Lab Rats 2 - Down to Business (v0.49.1, 2/8/2022)

[vrengames]

Lab Rats 2 v0.47.1 is finished it's week of bug testing and is ready for it's public release! You can find the links here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/lab-rats-2-v0-47-59665421


This update was focused on redesigning the core business cycle of designing, researching, and selling mind and body altering drugs. Each serum you design now has a collection of aspects which determine it's price, what contracts it will satisfy, and how much attention it will draw to your business from the authorities!

There are two major changes to the business system of LR2: the addition of aspect points, and the addition of contracts. Aspect points are an abstracted description of why certain serum traits may be wanted and come in four varieties: Mental, Physical, Sexual, and Medical. Each aspect has a value on the open market, and the more you sell the less valuable it becomes. Your marketing employees can be put to work counteracting these effects, keeping the price relatively stable long term. The value of each serum is now determined by the sum of all of it's aspects. Contracts are special orders for serum designs with a specific combination of aspects. In exchange for these strict requirements contracts offer far more money than you would earn by selling your serum on the open market. Creating new designs to meet the demands of your clients is the best way to catapult yourself to wealth and influence.

Selling serum now generates attention for your business. Attention bleeds away slowly over time, but if it reaches it's maximum value the city will be forced to take action. This includes a visit from one of their representatives, who can levy one of a number of different punishments. These punishments include a monetary fine, seizing your current inventory of serum, or destroying some of your research. New business policies have been added to help you manage your Attention. Future updates will include ways to corrupt the city representative and, eventually, or the city council she represents

There are a ton of little changes and additions throughout the game as well. Any page that references serum traits or designs has been updated to display their aspects in a convenient way. The serum design and research screens can now have serum traits sorted by research tier, alphabetically, and their aspect values. A new event for your companies head researcher has been added to help ensure you can generate the Clarity you need for your early game research. And, lastly, a bunch of bugs that were stopping progress on some side quests have been quashed.

Here's a changelog with some specifics (v0.46.1 to v0.47.1):

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

*CHANGES AND ADDITIONS*
- Serum traits now have a series of scores, representing their use in different fields.
- Added 4 serum trait aspects - Mental, Physical, Sexual, and Medical.
- Added flaw "aspect", added to serum by side effects.
- Added attention score to each serum trait. The attention score of a serum is equal to the highest in the design.
- Serum Deisgns now have aspect values equal to the sum of all of the traits they include.
- Serum Design values are now based on the sum of aspects they offer instead of a flat dollar value.
- Serum Aspect values fluctuate from week to week around a base value.
- Serum Aspect values decrease as you sell serum that include that aspect type.
- Selling serum is now an instant action.
- Added Market Reach score. Raising market reach counteracts the aspect value decrease caused by selling serum.
- Reworked marketting work action. Now raises market reach.
- Added Contracts. Contracts offer much better per-aspect prices, but require a certain combination of aspects and limited flaws.
- Added Attention score. Raised when selling serum with an Attention trait higher than 0.
- Added Attention bleed
- Added attention events. When business attention reaches it's maximum number (default 100) you will have a visit from a city representative.
- Added five attention event variants. Potential results include fines, supply seizure, and research destruction.
- Added serum marketing screen, containing infromation about stock, contracts, aspect value, etc.
- Updated all trait tooltips to display aspect information.
- Updated serum design UI to display aspects.
- Updated serum design UI to allow you to sort by a number of parameters.
- Added serum production tier. Your lab may only produce serum designs with a tier equal or less than your current tier.
- Added business policy to raise serum production tier. Each tier adds increasingly greater static operating costs.

*BUG FIXES*
- Fixed Lily's oral taboo quest not being completeable.
- Fixed Iris not having a home set (and causing a crash after her introduction).

[MaxTheDark]

Lab Rats 2 v0.47.1 is finished it's week of bug testing and is ready for it's public release! You can find the links here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/lab-rats-2-v0-47-59665421


This update was focused on redesigning the core business cycle of designing, researching, and selling mind and body altering drugs. Each serum you design now has a collection of aspects which determine it's price, what contracts it will satisfy, and how much attention it will draw to your business from the authorities!

There are two major changes to the business system of LR2: the addition of aspect points, and the addition of contracts. Aspect points are an abstracted description of why certain serum traits may be wanted and come in four varieties: Mental, Physical, Sexual, and Medical. Each aspect has a value on the open market, and the more you sell the less valuable it becomes. Your marketing employees can be put to work counteracting these effects, keeping the price relatively stable long term. The value of each serum is now determined by the sum of all of it's aspects. Contracts are special orders for serum designs with a specific combination of aspects. In exchange for these strict requirements contracts offer far more money than you would earn by selling your serum on the open market. Creating new designs to meet the demands of your clients is the best way to catapult yourself to wealth and influence.

