A question on software quality...

[Ragnorok]

Ya I'm still in 1983 but got a big marketing division and have make millions on the a bad quality 2d editor. But even though I have a great reputation and pay a ton for employees I can't seem to make software past bad and or horrible!? Any tips are greatly appreciated!

[Ozbay]

After A10, it is so hard to create good quality products because, education nerfed seriously. So you probably not doing anything wrong. Since your employees skills are bad, their product is bad thats all.

[ploppo]

Once you have money, replace all of your low to medium salary staff with high salary staff.

High salary staff come with a higher BASE skill.

The problem in A10 is some people are retaining staff and training them up - THERE IS NO POINT.

Example: You can pretty much max out an Artist in 2D, 3D, Audio, etc; HOWEVER; he can have the BASE skill of a toddler:
https://s9.postimg.org/4256si3b3/CHUMP.jpg
^This guy is a chump.


In A10, BASE skill does not seem to rise over time - ie it is not something they are just going to increase quickly or increase via training.

So you need to get rid of people who have a low BASE skill.

EDIT:
However, AGE becomes a factor in A10 - higher salary to get higher BASE skill = OLDER employees.

Think of salary on the terms of recruiting people - not how much you currently pay them.

So, bring up your Employee list - you wil notice that you cannot filter on BASE skill - there is no filter for it.

Here is an example of recruiting a systems programmer and offering a low salary:
https://s9.postimg.org/4ewkywj2n/low_salary.jpg

Here is an example of recruiting a systems programmer and offering a high salary:
https://s9.postimg.org/xhav1qkrz/high_salary.jpg

The specilisation skills whether low or high salary are reasonably similar, but the BASE skill is completely different.


So, because we cannot filter our employed staff on BASE skill, you will have to go through your staff one-by-one and get rid of anyone with a low BASE skill.

Obviously do this after you have had your first major release and have money to burn - high salary staff can be prohibitive in the early game.

[ploppo]

Actually, I tell a like - you can filter your Employee list on Code, Design skill, Art skill and Marketing skill which seems to be the BASE skill for each category.

[ploppo]

Oh and the other trap in all of this is COMPATABILITY - ie because we should ony recruit people who are Great or Amazing into a team - it means that the BASE skill of a potential candiate can shift.

ie on recruitment you can have a potential employee who has a 4 star BASE skill, but is not that COMPATIBLE with fitting into a team. You are then possibly stuck with choosing an employee who has a 3 star BASE skill level but has Amazing COMPATABILITY.

So, with regard to recruitment - you may have to keep hitting the 'Look again' button to get an employee with a 4 star BASE skill and Great or Amazing COMPATABILITY and also have decent SPECILISATION stats.

This is why doing this when your company has made lots of money - because you have to pay a fee to keep hitting the 'Look again' button.

EDIT:
So, recruiting just 1 person could cost you a fee of around $50,000 or it could cost you $100,000 - or more - it depends on how many times you have to hit the 'Look again' button.

EDIT:
So an actual decent TEAM of people could cost you around $1 million to recruit - purely in recruitment fees.

[IchBinGroot]

i only hire low employee for De, Pr and Ar... i just use hight for support and marketing and i have no problems so far...
now in 1990 most of my produkts are "great" some are still "good"
i have never dev a "bad" software from the beginning.
and i train them as well it takes long but it works and it helps.

YES - it takes too long
AND YES the values between low and hight sallary are to extremely

[ploppo]

I have been comparing my saved games.

Weirdly, BASE skill does actually rise over time - the weird thing being ALL BASE skills rise.

Strange.

My first employee was a programmer with a 23.12% BASE skill in programming - circa 4 years later is programming BASE skill has risen to 45.60% - THIS IS TO BE EXPECTED.

HOWEVER! This guy has ONLY ever been a programmer - end of story - yet all of his BASE skills have risen. Example he is now 16.88% in design BASE skill - but when he joined the company his design BASE skill was 6.09%.

All of his BASE skills have risen - even though he has never used any of them for anything - ie marketing, etc. Marketing has gone from 6.86% to 17.56%

So, BASE skills clearly increase over time - WITHOUT TRAINING OR DOING ANY TASKS THAT WOULD INCREASE THEM.


The other critical factor here is AGE.

A10 seems to lock BASE skill to AGE when hiring - ie recruiting low salary staff gets you YOUNG employees - high salary is employees who are often in their 40's.

[IchBinGroot]

lol - i cant confirm this strange story XD

[Ragnorok]

So after reading here and getting my reputation up with jobs contracts and two crappy software I ended update firing EVERYONE! made a market teams and a core team with systems in Mind I seem to be doing some better but still Olney about 4/10

[RoxiSinister]

Originally posted by ploppo:

I have been comparing my saved games.

Weirdly, BASE skill does actually rise over time - the weird thing being ALL BASE skills rise.

Strange.

My first employee was a programmer with a 23.12% BASE skill in programming - circa 4 years later is programming BASE skill has risen to 45.60% - THIS IS TO BE EXPECTED.

