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[LoSboccacc]

Would definitely recommend it, I've already put over 40 hours into it over the last year and I enjoyed them all. Gonna have to try some mods next time I play.

it is very good indeed. I stopped playing because it was getting to close to my day to day life

there's a mod around that ads lot of software and component but it's not ported yet to 8.x

[etgfrog]

At this point I have a team of 7 who can make a full operating system in 6 months. Its really silly how bookshelves and clocks stack their effect in a room. I didn't try the true dwarf method to see just how far you can go with stacking the boosters though, so I don't know if a room that spans the entire map filled with clocks and bookshelves will allow 1 person to make a full set of software in a month.

[forsaken1111]

I tried this out. Consistently made amazing products that failed to catch on at the market level, so I thought 'why not make a video game for the hell of it'.

I wanted graphics so the first step was to make a 2d editor.

I made a simple 2d editor software, didn't even market it. Suddenly it is #1 best selling 2d editor and I made over 9 million.

?

I made a sequel to the 2d editor, it made me 78 million.

I made a 3d editor based on it. It made me over 300 million.

There are other software out there better than mine, but mine caught on. I guess it's just like real life, no way to know what will be popular.

[BigD145]

Timing is big. If you can get a brand new feature out before anyone else you can easily make 300 million on a 2d editor. 400 million on a 3d editor is easy if you're the first to make one.

Same feature iterations are rather broken right now though. Brand loyalty is a strange thing. "It's a new year and here's the same thing I made last year. BUY IT FOOLS."

[Glloyd]

Timing is big. If you can get a brand new feature out before anyone else you can easily make 300 million on a 2d editor. 400 million on a 3d editor is easy if you're the first to make one.

Same feature iterations are rather broken right now though. Brand loyalty is a strange thing. "It's a new year and here's the same thing I made last year. BUY IT FOOLS."

Hey, Apple manages to make it work.

[martinuzz]

Picked it up on christmas sale.
I'm currently developing 'Super Triple Dragon EX Plus versus Batman', on Skynet.
It's good fun, although I can see it needing mods for replayability, for it's not as deep as reviews make it look.
Sure there's a LOT of options to develop software, but it lacks furniture or meaningful room/object placement and staff management beyond the basics.

The combination of building tall buildings while managing your company is nice though. I hope the dev continues to put work in it.

[martinuzz]

Bump.
Can recommend playing if only for a laugh at AI companies' randomly generated software names.
Currently have a contract for developing a game called "Goatcraft of Death 2".

There's a few mods that increase that game's scope. Xperience mod adds hardware development lines, for example.
Furniture is still limited. I don't think hey added any staff need options or furniture since I last posted.
They did add printing your own software, and there's been some updates. Dev is still working on it.

[BigD145]

Furniture mods will have to be updated. There's been some changes there.

Custom gen maps now.

[Gabeux]

Last time I played this a couple months ago I went in super hard in the vanilla game, made a huge office and had to take a break due to real life.
I was on my way to taking over the world by buying the best companies and keeping them as subsidiaries, having the best and most used Operational System and making sure the best software would only be available for that OS. Any new companies that popped up, I'd buy them out and kill them right on their first announcement of a product category I was keeping for myself.
Extremely fair market. And don't just trust - antitrust.

Can recommend playing if only for a laugh at AI companies' randomly generated software names.
Currently have a contract for developing a game called "Goatcraft of Death 2".

The most valuable videogame company on my playthrough were the developers of a game with the named something like "Universe of Goat", and it had a lot of sequels and was the most played game ever, at all times I think. It constantly blew my mind to the point I had to take that company over and protect it forever - videogame industry and companies were the only thing I played fair, and sometimes protect companies from bankruptcy. On my own company I kept a dev team 90% automated, because taking over all the other industries took enough micromanagement already.

Damn good game even on Early Access...extremely dangerous time-wise for people who can get in too deep due to complexity.

