any advice on how to beat Higgins in workshop competition?

[dynastystar]

Looking at the wiki, he gets 144-214 reputation points each day and starts the year with 5250

[Hexo Mia]

you can beat him easly by the second month, I didnt even finish the tird month and I was already way ahead of him.

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by Roderick✪Legend:

you can beat him easly by the second month, I didnt even finish the tird month and I was already way ahead of him.

how do I find out who's ahead?

[Falsus Te Deum]

The guild. Behind the clerk up the first 3 steps on the wall. The piece that looks like a victory stand from sport (first, second and third). There you will see who is leading/ranking and with how much.
Hope it helps.

[Shift]

Pretty easy, you don't have to do much. Higgins will only get points for conventional commissions, while you get points from NPC missions, commissions and story missions. Also if you get friends with Presley, you get bonus points that with the specific green skill will add up pretty fast.

1st day on 2 year I was about 10K points ahead of him.

[Bobucles]

Get points from daily commissions, main quests, and defect checking on weekends.

Main quests are the big one, because you can tackle multiple objectives in one day. The deedee stop quest for example has multiple vehicle requests, which is a big haul. You can even steal the rival's pick by choosing the right day.

Climbing workshop rank also unlocks higher level commissions, so the daily ends up worth more points.

[Livia]

- Increase your friendship with Presley as that bumps up your rep (get him to Good Friend for the best impact).
- You can advertise in the Portia time to increase your rep.
- Complete side quests (you don't have to rush the main story).
- Do lots of mining and tree gathering so you have raw resources.
- ALWAYS be producing resources - get lots of machines up and running constantly, so you have processed resources for commissions.
- Beat Higgins to the board in the morning. If you don't, he will take the biggest job. At first you'll have to let him as you won't have the resources to work at his level, but you'll get to the point where you do.
- Once you qualify, do the Saturday/Sunday guild inspections every week. You get eight changes to increase your rep.
- Once you have the museum, you can also donate items to increase your rep.
- Take commissions that you can finish quickly (ideally the same day), for rep and so you can take more commissions in the week.

You should be able to take Higgins pretty quickly.

[Ihateeverybody]

In addition to everyone elses advice.

Make SURE, VERY SURE when taking Jobs that you can complete them (you have the resources AND Workbench, Assembly Platform and most importantly the SCHEMATIC to do the job. Defaulting sucks. Betting you will pull the right diagram from discs is even worse. Taking a DAILY Commission locks you out of taking DAILY Commissions until it is done.

[Kasiornis]

Well, I'll add my bit of advice.
- Invest in Social skills, namely "Commerce Hot Shot" in the first row of green skills. It boosts your rewards from commissions and gives you +4 more Rep. Points for each. This stacks with Presley's relation perks which can give you up to +5 Rep. Points for each commission. Which will be +9 each and in the long run this is a lot.
- There are so called "Municipal Commissions" available one each Friday. They require you to assemble a costly item(s) for much bigger rewards in Gol and Reputation. Always do them if you can.
- Try to do all the Comissions during the week and all Inspections during weekend. This in general can help you bet Higgins already at Summer, Year 1. At my very first playthrough I beat him at the beginning of Autumn, Year 1.
- If it's not the first time you're playing - you can plan ahead (by usuing Wikia) your progress and obtain Main Mission Commissions before weekends, which will lock Higgins from stealing them from you and you can do all of them yourself, which will both boost your Rep and Gol significantly.

As mentioned above there are lots of ways of obtaining Rep. Points, while Higgins has only one - regular Commerce Commissioms.
If you're doing everything - you will beat him in no time. It's not a matter of "how", its a matter of "when"

[Hammer Of Evil]

stockpile resources and refined items so that when you hit the board in the morning you can fill a few requests instantly and dont have to risk trouble with the deadlines.

when you first start, you can't hope to compete with higgins because he starts with a fully operational factory, and you've barely got the first furnace built and a tiny yard. expand your factory and resource processors and then stockpile resources.

after you're more confident, get to the board before higgins in the morning so you can grab the higher return commissions before he gets them. just doing this, i basically just zoned him out in a few months, because he only had d and e rank commissions, i was taking all the good ones lol.

you can really go out of your way and exceed him by doing every other thing possible, but its kind of hard to keep track of everything before the sun sets =p

[Craig78]

Also just in case you didn't know, make sure to slow down the speed of the game, so you'll have more time to collect ressource.

[ KARR™]

Originally posted by Livia:

- Beat Higgins to the board in the morning. If you don't, he will take the biggest job. At first you'll have to let him as you won't have the resources to work at his level, but you'll get to the point where you do.

If you want to be really cheesy about it, if you enter the board room first and keep nudging Higgins away from the board, he gives up at 9.00 and walks out. So you can take the pick of what you want ;)

[esotericist]

Originally posted by  KARR™:

Originally posted by Livia:

- Beat Higgins to the board in the morning. If you don't, he will take the biggest job. At first you'll have to let him as you won't have the resources to work at his level, but you'll get to the point where you do.

If you want to be really cheesy about it, if you enter the board room first and keep nudging Higgins away from the board, he gives up at 9.00 and walks out. So you can take the pick of what you want ;)

other options:
- you can talk to him repeatedly until he leaves (less work than nudging him, but takes a similar amount of time)
- you can just pick up a commission from the board and NOT accept it. he can't take a commission you are 'holding' while at the board, so if there's two good ones and some bad ones, you can accept one of the good ones you CAN do, then hold the one you can't until he grabs a bad one. this method doesn't keep him from getting a job at all, but it's faster than trying to harass him. (and, i think, classier than getting in his face. gotta be better than the jerk.)

[Livia]

Why would you go to that much effort? He is slow to walk to the board and slow to take a commission - you have more than enough time to look through and grab what you want/can do. Or have you found this actually impacts his ranking?

[esotericist]

spite?

edit: more seriously, there are times where there are multiple story-related commissions you CAN all take in a day, and preventing him from taking a job you can't take/do yet (but could later in the day) can sometimes be helpful for your own progress.

but also spite.

[Livia]

I'm cool with spite - that is why I steal his resources every day, even when I really don't need them.

I don't think he goes to the board for those in mission commissions. Better to try to plan them for weekends, or take one, but go back with several done and just go back and forth between handing them in and the board to take another.