Dude, you do realize the game is being developed by a single dude right? It's not a AAA game studio. Those features will take years to develop - the gameplay is kept simplistic for a reason.
I'm not gonna pretend the game doesn't have flaws, but cut the dev some slack. If anything, critisize the intended, but non-functioning features. There's plenty of those to go around.
Years you say.
Lets start with one table.
Chemical name you are looking for, name of what has it, article or research paper that makes you aware of it, location, and expedition requirements minimal list, time to complete
Then you need an event system.
That at some random point in games you aware of the article and adds it to a list you can pull up on a computer at work.
That's so you can review what is out there and learn about it.
After that you need an expedition formation page. Were you select your crew and equipment list and funds.
After so many days you get a notice if it was or was not a success.
If its a success it can be added the parts bin for building serums.
As for building serums.
Create a parts class that list the name and type of effects and modifiers for the serum when added to it.
Serum class uses the parts class in an array
On creating a new serum it runs a resolve function which uses the parts list to automatically calculate the effects and duration.
It's a lot easier than trying to create each serum and balance them manually or by hand the way he is doing it.
You are right if I coded the same way he does it would take a lot more time.
However, I'm one of those assholes that would rather let my code do the work for me.
The marking system is a lot more simple than it sounds. It boils down to a result system and an expedition page.
The result system creates events like you have women rioting or you have an increase in sales.
One might cause you to close the business for a few days or move to another location and or change your company name.
Good results include a raise in sales and increase in what you can sell them for.
The second part would be a simple strategy window and a market survey window.
The market survey window you select how much money you want to spend on it and what types of questions you want to ask.
This works similar to the expedition system in it determines a chance of success modifier.
After a few days it tells you what strategy you are going with. You can ignore it and do the survey again.
Or go with it.
This is more on the level of what I would assign to students as a one week home work project. Hand it out Thursday and expect it back next Thursday. Compared to my 1st c++ instructor it's nothing. Our first homework assignment was write an ATM system. Our second one was create a text editor it had to work with the printer, that was when we were using dos and bios commands. Doing this in python vs C++ should be a bit easier.
