AntiTachyonPhone Target

[archdruidardanos]

Hi there,
i am struggling to figure out how to out run the time limit here. both approaches so far didn't lead to success. First run - out of time, second bankcrupt as the physic experts drained my funds and taking the loan seems not to be helpfull at all. second run was only missing 50% auf den last research with still good amount of time ahead.

But i wonder if it really needs the 30 Experts in Physics to solve that in time. Should it be do able with the 10 only - but then the questions is what do in addition.

On this run (3rd) i try to replace parts the moment i get a better usim/s rate which hopefully is worth the shutdows of the research machines. And hopefully keeping only the mim experts will not melt down the fundings as fast.

But anyhow i thought it worth to ask around for some tips - maybe i had overseen something. by the way i even tried in the other runs to utilize the "datacenter" rigs as well - but i couldn't figure out if that was helpfull or not.

thanks and regards

[Bigosaur]

It most of the test runs I had, the crucial point was switching mining to Litecoin when it comes out and hold mined BTC as long as possible so you get good returns.

If you crash Litecoin price to zero by selling too much, you can use the Marketing option to bring it back to life. Although I tested without that and it was still beatable.

Basically the whole balance is between not hiring too many people to early and managing to catch up in the end. You can do it will less than 30 people if you start early, but it can be tricky to fund their wages for that long when the market is low.

On this run (3rd) i try to replace parts the moment i get a better usim/s rate which hopefully is worth the shutdows of the research machines.

Usim mining power is just a threshold value needed to conduct research. Once you hit the minimum requirement, there is no point increasing it. Things you can do:

- organize people into 3 shifts so that your research computers are not running idle
- make sure you have all the objects that give research bonuses in the room. You can see that in object descriptions in the shop. Your research bonus should be +80%.

[archdruidardanos]

thank you for that info - that clarifies and streamlines the way to approach it. then let see if run 4th is the one :D

[Adam]

Admittedly I haven't beaten it because I wasn't paying attention to the clock, but my strategy was:
1) Play the market. The mysterious tipster tells you when to buy and sell, and if you focus on gaming the market based on his tips you can make a ton of money. Get rewards from your dad ASAP and immediately spend everything on buying Bitcoin. Forget Bitcoin mining until you're rolling in cash. You can take out bank loans for each tip to help you buy more Bitcoin. After his third tip I had about $14,000,000. After that, keep your money in cash because Bitcoin will crash. When it hits around $3-4 buy as much as you can while keeping $5,000,000 in reserve to pay salaries.
2) When the market crashes, buy up every Bitcoin available, but be careful of the bug that causes the number of available Bitcoins to go negative. (If that happens, sell some until it goes positive again.)
3) As soon as you become a scouting expert, hire an FPGA programmer and switch from PC-based to FPGA-based mining. Sell the PCs. They're basically useless now.
4) Set up your research room with at least 5 workstations. Add all the research-boosting items (painting, fridge, plant, etc). Hire 10 physicists and 5 hardware experts. Set them up on three different shifts so they can all use the workstations. Have the hardware experts rush ASIC mining.
5) When you get ASIC mining, replace all your FPGA miners with ASIC miners. Save the old FPGAs for Litecoin. You'll generate massive amounts of Bitcoin. Lay off the 5 hardware experts and replace them with another 5 physicists.
6) When Litecoin becomes available, feel free to throw all your old FPGAs into it, and maybe more. It didn't really matter to my run, but it doesn't hurt.
7) Play the waiting game... I had billions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin when I lost my first game due to forgetting about the time limit. I probably should have set up a second research room.

[vacbir]

I just finished the North America scenario in the game as of May 2013. Honestly, I thought it would be much harder at first, but things went pretty smoothly as I progressed. Until around 2010, I was mining BTC with just three full racks of computers, constantly keeping an eye on the market.

I didn’t hesitate to take loans from the bank, but I also didn’t rush to repay them immediately. Paying just the interest made more sense than giving up my cash reserves. As new systems became available, I upgraded only the GPUs on the physicists’ computers, thinking that higher H/s would speed up research. But I later realized this had no effect on research time at all.

Early on, I had some overheating issues that caused 2–3 miners to break down because I didn’t realize I had to right-click and manually start the AC units. 😄

I progressed with only 10 expert physicists until the last two years, then expanded to 17. I had every possible room upgrade to boost research speed, reaching a +80% bonus. The toughest time was when BTC dropped to $0.000038 — my budget was tight. But I tried to buy as much as I could at those lows, even taking out more loans to buy BTC.

For about 1–2 years, BTC remained very low, and sometimes I had to pause mining to save on electricity costs. I only sold enough BTC to cover loan payments. I never had to sell any LTC — not even at its peak.

By the end of the game, I had around $44 million in cash, 1.24 million BTC, and 10.4 million LTC. I didn’t buy any houses or rooms except during BTC’s peak; I always preferred to rent. I also didn’t buy every new device — the only major upgrade I made was switching to FPGAs when they were released. The other racks were still running RX 480 GPUs all the way to the end.