Features

Scandal points

Scandal points are applied to an individual idol or to the entire group. Events involving a specific idol (e.g. dating scandals) will assign scandal points to the idol involved, while events that don't concern a specific idol can gain scandal points for the group.

Your scandal point total is based on the sum of all of the idols' individual scandal points plus the group scandal points. Having too many scandal points can now result in certain penalties, including:

• Higher-tier idols not appearing in auditions
• Lower single sales
• Fewer new fans from popularity/obscurity
• Lower concert attendance

The penalty scales based on your total scandal points: for example, 3 scandal points will result in a 5% sales penalty, while 8 scandal points results in a 8% scales penalty.

You can see the breakdown of your scandal points (which idols have them and how many) and the associated penalties if you hover over the scandal points counter at the bottom of the screen.

Scandal points can be removed in the following ways:

• Having an idol graduate will remove all of her scandal points
• Scandal points can be spent to fire staffers.  The longer that a staffer has been with the group, the more scandal points it costs to fire them. (Costs 1 scandal point for staffers that were hired <6 months ago, 2 scandal points for staffers hired <2 years ago, 3 scandal points for staffers hired <4 years ago, and 4 scandal points for staffers that have been working 4+ years)
• Scandal points can be spent to change group policies

There is also a 3-month cooldown on firing a staffer using scandal points and a 3-month cooldown on changing policies using scandal points, so there's a limit to how quickly you can get rid of scandal points by using these methods.

When spending scandal points, you choose whose scandal points are removed, and whenever you take an action that removes an idol's scandal points, you gain influence with her.

Additionally, raising or lowering the difficulty level will affect the behavior of scandal points in the following ways:

• "Relaxed" difficulty: idols automatically lose 1 scandal point on their birthday
• "Unfair" difficulty: when an idol graduates, 50% of her scandal points will be re-assigned to the group as a whole.

Sister groups

You can now create multiple idol groups! The "sister groups" feature unlocks once you've hired 10 idols, and each 10 idols you hire will allow you to create a new sister group.  (For example, if you've hired 20 idols, you can create 2 sister groups.)  Sister groups exist in addition to your main group.

You may have noticed that you'll get penalized if you release new singles too often: fewer people will want to buy a single if your group has already put out a single in the past month. However, if you have multiple groups, each of them can release a single in the same month without sales penalties!  Idols who are part of sister groups can still also participate in singles released by the main group, but for singles that are released under a sister group, only idols who are part of that sister group can participate.

After creating a sister group, you can transfer idols to the sister group by clicking on their idol card. Under the "group" option, you can change which group an idol is assigned to. (The cooldown on transferring an idol is 1 year.)

Idols can still be friends with idols from other groups, but they can't be part of cliques with idols from other groups and can't bully idols in other groups. Transferring an idol to a different group will remove her from any bullying or cliques that she's part of. If you have a bullying problem and need to solve it quickly, perhaps a transfer might be in order!

Single sales for a group (either the main group or any sister group) are based on the number of fans following members of that group. If you want a sister group to perform better, you can quickly boost the sales of a sister group's singles by transferring a popular idol to that group.

Sister group progression

The way that sister groups gain fans works differently than for your main group. A sister group will gain fans with each new release based on sister group's demographic appeal.  The group's starting appeal with each demographic is based on the target demographic you select when creating the group (for example, if you choose "casual teen male" as your target demographic, you'll gain 1 point toward casual appeal, 1 point toward teen appeal, and 1 point toward male appeal), and you can increase the sister group's appeal with each demographic by leveling up attributes.

Your group has cute/cool/sexy/pretty and vocal/dance/funny/smart attributes, just like individual idols. Whenever you release a new single, you'll gain "group exp" for each of these attributes based on the stats of the single's formation. Each time one of these attributes "levels up," you gain 1 point which can be put into a demographic axis. (For example, putting a point into "hardcore" will increase appeal with all hardcore fans, putting a point into "young adult" will increase appeal with all young adult fans, etc.)

Your total appeal with any specific demographic is based on the sum of all demographic appeal points: for example, your appeal with the "casual adult female" demographic is based on a group's total casual appeal + total adult appeal + total female appeal.

There's a "soft cap" on the number of fans in each demographic (per group).  After hitting this number, you'll get progressively fewer fans in that demographic.

The "sister groups" feature is still a work-in-progress, and we'll be adding to it in the next update. In the meantime, if you have any feedback on your experience playing with sister groups in this update, or have any requests for features you'd like to see, drop by the beta forum and let us know!

Improvements

• You can now release an election single after holding elections. The election single will use a formation based on the election result. (1st place in the election will be the center, etc)
• An idol's graduation now negatively affects the graduation dates of her friends. (When an idol leaves the group, her friends are more likely to want to leave too.)
• Nerfed daily activities on higher levels
• Staffers level up slower
• Added an option to disable auto scroll when cursor is on the edge of the screen
• 3 month cooldown on firing a staffer using scandal points
• 3 month cooldown on changing policies using scandal points
• You can only change the image policy once
• Debugging tool (keyboard shortcut/"cheat"): press F4 to remove all scandal points

Bug fixes

• Fixed: When planning award shows, the idol receiving the award and the idol being thanked during the award speech could be the same. (Now, you can no longer tell an idol to thank herself.)
• Fixed: Idols now hang out in all of your break rooms evenly instead of using the same one almost every time
• Fixed: Time freeze caused by media shows with 10 stars of fame
• Fixed: Not being able to level up lyrics and media genres if you have a show with 10 stars of fame 
• Fixed: You now can't quit an audition before revealing any cards. (Prevents situations where players could accidentally end an audition without hiring anyone.)

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on the latest update in the beta community forum. If you have any bug reports, feature requests, or anything else you'd like to tell us about your experience with Idol Manager so far, please visit the forum and let us know. Thank you for continuing to support Idol Manager in 2020!