itch.io

It seems like the Beads of the Loyal Bunny are bugged. Once inserted, I can only remove one bead (leading to state 4/5), further removals do not change anything. Or is this the intended behavior?

Version: Public Beta 1.03

I really like the new map system. It makes the early game more interesting because sometimes you do not have a novice dungeon.

Is there any reason to not take a mission, like e.g. there is a maximum number of open missions? So far, I rejected missions where the goal was too far away, but I'm not sure whether this gives me any advantage.

When do your classes auto-switch? It is annoying when I give my ranger some uncursed maid equipment and let her working as a maid, and suddenly she is a maid and needs 50 mana to switch her back.

Mimics shouldn't move. I think it would be more fun if you don't know in advance whether it is a wooden chest or a mimic.

Nevermind, found it. It is hidden in the tutorial menu. I guess this icon on the map only appears on new quests.

Help, I lost the quest menu :-( It was there beside the adventurer selection, but suddenly it was gone. I'm not sure whether rejecting a quest offer caused this.

I'm playing Version 2.99 Linux without any mods.

Been playing version 2.8 for a while now.

- Hidden curses should not show up in the heroes goal list. I know my "one to all" crown has a curse that it triggered when the hero reaches level 4, so I can easily avoid wearing it when I'm close to that level.

- The mimics also show up when you interact with them, before you try to loot the chest. Better just make a chest curious, with a probability that it is a mimic. Thus, you would get information like "20% loot, 70% nothing happens, 10% cursed item".

- The lust system is balanced a little bit better, still I only reach high values in submission. Maybe this is due to my play style, I tend to kill fast, but I love to try new items, and cursed items can be really sticky.

- I really like the new personality/quirk system, feels much better than the old one.

I played into version 2.7 for a while now. All in all a really nice update, but in my opinion some things changed to the worse. Here are my thoughts about the update.

- I didn't like the new dungeon layout too much. You often can avoid hard enemies by taking a detour. Especially on novice dungeons, I often only had one fight. Maybe the possibility to backtrack after seeing the enemies should be removed.

- The new items are fun! However, the enema plug is overpowered. 50% additional magic damage is huge for a mage or alchemist, and cramps are really rare events. I normally end a dungeon with at most 3, so I'm far from expel.

- The affliction system makes lust damage even less dangerous than before. The debuffs from being at high lust level are gone, reaching 100 lust completely resets your lust and gives you one affliction. Often, this affliction is "Clearheaded" (at least in this early stage of the game), which simply does nothing. In the other cases, I had the "Oversensitive" affliction, which gives you just one orgasm and then is gone. I would love to see the debuffs return, and the affliction should last longer. Maybe until you get the next affliction, and you don't loose them after the dungeon?

Excellent game so far! I played the 2.6.2 version for a while, now I switched to 2.6.6. The new classes are fun :-)

The lab area seems rather easy to me, at least until veteran level, a never have trouble clearing it. Problems I realized so far:

- The technician is to slow, normally can only create one machine, then he wastes another move by buffing scrap. My Archer or Alchemists quickly knocks him out. Maybe he should get some protection to keep him alive a little bit longer (armor, or combine him with a prisoner).

- Scrap in the front often blocks the machines in the back. If only a weakness scanner is left, he cannot do something useful from the back.

Beside of that, I found two bugs, where the first one is really annoying:

- If my "One to all" reaches infinity, they transform into "All to one"

- The basic weapons of the new classes are initially not set to infinity. If you remove a basic weapon from one of these classes, it gets replaced by a new version out of nowhere. By repeating this process, you can set their amount to infinity (as it should be).

One thing that you could improve:

- You could add a symbol to the items whether it is identified and can safely be used. I often have several items of the same type, where I already used one of them. But I don't know which, and choosing the wrong gives me a cursed one.

That's sad news, but with the Unity license plans, it's understandable. I hope that you find time to come back to programming one day, and find another engine with a more friendly license. Personally, I use the QT framework, which is licensed under the LGPL (AFAIK; I never really cared because I never released my projects). Yes, this is not a game engine but only a GUI framework, but for things like DP it is enough. However, I don't know how good it mixes up with managed code, I always used it with C++.

