Contract work and time-limits

[bejoscha]

I think the "time-limit" of contracts should not only consider "dates" (i.e. months) but day-time as well, otherwise, one is always pressed to "accept" contracts only in the morning, or the time-pressure is much, much higher.
Alternatively, contracts accepd "after" 12:00 should only count the next day onward, maybe.

[RameyNoodles]

I agree.

[bejoscha]

A similar thing goes for education. I would prefer seeing employees "leave at once" and return X months later at the same time. It is less "dramatic" than for contracts though, as the employee still works for the full day, so "planning ahead" could be seen as valid game mechanism here.

[Harag]

Originally posted by bejoscha:

I think the "time-limit" of contracts should not only consider "dates" (i.e. months) but day-time as well, otherwise, one is always pressed to "accept" contracts only in the morning, or the time-pressure is much, much higher.
Alternatively, contracts accepd "after" 12:00 should only count the next day onward, maybe.

I currently play on 7 days to a month, I've had contracts in my list on the right for MONTHS... the trick. When you accept a contract, DON'T assign a team to it, you can then start the contract anytime you want, to start - simply assign a team with a designer to it.

But as you say - do this early on so the designer has all day to work on it, rather than the last thing 10 minutes before (s)he goes home.

I hope the dev is aware of this fact, as I do believe all contracts should have an expiry date once you accept it!

[bejoscha]

@Harag: Nice trick, thanks. But I agree that I'd rather have the game take things into account than have to "cheat" it. right now, I regularly pause the game in the morning and then do my plan-ahead-things. I Pause again at the end of the day.

(Would be nice to have an auto-pause option in the game for various things.)

[Harag]

Originally posted by bejoscha:

@Harag: Nice trick, thanks. But I agree that I'd rather have the game take things into account than have to "cheat" it. right now, I regularly pause the game in the morning and then do my plan-ahead-things. I Pause again at the end of the day.

(Would be nice to have an auto-pause option in the game for various things.)

I noticed the assign teams button on the contract screen and changed it to none to see what happens. I got the contract, and it sat there, after a while I put a designer on it and as soon as he started designing - the 7 day count down started, completed the contract in 5 days and released it to the client... This is when I saw that it didn't have any affect on the result... so lined up several more contracts and started them as and when they finished the previous one.

Yes, this is a "Cheat" and I would much prefer the system to change, maybe each contract should have an overall expiry date when it appears on the list.

Do you have the "skip when no one at work option ON?" You could try playing the game with more days per month (default =1) I went with 7 days, but that is too long, 4 days per month is a good time - this will give you plenty of time to sort various things out.

With the game set to 4 days per month, if you do your product release on day 4/4 then you get full month sales the following month - each day it sells products and you make income, wages go out at the end of the month, not daily which is good :)