before the signup deadline in the election campaign I spoke of. By this time I hadn't been able get message responses from the PI (Felix Crosby - Op 2) or Lily Baker (Op 0) since the election was announced or one of the two challengers (Sally Brown - Op 4) since she nominated. That didn't change for the duration of the campaign and, in the case of Felix and Lily, for close to 3 months afterwards (which is as far as I've got in the game).

If you can use the log to offer any insights as to what's going on with Felix, Lily and Sally I'd appreciate it. Felix and Lily are still missing and their families must be worried sick.

The log begins at week 14, so drink transactions are only around 30 per day but I think that suffices to show what I'm talking about. The effect is the same but more spectacular later in the game when 100s of drinks are sold per day.

Drink quality is 8.99, so the price triggering the sales collapse is higher than for normal quality. At the start of the log prices are $21 and sales around 30/day. When I increase the price to $22 sales immediately go to 0 and stay there.

At this point the game isn't allowing me to increase the alcohol inventory at above 'normal' quality, so topping up inventory will also trigger a collapse in sales to 0 by dropping the quality below 8.99. Let me know if you want a rerun demonstrating this.

As I've said, this effect is absolutely consistent and also happened in earlier versions, though the prices triggering the collapse were much higher, in the $90-100 range. If there's a change in sales at price changes below the trigger price it's too subtle to spot in the noise of normal sales fluctuation, even in previous versions when you could bump the average price from $4/drink to $94/drink in a single day without noticeably affecting sales, but once you hit that threshold ...

Thanks for this. For the price issue and the demand going to 0 I did found a bug that triggers when the satisfaction drops below a certain amount it was setting itself to 0. That creates the cliff you are seeing. I'm my game I was able to reproduce it at between $17 and $18 drink prices. The actual threshold it will happen depends on the quality of the product, the skill of the bartenders, etc. Same can happen with food, at a different price point. Anyway will work on a fix. The threshold is also affected by other prices in your club and others which is why it can happen if you suddenly lower the food prices (which makes the booze prices higher relative to other costs). Anyway, will work on a fix.

As for the text messaging, I'm still not sure. What I could tell from the log is that:

* Felix is around and healthy and going to work every day 9-5 like he should. There's no reason I can see why he shouldn't respond to texts. It doesn't look like you tried to text him during this time, so that may have been helpful to see.
* Lily is unemployed and didn't leave the home during the 2.5 days of that log. Again, no reason why she shouldn't respond to texts.
* Sally is also working 9-5 every day, like she should and then returns home at night. Again, no reason for her not to respond to texts.
* It doesn't look like you tried to text any of them during this time, so that may have been helpful to see.
* I do see plenty of other NPCs sending texts to each other and they are getting responses. Not a single one was ignored. I have no explanation for why this is happening to you.

 

[Magister Crudi]

* It doesn't look like you tried to text any of them during this time, so that may have been helpful to see.

That's true. I was focusing on the price/sales thing and trying to minimise any noise that might complicate the log by just passing time and sleeping unless I was forced to respond.

Below is a log starting from the same save but with multiple attempts to message Felix, Lily and Sally.
I feel like I've got your attention now so if you want me to do more tests don't hesitate to ask.

Sally got elected and started coming to Town Hall to work but couldn't be contacted before then.

Felix showed up at my club without explanations about 3.5 game months after he went AWOL and has been answering texts ever since. There's always a scene where the PI's in the club while a sensual singer puts on a sultry show for him. I guess I just had to hire the right girl and wait.

Still no sign of Lily though and there's now a couple of other unemployed NPCs who seem to have followed her into the abyss.

If you can't fix the bug you could try adding a noir murder mystery or horror sub-quest.

* Felix is around and healthy and going to work every day 9-5 like he should. There's no reason I can see why he shouldn't respond to texts. It doesn't look like you tried to text him during this time, so that may have been helpful to see.
* Lily is unemployed and didn't leave the home during the 2.5 days of that log. Again, no reason why she shouldn't respond to texts.
* Sally is also working 9-5 every day, like she should and then returns home at night. Again, no reason for her not to respond to texts.

Notice how Lily's home and Sally's and Felix's workplaces are all undefined in game terms?
Looks like a clue to me. It's a shame we can't put Felix on the case.

Edit: I just bumped into one of the 'no response' unemployed in the cafe. As an experiment I texted "... where's she at?" while she was in the same location as the MC. No response.

 

[Magister Crudi]

"... she is employed as a Human Resources"?

So should I strip mine her?

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

Finally got to the point of the mobster fight and it's somehow worse than the previous version...




50 Health + 80 Energy + 60 fighting and winning the fight leaves you with -100 Health.

Given I won and the Health value has rounded back up to -100, I have to assume Ed is dead?