Selling serum now generates attention for your business. Attention bleeds away slowly over time, but if it reaches it's maximum value the city will be forced to take action. This includes a visit from one of their representatives, who can levy one of a number of different punishments. These punishments include a monetary fine, seizing your current inventory of serum, or destroying some of your research. New business policies have been added to help you manage your Attention. Future updates will include ways to corrupt the city representative and, eventually, or the city council she represents

There are a ton of little changes and additions throughout the game as well. Any page that references serum traits or designs has been updated to display their aspects in a convenient way. The serum design and research screens can now have serum traits sorted by research tier, alphabetically, and their aspect values. A new event for your companies head researcher has been added to help ensure you can generate the Clarity you need for your early game research. And, lastly, a bunch of bugs that were stopping progress on some side quests have been quashed.

Here's a changelog with some specifics (v0.46.1 to v0.47.1):

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

*CHANGES AND ADDITIONS*
- Serum traits now have a series of scores, representing their use in different fields.
- Added 4 serum trait aspects - Mental, Physical, Sexual, and Medical.
- Added flaw "aspect", added to serum by side effects.
- Added attention score to each serum trait. The attention score of a serum is equal to the highest in the design.
- Serum Deisgns now have aspect values equal to the sum of all of the traits they include.
- Serum Design values are now based on the sum of aspects they offer instead of a flat dollar value.
- Serum Aspect values fluctuate from week to week around a base value.
- Serum Aspect values decrease as you sell serum that include that aspect type.
- Selling serum is now an instant action.
- Added Market Reach score. Raising market reach counteracts the aspect value decrease caused by selling serum.
- Reworked marketting work action. Now raises market reach.
- Added Contracts. Contracts offer much better per-aspect prices, but require a certain combination of aspects and limited flaws.
- Added Attention score. Raised when selling serum with an Attention trait higher than 0.
- Added Attention bleed
- Added attention events. When business attention reaches it's maximum number (default 100) you will have a visit from a city representative.
- Added five attention event variants. Potential results include fines, supply seizure, and research destruction.
- Added serum marketing screen, containing infromation about stock, contracts, aspect value, etc.
- Updated all trait tooltips to display aspect information.
- Updated serum design UI to display aspects.
- Updated serum design UI to allow you to sort by a number of parameters.
- Added serum production tier. Your lab may only produce serum designs with a tier equal or less than your current tier.
- Added business policy to raise serum production tier. Each tier adds increasingly greater static operating costs.

*BUG FIXES*
- Fixed Lily's oral taboo quest not being completeable.
- Fixed Iris not having a home set (and causing a crash after her introduction).

Oh fuck, he's doing it again... So many parts of the game can be improved, so much addition can be done that would actually make the game more fun... But Vren decided to complicate an obscure aspect of the game to make it more convoluted and grindy. Nope, not updating this one. Will just stick to the F95's mod for 46 for the time being.

[vrengames]

Lab Rats 2 v0.48.1 is finished it's week of patron bug testing and is ready for it's public release! You can find the download links here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/lab-rats-2-v0-48-60889833

This update focused on tuning the difficulty and progression of the business side of the game. It is now easier, particularly in the early phase of the game, to set up a profitable business. UI tweaks have also made it more convenient to design mind-altering serums to meet specific contract requirements.

To accompany the business improvements new events have been added to the game as well. The city representative, dispatched to investigate your morally questionable business, now has several new training options available for her. These training options provide new ways to reduce the attention your business receives from the authorities, as well as reduce any penalties those authorities assign to you. Other minor additions and fixes have also been made throughout the game!

