So, senior promotion

[Sai Kyouji]

Has anyone even managed to get the producer or an employee's stats to max on both skills before the game end or turn into freeplay?

Is there even a point to getting the promotion so late?
I have had a manager working on business proposal non-stop for 2 years and she barely gained one star (not counting the two stars from event) and this is just on one skill.
How the hell long is it gonna take to level up the manager from 2 star production to max?

[Fringehunter7719]

You can do it in about a year if you want.

Recruit a production specialised manager, set them to auto generate business proposals (ideally variety shows) then nominate them for 8 awards at the end of the year. Earlier skill ups are faster than later ones, so you should hit the Deals 6 threshold within the year.

You'll need to hit your marks for the awards by doing things like having a "sexy" group focus for 6 months of the year and a "pretty" focus for 6 months of the year, and sufficient managers to get the dozens of proposals required stacked onto the same idols. That should score you Gravure Queen, Fashion Icon and Top Entertainer.

Most Promotions and Most Prolific are absolute gimmes, as are Best Debut and Best Concert. Best Employer just requires you not assigning non-rest tasks to idols with <20 (I think) physical stamina, which isn't a big deal either.

You could do it the other way around and have a business manager produce 3-4 records/concerts a month for the year, but that's slightly less effective and slightly more effort.

[DeathJohnson]

I almost managed it, but I picked wrong on which awards to thank that staff member for, so they finished with only about 9.5/10 on deals.

Leveling production is so slow that maxing them out in time for it to be useful basically requires starting with a staff member with level 6 production, then going all out to win tons of awards and thank them for every single one of them. Or progress through the story extremely slowly.

I'm hoping it gets rebalanced at some point so leveling normally is actually somewhat reasonable. While I was going through some beta update notes earlier I saw "Staffers level up slower" listed as an improvement in one of them, so I guess they leveled too fast at one point and then they took it way too far in the other direction.

[Lonesomepoet]

Originally posted by Fringehunter7719:

You can do it in about a year if you want.

Recruit a production specialised manager, set them to auto generate business proposals (ideally variety shows) then nominate them for 8 awards at the end of the year. Earlier skill ups are faster than later ones, so you should hit the Deals 6 threshold within the year.

Why variety show ? wouldn't it be faster to crank out photoshoots .

[Sai Kyouji]

Originally posted by Lonesomepoet:

Originally posted by Fringehunter7719:

You can do it in about a year if you want.

Recruit a production specialised manager, set them to auto generate business proposals (ideally variety shows) then nominate them for 8 awards at the end of the year. Earlier skill ups are faster than later ones, so you should hit the Deals 6 threshold within the year.

Why variety show ? wouldn't it be faster to crank out photoshoots .

Because variety show have an award

Originally posted by Fringehunter7719:

You can do it in about a year if you want.

Recruit a production specialised manager, set them to auto generate business proposals (ideally variety shows) then nominate them for 8 awards at the end of the year. Earlier skill ups are faster than later ones, so you should hit the Deals 6 threshold within the year.

You'll need to hit your marks for the awards by doing things like having a "sexy" group focus for 6 months of the year and a "pretty" focus for 6 months of the year, and sufficient managers to get the dozens of proposals required stacked onto the same idols. That should score you Gravure Queen, Fashion Icon and Top Entertainer.

Most Promotions and Most Prolific are absolute gimmes, as are Best Debut and Best Concert. Best Employer just requires you not assigning non-rest tasks to idols with <20 (I think) physical stamina, which isn't a big deal either.

You could do it the other way around and have a business manager produce 3-4 records/concerts a month for the year, but that's slightly less effective and slightly more effort.

Idk, I have the business deal manager do proposal for a year and half now and she still have just gotten only one star.
What does award give? One extra star?

Best Employer is positively bugged. I drove them like slaves, frequently reaching 0 physical and 60 mental health but still got it.

[Fringehunter7719]

Originally posted by Sai Kyouji:

, I have the business deal manager do proposal for a year and half now and she still have just gotten only one star.

If you can't do it in one year, then you just have to repeat the process into the second. Or use the alternative method of a business manager to whom you give almost continual production work.

Originally posted by Sai Kyouji:

What does award give? One extra star?

Half a bar of experience in each discipline for that staffer. Or half a star in each if you want to think of it that way.

Originally posted by Sai Kyouji:

Best Employer is positively bugged. I drove them like slaves, frequently reaching 0 physical and 60 mental health but still got it.

I'm not sure if it is bugged or not. I believe it's supposed to look at average stamina levels and those are very hard to gauge over the year.

Best single does seem bugged though, so there's very much swings and roundabouts regardless.

Right now, the requirement is avoiding injury and depression, in real terms, as best as I can tell.

[Fringehunter7719]

Originally posted by Lonesomepoet:

Why variety show ? wouldn't it be faster to crank out photoshoots .

There's no difference in the speed that staffers can work on the different deal types. But variety shows are the preferred choice because (i) They qualify for an award type (ii) They aren't an ongoing commitment like ads and dramas, which mean trashing the stamina of an idol on a schedule you can't control* (iii) of the remaining two types they deliver the most new fans and fame.

This doesn't affect that your first 25 proposals are pretty well fixed by the promotions upgrades requirements, you'll want to do 24 photoshoots with 1 ad mixed in for those, and one tv drama a bit down the line (though best to immediately default on the contracts once promotions is upgraded each time). But that won't take a year if you build up to a sensible number of offices with managers. At that point it's best to switch to the preferred type.

It's worth noting that since you need to upgrade ads, dramas and variety shows to level 4ish through research points the demand for managers is *much* higher than for other staff types. Plus you probably want half a dozen working on proposals for a lot of the year and then research points for streaming, possibly cafe menus and for further upgrading variety shows to level 10 to maximise the gains.


*You can let a proposal sit for a few days after it's ready if your desired idol is low on stamina, but you can't defer the Monday stamina drain from a contract, which will intermittently coincide with important things like your release schedule.


ETA: Incidentally, in your first year when you have to do photoshoots for objectives it's best to combine the "sexy" category with them (chosen via your vibe policy), as "sexy" variety shows don't count towards the variety show objective anyway. I'm not sure "pretty" variety shows do either. That also may or may not be a bug.