Bay 12 Games Forum

I hadn't thought of trying to extend the loan period, doh. I saw the field showing cost of the loan explode when I tried that for things like an engine factory before, so I kind of forgot to try it on the starting car since I usually do the shortest loan period as it's default and I became accustomed to keeping it there. I'll give it a try next time I do some Automation.

I agree about tiny car factories, they really are not ideal. Unless I'm so strapped for cash that I can't afford the upgrade from Tiny plot to Small, I always take at least a small plot so I can upgrade the factory size later. The other reason I start with a Tiny factory is because it's only about $3mil if I remember correctly, and the market is Archea is pretty small so it's easy to over produce at the start. Archea mostly buys budget cars that can't be made for enough profit with contractor engine costs, it's hard to design one without an engine factory that will make much money.

There is one use for tiny factories though: they make a good starting factory for concept or prototypes of models that you tanked the sliders on to engineer faster. Facelifts seem to go much faster and cheaper than the initial engineering on a new model.

I usually scrape up enough cash for an engine factory by around 1950. Going from contractors to a small engine factory is a big savings on production costs though so once it's affordable the sooner the better.

For advertising, I do that eventually once there is some cash for it. You can also get a lot of free advertising that isn't useful for a while if you advertise for markets that don't exist yet; for example Pony. There are a few Other type advertisings in the dropdown menu that apply only to markets that don't exist yet in the nation selected, and if you put advertising into them they are completely free. The % increases on the nonexistant markets increase over time so I think it works. I don't know if when the market opens if it reverts to the set value; I don't recall noticing if it did. It seems like it's probably a bug but I guess it could be that the company you are playing as contributed to the development to the market culture that later emerges, enough to be a favored brand by the customers of that market.

Neat, I might try that next time. I was struggling to find a way to do a $0 and no factories or land start. Maybe selling a car model with a body and gubbins from the future will get enough pre-orders to not collapse (after designing the car and going bankrupt the first month) The previous patch reduced the way I was building the company in previous versions, so the save game I just checked had nothing in research, probably so I could lower the engineering time slider and whatever dealerships I can afford with the $0 and 0 factories start at 100x difficulty. I found dealerships to be crucial to not going bankrupt building the first tiny factory on the land plot. Not starting with factories and plots gives a ton of points; tiny or small plot for car factory gives some collateral to use for the loan; the small plot was how I got it to work. You'll need hefty pre-orders to not go in the red so far that the company goes bankrupt. To start with no plots or factories to go against the loan to build the first factory you'd need some magnificient vehicle that collects pre-orders at a rate far higher than what I've tried cobbling together.

Anything you set the starting research to, in order to have things unlocked for the first car? I like automatic transmission at I think 3 or 4 points in that research, the auto transmissions seem to score higher in everything for the same gears. I didn't make it to auto in my last game (was trying to craft a vehicle at 100x score before I found a method) so I don't know if that's true in this version or not, I recall something about manual shift having a plus side now other than being slightly cheaper all around.

I also like 9 in body tech because there is a sweet minicar there, though I think another one was added some years earlier from that which is actually even smaller if I remember correctly.

That's pretty neat because the standard 1000cc 3-cyl design I go for works really well for minicars, and if I start with aluminum pieces on the first engine I can actually build them with contractors for some really lightweight Fun or City hatchbacks. That allows some really light weight cars, though the engines get too expensive at alluminum DOHC-4 to be profitable using contractor engines; I usually do cast iron DOHC-2 now. DAOHC is cheaper but my vans are usually red underpowered with them IIRC; at least until they shed some weight from tech improvements or the engine design improves. Also if you can get your engineering time on the engine set to 7 months that is when the tiny car factory will complete, so with DOHC-2 it can be a small cheap engine that can still power big vehicles not looking at top speed with a few more points in the engy sliders than DOHC-4 with aluminum .

If you start with tiny or no car factory here's a good tip I think: Heavy Delivery  market (at least in Archaea or however that is spelled) with level 5 dealerships sells around what 1 tiny factory can produce at $7.5-10k depending on sliders and markets pretty reliably if there isn't a mistake somewhere. That's not so much in volume but the average customer price is around $8.5k per vehicle AND there is very limited competition, so it makes a good choice imo for the first tiny factory in an Archeae start to make the 1946 van. A downside is Dahlua has different fuel than Archeae so you'll need an engine copy with the correct fuel type to sell there. They don't like H. Delivery like Archeae does though so I don't think I'd bother making a van for Dahlua alone, but things like leaded gas engine trims works until the fuels become more evenly spread. Unlike different models, different fuel engine trims can be assigned to the same factory though I'm not sure if they will produce engines equally or if they will weight production towards the trim in higher demand.