HOWEVER! This guy has ONLY ever been a programmer - end of story - yet all of his BASE skills have risen. Example he is now 16.88% in design BASE skill - but when he joined the company his design BASE skill was 6.09%.

All of his BASE skills have risen - even though he has never used any of them for anything - ie marketing, etc. Marketing has gone from 6.86% to 17.56%

So, BASE skills clearly increase over time - WITHOUT TRAINING OR DOING ANY TASKS THAT WOULD INCREASE THEM.


The other critical factor here is AGE.

A10 seems to lock BASE skill to AGE when hiring - ie recruiting low salary staff gets you YOUNG employees - high salary is employees who are often in their 40's.

This has not been my experience at all. If you hire an Artist and assign them as an Artist, only Artist skill rises over time. Same with Marketer and Programmer skill. These pics are from a MEDIUM game which probably helps with money, but I doubt it changes the way skills are raised in a HARD game.

April 1986: https://imageshack.com/a/img924/7663/T6Fget.png

August 1986: https://imageshack.com/a/img923/5816/WcZWsA.png

December 1991: https://imageshack.com/a/img923/3035/vxKfpJ.png

[ploppo]

Well, I just started a new game and my 2 guys are making a text adventure game.

The progress is all over the place.

Project started February 1980 - Estimated Code Units is 8.00.

Based on Overall score by internal review by the Team:
3:58pm - March 1980 - 4/10

7:21am - May 1980 - 4.3/10
1:06pm - May 1980 - 5/10

7:16am - June 1980 - 4.4/10
1:20pm - June 1980 - 4.7/10
3:02pm - June 1980 - 5.9/10 - Here we had hit 8.81 Code Units

7:12am - July 1980 - 4.1/10
1:08pm - July 1980 - 4.5/10

I outsourced a review at 3:11pm - July 1980 and got 3.8/10

So, it's kind of all over the place.

So, I dunno.

At the start of the day on June 1980 we are at 4.4 - at 3pm we are at 5.9 - then BANG - that is the end of that - we go back literally 3 months in progress.

So maybe there is a certain amount of just being lucky that you Promote out of Alpha on a lucky guess.

[ploppo]

Originally posted by 07CobaltGirl:

Originally posted by ploppo:

I have been comparing my saved games.

Weirdly, BASE skill does actually rise over time - the weird thing being ALL BASE skills rise.

Strange.

My first employee was a programmer with a 23.12% BASE skill in programming - circa 4 years later is programming BASE skill has risen to 45.60% - THIS IS TO BE EXPECTED.

HOWEVER! This guy has ONLY ever been a programmer - end of story - yet all of his BASE skills have risen. Example he is now 16.88% in design BASE skill - but when he joined the company his design BASE skill was 6.09%.

All of his BASE skills have risen - even though he has never used any of them for anything - ie marketing, etc. Marketing has gone from 6.86% to 17.56%

So, BASE skills clearly increase over time - WITHOUT TRAINING OR DOING ANY TASKS THAT WOULD INCREASE THEM.


The other critical factor here is AGE.

A10 seems to lock BASE skill to AGE when hiring - ie recruiting low salary staff gets you YOUNG employees - high salary is employees who are often in their 40's.

This has not been my experience at all. If you hire an Artist and assign them as an Artist, only Artist skill rises over time. Same with Marketer and Programmer skill. These pics are from a MEDIUM game which probably helps with money, but I doubt it changes the way skills are raised in a HARD game.

April 1986: https://imageshack.com/a/img924/7663/T6Fget.png

August 1986: https://imageshack.com/a/img923/5816/WcZWsA.png

December 1991: https://imageshack.com/a/img923/3035/vxKfpJ.png

Oh, that is a point - I was playing on Easy

Yeh, difficulty level is probably a factor.

[ploppo]

Wait a minute - Reviews are complete nonsense.

I paused development on the game - ie nobody is working on it.

I then run review after review - my 2 guys are just giving random reviews.

4.8
4.0
4.0
4.7
etc

The Alogrithm and System smiley faces are all over the place - they range from 0.9/10 to 6.2/10 on various reviews

Meh.

[EvilFinchen]

Wasn't there something like 10% accuracy for inhouse review and about 80% for outsourced?

[IchBinGroot]

Originally posted by Ragnorok:

So after reading here and getting my reputation up with jobs contracts and two crappy software I ended update firing EVERYONE! made a market teams and a core team with systems in Mind I seem to be doing some better but still Olney about 4/10

if you realy fired everyone, you can restart
try to keep them as long as possible.
and be patiently

i know atm it takes to much time to train them but it still works.
you just cant be the best from the beginning anymore.(and you dont need to be)

trust me, im in 1991 now. most of my software is "geat" now.

there is realy not much to talk about.
it just takes much more time than before.
i know its very bad to learn the game, but if you know how - you will make "outstanding" only but not in the first 10-15 years.

edit: remember - if you hire ppls later, maybe in 1995 - you have to train them very long also.
so try to hire De, Ar and Pr as soon as possible.

i've got 6 team of Ar and 6 teams of Pr in 1985