The key to extended band life

It’s taken me a while to be able to get to grips with the early stage game, and I can happily go for 4+ years.

However eventually one of my band members will seem to become poorly motivated, with no amount of sell out concerts and rehersal will boost it. Shortly of course the band member will quit and ends up having to be replaced 2 days before an arena gig by some snot nosed pikey who cant hold the bass the right way round.

I have modded a number of values of the game (extended game time) as well as a few other minor tweaks. Is it just that members are becoming disolusioned due to the time the game has been going, or is there something I should be doing to keep motivation up?

Incidently, does rejecting a record deal cause the motivation to plummet (happened just after I rejected one).

And on a completely unrelated note, what factors determine the record deal offered and how good it is?

It ought to be possible to audition and hire better musicians when your band is well established… I can’t see a huge band hiring some halfwit guitarist who can only play two chords.

The greater problem is not hiring someone new. Its having the original band member leave in the first place.

Read the small print before you hire someone !
small print = pessimistic, egoistical, ambitious, possibly disruptive

Good concerts helps, of course, but don’t forget good instruments too :laughing: with plenty of practice and rehearsals.

It’s a pain having someone leave on the day of a gig and having to cancel but the overall effect on motivation and the fame of the band (and rehearsal levels if you hire someone else) isn’t that bad. It’s annoying but not crippling.

Yeah I only ever hire people with positive attributes. I didn’t however realise that Ambitious was one of those negative ones. Reading the config files I only thought it affected the rate at which that person would learn their instrument in practice.

I’ve found that a good mix of attributes makes a good band.

2+ charasmatic people (as well as photogenic members)
1+ Imaginative person

The rest is really just gravy. That way you’re covered across the publicity events (someone in your band will make it better) and you’ll always be fairly imaginitive for writing songs. 2 people with imagination really help but I’ve found its one of the harder attributes to find without bad ones as well.

I guess the key is really just to keep doing well without taking too much of a break to let the members stew and feel down.

Having businesslike bandmembers is very useful at the beginning of the game when funds are limited because the benefit stacks (though I’ve never had more than two).

people get cynical once they have been in the band a long time, and they are innocent and positive at the start. there are config values for this in config.txt if you hunt around :smiley:

Yes I saw those vales for cynasim. I increased the number of days after which it started to 400+ days. The percentage increase seems to be 1 percent per day. So in 500 ish days the person will be to 100%, does that mean that all members will leave at that time if they haven’t already?

This:

RS_CYNICISM_MULTIPLIER = 0.22

is the value that determines the extent to which cynicism can ever affect the band. setting that to zero effectviely turns cynicism off. at its default value, its saying that a band member who has been in the band forever, could theoretically build up a -22% level of happiness due to being old and jaded. How long it takes for this to happen is governed by:

RS_CYNICISM_INCREMENT = 0.01

Hope that helps.