How to turn a profit?

[Justin Hopewell]

How do you turn a profit in this game? Seems like no matter what I do, I am always in the red. I look at the cures screen for the drugs that are in more demand, then produce them. Sometimes it takes no more than a single evaporator and a pill machine to get the drug out, but I'm still losing money. I've tried doubling a line as well, with a C rating on the drug, and still the money drains. I've also tried producing multiple different types of drugs and that doesn't help either.

After restarting the mission three times, I'm giving up unless someone can help me figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Playing on the first Beginner mission if its important to know. I've gone through the tutorials and understand the mechanics, but the tutorial didn't really cover ways to mitigate the financial drain and make a profit.

[terbog]

On the few successful rounds I've had, I sort of keep myself afloat with loans until I'm making only level 2 and level 3 drugs. Seems level one drugs are just to help keep you going until you have the research/ingredients to get up to lvl 2 and 3.

[Hooch]

I did well on the Beginner campaign...but the others I'm struggling with as well. I've tried to use loans, but it almost always becomes a drain. Very challenging. I know I can play custom mode, but I really want those challenges in the other campaigns met! lol I know I'll develop the right strategies eventually, but I do agree it's frustrating at times.

One thing that has helped mitigate losses however, is trying to make sure that my production cost is as low as possible..sometimes even to the extent of not having the strongest medicine. You can see how much a version of the medicine costs at any given time in the production line by clicking on it after the machine it goes through.

If a medicine has a max possible profit of $100 or example, and I want to make $30-$40 profit from it, I know that I have to produce it with a few machines. Sometimes that means not making it as strong. If an ingredient starts w/ high potency, but it's max strength is very low...it means that I have to use a lot of machines to get it that way...and that's very expensive.

So I'll opt for a different ingredient to work with as it just may not be financially feasible to make the one I was looking at, be profitable.

[OrioN]

Disclaimer: I suck at this game, haven't been able to beat anything above intermediate so far... anyway... here's what I usually do:

1. pause the game so you have time to figure stuff out without the AI getting ahead of you
2. check the cures tab. the ones where you are shown an upgrade are representing the ingredients you have. see what you need to get them to level 2. If there's a tier 1 machine, go for that pretty much as the first product. if not, hire 1 scientist and start research on that (if both require an ioniser for example, if they have different requirements you'll need to see which one is probably more profitable based on proce, demand and difficulty to create)
3. see which ingredient can be easily either put to level 2 or activate it's effects. If it takes no more than 1-2 machines to activate, go for it as your first drug.
4. buy a second space. at this point, more doors is much better than lots of space since the builds will be pretty small.
5. check the ingredients to see which 1-explorer ingredient gives you the best profitability (reference: cures screen), hire an explorer and send him out. hint: s. health and pain almost always get you decent profits
6. build 2 production lines for 1-2 drugs
7. unpause the game and go from there

few more tips:
- use ingredient upgrades on a) expensive materials you use and/or b) materials you use a lot
- use research upgrades early on for machines you have a lot of. if your production line has 7 dissolvers, a single upgrade increases profits by 7$.
- take the loan with the lowest daily payment. it will be easier to reach the money required to pay it back early
- if your starters really suck, just restart and see if you get something better

[Rhekis]

When I make a new iteration of a drug, I will sell 60 or so units, then compare my profit and rating to previous drug iterations. If my goal is to max profit, sometimes I will need to roll back to making the drug the old way even if it is not as high quality or has side effects.

Also unlocking the autoclave and its counterpart can save you a lot of $$$ in production costs if you have the upgrades researched. At full upgrades, I think it is cheaper to use an autoclave than to run 3 distillers. Aionion's tips regarding examining drugs and cures to make sure you are not choosing a combination that will require a lot of work to get it finalized is a great tip as well.

I generally start off with 1-2 level one drugs before I hire a researcher. Once I have the first 2 machines unlocked I can make level 2 drugs and then hire some explorers to get new ingredients. HTH

[clvnhbs]

Another helpful tip I've found is not to always use the better machines, esp for level 1 cures. For instance, if you need to reduce concentration by 2, use 2 dissolvers even if you have the ioniser (since they have more processing costs, unless you've already upgraded them to be cheaper which is unlikely in the beginning). It can be tempting to use better machines but just use basic machines to activate the effect, it's not worth it try and hit the max strength for beginner drugs.

FWIW I've just completed the beginner challenge with expert rank (second level stripe) with just one small loan in the beginning. By the end of 5 years, I had about 1.5 mill cash and hit the 3 mill goal pretty easily. Also remember that REVENUE and PROFITS are different. In this challenge, goal is to get 1 million in revenue so don't worry about turning max profit, concentrate on more production lines and selling the max number of drugs you can.

Like the above poster said, try re-rolling the start. Sometimes the starter ingredients plus their upgraded cures may simply not be worth it.

[Hooch]

Very nice tips guys. I think one of my problems is that I tend to over extend in the beginning...wanting to hire 2-3 scientists and 1 explorer to just unlock the tech so I have options sooner.

But that seems to be the wrong way to do it...it's too costly to be a jack-of-all-trades. Seems that focus is necessary (with upgrades and research).