Enjoy, and here's a changelog (0.47.1 to v0.48.1):

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

*CHANGES AND ADDITIONS*
- Removed daily aspect price variability.
- Removed operating cost at serum tier 0, halved all other costs.
- Added HUD text showing opperating costs in addition to salary costs.
- Market reach gain has been increased by a factor of 5.
- Updated chat and sepcific actions list to support modder additions. Tidied up how those Actions are called. Append Actions to chat_actions or specific_actions after init -1 to have them appear in the appropriate chat column.
- Removed top two Attention reducing business policies (moved to City rep storyline events).
- Added one attention reducing business policy to city rep storyline. Unlocked by having high Love.
- Added one attention bleed increasing business policy. Unlocked with special trance tranining option.
- Added special uniform trance training option for city rep.
- Added multiple ways to avoid or lesson penalties levied when visited by city rep due to high Attention.
- Added early game event that has you discover several old doses of serum (based on LR1 designs)
- Added salon visit to the shopping date. Allows you to suggest new hair styles or colours to a girl.
- Added new random texting event.
- Added new office timed event.
- Added "current contracts" column to the contracts selection screen to make it easier to swap contracts.
- Added "view contracts" button to serum deisgn page to make it easier to design serums for specific contracts.
- Added ability to spend large amounts of Clarity to unlock new research tiers. Should speed up the early game in particular.
- Added opportunity to train girls if they're in a trance after you come back to their place (unless the event forces you to leave early).
- Lowered top end of contract aspect requirements slightly it easier (especially at low research tiers) to complete them.
- Manual synthesis side effect does not increase Flaw aspect now to match it's thematic description.
- Contract attention requirements now consider attention reducing business traits.

*BUG FIXES*
- Fixed bug in opinion trainables that was causing some menu options to be displayed when they were already known.
- Fixed crash when an attention event causes your inventory to be seized.
- Updated some incorrect tooltips.

[fmanaway]

Hey I'm honestly curious as I haven't checked on this game in a few years. How have the graphics or game play improved? I remember really enjoying the management part of it but not so much the ladies themselves.

[RunningAroundInCircles]

Hey I'm honestly curious as I haven't checked on this game in a few years. How have the graphics or game play improved? I remember really enjoying the management part of it but not so much the ladies themselves.

Vren has been redisigning a lot of the mechanics and the amount of content has suffered from this.
If it's been years you should definetely try this, and if you want more content then you should look a few pages back. There is a link to a mod.

[MaxTheDark]

Hey I'm honestly curious as I haven't checked on this game in a few years. How have the graphics or game play improved? I remember really enjoying the management part of it but not so much the ladies themselves.

Vren has been redisigning a lot of the mechanics and the amount of content has suffered from this.
If it's been years you should definetely try this, and if you want more content then you should look a few pages back. There is a link to a mod.

I heartly recommend the mod, honestly don't see any point playing without, considering just the amount of content there is. Here's the link: https://f95zone.to/threads/lab-rats-2-mods.32881/

[RunningAroundInCircles]

Hey I'm honestly curious as I haven't checked on this game in a few years. How have the graphics or game play improved? I remember really enjoying the management part of it but not so much the ladies themselves.

Vren has been redisigning a lot of the mechanics and the amount of content has suffered from this.
If it's been years you should definetely try this, and if you want more content then you should look a few pages back. There is a link to a mod.

I heartly recommend the mod, honestly don't see any point playing without, considering just the amount of content there is. Here's the link: https://f95zone.to/threads/lab-rats-2-mods.32881/

Well, to be fair, Vren said in one of the first posts that there will be heavy focus on systems until they're fleshed out. It's a shame that the design before the actual programming was somewhat poor, but that's to be expected for a second project.
The mod on the other hand is focused on content and has a team behind it.

[MaxTheDark]

Well, to be fair, Vren said in one of the first posts that there will be heavy focus on systems until they're fleshed out. It's a shame that the design before the actual programming was somewhat poor, but that's to be expected for a second project.
The mod on the other hand is focused on content and has a team behind it.

I guess it's somewhat down to personal preference and what you expect from the game. I wish he added some new positions and hairstyles, as well as events, and finish up the ones already in the game. That business update seems to just make the game grindier and boring, but admittedly haven't checked it myself.

[vrengames]

LR 2 v0.49.1 is finished and ready for it's public release! This update adds the ability to hire Jennifer, Lily, Gabrielle, and Rebecca onto your Pharmaceutical business team! Each girl has unique requirements that you will need to meet (or subvert) to convince her to join you. That addition required a major rework of how NPC scheduling and jobs worked, so while I was at it I also made (almost) all other NPC's hirable as well! Now you can invite your favourite NPC's from around town to fill critical business positions. Download it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/lab-rats-2-v0-49-62281801

Now that every NPC is a valid recruit the default method of accepting applications felt a little tame. A whole batch of business policies have been added to let you screen your applicants, only accepting applications from women who fit your specific criteria. Each enabled filtering policy increases the cost of finding new recruits, but with enough money you can now narrow down your search for the perfect bimbo secretary quality employee!

