Unity Strip Club Wars [v1.11] [Total Fluke Studios]

[Magister Crudi]

Other than "Sorry, I'm exhausted" responses to requests to meet up, the trainer at the gym has been unreachable for about 3 months; almost since the start of the game. The gym opens and closes as usual but is unattended. Fortunately I bought a year's gym pass about a week before he went AWOL; an instance of dumb luck going my way.

I hope TF will give the exhausted/injured dynamic a serious rethink. Not only is it unrealistic that so many people would be too sick to work or respond to texts for so long, its impact on game play is often excessive for something that can't be influenced by the player and is purely down to luck. IMHO something as simple as increasing the healing rate for both NPCs and the MC after mobster fights would improve game balance a lot. Perhaps you could include a healing rate coefficient in the config file.

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

Other than "Sorry, I'm exhausted" responses to requests to meet up, the trainer at the gym has been unreachable for about 3 months; almost since the start of the game. The gym opens and closes as usual but is unattended. Fortunately I bought a year's gym pass about a week before he went AWOL; an instance of dumb luck going my way.

I hope TF will give the exhausted/injured dynamic a serious rethink. Not only is it unrealistic that so many people would be too sick to work or respond to texts for so long, its impact on game play is often excessive for something that can't be influenced by the player and is purely down to luck. IMHO something as simple as increasing the healing rate for both NPCs and the MC after mobster fights would improve game balance a lot. Perhaps you could include a healing rate coefficient in the config file.

Think that NPC health issue was fixed in 1.01

Hasn't been put in the later pages of the thread, but it's published on the main page.

I'm testing it now. Am a few weeks in and haven't seen anyone spawning but otherwise not being available for interaction, so hopefully it's good.

As for everybody refusing to leave their job at the start of the game because they've 'just joined' their employer and slowing down how quickly you can get a bartender, that's another story.

I regularly go months before I can find a suitable candidate. While it helps with wasting time going to the gym, it really doesn't promote the concept of managing the club to a more impatient first-time user.

Spawning some characters in with a variable 'employment time' stat could alleviate this.

 

[Magister Crudi]

Think that NPC health issue was fixed in 1.01

I'm playing 1.01 and as I said the gym trainer has been AWOL for about 3 game months.

If it's not the health issue there's another problem causing key NPCs to disappear for long periods that still needs addressing.

As for everybody refusing to leave their job at the start of the game because they've 'just joined' their employer and slowing down how quickly you can get a bartender, that's another story.

That's always been in the game, but what I'm seeing in 1.01 is less unemployed NPCs available for jobs. I've been wondering if they're spawning with whatever issue has also caused the trainer to go missing so I'm not getting to see them for a long time after they spawn.

My understanding is that NPC spawning is dependent on job vacancies and that's consistent with my experience in earlier versions. I'm about 4 game months into my first 1.01 play through and I'm not seeing new unemployed NPCs appearing in response to my job vacancies, but as I've only built a storeroom and kitchen so far that could be down to bad luck. My first dressing room and seating area are almost finished and if there's still a problem with filling vacancies and missing key NPCs after that I'll probably stop playing until another version drops.

I appreciate the amount of work TF puts into this and if he wants to release inadequately tested versions to forum members for play testing I'm good with that. But I think he should be more upfront about it. IMHO jumping version numbers from 0.6a1 to 1.00 was premature. 1.01 is still an alpha or beta testing version.

I regularly go months before I can find a suitable candidate. While it helps with wasting time going to the gym, it really doesn't promote the concept of managing the club to a more impatient first-time user.

I like to hit the gym hard from the very start of the game so by the time the mobsters show I've got a chance of standing up to them. I also like to max out my endurance/energy ASAP so I can manage both the club and multiple girlfriends rather than having to choose between playing a club management game or a porn game.