If the van isn't utter garbage it's one of the few things that you can over produce on much farther than you would on most cars and continue selling it for few decades until it's too undesirable to sell at a profit or the fuel standards change. It's super easy to make an ultra desirable van compared to other vehicles, because the characteristics sought are cheap and easy. I use the 1946 van that has just massive cargo capacity. I morph it to be as long as possible (I can't remember if this increases capacity), turn all the sliders except the first one that can't be changed later (that I put at +1 or +2) down to -7 or so, all the stuff that gives + cargo capacity; 10 inch tires, skid plate, and manual locker for offroad; a tiny 1000cc 3 cylinder powers this giant van. While top speed varies with sliders and such, the vans usually end up with a top speed of 30 to 50mph.

The vans top speed range from 30-60mph depending on whether I make them DAOHC, DOHC-2 or -4. If I do DOHC-2 or better and it's set more towards high power rather than efficiency settings the van is yellow underpowered rather than red underpowered. Eventually as engine tech improves you can make the engine more and more efficient and still power the van at yellow underpowered.


Some years later I do a facelift and increase the quality sliders to 0 or +1 or whatever from the first run's -7s, lower the price on the previous model below the replacement at full price. In my last lengthy campaign I was selling 4 model years of the same van at once; the oldest was not being sold for a profit but for more than scrapping while the 3rd oldest sold at production cost and the 2nd somewhere between 3 and 1. That was a few versions ago and I probably was advertising for H. Delivery to some extent. Eventually I made another tiny or upgrade the original to a small car factory, and overproduced the vans for a while before I wrapped up production when the '46 van body just wasn't going to last for another face lift and I retooled one of the factories to make a '60s or early '70s body van. The last stocks for the later models '46s took years to sell but they did eventually; just remember to slash price before the desirability is too low that you won't have time to sell them off.

To show an example, here is my initial production run van in 1947. The thing to note is that the van trim has -10 in all sliders except safety (at -3 safety slider the trim is at 10 safety score because it's still a big van; the 10 safety scoreallows me to continue selling these once safety standards increase from 0 to 10 at some point)

Not sure if there will be riots, protests certainly. I would say a riot may be counter productive as the charges and release of footage are differing factor from previous instances. I would argue such riots would stand the chance of being counter-productive in light of charging decisions and release of footage etc as it would be presented as a reason not to accede to public demands, a decision that already has cultural weights against it.

Protests are more than appropriate however. I think a riot in the face of the unusual accountability-from-the-start would be more harmful to the interests of the rioters themselves, making this accountability even less frequent as the standard position of departments and agencies. Essentially, a rioter would appear to be giving justification to their opposition in this instance

As to the 2nd degree murder charges, I've heard the standard is that there must be knowledge that the assault would result in death. This sounds like it would make it more difficult to convict. However I sarcastically say to that argument that I'm sure there is not a plethora of caselaw where citizens are not convicted under 2nd degree after a person is hit in the head and dies. Whether that is the intent of the law when it was written is often moot after prosecutors have managed to stretch statutes interpretation in higher courts.

Quote from: Lord Shonus on January 24, 2023, 05:11:17 pm

Are you seriously treating the Twitter Files as anything but blatant nonsense? They're nothing more than regurgitated conspiracy theories that just happen to buttress far right narratives, pushed by somebody that just happens to be replatforming extreme-right bigots and just happening to silence people disagreeing with them.

The twitter files are real dude. I don't know what sensationalized version of them you were shown, but all they reveal is that: twitter has a left-wing bias, twitter had private communication channels with both political parties, twitter had private communication channels with the federal government, and that the Hunter biden laptop story was suppressed.

All of this was either public knowledge or a reasonable assumption. The twitter files just confirmed what everyone already knew.

I think that what the Twitter files revealed was that Twitter had moderation practices, the government could make reports regarding posts, but the company itself chose whether to remove them or not. The most significant revelation imo was the utilization of accounts for foreign influence operations that were flagged as un bannable or whatnot.

As to the left-wing bias thing, that seems to me to be complete hogwash. What bias there was appeared to be shielding important twitter accounts from moderation of the sort deployed on less important accounts. For example, an account that mirrored Trump's tweets was repeatedly banned for them.

Essentially, this is one avenue of attack to get rid of Section 230. One side wants to get rid of it's facilitation of moderation by private companies (this) and the other approach is to advocate it's removal in order to sue hosts for not preventing harmful content.