There have been a whole collection of other fixes, improvements, typo corrections, and tweaks. Serum price calculations were about 50% bugged, so that's been resolved. Girlfriends can now be invited on fuck-dates if their Sluttiness is high enough, and without the risk of someone interrupting you. The business policy UI now displays what prerequisites are required before something can be purchased. Strippers can now give you a private dance at the strip club, if you're willing to pay for it. Several business policies that mention seeking more or less experienced candidates now adjust the age range of the candidate that will be found.

Enjoy, and here's a changelog with the full list of changes!

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

*CHANGES AND ADDITIONS*
- Added list_of_instantiation_labels, useful for mods to instantate saveable constructs or modify existing lists.
- Added Job class. Each job has a title and related Role that is given when a Person starts that job. Each Person can have only one job.
- Added on_hire and on_fire functions to Job class. Called when a person's job is changed, in case special variables need to be set up.
- Added "job_known" field in event_triggers_dict. If True, you know what a person's new job is, otherwise listed as Unknown.
- Added strippler_role and stripper_job.
- Added stripper role to Gabrielle when you find her at the stripclub.
- Added ability to ask for a private dance from strippers when they are at work.
- Added special private dance branch for Gabrielle when she's working as a stripper.
- Added Schedule class to centralise weekly and daily planning functionality.
- Added DailySchedule class to hold information about location plans for a specific day.
- Removed old schedule Dict from Person class. Now stores an instance of Schedule with the non-work locations that person would like to be at for each day/time.
- Added Job class. A "Job" is a collection of a Role, map location, and Schedule.
- Each Person now stores a Job (unemployeed is it's own "job" for coding purposes). Each person can only have one job at a time.
- Added Jobs for each of the core business jobs (research, marketing, production, supply, HR)
- Added Jobs for many special roles (stripper, prostitute, and similar).
- Added special Jobs for most of the special characters (Jennifer, Lily, Rebecca, Nora, Alexia, etc.)
- Added multiple unimportant jobs for random characters to have (barista, cashier, etc.)
- Girls will check their Job schedule, if one exists, to see where they should be. If their job doesn't require them to be somewhere they will fall back to their normal schedule.
- Added override schedule, which has the highest destination priority. Used when a character needs to be forced to a location, is very pregnant, etc.
- Added "Offer to hire her" option to most job roles. Requires 20 Love to ask, and some jobs will require extra motivation to convince the girl to leave.
- Updated all events that maniuplated someone's schedule to work with the new Schedule system.
- Added event to have Gabrielle quit her job at the strip club and come work for you.
- Added recruitment critiera business policies, letting you only recruit applicants with tiny/small/large/huge breasts.
- Added recruit sex skill improvement policy.
- Many business policies now modify the age cap and floor of a new recruit.
- Added exclusive_tag to policies. When a policy is toggled on it will toggle off any policies with the same tag.
- Added recruitment criteria business policies for candidate age.
- Added recruitment criteria business policies for candidate relationship status.
- Added recruitment criteria business policies for candidate height.
- Added recruitment criteria business policy for candidate mother/childless status.
- Refactored Policy class. Added own_requirement and active_requirement lists, which hold business policies that msut be owned/active to purchse.
- Policy.requirement can now be used for a generic non-policy based requirement. If a string is returned that string is displayed on the business policy UI.
- Business policy UI now display what prerequisits you need before you can purchase a locked policy.
- Added ability to convince Jennifer to quit her job, and optionally hire her to your business.
- Updated many of Jennifer's work based events to check if she is actually at work.
- Added event to convince Lily to drop out of school and work for your business.
- Added event to convince Rebecca to come work for you.
- Added fuck date to girlfriend (and girlfriend-like) date list.
- Added a pregnancy related sex goal. Only generated if pregnancy content is turned on.
- Added unit tests for Job, Schedule, DailySchedule classes.
- Updated unit tests for Person class to cover new schedule functionality.
- Added a "salary_modifier" field to Person class. Modifies the amount of pay a character would demand from it's base theoretical amount.
- Updated Emily's event to properly trigger orgasms when appropriate.

[MaxTheDark]

LR 2 v0.49.1 is finished and ready for it's public release! This update adds the ability to hire Jennifer, Lily, Gabrielle, and Rebecca onto your Pharmaceutical business team! Each girl has unique requirements that you will need to meet (or subvert) to convince her to join you. That addition required a major rework of how NPC scheduling and jobs worked, so while I was at it I also made (almost) all other NPC's hirable as well! Now you can invite your favourite NPC's from around town to fill critical business positions. Download it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/lab-rats-2-v0-49-62281801

Now that every NPC is a valid recruit the default method of accepting applications felt a little tame. A whole batch of business policies have been added to let you screen your applicants, only accepting applications from women who fit your specific criteria. Each enabled filtering policy increases the cost of finding new recruits, but with enough money you can now narrow down your search for the perfect bimbo secretary quality employee!