Edit: There has been an increase in unemployed NPCs since the dressing room and seating area were completed so I'm tentatively putting my early game experience of a lack of job candidates down to luck. The trainer has started showing up at the gym again after being missing for about 4 months but now there are 2 unemployed NPCs I previously knocked back for bartending and janitor jobs who I'm not seeing at game locations and keep answering "I'm exhausted" to text messages regardless of time of day (maybe they're spending too much time playing porn games). That's from a pool of only 3 unemployed NPCs who were present before I built the new facilities.

 

[TotalFluke]

Other than "Sorry, I'm exhausted" responses to requests to meet up, the trainer at the gym has been unreachable for about 3 months; almost since the start of the game. The gym opens and closes as usual but is unattended. Fortunately I bought a year's gym pass about a week before he went AWOL; an instance of dumb luck going my way.

I hope TF will give the exhausted/injured dynamic a serious rethink. Not only is it unrealistic that so many people would be too sick to work or respond to texts for so long, its impact on game play is often excessive for something that can't be influenced by the player and is purely down to luck. IMHO something as simple as increasing the healing rate for both NPCs and the MC after mobster fights would improve game balance a lot. Perhaps you could include a healing rate coefficient in the config file.

Ok, I hate to do this because it's a pain to do on my end, but please post your save. I need to see this situation because it makes no sense. I just looked at 1.0 save file. With 224 characters, there's a total of 7 who are too unhealthy to work, 3 are too unhealthy to return texts. Which is not excessive. The gym (and other locations being unattended) is unfortunate. I had not considered that.

For the record, if you have dev mode turned on, you can see the health of every character using the console and typing "attr_val health" (without quotes).

That said, I will add a healing coefficient like you said to the config file if for no other reason than to get past this issue. But I'm still curious as to what covid-like pandemic is hitting your game.

 

[TotalFluke]

As for everybody refusing to leave their job at the start of the game because they've 'just joined' their employer and slowing down how quickly you can get a bartender, that's another story.

I regularly go months before I can find a suitable candidate. While it helps with wasting time going to the gym, it really doesn't promote the concept of managing the club to a more impatient first-time user.

Spawning some characters in with a variable 'employment time' stat could alleviate this.

At the beginning of the game there's a wanted character pool of 24 - that's the number of employable characters that the game will create by the end of the first month. Then we add 2 more characters each month plus one for every new job that got created in every club the previous month. So if you build a kitchen in March, that's 1 more NPC that will get added in April. So yes, at the beginning of the game it's hard to find workers. And most of them will not be ideal ones. That's on purpose. I've said countless times, hire the first warm body that comes you way as your first bartender and replace them when better ones appear.

If you want more people available, set the value of base_char_pool_size in the user config file.

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

At the beginning of the game there's a wanted character pool of 24 - that's the number of employable characters that the game will create by the end of the first month. Then we add 2 more characters each month plus one for every new job that got created in every club the previous month. So if you build a kitchen in March, that's 1 more NPC that will get added in April. So yes, at the beginning of the game it's hard to find workers. And most of them will not be ideal ones. That's on purpose. I've said countless times, hire the first warm body that comes you way as your first bartender and replace them when better ones appear.

If you want more people available, set the value of base_char_pool_size in the user config file.

I like a good grind, but 11 weeks without some scrub appearing (and accepting) to fill the ranks is a tad excessive. I start a new save per version, so that's a fuckload of time spent waiting and hoping that a viable candidate appears.

The easiest answer is right in front of us in the first sibling, but they never want to even interview and seem hellbent on recommending people who demand $30ph. Being a student, you'd think they'd be more likely to recommend other low-experience candidates and not ignore your bottom line.




If you were at least able to pry a worker away from another club, that club can hire from the pool too.

 

[Magister Crudi]

Ok, I hate to do this because it's a pain to do on my end, but please post your save.

