It's sad to hear that you're going for a break, but it is also understandable. It is always hard to keep the focus on a long going project. I hope you will really come back to this project, because I really like it so far. It would be good to release your current version before your break, mainly to get rid of the clothing bug that is really annoying.
I had another successful run on hard this week, and I have a few more thoughts about balancing.
In order to not get biased towards any kind of officer, I re-rolled the boni until I got the bonus on two base types (industrial and research). I tracked my money and the officer's levels after each week.
- It was an easy win. Mostly my spare money went up, except for a few weeks where I had bad luck and the best paying officers did not have a job for me. Having a high level officer in a base with bonus gives you a lot of money. Maybe the base bonus is a little bit too high.
- Captains and Majors feel pretty balanced now. A high level Captain can compete with a freshly unlocked Major. If a Major has no job available, in the most cases it is better to take the job of a Captain instead of waiting one day. Thus, you will have progress on the Captains after unlocking the Majors, and due to the missions with higher base pay (Civilians, VIP, ...), it really pays out ot get your Captains to a high level.
- Starting with the Colonels, the difference to Majors and Captains is too big. Having unlocked the Colonels, you decide your mission by target (where you can get a Colonel mission) instead of payment. It is sometimes even better to have an empty flight back to a Colonel instead of a low paying mission to another starport. I guess the main reason is that you give the bonus not only for the direct subordinates, but to all subordinates.
- Let's see what happens when you change the bonus to direct subordinates only. The Colonels only have 50% more base payment than the Majors, while the Majors have 100% more than the Captains. Now, you have to decide whether you want to push your freshly unlocked Colonels, or work on your probably better paying high-level Majors. However, neglecting the Colonels would probably lead to later failure. I unlocked my first Colonel in week 32, where you need about 25k per week, i.e. 5k per day. A sleazy Colonel with 40% subordinate bonus would start with 4200 per mission. In contrast, I unlocked my first Major in 10, where you need about 10k a week, i.e. 2k per day. The average Major starts with 2800 per mission. Regarding these values, you maybe should give the Colonel a base payment of about 4k. Then, it's the same factor from Major to Colonel than from Captain to Major. Similar math holds for the General, maybe 8k is already too much, but I think it should be at least 6k.
About the H-scenes: at the end of the game, I had 2 officers at level 4 (one of them was friendly), 1 at level 5, and 1 at level 6. From the two clothing obligations, only one officer asked for the maximum clothing obligation. That is, the high level obligations only play a minor role in the game. I'd like to see an endgame where you struggle because your morale is low due to all your obligations. There might be several approaches how you can achieve this:
- Make the game longer. At the moment, a hard game goes 250 days, whereas medium goes 300 days and easy goes 350 days. You could change the initial debt according to difficulty level, such that all difficulty levels go for about 350 days.
- Increase the relationship level faster. Starting from level 3, you only need 3 missions for the next level. Of course, this would reduce the overal difficulty a little bit, but this part is still in balancing.
- Maybe the officers should always give highest level obligations if available. That is, a level 3 officer will always add a level 3 obligation, and a level 5 officer a level 5 obligation. You might even go further and say that if a level 3 obligation just upgrades a level 1 obligation, the officer gives you an additional level 1 obligation. As there are 7 different clothing slots with 3 levels and 3? more with one level each, I do not think you will run out of obligations.
I'm looking forward for when you return to the project, and I'm willing to do some more balancing experiments.