Alpha 10.1+ feedback

[Coredumping]

Please tell me how you feel about the employee skill and satisfaction, company reputation and construction cost balancing.

Each new alpha release will go through a testing phase, where I fix up the most glaring bugs, before releasing it to the public.

Everyone is welcome to start testing early releases by right clicking the game in their Steam library, clicking properties and choosing the testing branch. No password is required (the password field is for unlocking new branches). Note that save files might break more often and the game will be somewhat unstable.More information here.

Please post about any problems you encounter or feedback about a new feature here. Remember to mail your saves and log files to [e-mail] if you encounter a problem in a game or use the in-game reporting tool. More information here.

[Sinkler]

Originally posted by Sweaty Gopher:

sinkier here's typically my strategy....

I get about 100k in the bank. I hire an artist. I have an artist do artist deals, my main is a programmer he does programming (secondary is design).

I don't bother hiring a designer, since my main has part design. Using both my programmer and artist I now work up to 200k in the bank. Now i hire a receptionist, and a marketer or two and start a large marketing job. Don't worry about failing it, it's only to sustain you while you develop your software.

Start your first software as something simple. Don't worry about adding complexities, you're looking at getting software out the door within two years. You have an artist and a programmer.

Now, you're going to pause your software dev once in awhile to do contracts when your money starts running low and you should have a passive income from the marketers deal.

Usually I can get two versions of a software out by using this strategy, and I should have a couple million in the bank afterwards. I typically invest 25-50k in marketing on my software a month.

ty for sharing!

I understand you both say "go for maketing deals early", but for me they are still broken. I lose all my reputation even when exceeding budget goals.

my default strategy is similer to yours basically. but failed to make it or any other strategy work on hard, unless i take huge risks and get VERY lucky. most attempts fail early.

hopfully after further balance most contract/deal options would be vaiable to sustain a small unexpirianced team from the get go (or at most after 1-2 years).

diminshing return on size of your team make it hard to make any frofits from just contracts and deals while growing your first team thward your first product.
And on the other hand a very small team wasnt able to handle the work load of a pre/post release of first product even if saved capital in advance knowing i wont be able to do contracts during that time and accepting the fact im losing money every month.

[Gopher]

Operating systems not selling well, when going to current software and clicking on total sales, and clicking on active users operating systems will have small amounts of userbase but the games for those operating systems will have more active users, and total sales than the operating systems themselves.

The cost to make an operating system is also extremely small, and products that shouldn't make you a lot of money per piece but instead a lot of money per sale because of a small market (2d engine, 3d engine, gaming engine) can end up out selling the games they are used to make...

[Sinkler]

Are marketing deals still bugged?
I tried several marketing deals and unfortunatly it still seems to be broken in my game.
I manage to spend the required budget yet ALWAYS get 3 red arrow of reputation per month which is devistating to my new company. :P

the only way i found to avoid this is to manually change the budget value to spend more money then the total you are paid which get me good rep but beat the purpose of the deal by loosing me money.

another thing that suggest something is not working as intended is that there is no apperant green progress bar on the deal item like there is useally on any other marketing task.

so basically marketing deals in my game seems to behave the same as in previous patches even though i remember reading it was fixed and ppl report it is working and even lucrative...
playing a10 latest, new game, hard diff.

[Gopher]

sinkler i just did a play through just doing a programmer (main, design second) and an artist. I ran contracts up to 50k then worked on software with my programmer (something that doesn't require art, so the artist could run contracts). I was able to stay afloat, and the software generated a few million because my programmer was decently skilled. Try that.

[Sinkler]

Originally posted by Sweaty Gopher:

sinkler i just did a play through just doing a programmer (main, design second) and an artist. I ran contracts up to 50k then worked on software with my programmer (something that doesn't require art, so the artist could run contracts). I was able to stay afloat, and the software generated a few million because my programmer was decently skilled. Try that.

how did u manage to sell few mil worth of copies without a maketing team? without enough capital for marketing budget? without reputation/fans? on hard diffeculty?

sure, the strategy u describe works well for me on easy/normal since it is easy to break into a new market. it no longer work for me on hard. first product with no marketing team is always a bust for me no matter the achived quality and market availability/inovation. even tried setting the price below market value on a product which had feature I patented earlier. it doesnt sell unless u invest enough money per month into marketing and have a decent marketing team which cost a lot to maintain and i cant use for marketing deals on the down time atm since i lose all my reputaion to what seems to be a bug...

Examples from my recent attempts:

• contracts and deals dont seem to pay enough to maintain my core team of 9 workers, which i need to be able to dev first product + market it + do contracts to cover saleries and costs.
  
• it cost me 30k+ a month even when i cut my employees salery and they almost never get a raise. i need to do 4+ contracts a month just to break even while educating my eployees and work on first product at the same time. i cant make it work no matter what i try.
  
• played for 10 in-game years and wasnt yet able to release a single product without bankrupting or be in debt.
  
• when i tried to make it work with a skeleton crew of just 3 workers that also tried to support and market the product after release they were easily overwhelmed by the work load.

after many attempts i concluded i cant find a working balance. easy and normal are too easy while hard is just too damn hard xD
since im frustrated atm, guess i will wait for further balance / fixes next update.
looks like a11 will be worth a startover for sure.

sry for the long post, and ty for everyone who commented.

