Customer Supply II

So how do I want to do it?

Well, I'd like to model the customers and use that model to adjudicate their interactions with the girls. WhoreMaster started down this road, but never quite got there. There's a big array of customers, but as it turns out most important interactions are computed as on-the-fly probabilities, and/or affect temporary customers that are created and discarded in the same transaction.

So this means that if a customer leaves the premises pissed off because you're using fake plastic tentacles for the third week running, he'll be back with the same probability the next week, and every week thereafter. It means that the PC can kidnap his customers wives and children and the customer will bear him no ill will. I think it's even possible to abduct his womenfolk several weeks running, because they're created on the fly too.

And it means that if the PC tortures and enslaves half of Sleaze Street, it's going to have no impact on the customer supply, because the dead or enslaved punter was generated on the spur of the moment anyway.



 None of this is criticising necno. WM has expanded well beyond it's initial parameters, and it is manifestly unfair to expect it to do things that it was never designed to do. It's also possible that it did all these things, and a bunch of bumbling newbies like myself didn't see the intention and accidentally messed it all up. The important thing here is that it works and it works well enough.


So if it ain't broke, why fix it?

Good question. Partly it's the stuck-on-an-asteroid business. In a sizable city, you can probably afford to piss off your customers to an extent, and there are enough still out there that it doesn't touch your business. At the start of Clonemaster you're going to depend on a fairly limited number of passing ships, each with a small number of potential customers. If I was playing the game, I think I'd be disappointed if I could rob and enslave the crew of each ship that docked, and still have turn up with the frequency and the same expectations. So your history with the crew is going to matter. So is your relationship with the captain. And the girl's interaction with crewmembers is going to have an effect.

And partly, it's that I want to manage this on a much smaller scale (another thing CM is going to have in common with Otherworld) and pay more attention to they girls. It's a resource management game, so let's make it so that how well you do depends in part on how well you manage those resources. (Some people may disagree. Those I would direct towards WhoreMaster which works just fine, and is ready to play right now)