This save from mid-April has the problem with the gym trainer (Cam Williamson) but from your comment I think what you're looking for is a 1.01 save with a large proportion of people down sick (i.e. higher proportion than 7/224). I've only got four 1.01 saves counting the autosave (which I reset to daily saving) and I'll use the console command to check them out tomorrow. They're all the same play through.

But the sheer proportion down sick at any one time isn't what I was talking about. If that 7 out of 224 (3.1%) are all down sick for over a month that is excessive unless SCW cities are public health disaster areas. For comparison, in Australia the average employee unscheduled absentee rate for all causes is about 8 days per year (about 3% when accounting for holidays and annual leave) but only a tiny proportion of those would be off for over a month at a time.

But I'm talking about how it pans out in the game.

In the attached save there are two unemployed NPCs. Franklin Boone is an all-round loser and Mike Sanders has been too exhausted to meet up since just after he spawned some time in March. My most recent save is well into June and he's still too exhausted to meet up. Shortly after this save he was joined by another unemployed NPC, Noah Morton (opinion 1), who I tried to text the morning after I met him without success. He too is still not answering texts over a month later. From then until after I built my dressing room and seating area in May there were only three unemployed NPCs and two were permanently unreachable and remain so.

So in the save below there are 2 people (Cam and Mike) out of 40 contacts (5%) who I know weren't answering texts for months, but as I've only tried to text a small subset of that 40 it seems reasonable to assume the actual proportion of long term AWOLs is considerably higher than 5%.

I've also posted my modded config and room_types files in case they're contributing to the problem.

 

[Magister Crudi]

The easiest answer is right in front of us in the first sibling, but they never want to even interview and seem hellbent on recommending people who demand $30ph.

I've had the first sib agree to interviews lots of times, only to cancel at the last moment because she'd found a job. The only time she's accepted a job in the early game was when her attributes were so poor it's unlikely anyone else would have hired her.

In my current play through 4 of my 6 singers were from sibling recommendations (often as waitresses rather than singers). I don't know how long it would have taken to fill the jobs if I'd had to rely on NPCs who were already in the game.

I'm still struggling to fill the last waitress/waiter slot from an unemployed pool of 2 losers and 2 non-responders. Hope my sibling helps me out soon.

 

[Magister Crudi]

I've said countless times, hire the first warm body that comes you way as your first bartender and replace them when better ones appear.

... after they've already trashed your club's vital early game reputation with negative customer reviews.

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

I've had the first sib agree to interviews lots of times, only to cancel at the last moment because she'd found a job. The only time she's accepted a job in the early game was when her attributes were so poor it's unlikely anyone else would have hired her.

In my current play through 4 of my 6 singers were from sibling recommendations (often as waitresses rather than singers). I don't know how long it would have taken to fill the jobs if I'd had to rely on NPCs who were already in the game.

I'm still struggling to fill the last waitress/waiter slot from an unemployed pool of 2 losers and 2 non-responders. Hope my sibling helps me out soon.

I'm specifically referring to the first Bartender role.

 

[Magister Crudi]

I'm specifically referring to the first Bartender role.

So was I in the first para.

But yeah, the bartender my sib recommended in this game charges $28.31/h and started only 1 skill point better than the unemployed NPC I hired at $20.45/h.

 

[Magister Crudi]

So if you build a kitchen in March, that's 1 more NPC that will get added in April.

Was that a misstatement or does a kitchen - with two vacancies - only generate one extra NPC to fill them?

Thanks for the 'following month' qualifier. That explains why it can be weeks after completing a facility before I see an increase in NPCs to fill its vacancies .

 

[Logan1377]

I like a good grind, but 11 weeks without some scrub appearing (and accepting) to fill the ranks is a tad excessive. I start a new save per version, so that's a fuckload of time spent waiting and hoping that a viable candidate appears.

The easiest answer is right in front of us in the first sibling, but they never want to even interview and seem hellbent on recommending people who demand $30ph. Being a student, you'd think they'd be more likely to recommend other low-experience candidates and not ignore your bottom line.

