Hairdressing is hard, because RNG.

[Washbasin]

Right, so I've taken up hairdressing during shifts, and I have this problem where I am in constant, unending pain.


Here's the mechanics. 
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There are three layers of hair you can cut: Top, Middle, and Bottom.

Your goal as a hairdresser is to harmonize the layers, put them in order, choose the styles, and make things look nice.

Whenever you attempt to modify a single layer, one of four things will randomly happen:

1. It will change the hair layer to your chosen style (This is good!)

2. It will change a random hair layer to a random style (Not so good)

3. It will shave off all hair on the player and make a wig (Well this is terrible but at least you have something for it)

4. It will shave off all hair on the player, you get no wig (Yikes)


Here's my issues.
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My big issue with this is that I am consistently getting the bad options. I want to make people happy, and do cool hair things, but almost every shift I will run out of hairgrownium pills because of RNG.

Options 3 and 4 are way too common. 
If you get them you have lost all your progress with the hair layers, and are forced to either accept your losses, or waste a hairgrownium pill and then take the risk on losing all of your progress for a second time if you wish to re-modify things.

Option 2 is better, but still quite painful. 
It messes with one of the hair layers randomly, thus forcing you to roll another RNG check with the high possibility of losing all your progress (and hair) again. This is torture.


So here's the suggestions. 
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More hairgrownium pills in barber shops would be fantastic. 

Barber shops could have water coolers which are filled with hairgrownium.

Maybe Cargo could buy barber restock crates filled with wigs and a single bottle of hairgrowth pills.

Hairdressing RNG could be rebalanced, which may or may not solve all the issues.

Barber clothing could give a bonus which helps reduce the chance of scalping people.

Maybe cleanliness of tools could come into play; If your tools are clean you won't scalp people, if they aren't you have a chance of doing so.
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If you have any other ideas post them below

[DioChasek]

How about a harigrownium pill dispenser in the barber shop? Can be hacked to dispense colorful reagent pills and of course super hairgrownium.

[Washbasin]

How about a hairgrownium pill dispenser in the barber shop? Can be hacked to dispense colorful reagent pills and of course super hairgrownium. 

That could work, perhaps the vendor functionality could be put into the already available hair dye machine?

[Lady Birb]

Remove the RNG failure chance entirely
rng bad

[aloe]

For context, here's the Barber Logic (all additive, not multiplicative):
Being a barber gives you a 60% boost
These all give a 30% boost:
- Wearing barber clothes
- The person getting their hair cut (barbee?) being buckled to a barber chair
- Being in the barber shop
Now for the Bad Ones:
These give a 20% penalty:
- Being jittery
- The person who's hair you're cutting being jittery
- Barber being clumsy (i.e. clown)
And finally, cutting your own hair gives a 30% penalty.

All these Barber Effects are added up, clamped between 10% and 100% (so you can't have a lower than 10% or higher than 100% chance to succeed), and then that probability is rolled- e.g. if I'm a barber wearing barber clothes cutting a random person's hair outside the barber shop, and neither of us are jittery, I have a 60% + 30% = 90% chance of success.

If you succeed, you Cut Hair Right.
If you fail, there's a 50-50 chance between Minor Failure (you cut the hair into a different style) and Major Failure, which is ANOTHER 50-50 between Oops All Wig and Oops No Hair; meaning each of the Really Bad outcomes has a 25% chance of rolling.

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Hoo, that was long. Lot of weird compounded probability. Maybe we should put this in a book in game?
Anyways, agreed that the barbery conditions are pretty arcane; I don't see any particular reason why just being in a barber shop should give you a 30% bonus. Plus the failure conditions are 100% random- it doesn't matter if you failed with a 10% chance to succeed or a 90% chance, either way you have the same odds to completely fuck up their scalp.

I wouldn't mind going through and rebalancing the conditions a bit, and making the failures worse if you're a shittier barber and less bad otherwise. Will put on the to-do list.

[Lady Birb]

I wouldn't mind going through and rebalancing the conditions a bit, and making the failures worse if you're a shittier barber and less bad otherwise. Will put on the to-do list.

or just remove rng failures because they suck and nobody likes them.

[cyberTripping]

Eh, I think the chance for failure is funny, it's just frustrating when it goes wrong even though you prepared. Maybe it should just be easier to reach a 100% success rate, so preparing adequately means anyone can cut someone's hair without failure, but a methed up clown giving someone a haircut in the middle of the hallway still has a chance to fuck everything up.

[Cal]

i think maybe major fuckup should be removed or rarer, but cutting it wrong is honestly so funny

[Kotlol]

Agreed with most of the above, make critical fail like a major fuck up only be able if you have someone being JITTERY or some sort thing that makes cutting hair harder.

Smaller fuck ups like the wrong hairstyle should still be common if you have no hair cutting profession.
But other wise I agree with most of the idea ALOE has.

[Lady Birb]

I feel like I should remind you all that barber is a job of the day, so unless a new positive modifier is added or existing modifiers are increased, it is impossible to get 100% six days of the week.

[Lucky.Cobra]

yea i think the barber could use an update, is hell to use the barber menu in game sometimes

[zjdtmkhzt]

Removing or severely reducing the chance of cut-all-hair-off seems good to me.

[Frank_Stein]

My childhood barber had a jar of ears on the countertop of all the people who didn't sit still during their haircuts

[aloe]

improved hair cutting logic a bit so you'll never get severe failures unless you're cutting hair in a shit environment
moving to 'good ideas'