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Powergaming: Protips on Higher Difficulties

admin
2022-01-15 14:22:55

Protips - The Best Is At The End!

The tutorial is great on telling you what to do when playing on Easy or maybe Medium difficulty, but you'll go bankrupt on Hard or Ultra.

Borrow money right away. You can borrow more before you need it, than after hemorrhaging money for months. Also sign up for a Line of Credit.

EDIT: After getting established I've started using Bonds to pay for Factories. I THINK you can now pay them back early. Mathematically, bonds are something you do as you are growing, so that the money that you pay back isn't as valuable as the money you are getting. Example: Use the bond money to finance a factory. Use the factory to make money on making cars. Suddenly the money coming in is hopefully significantly more per month than the money you borrowed. Doesn't work out too well at the Ultra Start, since you can't design anything decent and you're hemorrhaging money.

Most important: DON'T rely on your own designs. You need to go the the Outsource Tab (at R&D) and purchase a license for a vehicle design right away, so that your factory can produce something to sell.

I usually then proceed to purchase components so that I can design my own vehicles. Those vehicles you design yourself are more cost-effective, and you can control what type of vehicle(s) you get.

On Hard, I might be able to then start researching components. On Ultra, there usually isn't enough money right away.

EDIT: Many guides suggest researching components to improve design teams. However, your design teams will learn just fine if you license components that have better overall quality than your design teams. So on Ultra, any component will satisfy your 1 skill teams for quite a while. On Hard, you'll still get plenty of time with licensed components. BUT, you have to design vehicles to improve on your vehicle design skills, so slap something together when you have the funds.

Secondary: Play the stock market. I usually wait until the second month so that I can invest in a company with major market share (under one of the reports tabs). They're the ones that are going to make money. Buy low (less than 10), sell high (more than 10).

EDIT: I removed all the fun about market manipulation of your own stock. If an AI company buys your stock, they tend to keep it regardless of stock price, and stock price shennaigans can backfire. I'm digging myself out of one save where I tried lots of that stuff, so obviously I shouldn't be giving advice on it.

Fun things to do with Marques:

-Drat my factories and branches are caught in a country undergoing war! Rebrand them with a Marque and either sell the Marque outright, or maybe spin out the Marque its own company, then sell all the shares. Be careful, as you lose all the vehicles and components associated with it. Can be a real suprise if you absorbed another company then do this.

Why do this? Because you don't get paid for closing down branches!

I still haven't figured out how to make the most of this, but its fun and profitable all the same.

When I have money, its nice to buy out a failing company, then open a branch somewhere that they can actually sell their cars (and mine), and then suddenly make money. Good going AI.

On Ultra, there is another feature that is helpful: You can actually buy cars from other companies and sell them as your own! In the Outsource menu, you can select Vehicle->purchase, then enter into a contract to buy vehicles from other companies. You sell them the same as if you built them yourself. I would suggest starting with like 240, then change to something higher when I see the demand. NOTE: You get 1/12 of the amount your order every month until the order is filled, from what I can tell. So take what you want to sell and multiply by 12. A lot of math and super fiddily, hence why I probably wouldn't even bother on lower difficulties.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1527419855

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