How I Play Software Inc to Become the Richest

Starter Building in Software Inc (less than 90K)

In short

  1. I play on medium difficulty starting in 1980 with 8 days per month.
  2. Get 4 founders all visionaries with different focuses usually Operating System, Game, 2D Editor and 3D Editor as these go hand in hand.
  3. Personality i go with optimistic and generous then for the attributes i always choose fast learner and big brain together neat freak and stressed (which is not optional)
  4. Get maximum funds (which is $115,000 on medium difficulty) so you can get enough to build a tiny 4 office building
  5. I give all the founders 3 stars in accounting so I can use them for offshore accounting and applying for a loan.
  6. For all the leaders keep the main role and assign all stars except automation
  7. Fo the rest of the skills balance them out excluding hardware maybe only give one founder hardware. Balancing skills will help you later on in contracts without having to employ in the early stages when you want to reach 6 star reputation quickly
  8. For mods i only use realistic companies mod.
  9. Start the game by getting a cheap rural plot.
  10. Build a small maybe 6 by 6 tiny 4 room building to fufill private office requirement while you apply for loan
  11. Add basic things to get maximum stats: +15% effectiveness, +25% skill and +25% mood.
  12. Next do contracts perfectly until you get a full star reputation so you can get better hiring applicants when you go for scale.
  13. In order to get outstanding on contracts assign a lead and do at least 2 iterations before starting development. You dont need to get 100% development just cross the minimum requirement
  14. After getting a 6 star reputation apply loan and crunch the core team. Add an extra hour to their work time.
  15. You can move to rent a big appartment and scale before building or go straight to building your own empire.

Things I found that make money fast

  • Contracts: Doing Contracts at 5 stars makes over 2 million per month. The most effective way is having split teams of developers, artists and designers.
  • Stock Trading: If you have $1 billion to invest, you can make a few free million over a month by just investing in the stock market and doing nothing else. (you can also lose if you make the wrong investments)

Teams

I have 3 sets of teams for each "team" i.e for core i will have Core (A), Core (B) and Core (C) who will work around the clock. So basically for every team you have make other 2 identical teams to work the after hours. 3 teams because each team works 8 hours and a day has 24 hours.

Optimal Ways to do any activity in Software Inc

Starting a new company

I prefer starting with 4 founders in Garage inc. Finding highly creative employees is a hustle and risky once you get to the late game so i prefer starting with all founders as visionaries. But starting this way has the downside of having to start with a building that has 4 private offices and another office for employees.

For the starting employees there will be a programmer, designer and artist.

Contracts

Having split teams into programmers, designers and artists is more efficient as some contracts only need artists and it helps when doing a contract and the art team finishes early, you can assign them to another contract.

I dont usually use designers in contracts unless i want to get a better score inorder to raise company stars.

Research

Research is very expensive and i recommend only doing this once you are financially stable. Its not really profitable but it helps you get the latest tech quicker and sometimes also earn a few extra millions from patents

I have a dedicated set of research teams for everything System, 2D, 3D etc. Like before I have 3 sets of teams for each tech so i can work them around the clock. And for each tech I have a set of lawyers to file patents.

As you can see this is getting very expensive but if you have built at least 2 successful softwares it will help get more sales and recover.

The only boring part about research and lawyers is they have a lot of downtime. I hate the effort of reassigning tasks as not all are skilled in other things. So after each team is done say research i just click send home and scroll up the number of days to whatever number of days is left until 1 January of the following year.

Team Structures at Scale

Visionaries

This should be solo teams you assign to boost creativity on products

  • CEO Team (you)
  • Other visionaries you poach from other companies (put them in solo teams and assign them in contracts and product development). These should be people with private office requirements.

Workforce

Workforce teams will be split into 3 teams to works around the clock.

1. Product Development Work force

a. Programmers Teams

  • Programmers (A)
  • Programmers (B)
  • Programmers (C)

b. Designers Teams

  • Designers (A)
  • Designers (B)
  • Designers (C)

2. Research Workforce

3. Misc Workforce

a. Contracts Teams

These are basically the star recovery team as completing contracts levels up stars quicker

Also I use them to level up visionaries as they get a lot of creativity points from contracts.