Family Office Simulator · published
Another Family Office Simulator update is live.
This one came from a handful of very different player questions that all boiled down to the same thing: the game should not leave you wondering whether you are stuck, what a number actually means, or whether a choice really does what the UI says it does.
## SUCCESSION & SUCCESSOR PLANNING
The biggest change is in Legacy.
A player recently ended up with a designated successor who simply was not going to reach the Dynasty readiness threshold. I do not want to solve that by magically making a bad heir good. Sometimes a successor just isn't the right person.
What was missing was the ability to do something about it.
You can now:
• Compare your available successor candidates
• Explicitly change the designated primary successor
• Nominate an alternate successor
• Nominate professional successors from age 22 through 65
Changing the designation does not boost anybody's stats, potential or readiness. A weak successor can still be weak.
The difference is that the campaign is no longer stuck with that person merely because they were selected first.
Your successor designation is also preserved through save, quit and reload.
This does not add voluntary retirement yet. Leadership transfer still follows the current succession rules. Elective retirement / voluntary generational handoff is a separate feature I am evaluating.
## ACREPILOT NEGOTIATION HISTORY
One player managed to build up roughly 88 negotiation records, which made a very good case that simply rendering the entire history forever was not going to age well. 😄
AcrePilot now:
• Shows the newest 20 Negotiation History records initially
• Clearly tells you how many are being shown out of the full history
• Lets you reveal 20 older records at a time
• Keeps the complete authoritative history intact
• Supports repeatedly using Enter or Space to reveal additional batches without forcing you through every Detail button
Nothing is deleted or silently archived. Older negotiations are still there when you need them; they just no longer turn AcrePilot into a mile-long page by default.
## FOUNDATION / CHARITABLE GIVING
The Foundation screen now does a much better job explaining what its numbers actually represent.
It now explains:
• DAF Balance
• Lifetime Giving
• Why those numbers may sometimes be identical
• Why they may sometimes differ
• That FOS does not currently model grants or distributions reducing the DAF balance
• That the current FOS taxable-income model does not deduct Foundation contributions
I did not add a charitable tax deduction just because one can exist in the real world. That needs to be designed properly against the game's tax model rather than bolted on because the UI was unclear.
For now, the important thing is that the game tells you truthfully what it actually models.
## ANNUAL REPORTS
If an annual change or Dashboard year-over-year value cannot be proven because the save does not contain an authoritative opening baseline, that unavailable state is now presented neutrally.
It should no longer look like you suffered a financial loss simply because the game correctly says the historical comparison is unavailable.
Actual gains still display as gains and actual losses still display as losses.
## FINANCING & TRUST WORDING
I also cleaned up a couple of places where the game was saying more than the underlying simulation actually supported.
Recourse and Non-recourse remain meaningful loan classifications, but FOS no longer implies personal-liability or asset-protection consequences that it does not currently model.
Likewise, South Dakota, Nevada and Wyoming remain available trust-jurisdiction choices, but the game no longer promises unsupported tax, privacy, asset-protection or duration advantages from selecting one.
The modeled trust formation cost, trustee fees and current succession effects remain intact.
I would rather narrow a description than tell you a system does something it doesn't.
## EXISTING SAVES
Existing saves are supported. You do not need to start over.
The final build went through focused regression testing, packaged Windows testing, save/quit/reopen testing, long Negotiation History testing and validation through the actual Steam-delivered private build before promotion.
A lot of this update came directly from players asking perfectly reasonable questions like "Am I stuck?", "Why are these two numbers the same?" and "Why do I have 88 things on this screen?" 😂
Keep those questions coming.
If something does not make sense, I'd much rather hear about it than have you assume that is just how the game is supposed to work.