Training people

[Dertin]

May i missing something, but i ran into a problem.

I got some Employees with Level 1 skills but most work i got is for Level 2. Is there a way to train these without waiting for easy work to appear? can i send them somewhere to train or let them learn on theyr own?

@Devs i would suggest to let people that do not meet the Skill requirement (Level 1 2D Artist working on Level 2 2D Project) work on that project in some way. Maybe reduce generated Work to 1% or increase Bugs created as well. therefor increase experience gain as they learn new skills doing things they never did. Just so i dont have to fish for these low quality jobs and can train my people somehow.
May also add the Mentoring thing to that so that Mentors would, instead of train random people, just go to people not meeting the job requirements and would otherwise be doing nothing and teach them how to do it to increase theyr exp gain.

[Septus]

you could have them develop software that you never intend to release

[Waffles Of Mass Deliciousness]

They already do contribute somewhat to a project as there's always a few things that need work and don't require any stars. Personally I like to use deals to train those with less skills

[nosedigger]

Originally posted by Dertin:

I got some Employees with Level 1 skills but most work i got is for Level 2. Is there a way to train these without waiting for easy work to appear? can i send them somewhere to train or let them learn on theyr own?

The only way to level up employees is to have them work on a task for that skill. I have not yet tried Mentoring, so I can say it works the same way. However, Law is the only skill that can't be trained in a normal way (you would need to run a company to constantly get sued), but everything else is gained through work.

Some explanation first:
1. Employees will work only in roles that they are assigned too, and if they have the proper level
2. Employees gain skill in other areas through time, even if they do not have a role assigned to it (common example Founders getting full 9 skill points to spend in Support, even if they are not assigned to it, but they are around from the beginning of the run)

If you take a closer look to Contracts, you can see that usually low level contracts can will have 2D Art (Any level) or 2D Art (level 2). Explanation 1. comes from my experience with these, where if I have a Designer/Programmer with 0 skill in 2D Art, Contract requires level Any, assigning him an Artist role will let him work on this Feature.
Combining this with Explanation 2 means, that acquiring 1* in specific skill that is unknown, would be "fastest" if the Role for that skill is assigned to the Employee, allowing them to work on tasks that are "level Any" and acquire XP.

But, as you noticed, the game prevents you from having low level workers do job for higher level, and this corresponds to real life - there is no way that I as a medior developer can work on a task for Senior, or even Architect. And sorry to say, this would not be changed, because it is one of core game Mechanics. It would be utterly easy to just hire a bunch of 1* Employees and have them iron out PC OS with complex 2* Features. Just not happening, levels are there for a reason.

What can you do ?
There are only 3 levels of experience, so do not be stingy with money, and hire straight away Medium salary employees. In terms of Design/Programming, Medium salary will bring 3* Employees (which have 15% bonus speed, beside being able to work on Features of all levels). Low level employees work on certain tasks, and usually it is not viable to hire cheap and train up, because bonus training speed is lowered down on each difficulty. I play on hard, there is 50% gain for learning, I think on Impossible it is none, so training up can take decades, so hiring Medium level Employees straight away solves the issue.

Design can be leveled up by Contracts and Deals, however watch for level requirements, Programming by fixing bugs and Porting. Updates are also good, but if you use 1* Employees only, then you would not be able to update all 2* Features, so mix level team is needed. Service-Support, the only skill that can be staffed by 1*, since they only report bugs, Marketing can be leveled by endless budget in post marketing for any product, Press Reviews do require higher skill, and Accounting just by doing taxes year round.