Another tip: Don't sell your machines! You'll undoubtedly use them in another production line. Just move them off in a deserted space and consider them stored for future use. It costs no money to store them, only to use them.

Of course, that's just a general rule, sometimes you will need to sell due to lack of room or needing quick cash. But if you sell them because you need cash, you may already be in trouble.

[OrioN]

Originally posted by ✫ Aionion:

But that seems to be the wrong way to do it...it's too costly to be a jack-of-all-trades. Seems that focus is necessary (with upgrades and research).

Sometimes I use 2 scientists right from the get-go. It depends on the situation but can really be worth it, especially if you have 2 good starters which require one each for lv2 (ioniser/agglomerator). just know that going this route will pretty much ensure you'll have to take a loan very soon. as mentioned above: cheapest daily rate pays off in the long run. also, doubling down on loans is usually a very bad idea unless you have a ton of cash flow already and just want to invest so the AI doesn't get ahead.

[Justin Hopewell]

Thanks for all the tips, everyone. I'll give some of these a try next time. Some good discussion in here!

[AlexMBrennan]

Simply put, luck.

What drugs you start with, their concentration ranges and so on are all random. If you are doing the mission to cure sickle cell, for example, it makes a huge difference if the blood drugs are available from the start or hidden behind 3 explorer desert missions.

Similarly, the drugs you start with can vary widely - if you start with drugs that can cheaply be turned into cures (e.g. one dissolver followed by a pill printer) with no side effects then you are going to have a much easier time than if you start off with chemicals that require extensive processing (5 evaporators) and have unremovable side effects.

Sadly, it seems that the best advice is to keep restarting until you get suffiently lucky.

[Hooch]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Simply put, luck.

What drugs you start with, their concentration ranges and so on are all random. If you are doing the mission to cure sickle cell, for example, it makes a huge difference if the blood drugs are available from the start or hidden behind 3 explorer desert missions.

Similarly, the drugs you start with can vary widely - if you start with drugs that can cheaply be turned into cures (e.g. one dissolver followed by a pill printer) with no side effects then you are going to have a much easier time than if you start off with chemicals that require extensive processing (5 evaporators) and have unremovable side effects.

Sadly, it seems that the best advice is to keep restarting until you get suffiently lucky.

Sometimes this is true. I think it depends on the intent of that particular session though.

Is the player simply wanting to receive the achievement or get the Master record? Then yes, they ought to do whatever they can to help that, including restarting until favorable start conditions exist.

Is the player wanting to take on the challenge? Then starting over isn't an option for that player.

This game allows for both types of players, which is why it's good. For those who prefer to focus on one thing or the other, they can. No player is stuck to play a certain way just because a developer deems it that way.

So I view the randomness as a good thing, not a bad thing. I realize that many do not...but I think they are just looking at it the wrong way, not realizing the actual benefit that the player base gets out of it. They see "randomn" and all of the sudden have a knee-jerk reaction (not referring to you necessarily, but some of the negative reviews on the store page).

[Machin Shin]

i made enough with 2 lvl 2 meds
and at the finish i invented malaria pills and get rich

i had all the time 4 LVL 1 running

[AlexMBrennan]

So I view the randomness as a good thing, not a bad thing

It's good for the game, but not for the meta-game i.e. the challenges. Giving people an achievement for getting Master ranking on 5 missions is simply meaningless if the difficulty of the task can vary from trivial to impossible.

[Hooch]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

So I view the randomness as a good thing, not a bad thing

It's good for the game, but not for the meta-game i.e. the challenges. Giving people an achievement for getting Master ranking on 5 missions is simply meaningless if the difficulty of the task can vary from trivial to impossible.

Achievements are meaningless. They are just psychological candy. They do nothing for the player, they offer no rewards or bonuses. They are also often very arbitrary in games. To further illustrate that point, acheivements are still earned even if a player uses Mods. Mods can dramatically change the game, decreasing the challenge from just a bit to a great deal. I completed one of the Beginner's missions with the "Free Belts" mod and I still received the acheivement for completeing all the missions.

To base an entire mechanic or design around acheivements is to practice bad design. Achievements are the sprinkles put onto the icing of the cake, nothing more.

What is good for the game, and by extension the players, is what any good design ought to be considering. Not sprinkles.

[DhartiBoar]

1. At the beginning pause the game. Spend all your money on machines and expand your building unti you can spend no more. There is no point having unused-capital at the beginning. PUT ALL YOUR MONEY TO WORK BY REINVESTING IN PRODUCTION ESPECIALLY AT THE BEGINNING.

2.DIVERSIFY : dont bank on one drug, always have a variey , because the markets go up and down , if you have many drugs, then when the market for one goes down, you still have profits form your others.

[ultrapowerpie]

Yeah, I've been having problems too jsut making money. I'm even having some trouble on the starter ones, and I noticed that the other company seems far, FAR more efficient then I am in terms of turning a profit. I really would like to see how the other company does it so I can at least... I dunno, mimic them and then improve? I dunno, unless the AI itself isn't hampred at all, it seems a bit bizzare for the starting levels.