Hi,

for us, this is mainly good news, because it means that you are back to DP, and you're making steady progress :-) Setting up a computer doesn't take that long. However, I hope you haven't lost too much of your other data - things like this can be really annoying.

I also made the experience that development always takes more time than expected. I once had a small private project that suddenly took 4 years :-o But yes, it was fun. Unfortunately, at the moment, I neither have the time nor the ideas for a private game project.

Greetings!

Hi,

the screenshot looks great :) I'm looking forward to the new version.

Greetings!

Hi,

nice to see that you are back :-)

I would give a small morale boost, then subtract morale for witnessed/participated lewd actions. I think this would be better both w.r.t. balancing as well as immersion.

Balancing: If I remember correctly, the morale loss when meeting a sleazy male officer at level 2 is 2, while at level 4 it is about 5? So the difference is 3. Missing your evening relaxation is huge, especially as you cannot avoid it. When you reach relationship level 4 with some officers, you normally get 6-8 morale each evening. Stern female compensates that by having a reduced morale drop for missions, sleazy female doesn't have this. Plus, I guess you can still get the level 2 scenes in the office. So an initial morale boost might be good, it is still worse than getting your normal evening program. Depending on how fast you will get penalties for lewd actions, I would give an initial boost between relationship*0.5 and relationship.

Immersion: If you are invited to the private party of a girl that you know she has a crush on you, but you don't share her feelings can be an akward situation. But you can still have fun at this party, at least more fun than having a bind date with a creepy stranger. However, as soon as you have to do some dares on this party, this might change...

I wouldn't use relationship as a ressource here, relationship is the most valuable ressource and there are little situations where you would go for morale instead. It also would change the game mechanics a lot. What I could imagine is a money/morale tradeoff. While doing things for money doesn't really fit a private party (might better fit stern male), you might meet certain people at the party. If they enjoy your company, they could use your services the next day. In other words, if you accept some lewd actions on the party, you loose some morale, but get a guaranteed passenger of even VIP mission from that officer the next day.

Still, I'm not sure that implementing new features at this stage of development is a good idea, or whether this should be postponed for later.

Hi,

nice to hear that you are back, even if you're not yet have the time to continue your projects :)

I had a look into your story generator. The randomization works surprisingly well, although the events feel somewhat repetitive. What I am missing is the lack of personality of the actors. In the main game you're playing (e.g., Darkest Dungeon), they have a personality, and in the lewd scenes it is suddenly completely random. What you might do about it is adding some initial stats / likes / dislikes to your heroes, which greatly affect the randomness of the events.

And one thing I ever wanted to ask you, even for Delivery Pilot: why do you provide a 32 bit downloadable version? I doubt there is still anyone playing on a 32 bit system that cannot handle 64 bit applications.

I wouldn't say that I try to finish a game with a random skill map quickly. If you place the really good stuff in the corners, the aim would be to reach these skills in order to be able to defeat the bosses. For me, the difference between long running games and shorter games is how often I want to replay them, and why I want to replay them. In Skyrim, I spent over 100h in one run. After that long time, I want to see something different (although I might replay it one day). I have seen a large part of the content, playing it with a different character would show me the same content, although with slightly different gameplay. So yes, I know in advance that I will only play it once, and I want to play this go with the character I like most, thus I need full control over the skills. In roguelikes, the random generated content does not change much, but the fun is to see how well your character gets along. That is, the differences in the character creation/development is the interesting thing. I guess I spent more time of my life with Nethack than with Skyrim, although I could never beat it.

So yes, random skill map is for shorter games, but not because you want to finish them quickly.

Honestly, I don't really get it - some explanation might help.

I guess you have to start in the center, and can only select skills adjacent to already selected skills. Is there a difference in the skills in the square centers and the square sides, or why are they bigger?

Generally, I like the idea of random skill maps. You won't make a AAA title with 100+ hours of content like Skyrim, so you must go for replayability. In my opinion, you have a higher replayability when you have to rethink your character development each time again, instead of playing your standard characters, thus random skill maps are good.