Well, I might stand corrected then. I'd have to do more work than just complaining on the internet to be sure. I had thought that legislative guidance could be used in a court as a sort of deflector shield against law suits that are aimed at impeding the administrative decisions done in support of guidance. I didn't see the non-binding part of it; and I'm not sure if that can be used in such a suit without doing some research on that topic. It would have to be discussed in on the internet somewhere (likely on a law school website) that I find through a search engine unless I went to a state college law library. Techdirt did say it does nothing, which would be the non-binding part; I assumed they might be missing the issue of guidance, if I am using that term correctly. I do agree that the techdirt article could have been clearer about this. I do sometimes read bills and such (see bunker thread) but I don't want to have to. In this case I didn't, which was wrong of me, as I assumed that this was worse than it was (assuming it is non-binding and if it can't be used to defend from suits) from the information I did read. What a fool I was to not read the bill before becoming incensed.

Well, no, if sales are phased out in 2035, thats a ban on sales (of at least new electrics) in 2035. That's plain reading. Even if it's read as guidance, surely there is liscencing from the state involved in regards to the sale of new vehicles. In this way a guidance law can mutate to become an enforcement law through regulatory bodies, if those liscences were denied based on the guidance under the bill, and such a refusal to issue liscence would be upheld in courts unless it runs afoul of Federal law or is otherwise judged to be in conflict with other law or regulation in the state or found unconstitutional. This is because the regulator in charge would be bound by the guidance to phase out sales by 2035; or at least they would be resistant to suit to prevent such phaseout as the intent of the bill states a goal of phasing out new electric vehicles sales in the state.

I haven't played any of the FF games at length past 9. I agree with you on VIII, that one was grindy with the draw mechanic, though I liked the story and characters. I liked 9 more as a game, it felt more like 6 than either 7 or 8, though I liked the less cartoony art style in 8 more. I tried one I can't recall the number of on Xbox IIRC when I was living with room mates who had it, but was somewhat disappointed with it, perhaps unfairly, having come from the earlier iterations of front/back line setup instead of the running around in 3d; that one felt like single player Everquest sort of. My favorites in the series are 6, 5, and 7 in that order, with 8 and 9 right behind in unsure order as I liked different things about them. I also liked the Chrono Trigger game, never played the sequel; and oddly enough Mystic Quest was one of my favorites even though it was one of the most barebones; probably because I played a ton of it at a young age because it was one of the rentals available at a local movie rental store.

The console only release is kind of disappointing just as it is for any game that does that, though I probably wouldn't have bought it right off the bat (limited budget, not a hit at it's quality which I haven't assessed).

It's good to hear it might be a quality game.

I've heard some minor complaints about practices by Square in a business rather than creative sense so I left the FF series remakes off my wishlist on Steam when I cleaned that out the last time. They had been sitting there a long time anyhow. Something about C&D orders for using their art assets but then being caught with a Getty images copyright in some of their art in a game, I can't recall specifically.

The series has always had outstanding music, I still love the Veldt song from 6. If you feel like making your own version of the song, I'd guess many of the old songs are available in midi format somewhere. You can open such a midi file in the free trial version of FL Studio (just export the result before closing out the program, as the trial version can't save project files but can export a finished mp3/whatever format) and replace the midi instruments for other instruments, because the notes will remain the same after the midi instrument is replace by a different instrument. That was how I made some music for the LCS game using classical music midis; it was quite easy comparitive to making an original song. Most of the synthesizers have a list of presets to choose from so it's almost accessible to those who haven't the experience to know what knobs and sliders to wiggle around, in that if they can receive direction to that point of picking presets it's a simple swap out of instruments, takes only a few clicks per instrument.

Yeah, I think it was the Snake now that I think about it, thanks E. Albright. I forgot it was colored green but I remember now that you mention it.

I think the FAUST can use airballs after all, but I already unlocked Krazy Hannah and put some 2x25mm on it. I also built two more FAUST with the small engines I was right to send to storage in other bases, and started another base, this time in the Steel Pact. Hawaii (whatever crazy nation that's a part of in this game) and New Zealand (I think part of Death Realms?) are the last two I'd need for covering most of the world in radar if I make it to the last radar installation. Then I put a big factory on the North Pole and should have one more spot open. I can probably tank the infamy hits from the Eurosyndicate, but I'd put a base there if they eventually stop protection payments or start raiding my bases.

I unlocked metal armor and can buy RPGs from Krazy Hannah, so I should be able to do the other base attack mission as well. I'll also try out the Mortar next outdoor mission unless I forgot to pack it onto the BLOWFISH. I might wait for chainmail.