Is anyone else playing it without hiring employees?

[孙笑川大佐]

I just don't think the employee system is well developed and feel it will be a mess.

After spending dozens hours, I have developed a way to fill all 5 dealers and generate a decent amount of profit without hiring employees.

What I'm doing is, keeping the Uptown customers to myself (high budget and very close to my barn), assigning anyone else to dealers. I focus on only 2 types of products, 1 weed and 1 meth, coke is occasionally, both are high profit but not too complicated to mix. I threw all the weed bricks to dealers and sell the meth and coke through phone. This approach is generating 25k to 30k cash everyday.

[SandrocK]

I used to do this, it gets tiring after a while.
what I did was put 16pots topped up with soil dispensers and water dispensers.
at first it was great, since I'd be feeding it with all plant vitamins; I didnt care about the outcome of the plants since I'm still throwing them at the drying rack.

it was fast and great at first, but once I actually wanted to check my other property; mind you this was before NPC inventory patch. Airpots became my worst nemesis since I keep forgetting to water them, I could technically switch to the black pots but it defeated the purpose of what I wanted to do. Now I am back to slave simulator, and just have 1 property as my own garden (ye the sweatshop same set up but with 6 pots instead).

[#1 Pervitin Enjoyer]

I'm in the middle of moving all m y operations over the barn for centralization because yeah, its just me running it all, save the dealers of course.

[Phatel]

All I have is botanist's. Not having to deal with the plants saves me so much time I can run my empire.

[This PC]

It's a bit of a shame, cause the game really starts to shine once you have a good production line with employees going. You can start doing more important stuff, like swinging at geraldine poon with a bat while you're speeding along with athletic weed. ლ(▀̿̿Ĺ̯̿̿▀̿ლ)

in all seriousness, better employee management is planned on the trello board, including delivery drivers that unload. ^^''

[#1 Pervitin Enjoyer]

Originally posted by This PC:

It's a bit of a shame, cause the game really starts to shine once you have a good production line with employees going. You can start doing more important stuff, like swinging at geraldine poon with a bat while you're speeding along with athletic weed. ლ(▀̿̿Ĺ̯̿̿▀̿ლ)

Why would I ever beat one of my best buyers? She's the one that shows up offering a good 150+ over fair price all on her own.

[This PC]

Originally posted by #1 Pervitin Enjoyer:

Why would I ever beat one of my best buyers? She's the one that shows up offering a good 150+ over fair price all on her own.

some things just can't be priced, also, you could like... wait till your wrap up your deal, and then do it, and then wrap up deal the next day. *nods sagely*

pretty sure geraldine is a man too ? idk :P

[Spy]

The employee system will need a pretty big overhaul in the long run. On paper they generate a lot of value, but they feel so unrewarding and inefficient which is due to their limitations and clunkiness.
Especially chemists and handlers feel very inefficient, because neither of their systems work well with the 4-5 station/route limit, and if Tyler intends to introduce even more products that system is going absolutely nowhere long-term lol
Eventually (and likely soon-ish) the system will probably be a lot more in-depth and optimized so that it feels more rewarding and doesn't cause any space-wise issues within the next few content patches, because you can't facilitate nor operate the current gameplay loop on an even grander scale without tweaking it accordingly.

[vega]

i run max employs. be warned your making a monster that needs to be fed. its a grind moving stuff from bungalow to barn, barn to docks that need a constant resupply on shelves for mixers. im kinda leaning towards meth being the better option next time? im full coke now with weed and meth stocked up.

[This PC]

Originally posted by Spy:

Especially chemists and handlers feel very inefficient, because neither of their systems work well with the 4-5 station/route limit, and if Tyler intends to introduce even more products that system is going absolutely nowhere long-term lol

actually handler/chemist setup works really well. :P
here's a diagram: https://puu.sh/KrMsh/fd86dd631e.png
blue arrows are handler assignments, yellow arrows are chemist assignments, grey arrows are machine assignments, brown squares are shelves, black squares are mixing machines.

With coca, you can boil two cauldrons and cook two lab ovens and output product with a single chemist without even needing anyone else, if you don't mind putting the leaves in the cauldron yourself, it handles enough for a day or two.

[Spy]

Originally posted by This PC:

Originally posted by Spy:

Especially chemists and handlers feel very inefficient, because neither of their systems work well with the 4-5 station/route limit, and if Tyler intends to introduce even more products that system is going absolutely nowhere long-term lol

actually handler/chemist setup works really well. :P
here's a diagram: https://puu.sh/KrMsh/fd86dd631e.png
blue arrows are handler assignments, yellow arrows are chemist assignments, grey arrows are machine assignments, brown squares are shelves.

I get how assignment works under the current system, I'm talking about it's future scalability, since its also the current maximum (per worker). The whole system should work around your customers, and you can't make any effect- and profit-wise cool/desired products with 4 ingredients alone + it takes up a sizeable portion of space that you will have to share with MDMA and shrooms in the future.
The mixing system is viable but not integral, which is good in early access so that you can largely enjoy the game without balancing tweaks, but it will inevitably need an overhaul to connect it to more than just getting customer recruitment approval - and since employees are unfortunately integral to the mixing system, they will need to become smarter and more competent.