However, I see problems in the playability of your skillmap representation. In a game like this, I would either only check the currently available skills and select the best one (which would work), or plan the whole character development in advance, and trying to stick to this plan. Here is where your representation is weak: you have to click on every single skill to get its description, and when you're done, you're most likely confused. A graphical representation of the skills would help, maybe with some generic icons (e.g., shield +2)?

I wish you a happy new year :-)

I tested the new version, but so far I only reached level 4 with a sleazy male officer. I liked the writing so far. However, the morale penalty was really hard, I wonder if it still works when all personalities have scenes up up level 10. And I'm not sure whether it pays out to have relationships above level 5 (depends on the morale penalty for level 6 + 8 scenes), or if you better stay on level 5 to gain less money but avoid the morale loss. Level 4 is a must-have because of the VIP missions.

I like the idea of having some of the sleazy female scenes in the evening. It makes it more unique how you have to handle each personality. I think morale loss should be less than in the office scenes, because there is no way to avoid evening scenes. In the current versions, I have the feeling that stern female is slightly harder to handle than stern male because of the evening scenes, but the lesser morale cost for missions compensates for this.

Hey,

thanks for the update :-) Looking forward to the next release.

I was a little bit surprised when you wrote you bought DF. I played it years ago, and it was completely free. I checked it, classic version seems still to be free, Steam version costs but seems to have a completely reworked UI. Although the UI was a main problem in the classic version, I'm not sure whether it is worth the price. To be honest, I didn't stick long on this game, because I soon reached the point where my dwarfes lived in safety, and it got boring.

Currently I'm playing the old Neverwinter Nights mod "A dance with rogues". Maybe the best adult game I have ever played, and from what you wrote about your gaming preferences, you might like it (if you have no problems with a little bit outdated graphics). Primarily a challenging RPG with a dark story, spiced up with a lot of lewd scenes and a lot of beautiful clothing.

Hi,

thanks for the update :-)

Although it is unlikely to get more than one officer to level 10 in time (except for infinite mode), I like the idea of this level being something exclusive. Another approach would be to end the game immediately when reaching level 10 (MC decides to stay on this station and "work" exclusively for the officer, or signs a marriage / sex slave / whatever contract and the officer pays the whole remaining debt, ...). In any case, this ending should have a special ending story, and should be considered a good ending and not a failure, otherwise there is no reason to accept level 10.

Thanks for the update :-)

In the meanwhile, I have finished a game with custom settings (70% mission probability / 5 days repay interval). I think I found my ideal setting, it was really challenging in the beginning (failed to repay once), starting from midgame with having several higher level Captains and some Majors, it got easy again. Btw., are you planning to nerv mid- to endgame a little bit or is your current focus just on writing?

Morale was a constant challenge until the endgame, where I can recover morale by relocating without mission, which is often better than taking a low profit mission in this stage of the game. Normally, the morale situation gets easier already in midgame, but this time I had a lot of stern female officers, and the arranged dates can cost you a lot of morale in the late game. When you add the higher level obligations, which primarily effect the late game, the current morale settings could fit really well.

VIP scenes: Are there any differences in the personalities of the VIPs (expect fo the introduction)? I couldn't recognize any, and they were quite similar to the normal cargo loading scenes. I was hoping for more distinct scenes, and more specific reaction to the current outfit. But maybe I missed something.

Btw., the "Captains are always busy" rule is - against my expectations - really great. It greatly improves the value of locations with only 2 Captains in the early game, as you no longer have to fear that you do not get any mission at all.

Hi,

nice to hear that you're progressing smoothly :-) Overall 13 new scenes? All for sleazy male? Wow! I was only expecting 4 new scenes, one for each even level from 4 to 10.

At the moment, morale feels balanced, but you might need to adjust it when all obligations are finished. I guess level 4-10 obligations will also have a higher morale drop than level 2, and you have to compensate it.

Honestly, I do not really get what you mean with our mystery game. So you see what is happening in the doll art, but you do not know what's happening? That sounds somewhat strange. However, I like the idea of just hinting things and letting imagination doing the rest. It often has a better effect than showing everything explicitly.

Thanks for the new version! As I have skipped the last version completely, I also have some comments for that version, too.

