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Saturday, July 30, 2022

Release 32: Rampancy

The centerpiece of this update is the fourth Distortion path, Rampancy.  It's the last of the four Distortion paths which are based on selectively avoiding breaking one of the Tier-1 Vulnerabilities and the higher-Tier Vulnerabilities associated with it.  In particular, by never forcing one of the Chosen to use 'begging', and by never using Force Orgasm or Sodomize/Torture/Force Laughter on her (e.g. by avoiding PLEA and INJU/TICK damage), you can break her sense of compassion while still leaving her pride intact.  After performing Inseminate and Broadcast on her, the final step is to surround her for 15 turns at once while her HATE is higher than her INJU/TICK.  The building frustration will finally cause her to snap and use the new Rampage action.

This Distortion is probably easier to trigger than the other Distortions, but it's also more difficult to deal with once it's been triggered, because there will no longer be a surround duration requirement in order for the subject to start using Rampage.  And Rampage itself is a very powerful action, causing the subject to immediately break free of the surround and become untargetable for however long she would have remained surrounded.  The only benefits are that Rampaging Chosen will deal large amounts of HATE and EXPO to themselves, and that they'll also generate very large amounts of Evil Energy after the battle.

Chosen defeated on the Rampancy path will gain the 'Demon Knight' trait as Forsaken.  Rather than serving the Demon Lord out of any sense of fear or loyalty, they simply fight for you because they've become completely addicted to fighting, and because they want to use you in order to make themselves even stronger.  Rather than costing Motivation to deploy, they actually restore Motivation when deployed and lose it whenever they're left idle.  Furthermore, rather than having a static Evil Energy cost to deploy, they consume however much Evil Energy you have on hand, scaling their own power to however much energy they're fed.  They're most efficient when deployed close to their "natural" cost, so Disgrace is still a meaningful corruption stat for them, but they have a lot more flexibility, which can be especially useful early in campaign mode.

In addition to the new corruption path, a small but very noticeable change is the addition of the "guide goals" system.  This is meant to provide new players with a set of short-term tasks which will get them on their way to a successful loop.  The task notifications can be turned off, and they don't provide any extra gameplay benefit, so experienced players can safely ignore them.  The current system goes up to the mid-to-lategame of a single loop, but if this proves successful, then I'll try extending it so that it covers the creation of rivalries, Distortion paths, and Forsaken training across multiple loops.

Finally, this update also includes another vignette commissioned by Kalloi.  This one is connected to the Negotiation Distortion, and it's a little bit unique in that it can only trigger on days when you've made a truce with the Chosen.  Its only other requirements are to have made a few truces in the past and for the subject to have already started using Fantasize, so it should still be pretty easy to trigger.

Having the four basic Distortion paths completed is an important development milestone.  I'd like to eventually implement a HATE/PLEA Distortion and an INJU/EXPO Distortion, but in the short term, I think it's time to push further into campaign mode and start implementing the other species and the boss fights.  The first step toward that will be to improve the user-friendliness of the Forsaken training and management systems.  Forsaken are core to much of the game's sexual content and progression, but I know that a lot of players find them too troublesome to bother with.  I already have some improvements in mind, but more suggestions are always welcome.

Click here to download.  Mirror.

  • Content: Added a new corruption route.  See the end of the guide.txt for more information.
  • Content: Added new variants of the T3 Core Innocence and Confidence Break scenes when the would-be victim is on the new corruption route.
  • Content: Added a new vignette.
  • Content: Added a system of guide goals for new players.
  • Balance: Distorted Forsaken will now be much more willing to perform the training actions which give them their unique Defiler actions.
  • Balance: Aversion Forsaken now ignore the usual corruption requirements for Punisher Positions.
  • Bugfix: Added a missing button to the options menu.
  • Bugfix: Resolved a crash that could happen when the Chosen use Fantasize.
  • Bugfix: Stopped the generation of bugged Forsaken that could crash the game at the end of the day.  (Saves which already have these Forsaken will need to delete them.)
  • Bugfix: Added some missing text for high-Hostility Forsaken talking about their personal philosophies.
  • Bugfix: Chosen and Forsaken will no longer be generated with impossible family relationships.
  • Other: Rewrote some of the documentation and added more information, notably adding more information about Forsaken training consent factors.
  • Other: Once the Chosen start using the moves unlocked by Tier-3 breaks, there will be an end-battle recap of how much progress they've made toward their Tier-4 breaks.
Release 32b:
  • Bugfix: Using an unupgraded Commander to capture one of the Chosen when it'd make her immediately Rampage will no longer result in a bugged capture state.
  • Bugfix: Chosen with higher-tier Innocence and Confidence Breaks will no longer Rampage.
  • Bugfix: Resolved a bugged capture state related to selecting a target with an unupgraded Commander and then backing out from the menu.

33 comments:

  1. Question. Do Superior chosen have superior specific variants for their defilier and punisher actions?

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    Replies
    1. They're the same. I didn't want regular Chosen to become completely obsolete once you start getting Superior ones.

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  2. If it's possible I would like some forsaken options added to the cheat menu, anything from unlimited motivation to direct adding to their stats.

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    1. This is a good suggestion. I know that a lot of players use cheat mode in the regular game in order to learn the mechanics, so letting them do the same for Forsaken would make sense. I'll add it to the list.

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  3. Don't know if it's a bug or I screwed up, but I got a Rampage Forsaken, but when I select to deploy her, she never shows up.

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    1. Do you have any Evil Energy at all? I realize that I should have clarified that you need at least 1 to deploy any Forsaken.

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    2. Yes, I have tons of it. And it says "'forsake name' is ready to be deployed to this battle" on there, but when the fight actually starts, they're not there.

