Educate

[LuminescentBulb]

I've educated my employees and their skills aren't rising. Any solution to this?

[ploppo]

Not currently. The education system appears to have been tweaked to make it slower.

[scott4dges]

It's significantly slower, as I've been seeing. Sending people for 1 month basically does nothing. I've started sending people for 4 months and there's some improvement but it's stil nowhere as it was before.

You'd probably need multiple rounds of 6-month education to get an employee anywhere close to 100%. But I've not invested that much into employees yet in my current playthrough.

Which... actually makes more sense. Learning something for 3 months shouldn't exactly make you a kung-fu master.

[L33tShark]

I was experimenting a little bit with A10 education system and found out these:

1. age, base skill and traits have effect on learning speed

2. young persons learn a little bit faster (max +10%), person with high base skill learn somewhat faster (max +25%)

3. traits has the greatest impact on training speed

4. due to point 3. you want to hire persons with high "fast learner" trait. The best combo for that is Introvert-optimistic. Also good combos, but has a negative trait: introvert- Misanthropist/Cocky/Snob

5. I was able to train a 45 years old introvert-optimistic programmer from ~15% network skill to ~80% network skill with 4x6 months education. Medium difficulty.

6. When you hire employees young persons (low salary) usually has low base skill, but high subskills while old persons (high salary) has high base skill but low subskills.

Not connected to education very closely, but a 20 years old kid with 3% base skill but 95%+ 2D skill was able to code a great 2D editor (9.5+ ratings) in alpha phase in my test game, medium difficulty.

Same kid was not so good at beta phase, he stopped working after patching about 10 bugs.
I added a senior programmer with high base skill to the team, and the kid started to work on bugs again together with her new mentor, and they fixed about 150 bugs when I decided to release.

Conclusion: use youg employees for alpha, seniors to beta and support.

I have not tested design yet.

[L33tShark]

Forgot to mention I think programmer with low base skill make a bugfest when coding, but that issue can be somewhat adressed in beta and support.

[Traksimuss]

Okay, I ran some tests. Now actually when recruiting "low skill" option, you get cheap 20years, with low basic skill but great secondary skills. Medium gets medium results, and "high salary" guys are old with high basic skill but low additional skills.

As main skill grows while working, and it makes sense to do trainings for 20 year olds, it is actually good strategy to go with low salary guys now.

[L33tShark]

No idea about business rep, I was not testing that. I had 1 star business rep and 0 fans when I got my results. It was just a test game, I didnt take contracts.

But anyways yea, the business rep tooltip says you will get better empolyee applicants with better business rep, so I'll probably test it later.

[L33tShark]

I get about the same applicants now with 6,7m fans and still 1 star business rep, so fans number probably doesn't affect applicant quality.

[ploppo]

What happens if we change their ages via the console?

There is an age employee command (which you can apply as a batch command if you shift select from your employee list) that takes negative numbers as well as positive numbers so (for example) you can use -240 or 240 to age them forwards or backwards by 20 years. Basically, the aging is done in months, so you can pretty much age them how you want.

Don't try to make them little kids though - because the game will let you do it, but then they throw tantrums over being paid too much money. Well, last time I tried this, they did:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/362620/discussions/0/142261352643910700/

[Bautz]

Originally posted by L33tShark:

I was experimenting a little bit with A10 education system and found out these:

........................

Conclusion: use youg employees for alpha, seniors to beta and support.

I have not tested design yet.

Thats good to know!
The same goes for artists and desginers. Just made a view trials with the console.

[Traksimuss]

So I managed to earn my early 50 millions again.
Key is to recruit 20 year olds and go for contracts. Founder takes care of designer phase, and programmers upgrade their skill working on programming contract itself.

Later they can create great software, while founder concentrates on pushing contracts to cover financially.

When getting close to release phase, recruit 1-2 skilled programmers for bug catching and postrelease support.

And voila! a new hit is born.

[ploppo]

Employing youngsters is problematic with regard to team compatability. I mean, normally, I only ever hire people who are either Great or Amazing - regardless of age.

[Traksimuss]

Have never seen Amazing, but there are 2-3 people with Great in every batch. I put amount of money in middle when recruiting, around 4000 and of course all checkboxes for testing all the traits etc.

[Thomas]

I just pay people and send them off for 3 months