So you’ve made it through month 1! Probably ran into efficiency (and thus qualification) problems, had to figure out basic game mechanics, finally got a small profitable enterprise going. You did all this by figuring it out yourself, having help from a vet or asking question on the forum.
Now, it’s month 2. Where do you go from here?
I’ve been asked that many times so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the forum. This is just my opinion so it’s not definitive. Hopefully other vets will share some thoughts as well.
Goals in order of priority:
1 win contests available at start of game
2 grow qualification
3 grow income
That is very high level.
Regarding 1, win contests, I put this first because some contests are only available to new players and if you don’t go after them early you won’t be able to try later. Some of the contest pay off handsomely with virts and paid resources. I personally have no expertise in this area and it’s ok not to participate in the contests if you don’t want to. I simply list them first because many people like them, they have great pay-outs and as noted some of them are only available at the start. That’s all I’m really going to say about them, if you need more info or help, open a thread on the forum and ask.
So, your company is stable and you did (or maybe did not) win beginning contests. The game is wide open to you, what to do?
You would think the answer is to make as much money as you can! And ultimately, that is the point of the game. But the game within the game is qualification growth. Without qualification growth, you will have trouble making money.
My main advice is: change your mindset from how to make money…. to how to increase qualification.
You do need to make enough money to not go bankrupt. If you increase qualification aggressively you can actually lose money doing it, but that’s ok as long as in total you have profit. For example, you can open 5 offices to max management qualification growth when you only need 2.
In order to make enough money to stay profitable while focusing on qualification growth, I recommend retailing goods that others produce. In order to do that, you need to know how to do market research.
Regarding qualification growth, there is a pinned thread called Qualification growth. How it works that can be found under Questions and Answers on the forum. Also, there is the Xio script which everyone uses instead of looking at qualification tables (see pinned Scripting Ideas! thread under Questions and Answers).
Lastly, here are my thoughts on which qualifications you should worry about:
Qualification
| Comments
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management
| important, grow this qualification to keep ahead of growth in operations
| agriculture
| very hard to grow, need paid resources
| commerce
| will grow naturally with retail and later in game becomes less important
| fishing
| very hard to grow, need paid resources
| auto repair
| increase this qualification with non-paid resources
| livestock
| increase this qualification with non-paid resources
| marketing
| will grow naturally with advertising
| medicine
| increase this qualification with non-paid resources
| mining
| very hard to grow, need paid resources
| power plants
| do not enter this industry unless you are bored, not good
| production
| Primary!, grow this qualification full speed forever
| restaurant
| increase this qualification with non-paid resources
| science
| will grow naturally with research, becomes less important if you can negotiate tech purchases
| service
| do not enter this industry unless you are bored, not good
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Focus on production. To make big money, you need this to be as high as possible. Early in the game you need to grow management qualification or it will get in your way. Any qualification that requires paid resources (agriculture, fishing, mining) will be very hard to increase qualification to a high level without buying the qualification outright, so I would not worry about those. And researching your own tech can be important to help you save money on tech, so growing science qualification probably makes some sense.
This is obviously high level advice. Hopefully it helps you formulate your game plan for early stage game play.
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