Out of curiosity, is there a somewhat easy way to modify the starting openness of girls available to hire in scramble mode? I know theres the default openness in the description file for each girl but I'm guessing there's a function for scramble mode that makes it scale with your policies.
The idea is that you don't. The starting stats of a girl in their JSON file informs (but does not dictate) their stat distribution which in turn scales with their openness, which is assigned based on the hiring order, according to a set progression.
That said, if your intention is for a girl to start at 0 to open the game:
With that said, there is a flag you can set in the JSON, firstgirl, which if set to true means that girl will be selected to be among the first three girls you get. And until you actively hire your first girl you can always reshuffle your starting trio.
In Lottery, however, -sometimes- openness in the JSON may impact starting openness. But not always.
That is deliberately made to be inconsistant. It is actually intended design that there comes a point in scramble mode where you move from hiring girls from cash, to hiring them through the lottery, where hiring girls through case is specifically to target specific desired traits you need for specific roles.