- VIP: Didn't reach the VIP lewd scenes yet. I had a view flights with VIPs, the introduction to the different VIP personalities sounds promising. Before triggering further action, I was too overconfident and lost due to my morale, an arranged date catched me in the wrong moment.

- Backside view: good work, but I prefer the frontal view.

- Custom mode: perfect for me, I played with 60% / 6 days, because it is maybe the closest to the old hard mode (v0.4). It was hard, but doable, reached day 180 but morale went too low. Next game, I will try 70% / 5 days, so it is similar hard, but I have more decision to make.

- Morale balance: Up to the point that I have played, it felt pretty good. I was struggeling all the time, carefully decide which days to take off, eventually not visiting some officers, but I did not have to take too many days off.

- Transport scenes: are okay

- Revised bra/panties inspection: Really liked these scenes, also the synergy that started between the obligations. When you also allowed the officer to take photos (on level 2), this also triggers for the inspection scenes :-) With these scenes, the "inner view" seems superfluous to me, almost like cheating (viewing things too early).

So the romance/erotic scenes are more a reward for completing missions? That's completely ok, many commercial games go this way.

1) Sounds like a good concept. The "hunters and collectors" principle is always fun. You can also make a connection between the dungeons and the romance scenes. For example, you do not only find better gear, but also clothing / toys /... that can be used or even trigger the romance scenes.

2) Does not sound that exciting for me. Might work, but it could feel like you are playing two different games that have no real connection to each other. The goal is survive game 1 long enough to see the good stuff in game 2.

Wow, the scene looks good :-) Looking forward to it! Is the VIP also reacting to the current clothing of the MC?

What will the third view angle be? I still miss the complete view from the earlier versions a little bit, where you could see all current obligations. As far as I can see, also the back view does not show the shoes.

About your plans for the next project, I have no real preferences for a scenario. The game mechanics can normally be done both in a fantasy or Sci-Fi setting, for example you can replace mining by looting magical ingredients in random dungeons. I'm normally not a big fan of sequels, because first I prefer to see new stuff, and second I'm often a little bit disappointed when I have expectations from the first game, and these expectations are not fulfilled.

I guess you also have a lewd system in mind for your new game. It might be a good idea to think about what it will include, and in which scenario this system fits best. Do the same for your general game system and your character development system, then use the setting that fits most.

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to the VIP scenes :-)

Hi,

yes there are times where the mood is not right for writing, I know that. Do not pressure yourself, it's better to make a break sometimes before loosing the motivation completely. Moreover, what you write looks a little bit more than "Nothing": you made small progress on the VIP scenes, and you have a detailed plan for the sleazy male officers. I'm really looking forward for these scenes!

Giving us updates even if there is not much to report is nice :-) So we know you are still working on the project and haven't abandoned it. Also we (the players) have been a little bit lazy with responding to your posts. In the beginning, there was a lot to discuss, and we could give you a lot of feedback. Now, as your posts are mostly progress reports, and not much discussion about the best ways to implement something, there is not much to say for us. Expect for thank you, of course ;-) That's maybe the reason that we answer less to your posts. But be assured that we (or at least I) still follow this project, even if we do not answer.

Greetings

Hi,

the screen looks good :-)

I'm missing the "infinity mode with debts" mode a little bit (although I do not know whether I would play it). As you have both the Infinity Mode control box and the Repayment Time dropdown, it would be easy to implement. If the checkbox is checked, the remaining debt always is infinity (or not reduced when paying your debt). If Repayment Time is infinity, you never have to pay. That is, if both is activated, you have your infinity mode without debt pressure. If only the checkbox is activated, you have the debt pressure. If you stick to your idea, I would recommend to remove the checkbox, as it is superfluous.

Another custom setting you could add is the probability of getting personal transport / VIP missions. In my opinion, they are too frequent, making late game rather easy compared to early and midgame. If a level 4 Major offers you only to transport furniture, it is better in most cases to rest one day, because you have a high chance to get double or triple pay on the next day and you restore morale.

About release frequency: have you ever thought about releasing depending on content? So, decide which content you want to provide in the next release, implement and test it, then release it whenever it is ready. You have less pressure, all your releases are meaningful, and you can better react to major bugs. For example, with this clothing bug in the beginning, I would have been happy to see the fix already after two weeks, instead of waiting for the end of the month.

