You don't need to use the obedience-increasing skills constantly, if anything obedience is easier - perhaps too easy - to keep at a comfortable level. The new Loyalty on the other hand, requires much more micromanaging imo. Still getting used to the timing when Loyalty can be raised (once per day) and which skills actually do that and/or do other things. Definitely a learning curve, and as Yoda once put it, much I have to unlearn...
Yeah, I ended up trying it for like 30 minutes on a new save. For a little bit there I was confused as hell trying to figure out why I couldn't interact with my starter at all... Took me like 10 minutes to realize I should look for a new menu lol
The one thing that's really needed, aside from a 'buy all' button in the stores, is an indicator telling you whether a slave can have their loyalty increased on the main screen. It shouldn't be trial and error, specially when the good loyalty skills have long cooldowns and are consumed even if they don't work.
Obedience does seem too easy with every slave being able to reset it for multiple others. I have a feeling this is going to turn into a situation where you're just giving every slave a single social skill as a sort of obedience tax, and then you won't think about it again.
The loyalty system seems interesting, but it feels really out of place in some cases. I probably wouldn't implement it like they did, personally. Like, some of the restrictions just don't make sense.
If it were me, I'd make it so that you could still force a slave to do what you want, but you'll lose a significant amount of XP if you haven't won them over with loyalty. Like, you *should* be able to force your slaves to do things they don't want. They're slaves.
And for any of the people who feel lazy, mind control gives you an unlockable option that sets their obedience drain to zero. So you'll just do that to anyone you're going to send off on their own. Just be careful what clothes you give them so they don't have any negative past that.
Or edit the obedience loss in the global variables file.