View attachment 4006196


If you were at least able to pry a worker away from another club, that club can hire from the pool too.

I usually have a REALLY hard time finding people who are qualified at all to be cook as well. Even if they apply, they have really poor skills. However in my last playthrough that got that far, I had a good relationship with the women who worked at the diner and restaurant, and they both agreed to come work with me.

 

[Magister Crudi]

I usually have a REALLY hard time finding people who are qualified at all to be cook as well.

That's why I always grab cooking (and service) skill books as soon as they come up. When you can get skilled cooks they tend to cost a bomb. I prefer to go for relatively unskilled ones with good focus and train them up.

 

[NumeriusNegidius15]

I've had the first sib agree to interviews lots of times, only to cancel at the last moment because she'd found a job. The only time she's accepted a job in the early game was when her attributes were so poor it's unlikely anyone else would have hired her.

Yep. In earlier versions, usually I could hire my sister after she first gave a life sign, but nowdays (when she is always there with the character creation), even if I try to be as fast as humanly possible, no dice - she interested in the job, but she always cancels later, as she already found another one bartending gig at one of my rivals. Thanks, Sis!

 

[Logan1377]

Yep. In earlier versions, usually I could hire my sister after she first gave a life sign, but nowdays (when she is always there with the character creation), even if I try to be as fast as humanly possible, no dice - she interested in the job, but she always cancels later, as she already found another one bartending gig at one of my rivals. Thanks, Sis!

That always happens with me too. She's almost immediately hired as a bartender somewhere else.

 

[duane71]

Yep. In earlier versions, usually I could hire my sister after she first gave a life sign, but nowdays (when she is always there with the character creation), even if I try to be as fast as humanly possible, no dice - she interested in the job, but she always cancels later, as she already found another one bartending gig at one of my rivals. Thanks, Sis!

Yeah, same. Disloyal bitch...

 

[Not YrBroom]

NYB image pack #4. Models in this set:
Elle Voneva, Melody Marks, Mia Sollis, Ariella Ferrera, Nikki Hearts
View attachment nyb4.zip

 

[Magister Crudi]

For the record, if you have dev mode turned on, you can see the health of every character using the console and typing "attr_val health" (without quotes).

Did that for saves on the following game dates (all 2024).

Jun 14: 68 NPCs, 7 health <0 (3 <-10)
May 12: 55 NPCs, 6 health <0 (5 <-10)
Apr 22: 47 NPCs, 8 health <0 (5 <-10)

I also did it for several 1.0 saves I still have and the proportions were similar.

Not sure what values stop them from working, training, leaving the house, socialising, answering texts etc but I think consistently having over 10% of NPCs sick at any one time probably is excessive.

Edit: Occurs to me you'd get higher proportions of sick NPCs early in the game if the risk of injury isn't scaled to the total number of NPCs. So while 8 sick NPCs might not be excessive during the mid-game when there's several hundred of them it sure is in the early game when there's less than 50.

 

[SqueezeMeMacaroni]

Did that for saves on the following game dates (all 2024).

Jun 14: 68 NPCs, 7 health <0 (3 <-10)
May 12: 55 NPCs, 6 health <0 (5 <-10)
Apr 22: 47 NPCs, 8 health <0 (5 <-10)

I also did it for several 1.0 saves I still have and the proportions were similar.

Not sure what values stop them from working, training, leaving the house, socialising, answering texts etc but I think consistently having over 10% of NPCs sick at any one time probably is excessive.

I tend to find this happening after I've just met someone who's spawned in. At least in the current build there's some sort of indication that they're not available due to health reasons.

Am curious if they get force-spawned into a location initially, but with a low enough health value that they get stuck in transition. I'd have to check the variable data files and logs to see if this theory holds up.

If so, I'm thinking that having them spawn at home first may alleviate the situation. That or just simply not having characters spawn in with extremely low health stats.