If you stick to your time boxed approach, two months is perfectly okay in this stage of development, and way more frequent than in other projects. Additionally, you keep us up-to-date in your weekly posts, so we see that the project is not abandoned. Also here, it would be no problem to reduce the frequency.

Yes, I mean the MVC pattern. Especially keeping the view separated from the rest is quite useful.

I also think the second approach to non-permadeath is what most players would prefer. You will never get stuck, it only could feel like a grind if your strategy is bad. The other approach is more frustrating for the player. It might be even more frustrating than permadeath because it takes some time until you realize that you are stuck.

Heya!

Due to holidays, I almost missed one version of Delivery Pilot. So I haven't played verson 0.6 yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

I hope you will only take a break from the game, and not completely abandon it. It has reached the state of "almost finished". When the VIP scenes and the higher level obligations are written, everything else that might come feels like bonus.

About your future project:

- I cannot say much about the UI. You have to play it to see how it feels. However, I have one point that I didn't like in the Delivery Pilot UI, and you could avoid it in your next game. The doll view (where you want to look) and the control area (lower right, where you have to look) are too far from each other. Maybe place the doll view closer to the buttons.

-Another thing you could learn from Delivery Pilot: you spent a lot of time for refactoring. Of course, you will always need refactoring, as a lot of things have to be tested by playing. However, you often refactored well working things just because you weren't 100% happy about how they looked. I normally keep this perfectionism for the fine tuning when the main features are done. Without rewriting some of the scenes, you might already have a first version of all scenes.

- Consider keeping the GUI and the data / game logic apart. If done right, you can replace the GUI by a simple AI, which can help a lot during game balancing.

- About permadeath: I'm a big fan, but most people do not like it. If you remove it, you should have a clear idea of how to replace it. Either your missions become harder over time, so that you can reach the point where you will fail all your missions if your strategy was wrong and you did not keep up the pace. It is a kind of game over, but not as harsh as permadeath where some unlucky dice roll can finish a well going run. The other option is that the missions get harder as you get stronger. That is, with a bad strategy, you have to grind a lot on the easier missions before you can go on more difficult missions and unlock more content. With enough patience, you will see everything in the end. Both approaches are valid, but I think you should decide which one you want for your game.

We will see how the reroll strategy feels when playing. I assume that it is harder than rolling once with 70%, for the following reasons. First, I think the second issue (having only one mission) is more of a problem than the first issue (having no mission). On my runs on medium, I realized how much faster I could unlock the Majors because I had more options w.r.t. chosen Captain and destination. Here, the reroll will not help much. With the morning scene morale sink, having no mission at all is not that bad anymore, because you sometimes need a day off in any case. Of course, it's still annoying if your current location does not offer a good recreation option.

About the symmetry of the difficulties, I'm also not a friend of the 100% on easy. If easy should be tutorial style, you remove a part of the game mechanics here. I think 90% would be a better choice.

I still would prefer the 70% difficulty. It keeps stuff easy and easy to understand. But I can also understand your sentimal arguments. And before having played it with the reroll strategy, everything I wrote are just theoretical assumptions. So implement it, and we will see how it feels.

About this balancing stuff, it might be good to have a non-UI version with an AI interface, so you can write a simple AI that plays it thousands of time, maybe outputing some statistics, and you get a feeling where the game is too easy and where too hard. But I guess this will be hard to include at the current stage of development. Maybe for your next project.

Yes, you should definitively soften the 60%. First, I think there are only very few bonus combinations where hard mode is currently beatable. Second, it will be more fun, not because of the reduced frustration but because you have more decisions to make.

My suggestion is 70%. On a station with 3 officers available, the probability of getting at least two missions is 78.4%, having only one mission 18.9%, and having no mission at all 2.7% (compared to 64.8%, 28.8%, and 6.4%). This is, about on 4 of 5 days, you have to make a decision.

I'm looking forward to whatever decision you make.

