by Redicicle » Thu Sep 29, 2022 5:40 am
Has anyone found settings and map design elements that create a coherant social structure without waiting for relationships to catch up with continental drift? I like the idea that the people I'm interacting with are mostly part of a complex web of social interactions and that vore has social consequences. The problem is that the timescales for relationships to form naturally, even with some settings maxed, are very, very long. Thousands or even tens of thousands of turns. And that is also with relationship decay off, maxed outgoing, 2.5x relationship multiplier, promiscuity maxed which is also a bit problematic as it makes everyone engage in public self-pleasure instead of just bathroom/shower/dorm room/not visible or whatever the logic is.
The thing is, sure, I can do that. Maybe I can even lower promiscuity enough that most people keep it in their pants. But then vore needs to be minimized for anything that takes 10000+ turns to actually happen to a person. Or at least, vore needs to be minimized among those who survive long enough to make connections. Technically it's not a big issue if most newcomers end up digested pretty quickly. Afterall the game can keep up with 1 death every 3 turns. But the well-connected people need to not die quickly so they can become even more well-connected with time.
My best guess for how to increase relationships without nuking vore completely:
0. Have a break in period where vore is incredibly rare or set relationships really high so that communities have a chance to form before people start dying left and right.
1. Make rescue attempts relatively effective. Obviously one way to make social connections worthwhile is to make it so people who know people are less likely to end up in the toilet.
2. Make struggling not that effective so eating the "new kid" is very easy. This is a bit of a double edged sword however. The main problem is that some preds will siren/abduct/blackout and then just wake up the next morning with the most well known person around sloshing around in their guts. Some people do have better struggling ability than others though, and these behaviors are pretty cool so we probably do not want the traits to be banned.
3. Make rescue mid-swallow nearly 100% effective. That way even the blackout preds have to worry about it.
4. Dramatically increase digestion time. For most preds this increases exposure to rescue.
5. Make sure most people have high pred loyalty. That way it will be mostly strangers and enemies eating well-connected people, not people eating their best friend.
6. Reduce willing vore by a lot. There are quite a few ways to do this. The main concern is that willing digestion is an easy way for well-connected characters to die. Just seeing the digestion log and seeing most are unwilling doesn't mean that willing vore isn't having a big impact on character survival. If a character alive for 2000 turns is digested unwillingly, that is much less relationship loss than a character alive for 20000 turns sacrificing themselves.
Even so, I'm not sure that's enough to make relationships common without making vore very rare.