News:

Please request registration email again and then check your "Spam" folder

Former www.henthighschool.com

How does one make money in this game?

Started by Chobiss, Nov 18, 2022, 08:47 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

ChobissTopic starter

I've now played for 2 in game months, and before this week I was very slightly in a positive balance. But this week im suddenly -2500. I havent added any clubs, teachers or anything else other than the new students arriving every week. I'll be broke soon and I presume that's a very a bad thing. Here are my income/expenses graphs but as everything changes color and the scale jumps around when I remove something it's very hard to read IMO. https://i.imgur.com/Ivph6NY.png

So now for my actual question. Other than relying on state funding, what other source of income are there?

⚧ Squark

#1
Quote from: Chobiss on Nov 18, 2022, 08:47 PMI've now played for 2 in game months, and before this week I was very slightly in a positive balance. But this week im suddenly -2500. I havent added any clubs, teachers or anything else other than the new students arriving every week. I'll be broke soon and I presume that's a very a bad thing. Here are my income/expenses graphs but as everything changes color and the scale jumps around when I remove something it's very hard to read IMO. https://i.imgur.com/Ivph6NY.png

So now for my actual question. Other than relying on state funding, what other source of income are there?
You're only into the second week of the second month of game time.
The PI adds to monthly deficit, if you give him a bonus to speed things up a bit so you might find that your losses rebound wildly at the beginning of the next month.
I notice that your Staff salaries has taken a nosedive with a slight rebound.
How in the unholy F did you Principal's salary drop? It looks like your State Funding has been fairly static around the 0 mark and this shouldn't happen.

There's a job opening at the Restaurant but that doesn't pay much.
I can't be sure but I think you can apply for a loan from the Bank.

If you're not beyond cheating and don't want to use the Add Money command, you can use the Debug to 0 all staff wages and they won't complain. Or even funnier, set then with a negative amount and THEY'LL be paying YOU to do their job.

ChobissTopic starter

>The PI adds to monthly deficit, if you give him a bonus to speed things up a bit so you might find that your losses rebound wildly at the beginning of the next month.

That probably explains the sudden nosedive in money. I dont even have access to PTAs (had to fire the personal assistant to make last months budget even out after passing theoretical sex ed) so getting blackmail hooks already is probably thinking too far ahead.

>How in the unholy F did you Principal's salary drop? It looks like your State Funding has been fairly static around the 0 mark and this shouldn't happen.

No idea. But I guess it comes from a massive loss of Reputation. I went one tier sluttier in clothing for a while and didnt think much of the losses until I looked at the graph. I went from mid 40's to like 21.

>I can't be sure but I think you can apply for a loan from the Bank.

Taking a loan is something I feel I should save until its pretty dire. But looking at how finances are, it might be time for that already.

>If you're not beyond cheating and don't want to use the Add Money command, you can use the Debug to 0 all staff wages and they won't complain. Or even funnier, set then with a negative amount and THEY'LL be paying YOU to do their job.

When I first found this game I did cheat a lot, but its something I'd like to avoid with this campaign. It quickly becomes a slippery slope where I just cheat myself everything and skip the gameplay so I try to stay away from it. But if the options are cheating or game over that's what I gotta do.

Calob

> So now for my actual question. Other than relying on state funding, what other source of income are there?

The short list, roughly in order of importance:  Clubs, quest chains, events, spy cams, maintenance detention, and the restaurant.

Music, Cooking, and Theatre clubs are the big three that will flip from being mild sinks to relatively major sources of weekly cash as you corrupt them. Later on you'll unlock more clubs via events and those will also earn cash. The Perrier chain gives you a repeatable event that earns you cash and reputation every weekend, while the Photoshop chain provides a job every 2-5 days until it runs out. There's also the 'paperwork' button in your office that can earn you cash or reputation every four days.

The lottery event downtown requires a positive cash balance, but has no cooldown and has a 25% chance of earning you way more cash than you put in. Most other events that yield cash are one-time events. Spycams pay for themselves after a month and there are several places you can put them in. They earn more the sluttier your school is. If you set detention to "Maintenance", it results in a small bump in cash. There's also the restaurant, but the cash you get is abysmal for an entire days' worth of time and energy.

Note that event cash doesn't count towards your budget cash, so it's typical to be running an 'on paper' deficit and making it up via other means. The Perrier questline gives you an easy $600 every weekend once you complete it.

But really, the thing that will really kill your cash balance is staff costs. Not only are there direct staff costs, but most teacher quest lines require a PI investigation (which is 1-3 grand per head) and often also a direct cash infusion during the quest itself.

I've mostly given up on playing the money game (I don't find it interesting, I just hand myself $200,000 at the start of the game now), but when I do my strategy is to run a two-teacher school for an extended period while I get clubs corrupted and earning cash for me. Once that's done, then I can expand the staff.

TBBle

Another thing is keeping your reputation up and your education levels rising will give you an end-of-month bonus from the city, which will help fund expansions. So you only need to keep your budget approximately balanced (ignoring the PI), not make a significant profit in order to add upgrades, as it might seem from the finances display.

The way the PI is included in the budget display is mildly annoying, it does skew your view on cash-flow quite badly if you forget to ignore it when deciding if you're cash-positive or not, in order to afford some new weekly/monthly expense.

It'd be nice if that could be separated out into an allocation for the total spend when displaying the total monthly profit/loss, rather than carrying 3-6 times its actual effect into the cash-flow. Or at least not have the daily cost multiplied by 30 when included in the month's profit/loss, for a 5-day investigation.

I think all the budget stuff is handled in-engine though, rather than in VEE, so this one's not something event-contributors can help with.

There's also an incomplete system for "PI retainer" floating around; if that's actually landed and the investigations are moved to that, it'd fit better into the P&L sheet, particularly since that system, like the cameras, is intended (from the VEE-based comments I saw) to provide a way to be net-positive cash flow and/or provide city-wide effects in exchange for the cost.

I'd also rate cameras as slightly more-important, as they're available earlier and more-easily than the money-making clubs and events. I always have two spy-cams on me pretty much from day one, so that when I get a chance to place one I can immediately do so, and still ensure I don't fail an event triggering right afterwards which requires having one on-hand.

Side-note: Claire Fuzushi is a good early-teacher choice because her "gym for adults" event offsets her wages, if you choose the cash option, and the event has no other pre-requisites AFAIR. And I don't think any of the other options there provide meaningful benefit, so it's an easy win.