[Sol]

The "My Friend is gone / This job is not Fufilling" element makes the game a complete nightmare because it destroys reputation but if you keep them they spam you with salery requests

[Gopher]

Originally posted by sinkler:

Originally posted by Sweaty Gopher:

sinkler i just did a play through just doing a programmer (main, design second) and an artist. I ran contracts up to 50k then worked on software with my programmer (something that doesn't require art, so the artist could run contracts). I was able to stay afloat, and the software generated a few million because my programmer was decently skilled. Try that.

how did u manage to sell few mil worth of copies without a maketing team? without enough capital for marketing budget? without reputation/fans? on hard diffeculty?

sure, the strategy u describe works well for me on easy/normal since it is easy to break into a new market. it no longer work for me on hard. first product with no marketing team is always a bust for me no matter the achived quality and market availability/inovation. even tried setting the price below market value on a product which had feature I patented earlier. it doesnt sell unless u invest enough money per month into marketing and have a decent marketing team which cost a lot to maintain and i cant use for marketing deals on the down time atm since i lose all my reputaion to what seems to be a bug...

Examples from my recent attempts:

• contracts and deals dont seem to pay enough to maintain my core team of 9 workers, which i need to be able to dev first product + market it + do contracts to cover saleries and costs.
  
• it cost me 30k+ a month even when i cut my employees salery and they almost never get a raise. i need to do 4+ contracts a month just to break even while educating my eployees and work on first product at the same time. i cant make it work no matter what i try.
  
• played for 10 in-game years and wasnt yet able to release a single product without bankrupting or be in debt.
  
• when i tried to make it work with a skeleton crew of just 3 workers that also tried to support and market the product after release they were easily overwhelmed by the work load.

after many attempts i concluded i cant find a working balance. easy and normal are too easy while hard is just too damn hard xD
since im frustrated atm, guess i will wait for further balance / fixes next update.
looks like a11 will be worth a startover for sure.

sry for the long post, and ty for everyone who commented.

Okay so the strategy i use is i max out programming for my main guy and put all the rest of the points into developing systems . I check his stats, he's got decent system stats so I know that whatever I develop should not require anything other than system and maybe algorithm to make. With an artist and my main, I do contracts to stay afloat (this is even with the 200k loan at start for making my own building). I hire a marketing specialist once my product has the right amount of code units. I make sure it's a 7 or 8 rating before going into beta. I fix about 200-300 bugs before releasing. I believe the easiest options for this would be like a 2d editor, or office suite. I tried to keep my income at 50k so I had to pause many times. I think it took 5-7 years to make my first software, but it worked and then i was rich.

The most important thing is marketing 25k at the end per month... and the rating of your software. If it's too poor quality it won't do well at all.

I also was able to get one server up, and a printer up to do all the distribution myself.

keep in mind you can hire a marketer to do the marketing for a month, fire them and hire a new one later.

[Gopher]

Originally posted by Red Solis:

The "My Friend is gone / This job is not Fufilling" element makes the game a complete nightmare because it destroys reputation but if you keep them they spam you with salery requests

Yes and the biggest issue with this is if you have a lot to manage and they go any length of time (even a day) without a project their job suddenly becomes "unfullfilling" and they want a raise.

When you have 100 employees in a single team hiring an HR manager is worthwhile, but when you're running small teams of 10 it is a HUGE pain and somehow there's always an employee everyone hates... It's way too common that someone has an employee they just cannot stand.

[DoctorDanny]

Originally posted by Sweaty Gopher:

Originally posted by Red Solis:

... and somehow there's always an employee everyone hates... It's way too common that someone has an employee they just cannot stand.

You obviously never worked in an office environment ;-)

[Sinkler]

QoL suggestions

Hi again dear dev, here are 2 QoL topics i would love see implemented:

• Demolishing a room does not refund any money back from the lost doors/windows/furniture/hardware in it, nor any partial refund of the cost of construting the room. the latter may be intentional, but selling/relocating the room content manually before demolishing is a hassle. should consider doing it automatically. atm remodeling your initial design (which useally suck due to lack of intitial funds) is a pain and very costly.
  
  
• Asking for a raise: employees ask for a raise way too often. i hire an employee and 1-2 months later he already ask for a raise. also, when an employee isnt happy with his salery (after i cut it or refuse a raise request) he then ask for a raise almost every month or two. only after a long time and much nagging he might present an ultimatom threatning to quit. notice that HR automation does not solve the above situation since they tend to just aprove most raise requests which you cant always afford.
  suggestion:
  
  
  • Employees contracts - option to use a global or personal employees contracts in benefits. being able to manually set a global property of "time between salery re-negotiations". when set you should also no longer be able to change an employee`s salery manually outside those time frames. (atm there is no limit on those changes frequancy... u can cut an employee salery every month and they can ask for raise every month, both are unrealistic and a bit annoying, such option to avoid that would be great).
    
    
  • Ending a contract - if the player chose to use employee contracts, firing an employee outside a negotiation frame will result in penelty paid to the employee determined by his last salery.
    when an employee is REALLY unhappy with his salery and the negotiation time frame is reached, he can threat to quit with the special prompt and ask to terminate his contract unless getting a raise. u will then have ~1-3 sequal attempts, determined by the employee`s personality traits, to offer him a raise he agree to, and if you dont offer enough he stops the negotiations and quit.
    
    
  • the negotiation UI window should clearly mark on the slider:
    
    • employee`s current salery.
      
    • average salery of employees with the same role
      
    • average salery of employees who work in the company for same #years .

ty for reading. hope you find my feedback usefull.