Hi,

thanks for sharing your progress :-)

A small idea for the doll view: if I got you correctly, there won't be a front view that shows the whole doll anymore. Therefore, switching the view will be more interesting (I practically never did it in the old version). Maybe it would be a good idea to have the switch button on every page, not only in the menu page.

About the statistics, I do not care much about them. They are just numbers, but what do they tell you? Except that they are too high to what you should have in real life ;-) They do not help you to improve your gameplay. Maybe some more general statistics would help, like lost morale due to morning scenes / officers / loading scenes. That might also help you to balance the game.

As you have given me the idea that the game still might be beatable on hard with the right boni on your last post, I tried it. It took me over 30 rerolls to get the desired boni. But it works - I'm on day 180 and there is not much that could go wrong anymore.

About unlocking the inner view button, I would only unlock it on stations where you have a lingerie obligation. And you're right, it is difficult to tell the user that the button is unlocked. So maybe leave it like it is until you have a good idea how to solve this.

Sure I know where the overpowered stuff is :-) Problem is, on hard mode, you won't reach it fast enough. But if hard mode means "see how far you can go", this is okay. Nevertheless, I vote for increasing the mission chance to 70%. The reason is, with 60% you often get only one mission. You cannot afford to take no mission in the early game, so there is not much choice. With 70%, there will be more decision making without reducing the difficulty too much, which would be more fun to play.

I'm on my second run, this time on medium. After day 120, the morale pressure is still very high, but I have already unlocked the good stuff and can easily afford the breaks I need. However, I watch morale carefully, and do not ask another officer for a mission if I already have a good option, in order to not risk morale loss. In other words, morale currently feels well balanced in mid game.

I just had the idea that I should try to beat the game on hard again, with carefully selecting my bonuses (reroll until I got the desired bonuses). So far, I never rerolled, but with the right bonuses, I might survive long enough to unlock high value missions.

I had a quick first test yesterday. Here are my impressions.

1. I like the new doll, the artwork is greatly improved to the old version. Seems like also MutantPrawn gets better :-) However, what I did not really like is the perspective, because the lower part (pants/skirt) is only partly visible and the shoes aren't visible at all. As other views are in planning, this is ok. What I also disliked is the "Switch" button. I think you should first earn the underwear view, maybe temporary remove the shirt when an officer checks the bra.

2. Cargo bay writing is pretty good :-)

3. Couldn't go that far, but I think it is a useful additional check.

4. I don't really need this info (anymore), but might be useful for noob players.

5. The harassment frequency felt good on my run. However, I cannot really judge it yet, because I played with the "friendly" bonus, so I preferred missions from friendly officers. With this, I never had problems with morale, it was quite stable during the whole game. This means also that I only got a few obligations and the harassment chances did not change very much. I have to play another game with other bonuses before I really can tell whether the harassment chances are good now.

6. I did not really realize this, maybe I wasn't deep enough into the game.

7. Same

8. Same

9. From the money curve I had in the old version when playing on medium, I can confirm that this is managable on medium and feels ok as medium difficulty. However, on hard it now feels similar as your first version, I could only make it until day 120. I think the problem is that the differences between the difficulties are too big. I would suggest to bring them closer together, either by giving all difficulties the same week length, and/or by having less differences in the mission probabilities (maybe 70/80/90?). The mission probabilities make a huge difference, because you have a higher probability to get a mission from your favorite officer, and you have a higher probability to get a mission to your favorite starport. Both effects result in getting more money and faster unlocking the higher ranks.

Looking forward for your next updates :-)

Hi,

thanks for the update - Looking forward for the new release :-)

This Unity stuff does not sound too well. I wouldn't expect them to add malware into the engine. Someone would recognize it, and then Unity is ruined. However, as they seem to have chosen the way of quick money, I would expect that they reduce development, reduce maintenance, and therefore reduce quality on the long term. Many good products died this way, normally by getting swallowed by a larger company that only tries to milk out the most money of the product and neglecting further development. Therefore, it might be a good idea to switch to another engine in the long term, maybe for your next project.

Hi, thanks for sharing :-) It looks quite good. I'm happy that you stick to your old style, having an (initially) rather masculine looking pilot. I think this fits the idea of the game much better than starting with a sex bomb dressed as a pilot.

