Given a positive integer $x$, find $k$ distinct positive integers $y_1, y_2, \dots, y_k$ such that $$ x = \prod_{i=1}^k(1+y_i) $$ The problem is to pick the $y$'s so that $k$ is as large as possible.
Now, if the restriction of distinctness of $y$'s is removed, the problem becomes really simple. Let $$ x = \prod_{i=1}^n p_i^{a_i} $$ be the prime factorization of $x$ ($p_i$ are prime numbers), then the answer is simply $k=\sum_{i=1}^n a_i$.
But I cannot seem to figure out how to solve this if $y_i$ are required to be distinct.
One approach I tried was to simply greedily pick the factors(excluding $1$) of $x$ in ascending order.
To illustrate, for $x=36$, the factors are $2,3,4,6,9,12,18,36$.
I choose $2$ because $2$ divides $36$.
I choose $3$ because it divides $18$ ($=\frac{36}{2}$).
Next I skip $4$ as it does not divide $6$ ($=\frac{36}{2\times3}$).
Finally pick $6$ which divides 6.
I end up with $k=3$. But I couldn't prove that this algorithm is correct.
EDIT: I am primarily interested in finding $k$, the size of the largest subset.
My initial guess for the solution to this problem if $x$ is the power of a prime seems to be true. Let $$ x = p^a $$ Consider the following problem:
Find number of integer solutions of: $$ n_1 + n_2 + \dots + n_k = a \, (n_1 > n_2 > \dots > n_k > 0) $$ Let $m_k = n_k, m_i = n_i -n_{i+1} (i\neq k)$ Then that problem can be rewritten as the number of integer solutions of: $$ m_1 + 2m_2 + \dots + km_k = a \, (m_i > 0) $$
which is the coefficient of $x^a$ in $$ \frac{x^{(1+2+\dots+k)}}{(1-x)(1-x^2)\dots(1-x^k)} $$ which is non-zero iff $\frac{k(k+1)}{2} \leq a$
Going back to the original problem, this means that if $x=p^a$ then $k = \lfloor{\frac{\sqrt{1+8a}-1}{2}\rfloor}$ and $y_i = p^i-1, 1 \leq i < k$ and $y_k=p^{a-\frac{k(k-1)}{2}}-1$
So for $x=8192=2^{13}$, $k = 4, y_1 = 1, y_2 = 3, y_3 = 7, y_4 = 127$. Note that the choice of $y$ is not unique. $y_1 = 1, y_2 = 3, y_3 = 15, y_4 = 63$ is also a legitimate solution.
As @Wore mentions in the comments how to we extend this to $x$ when it is not the power of a prime?