Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MrBernie]

Hi all!

I've recently got into this game, and much fun was had getting myself mowed down because the Conservatives hate on my hustler/hooker squads.

Now I've tried the more legal venues of making money... namely, the freeing sweatshop workers and setting them to sell tie-dyed t-shirts thing.
Only problem is, they're not making in money for me. I've got six of them, all with tailoring above 5, but at the end of the month, I have about $2200 in purchase of goods and about $400 in sale. Is there a skill minimum before this becomes profitable, or am I just overlooking something horribly obvious?
Any input on how to make money in a fashion that doesn't get my liberals busted constantly would be appreciated.

[mainiac]

There is a minimum skill needed for profit w/ t-shirts.

If you want something that can't lose you money, go with street music or solicit donations.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Your people are good at making clothes, but back in the sweatshop, all they did was make the clothes. Now they're responsible for selling them as well, and that's where you're having trouble, I think.

You might try pulling a couple of them off of T-shirt duty -- you're obviously not selling enough T-shirts at a high enough price to justify the amount of shirts that you're making. This could mean that your people are making crappy shirts that nobody wants to pay for, or it could mean that there's just not enough demand for tie-dye shirts to support all six of them working on it, and they're either not selling everything they're making, or they're being forced to drop their prices heavily.

In your case, while your new recruits have good skills in making shirts, they probably have zero skill in business, so aren't skilled at the art of hawking the shirts they're making. I would suggest drawing your shirt workforce down to your one best skilled person, and letting that person continue practicing. You'll lose less money as they get into it, and that person will have less competition from other LCS shirt makers, so might be able to sell at a higher price. Eventually, they should start turning a profit. If you want to go with T-shirts for all six, start slowly phasing them in one at a time, letting each one train at a loss while the already trained ones are making a profit.

Alternatively, you could take some of them (with high heart, hopefully) and set them to play music in public. Note they'll make much more money with this if you go to the pawnshop and get guitars from the tools menu, but guitars are only $200, and are a one-time expense. Street busking won't make the big bucks early on, especially since they probably have no skills in music and sound like crap, but getting them out there to play costs nothing and they'll eventually learn.

Asking for donations won't get you a lot of money, but it's dirt cheap. You'll want to have society not super conservative, and you'll want the LCS to be well-known and respected, otherwise you won't get many people willing to donate. One thing you'll want to make sure of is that you get them some nice clothes when you get the chance. A cheap suit from the department store downtown will do a lot to make them look more responsible and will help them to get more people to donate.

[Neonivek]

Little Known fact... Some Street Musicians make tons of money, they just have to know how to look poor (for lack of a better word)

Perhaps a Slight of hand skill for Street Musicians could exist to represent their ability to hide money you give them so they look continuously hungry

[MrBernie]

Thanks for those hints/that specific walkthrough on how to make t-shirt selling work. I had no idea supply/demand actually played a role there.
I'll see if I can skirt prostitution the next time.

I did manage to win my third day's nth start at this, with much music and guitar power.
Is 104 recruits/0 martyrs/52 kills/7 kidnappings/$1296926 taxed/$583185 and a finish in September 2019 (after a year of disbanding) a good overall for a newbie? Should I work harder? Try killing more/less?

[Aqizzar]

Honestly, if you can finish the game at all, you did good for newbie.  I've been playing it for a year and I haven't "won".

[beorn080]

There is a method for making money with garment makers, but its not exactly convenient. You can make clothing and sell it for cash. Expensive suits can be made and sold at a profit, especially if you lay in a supply of cloth. However, it requires at least 7 and preferably 9 to 10 skill to ensure constant high quality suits. However, at the very least you need to sell them constantly to get the money, and I think you might need to order a new suit every day to keep them producing, though that may have changed.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

It has changed, so they'll keep making suits continuously, but it's still inconvenient due to the need to ferry the suits to the pawn shop.

[Neonivek]

It has changed, so they'll keep making suits continuously, but it's still inconvenient due to the need to ferry the suits to the pawn shop.

Perhaps you could just set an option that would do all that AS IF they were making the object in question. A bit of smoke and mirrors I admit, but it gets the job done.

Though there is a question if the Pawn Shop would really buy that much garnments.

[Rakeela]

Considering you make them for $300 and they're $5000 new, it strikes me as believable that you can profitably sell those expensive suits to almost whoever you want.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I'm disinclined to make selling expensive suits automated for the simple reason that t-shirts exist in part to end that practice. There was a time when selling suits was THE strategy; you'd get tons of money and it was just lame. Rather than making selling suits easier, I elected to get people to stop doing it by nerfing it and making an alternate, more fun use of the garment making skill, in the sell t-shirts option.

[Servant Corps]

You could switch over the good old days when you didn't need to buy materials to make T-Shirts in the first place.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Each of the legal fundraising methods has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Donations earns relatively little money and isn't effective if the LCS isn't popular. Music requires no initial investment to get in, but uses a skill that is uncommon and earns little money if you don't buy guitars for the people doing it. T-shirts use a skill that comes essentially free in sweatshop workers, and one with broader usefulness, but you will generally operate at a loss for awhile, though it can be quite lucrative once it's up and running. If you don't want to have to buy materials, you do an alternative legal fundraising method that doesn't require materials (but that sweatshop workers don't come pre-skilled in), or you can go to an even more lucrative but illegal fundraising method, like brownies (which trains a nice body of skills and has good income) or prostitution (which trains the extremely useful seduction, and gives good income, but also slowly drains juice).

[beorn080]

You could always seduce or enlighten a CEO or other decently skilled businessperson to provide the business sense. Plus theres the poetic justice of a CEO selling t-shirts next to naked sweatshop workers.

[Servant Corps]

See, the problem is that as long as fundraising speeches at the Co-Op or the Court House can get you loads of cash, there is no reason to try and engage in any other fundraising activities. You can't get arrested for making speeches and talking up the glories of the LCS.

Also the Sleeper tactic, which is very effective, does not use up a lot of money. Sure, requesting donations make a little bit of money, but at least you make money without getting arrested or killed or anything bad, and as long as you get a constant income stream, you can pay for any expenses that come up. The only main expenses you have to worry about is paying sleepers lawyers, building a printing press ($3000), and possibly building a Business Front to protect your Hacker ($5000).