ALPHA 0.6: "The Prince"

This update makes invasive changes to virtually every passage in FC by taking a blowtorch to the devotion system. If you are playing this game for fun, I strongly recommend waiting for 0.6.1 or 0.6.2. Play 0.5.11+ in the meantime, since 0.6+ is liable to be terribly buggy and badly balanced for at least another version. I've certainly playtested 0.6 myself, but once again I'm leaning on you all to help me there, since with all FC's features a reasonably complete test would take 10+ hours. I had a long list of goals for this long-deferred revision of the devotion system, including:

• Add character to individual slaves by adding more nuance than a simple devotion stat can provide.
• Provide alternative paths to players by offering approaches other than making every slave worshipful.
• Make the path to a mentally perfect slave less predictable and linear.
• Provide interesting choices that force the player to consider tradeoffs between benefit now and later.
• Confront nicer slaveowners with choices between cruelty and inefficiency.
• Create situations in which some of the most wantonly cruel options can offer a gameplay advantage.
• Differentiate between event options with mechanically identical outcomes.
• Reward individual attention to slaves while keeping the game playable for those who prefer to rely on the assistant.

I've attempted to address these goals by adding a trust stat in addition to the existing devotion stat. All mechanics that previously affected devotion now affect either devotion, trust, or frequently both. I'll leave the exact balance for playtesters to discover (mostly because this is a complex enough system that I want to see if any unexpectedly good stuff emerges), but the basics are as follows. Slaves are now somewhere between terrified and trusting on the one hand, and hateful towards the player or devoted to him on the other. Obedience is no longer a range on the Devotion spectrum; it's now a derived and hidden stat based on devotion, trust, or both, and differs for each task. Devotion and trust are good, of course, with one enormous caveat: if a slave does not yet accept her position under the PC, it is better for her to fear him than to trust him. Methods of creating enough fear to break a slave in the short term also reduce devotion, though, pushing the eventual goal of raising devotion farther off. The trick to slavebreaking is to find reliable ways of creating the minimum necessary amount of fear while doing as little damage to devotion as possible.

Oh, almost forgot. There's one other small addition: it's now possible to play as a woman, or even an intersex person. These options are very broad-strokes. Rather than implementing full player character customization (which will never happen), this update allows the player character to choose, for example, a vagina or a penis. I'm holding the scene complexity down by keeping the options on the order of penis/vagina, rather than full PC description. Furthermore, I like having the PC nice and vague, and the transformation focus on the slaves. There are many, many good h-games that involve PC transformation; I consider the market well-served, so I'm not eager to spend time on it. On the other hand, I haven't seen a good femdom slavegame, so here we are. A word of warning: female PCs in FC are going to behave a lot like male PCs in FC. From the slaves' perspective, there's rarely going to be much difference other than being molested by a strap-on rather than a bona fide dick. Gameplay effects like future society interactions for female PCs are very much planned.

There's been yet another wave of questions asking if I'm ignoring suggestions. So, yet again: I read every single comment I get, and seriously consider every single suggestion that isn't something I've publicly ruled out. The chance of any single suggestion making it into the game promptly is very low, however, because my time is finite. Please understand that I get so many suggestions that many good ones don't get addressed right away. If you can code or are willing to learn, though, there's one good way to make your suggestion more likely: email me, and I'll let you know if I'd add it, were you to code it. Four contributors are currently adding to FC, that I'm aware of.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs. I do mean it this time. If you load an old game the code won't be able to tell whether your character has a dick or not. Latest hotfix at 1930 PST; patched issues include misapplications of the female PC rep malus and the high trust / low devotion conflict penalty.

0.6 Changelog

Major updates:

• New introduction sequence to better introduce the game world and start options to new players; veterans will find a skip option on the first intro screen.
• Devotion and all related mechanics have been broken out into Devotion, Trust, or both. Most Devotion checks are now quite severe, but can be passed with low Trust (e.g., a terrified slave) instead. High Trust combined with low Devotion is extremely negative. Trust is very similar to Devotion, mechanically.

Major balance changes:

• Devotion and the new Trust stat now apply multipliers to slave cost, to more accurately price the value of a devoted and trusting slave over an unbroken one.

Minor additions:

• The upper bound of Devotion has been lowered to match that of the new Trust stat, and to preserve overall balance, since many preexisting Devotion-raising mechanisms now affect Trust instead.
• Devotion and the new Trust stat now have a lower bound in addition to an upper bound.
• Devotion and the new Trust stat can now become soft locked at the lower bound, like the way in which Devotion can be soft locked up at Worshipful.
• New drug regime, hormone enhancement, that doubles a slave's chances of seeing hormonal effects.
• Arcade upgrade that milks and/or cockmilks appropriate inmates at severely reduced efficiency, and attempts to drug them to increase relevant asset sizes whenever their health can take it.
• Rules assistant option to automatically apply lactation inducing drug implants.
• Added customization options at start to specify whether the player character has either a dick or a pussy, either a masculine chest or feminine breasts, and whether the character is addressed as Master or Mistress. Female characteristics make it harder to maintain reputation.
• Bugfixes.