[dennislp3]

Forgot I was the OP of this thread...lolz

Anyone played the new update that just came out on the test branch? Sounds like a lot was tweaked.

[martinuzz]

Tried Alpha 10. Reverted to Alpha 9.
I can't say I am a fan of the new update.
New plot system is obnoxious and unfriendly for those who like to build nice buildings. Can no longer expand rows and columns, need to buy randomly shaped plots that don't even align properly with the grid.
New education system is completely unbalanced. Expect all software that requires more than one subskill to be bad quality unless you spend YEARS on education.
Three months doesn't get you to 99% in a skill anymore, you need like 4 or 5 sessions of 6 months education for that now (per subskill, so expect an employee to need about 15 to 20 years of non stop education to reach full bars in all subskills of one skill.
When you start in 1980, and 3d skill is unlocked not much later, you can best fire all your employees and get new ones that get some 3d skill from the RNG, much faster than training up your old employees' 3d skills from zero. Still expect to need to train them for years before they can start working on projects requiring more than 1 subskill.
I hope there's some balancing updates soon, as is now, alpha 10 is not enjoyable for me. Which says something, since I was most definitly enjoying alpha 9.

[hector13]

So... bought this the on Saturday, already dropped 15 or so hours into it. The game has rather surprised me with the stuff I’ve uncovered, the most mind-blowing thing so far being able to contract out my teams for other companies’ work.

Anyhow, not done anything mind-blowing myself, made a couple of mil on audio tools and 2/3D editors, but how do you guys manage your teams?

I like the idea of having the various jobs (programming, design, marketing, artists, and a separate team dedicated for support) as separate teams, but my designers and artists usually end up with nothing to do while the programmers plug away developing and bug-fixing. It seems inefficient having designers and artists who are less skilled at programming to do these parts too, but it’s also a bit of a pain making sure they’re actually doing things once their part is over.

[lordcooper]

I have two main approaches to teams

1 team per project.  Artists and designers are the same people and I'll try and pick design components that keep the numbers matched.  Programmers just program.  The design phase is usually short enough that there isn't too much time spent with all the coders sat around doing nothing, but I'll typically take the time to send them off for training anyway.  Typical numbers are 2-3 designer/artists to 5-7 coders (obviously varying based on software type, but this ratio works fairly well for games, audio and graphics editors after the early game).  The advantages of this are that teams can be highly specialised to create good quality software with minimal training, and that you can generally more or less sync releases/marketing to save effort keeping track of everything.  The main disadvantages are that you will have downtime (particularly once employees are well trained) and the slower pace means you might struggle to be first at anything.

Assembly line.  One design team and one large art team support multiple teams of 6-8 coders.  All designers and artists get trained in all relevant specialisations but coders are highly specialised.  Releases are staggered so that the designers can always be working on something new.  If they're designing faster than you can develop software, you need more teams.  The main advantage of this is that you can pretty much completely eliminate downtime.  The main disadvantage is that pursuing a 'quantity over quality' philosophy lessens your chance of the occasional massively profitable breakout hits, and there's no obvious time to send people out for training.  Keeping up with marketing can get a little unwieldy too once you're running 5+ teams of coders.

Either way, I just have one smallish team of marketers handling all of that.  Once they've levelled up a bit those guys are crazy fast.

[martinuzz]

One thing that REALLY speed things up is having three 8 hour shifts. One major benefit is you can keep losing followers to a minimum with continuous hyping.

I usually have sets of 3 times (early shift, late shift, night shift) 2 support teams (programmers only), 1 marketing team, 1 core team and 1 reserve team.
The reserve team holds excess artists and designers, the core team draws the needed amount of people from the support and reserve teams for each project.
The reserve team usually gets assigned design deals to keep the designers busy.
I try to hire as little artists as I can get away with.

[LoSboccacc]

Keeping up with marketing can get a little unwieldy too once you're running 5+ teams of coders.

I haven’t been playing since alpha 8 or early alpha 9 but can’t project managers take care of that for you?