Hi, thanks for the progress report :-)

I'm eager to see the new doll art, and the new writing.
About the inner clothing view, I'm a little bit divided. On the one hand, you sometimes have to wait really long until you see the panties in the current version, so the new view would be great. On the other hand, if you get the inner view for free, it greatly reduces the reward for the obligations of the outer layers. For me, I would prefer having no inner view, but good scenes where the inner obligations are presented. Maybe you could think of unlocking the inner view only if there are obligations for the inner layers.

I also wouldn't care too much about different view angels. Currently, I almost never look at the backside view. It is a nice to have, but nothing important.

Minor things:

1. I can confirm that the miniskirt obligation is still available, had it on my last run.

2. Great, I'm curious to see its effect on hard mode.

3. Useful.

Next steps:

1. Polishing and testing is always good.

2. Good in terms of immersion.

3. Personnel transport and high level obligations are currently the things I miss most, because these are the points there the game feels incomplete. But don't rush it because of me ;-) I know good writing takes time, and you have to find your own balance between programming, writing, and game balancing to keep your motivation for the project.

No matter which approach you choose, either permanent obligations or obligations for one journey - the tricky part will be that the obligations get you a disadvantage. Either your morale is low and you get -1 on all your dice rolls, or you are tired because you had to work on the merchant all night - start fights with half stamina, or you have to wear some armor that looks good but does not give good protection. Ideally, taking no obligations will let you lose over time because you have no money for gear, healer, or whatever. Taking all obligations will also let you lose because the fights get too hard. So taking the obligations is not a double win in terms of money and sexiness, because you will not make it to the really sexy stuff. You have to find the right balance when to take the obligations.

Overall, I think the approach might work, but it will be really hard to find good disadvantages for the obligations, and even harder to balance the whole system.

Hi,

I just finished a run on Delivery Pilot on Medium. I wanted to know how the latest changes affect mid/endgame. It was surprisingly easy. I even tracked my money to check whether it was sufficient for hard mode - it was over the whole game. So maybe it is still managable in hard, but having a mission chance of 80% is a big advantage, much bigger than I expected.

About the effects of the latest changes:

- The morale drop is really painful from day 30 to 100. I had to rest once a week. From day 100 to 150, it relaxed a little bit because you get more morale from resting. I had to rest about one day in 3 weeks. After day 150, morale wasn't an issue anymore. Sometimes I took flights without cargo because the proposed missions did neither pay well nor had a good destination. These flights were sufficient as rest days in the endgame. I wonder how this morale curve will look when you add the even level obligations.

- IMHO, the officer part in the harassment probability is too much. Even in the endgame, the harassment chance was mainly determined by the officers, not by the obligations. Thus, it did not make much sense to avoid a station with many obligations.

Proposal for balancing: reduce the officer part in the harassment chance. This makes the early game easier. You might increase the obligation part, but I would wait with that until you have the transport scenes and even level obligations.

- The morning scene selection needs some weighting, higher level obligations should have a higher probability. I was walking around topless and MC was concerned about her jacket...

Darkmorrow Bodyguard:

I like some of your ideas, others not.

- Permadeath: I'm a huge fan, adds a lot of replayability for me.

- Turning down offers ends the game: what's the point in this? If both turning down an offer or failing means game over, the only option for me would be trying the mission. Of course, my highscore would always be 0 because I loose every game, but who cares? For me, I would remove the possibility of not taking a mission, and make it a "see how long you can survive" game, or make a maximum level of missions. About the H-scenes, you should give the player a choice. I think it was Fable where you could announce how you do a mission, and you could get more fame and money with riskier announcements (like "I will slay the dragon naked!"). You could do something similar here. You get an offer for a mission. The merchant offers you a bonus under certain conditions, like "you get 100 gold extra if you wear this chainmail bikini during the mission." Accepting the condition gives you the H-content, but also a disadvantage, like you cannot wear your best equipment, or you start battles with lower stamina, ... On later levels, the merchant might demand a minimum obligation and offer a higher obligation. The way to victory would be by clever deciding which missions you can do with the obligations (in order to earn money fast enough), and which better to do with your best gear.

- Level/Battle system: sounds fun to me.