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    3. I wasn't able to reproduce this bug. Does the rest of the fight happen as normal? If you upload your save, I'll be able to figure out exactly where it's going wrong.

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    4. I am unsure how, but I will try to upload it! Basically, from what I can tell, if you have them convert to you and continue the story for that run, you cannot deploy them to battle. My BEST guess is something to do with your Forsaken technically fighting themselves since you continued the story, but unsure.

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  4. Are the difficulty options being absent from this build a deliberate choice or a bug? Wanted to try playing on Easy difficulty but couldn't find the difficulty options

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    Replies
    1. I think you need to beat a game atleast once, and save after you won, then you will have access to the difficulty selection.

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    2. Even if you lose, selecting to continue the game and having a save after the day of the final battle should also enable cheats.

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  5. Bug Report - Started a completely new save in 32, a campaign with a roster imported from 31b. Completed the first loop, and was loading and retrying day 7 a few times. After combat, the game froze, when I closed it out and reopened, the save file was corrupted. I opened the safe file with notepad and there's only 16 lines.

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    Replies
    1. Remembered some things which I'm not sure is relevant. When the day 7 broke my save, I had broken a core T1 of one of the first two Chosen, and the third Chosen which hadn't shown up yet had the minor vulnerability which would trigger the growing apart of the relationship, but could not until after the third Chosen arrived. Also I had a Bait Forsaken that had a relationship with the Chosen whose Core T1 I had broken.
      But then again, the 'growing apart scene' did trigger fine one time, and when I did the same thing (might have used different steps) the second time it corrupted my save. Not sure what I did different or if it's related at all.

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    2. I'm investigating this now. When you say that the save file is corrupted, do you mean that the game crashes as soon as you open it, with no opportunity to start a new game or load a save? If you upload your save file, I can try to run it with my IDE and see what error pops up.

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    3. Will upload on 95 site. The program window opens, but it's a black screen with no text and no buttons. The window controls (close program, move window, etc) are operational so the program is not frozen, no error message.

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    4. I'll try a few loops again and see if I can replicate the issue with the same roster and the same loop 1 Chosens, backing up the save file day by day. Won't be able to select the same loop 2 chosens however, but still, I know being able to replicate the issue is crucial in debugging.

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  6. There is a rare bug I've encountered again, I think the setup is if you have 2 chosen in a defiler action, and look at capturing the third, then cancel. When you finish the turn, it will use the default capture on the 3rd chosen, but prevent activating any ability on them for the duration. It does burn one of the uses of the capture as well.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for pointing this out. I've found the cause and it'll be fixed in release 32b (which is coming shortly).

      Delete
  7. Hello,
    I for one really like the idea of the guide system. This is a game with a lot of text and numbers that interact with each other so having a reminder of what I'm doing is immensely helpful.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for the feedback! I plan on expanding the system to cover some of the more tricky systems as well.

      Delete
  8. Behold...a bug report!
    ...probably.
    The Rampancy distortion for me is just flat out not triggering. I've got my Chosen ready to go with a 15 turn surround exactly, but nothing happens when I do so. I've tried having Hate > Injury, as well as Injury > Hate, so unless I need to surround for MORE than 15 turns, I gots nothing. Does it trigger on the surround, or randomly during it even? I'm not seeing a text prompt and the info instructions for triggering are still present after the battle.

    Still having fun though, trying to balance a Superior close to the Aversion and my buggy Rampant. Hoping I can use the Rampancy to setup the Aversion trigger, fingers crossed!

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    Replies
    1. I'm back. It was needing >15 and surround. Ignore this one.

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    2. Even a 15 turn surround should work, but I've realized that I failed to properly explain the HATE/INJU condition. It's not the raw HATE damage that needs to be higher, but rather the HATE level. So, 100 HATE and 999 INJU still wouldn't trigger Rampancy because they're both still Lv 1. (Believe it or not, this mechanic is meant to make the game easier - once they start rampaging, it can be really hard to make them stop.)

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    3. Ooooooooooooh. I did not ping on that. Good to know. Back because uhhhh, my sacrificed Forsaken aren't staying sacrificed. Which just proves how much they deserve it. Did a massive sacrifice binge because the game presented a day 20 Finale with three normal Chosen for my next loop, and I wanted that +4 starting EE for it. Got halfway through before I even noticed some of my minions were supposed to be on breeding duty. Finished the loop and noticed the achievement had reset as well. So uhhhhhh, sacrificed them again for that sweet +4. Came right back when I started the next loop and achievement reset to 8/15 again. Is weird.

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    4. I haven't been able to reproduce this bug. You're saying that it happens immediately upon starting a new loop? If you can send me a save file where it reliably happens, I'd greatly appreciate it.

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    5. Chucked onto f95 forum. Just sacrifice a bunch, doesn't matter which city is chosen, and then when ya buy Focus they're back.

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  9. Ran into a bug for the event following one of my chosen going on the rampancy path. Team was Vassal, Shield, and Spice. Chosen that went rampant was Spice, in the event where they get confronted by both of their teammates instead of Shield and Vassal showing up 2 Vassals are in the scene.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for catching this, I've found what was causing it and it'll be fixed in the next version.

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  10. Tried to import the teams from kalloi full but it doesn't seem to work. Don't know if it has something to do with kalloi's file or the game though. Even the 31b version doesn't import it.

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    Replies
    1. Seems to be an error on my end which has been resulting in some old team files being unimportable. Kalloi has told me that he's remaking the teams for the next version in the next portrait pack release, though.

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  11. Another bug report, regarding T1 Dignity break happening when it shouldn't. I've posted details and the save file on f95 forum.

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