There have been a whole collection of other fixes, improvements, typo corrections, and tweaks. Serum price calculations were about 50% bugged, so that's been resolved. Girlfriends can now be invited on fuck-dates if their Sluttiness is high enough, and without the risk of someone interrupting you. The business policy UI now displays what prerequisites are required before something can be purchased. Strippers can now give you a private dance at the strip club, if you're willing to pay for it. Several business policies that mention seeking more or less experienced candidates now adjust the age range of the candidate that will be found.

Enjoy, and here's a changelog with the full list of changes!

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

*CHANGES AND ADDITIONS*
- Added list_of_instantiation_labels, useful for mods to instantate saveable constructs or modify existing lists.
- Added Job class. Each job has a title and related Role that is given when a Person starts that job. Each Person can have only one job.
- Added on_hire and on_fire functions to Job class. Called when a person's job is changed, in case special variables need to be set up.
- Added "job_known" field in event_triggers_dict. If True, you know what a person's new job is, otherwise listed as Unknown.
- Added strippler_role and stripper_job.
- Added stripper role to Gabrielle when you find her at the stripclub.
- Added ability to ask for a private dance from strippers when they are at work.
- Added special private dance branch for Gabrielle when she's working as a stripper.
- Added Schedule class to centralise weekly and daily planning functionality.
- Added DailySchedule class to hold information about location plans for a specific day.
- Removed old schedule Dict from Person class. Now stores an instance of Schedule with the non-work locations that person would like to be at for each day/time.
- Added Job class. A "Job" is a collection of a Role, map location, and Schedule.
- Each Person now stores a Job (unemployeed is it's own "job" for coding purposes). Each person can only have one job at a time.
- Added Jobs for each of the core business jobs (research, marketing, production, supply, HR)
- Added Jobs for many special roles (stripper, prostitute, and similar).
- Added special Jobs for most of the special characters (Jennifer, Lily, Rebecca, Nora, Alexia, etc.)
- Added multiple unimportant jobs for random characters to have (barista, cashier, etc.)
- Girls will check their Job schedule, if one exists, to see where they should be. If their job doesn't require them to be somewhere they will fall back to their normal schedule.
- Added override schedule, which has the highest destination priority. Used when a character needs to be forced to a location, is very pregnant, etc.
- Added "Offer to hire her" option to most job roles. Requires 20 Love to ask, and some jobs will require extra motivation to convince the girl to leave.
- Updated all events that maniuplated someone's schedule to work with the new Schedule system.
- Added event to have Gabrielle quit her job at the strip club and come work for you.
- Added recruitment critiera business policies, letting you only recruit applicants with tiny/small/large/huge breasts.
- Added recruit sex skill improvement policy.
- Many business policies now modify the age cap and floor of a new recruit.
- Added exclusive_tag to policies. When a policy is toggled on it will toggle off any policies with the same tag.
- Added recruitment criteria business policies for candidate age.
- Added recruitment criteria business policies for candidate relationship status.
- Added recruitment criteria business policies for candidate height.
- Added recruitment criteria business policy for candidate mother/childless status.
- Refactored Policy class. Added own_requirement and active_requirement lists, which hold business policies that msut be owned/active to purchse.
- Policy.requirement can now be used for a generic non-policy based requirement. If a string is returned that string is displayed on the business policy UI.
- Business policy UI now display what prerequisits you need before you can purchase a locked policy.
- Added ability to convince Jennifer to quit her job, and optionally hire her to your business.
- Updated many of Jennifer's work based events to check if she is actually at work.
- Added event to convince Lily to drop out of school and work for your business.
- Added event to convince Rebecca to come work for you.
- Added fuck date to girlfriend (and girlfriend-like) date list.
- Added a pregnancy related sex goal. Only generated if pregnancy content is turned on.
- Added unit tests for Job, Schedule, DailySchedule classes.
- Updated unit tests for Person class to cover new schedule functionality.
- Added a "salary_modifier" field to Person class. Modifies the amount of pay a character would demand from it's base theoretical amount.
- Updated Emily's event to properly trigger orgasms when appropriate.

Finally an update that sounds interesting. PLEASE tell me there is an option for a candidate to 'convince' you to hire her!