School Tycoon

Have you ever dreamed of building and running your own school?  Well, neither have I, but with School Tycoon it’s more fun than it sounds!  School Tycoon is one of the latest entries in the tycoon game craze.  Your challenge here is to build a school from the ground up.  You’ll need buildings, teachers, janitors, football fields, landscaping and much more.  The better your school, the more students you will attract and the more students you attract the better your school’s ratings.

But once you have your students you will need to work to keep them.  School Tycoon won’t make it easy.  Students are fickle and demanding and will leave your school for a variety of reasons.  You will need to keep any eye on the needs of your students and on your budget if you want to make your school a success.  And you never know when a hurricane or a fire may ravage your school!

Building the School
As you start the game you will choose between three school sites; the country, the beach or the city.  Once you have decided on a location, you’ll need to start building.  No buildings, no students so getting the academic buildings up is the first priority.  You’ll start out with the cheap portable buildings, but as your school grows and your budget increases you can upgrade to the nicer buildings.  Make sure to build a variety of academic buildings.  And don’t forget the nurse’s office and a maintenance building.  Both become very important to keeping your school running well.

Teachers
Once you have the buildings, you’ll need someone to staff them.  When considering which teachers to hire, look closely at their discipline and skill ratings.  A teacher who keeps the students in line during class will help keep your school discipline rating high.  This will cut down on the need for detention centers.

A teacher’s skill level is the most important consideration.  High skill levels mean better academic performance for your students.  A high academic rating for your school is a huge help.  Try to find a teacher with a good balance of skills (6 or higher) and discipline (5 or higher). 

The fun rating is only slightly helpful.  It will improve the morale of your students, but in the long run it’s more beneficial to build an entertainment building like the arcade or roller coaster.  Yes, I said roller coaster and no, none of my schools ever had a roller coaster!

Stuff you don’t think about
Garbage cans and bathroom.  Repeat that over and over.   Garbage cans and bathrooms.  Having plenty of garbage cans will reduce the number of janitors you need to hire and will save you money.  Bathrooms are self-explanatory.  You’ll start out with only portable bathrooms, but you should upgrade to the bigger bathrooms as soon as possible.

Students in School Tycoon like the extra objects.  Adding picnic tables, landscaping and paths is a cheap way to improve your morale rating.  Picnic tables outside the café are a good bet and they will fill up fast.  Use paths between buildings…these students don’t like walking on dirt!  Select a variety of trees and flowerbeds to keep the school looking pretty.  A pretty school means happy students and happy students mean a good morale rating.

Design Ideas
Start with a central area.  Drop in a fountain, some seating and some trees to make up the core of your school.  Build out from here.  Add the academic buildings and gym and connect them with paths.  Keep the administrative buildings grouped together and locate the maintenance buildings a bit further out.  Don’t forget several garbage cans placed between buildings and bathrooms in accessible areas.

Keep Moving
School Tycoon moves fast.  Keep an eye on the school newspaper for coupons.  These coupons allow you to purchase events like a pep rally or a teachers conference.  These events, while expensive, will boost morale. 

Click on the students as they wander the school to read their comments.   This is a good way to decide what to build, buy or design next.  And if a student is injured you can send them to the nurse’s office.  Hey, kids need guidance!

The school buildings will need maintenance.  Some, especially the portable ones, may catch fire and burn down.  Don’t be afraid to try to sell a building that looks ready to catch fire.  You may be able to get some money back.  If it burns down completely, you’ll lose your investment and have to start over.

Use the move option to manually drop a maintenance man in a building that needs work.  The sooner you can get the building repaired, the less likely you are to lose it.

Cheats
Sometimes it’s good the cheat in school! 

Submit the code iamacheater while playing the game to enable cheat mode. Now submit one of the codes below
to unlock that particular cheat code.

Get free buildings:
Using your text editor to edit the following files in the "c:\program files\cat daddy games\school tycoon\data\buildings" folder: "restrooms.ini", "academic.ini", "administration.ini", "athletic.ini", "entertainment.ini", and "food.ini". Such as in the "restroom ini" file, look for the "Cost=" and "OperatingCost=" entries. Change these to "Cost=0" and "OperatingCost=0". The items are now free. You must do this to all objects in there.

Have buildings never break down:
Using your text editor to edit the following files in the "c:\program files\cat daddy games\school tycoon\data\buildings" folder: "restrooms.ini", "academic.ini", "administration.ini", "athletic.ini", "entertainment.ini", and "food.ini". Find the "DecayRate=0.0005" entry and change it to "DecayRate=0.0000".

More money in levels:
Using your text editor to edit all of the *.ini files in the "c:\program files\cat daddy games\school tycoon\data\challenges\easy" folder. Find the "StartingCash=50000" entry and change its value to anything desired. Repeat the steps for all levels in the "medium" and "hard" folders as desired.