Into the 90'sAlright, now we're ready to go! The last thing we needed to be ready for the new decade was a muscle car that gets 10 miles to the gallon, apparently. Well, we'll just consider ourselves lucky that emissions and fuel efficiency requirements don't exist in the current version of the game.
The ColossusI've made a few final tweaks. It's got much stiffer suspension, as well as traction control and Advanced 90's safety, both of which are at -2 quality for now because they're advanced, but we'll be able to bring them up in the first facelift. I also added some brake airflow, because there was brake fade even with massive brakes. Here's the final stats in a new Bronze color.
Everyone who says it needs to come from the dealer with flames or skulls or some other tasteless decals... well, I agree with you, but those are fixtures and you'll have to design them yourself. I'll be uploading the car file as usual, and you'll have no problem finding decal fixtures on the Steam workshop if you're interested.
One more important design feature I don't think I mentioned: it's actually using an electronic limiter to keep its top speed below 186mph (300kph I think), otherwise the tires become insanely expensive and the Muscle demographic suddenly can hardly afford it, so the competitiveness drops. If your performance car gets worse competitiveness when you add power, either this or wheelspin is usually the reason. I only recently realized though, there is a tooltip which actually shows to tire cost multiplier. Just look at that!
The tooltip partially hides it but left image has the speed limiter set to 186mph and right image has the speed limiter set to 193mph. The tire cost multiplier more than triples.
Usually you can reduce the car's top speed through gearing instead, but in this case it creates too much wheelspin. Luckily we're using EFI which gives us the ability to use the speed limiter.
This car (and engine) both use a lot of production units. I'm aiming for a Large 1 factory for each, that will produce around 8000 cars, I think later we can engineer that close to 10,000 in later facelifts and that will be plenty for the market since we have some cars that overlap into Muscle already. A Large 2 would make around 13000 and with the demographic sizes I think that would be pushing it. As usual, I'm targeting the engineering to 5 years for a new model, which means some engineering sliders are reduced.
For the engine factory, I've noticed a bug... or at least some strange behavior. The Large 1 Engine Factory in Archana has recall chance go UP when worker wages go up, and DOWN when worker wages go down, when I would expect the opposite. Well, I always knew those damn labor unions just encouraged workers to be lazy! Archanans work the hardest when you keep them starving just a little.
Slowdown is affected as normal and I could probably afford to tweak QA accordingly, but I still thought this was weird.
Heheh, "Quality Ass"...The forecast tool estimates that the Colossus will be most profitable at EXACTLY a 20% markup, falling off steeply at 15% or 25%. I think this is because it gets past the $26,0000 median affordability for Muscle if we go higher. However, as our Awareness in muscle improves, I'm sure we will see our margin go up as well.
In case anyone skipped the posts in between this episode and the last one, I'd just like to reiterate that we're going to sell a 12.0L V10 RWD manual muscle wagon.
Revisions: Moving in Lock-StepNow we're officially in the late game: we have a wide variety of models, and many of them share engines. For every time we facelift an engine, every model which uses it must facelift as well and complete at the same time (if we want to avoid a gap in production). Luckily, we don't have any models which use two different engines, which would tangle them together even more. Still, now we must be careful that no one model's facelift has features which make it take much longer than the others. At least, not if we're actually trying to be optimal for sales numbers. But if we're not, then what's the point of Campaign? Well, besides proving that General Motors totally should have sold a 12 liter manual-only muscle wagon for $24,000 in the 90's, and anything less was doing wrong by the consumer.
The Pumpstack CarsThe LMP and Rapture both share the Pumpstack engine. They're also slightly at odds for tuning, so it might be time to make the engine into two variants.
Starting off with the
Rapture, I'm noticing that we're staying at 120 competitiveness on the Hub screen. This means our sales are probably being limited by demographic sizes/awareness, not by margins, so it might actually be time to make a trim. First thing's first, the engine though. VVT adds 2 PU and only helps with Budget demographics (it saves fuel close to idle, basically). My first thought was no, but double-checking the market screen, we actually sell more to Sport Budget than to Sport. That's not necessarily beneficial to our margins, but what the hell, I can try it out. Oh yeah, I'm also getting rid of that negative fuel system quality- yay!
Surprisingly, this also lets me up the cam profile. The competitiveness scores were steering me towards a lower cam, but it wasn't that the care was making too much power, fuel efficiency was the issue. Or at least, that's what I assume, because after VVT is installed the regular Sports demographics like a higher cam. Hey, wait a moment... fuel efficiency? I need to turn Archana off in the market screen. Bloody poor people ruining sports cars for everyone. Once I turn that off, I can see that this car is scoring better in Budget than in regular demographics... time to increase the power! With a ball-bearing turbo, more cams, more compression, and more exhaust, we've gained about 70 horsepower at the peak and lost very little power on the bottom end. This will probably be good enough for the LMP too.
The Rapture itself gets a gearing tweak, including the AWD being changed to 50/50 (it was biased to the front before). It also gets quality improved, interior to +2, and ABS is no longer negative. I'm skipping traction control and adaptive shocks for this round. It's up about 10 points in the areas that matter.
I tried out a hard-top version as well. With only 2 seats, it scores 172 in Light Sport, which is cool, but with 4 seats, it gets us access to the GT, GTP, Fun P. Then I switched from that to the 4-door version, which gets good scores in Family Sport Premium (a much larger demographic!) at very little penalty to the others. So, this is the new Rapture Hard-Top trim. Hopefully, we'll see our margins go up with the wider appeal.
I'm initially dialing the Rapture's engineering in to 26 months, because I want to get the new trim out but this still gives me time to increase Automation a lot and go from 4000 to 4800 cars produced, about (with a major factory retooling that causes 10 months downtime but oh well).
Now we have to tune the LMP to handle the increased engine power and see what new features we can get... while keeping the engineering time down. First off, it looks like we've fallen out of competitiveness with the Super demographic, but the new engine brings us right back up. Once again, they like the AWD evened out, which helps with wheelspin. At a glance, I'm not seeing better scores out a more aggressive engine tune, so we're shelving the idea of a separate engine variant for now. Playing around with the options, nothing really seems to make an improvement in the scores much. I did give it a wing which helped a little when properly tuned, but mostly because I felt like it was needed in Beam. It also gets adaptive shocks. Tuning the engineering to 26 months gets us a lot more automation again. It's still not scoring like a "true" super car... we might have to try actually making an all-out super/hyper car in a small factory some time. I signed off before I got a market screenshot and the numbers seem to go wacky after you do that if you look at it in the museum, so here's a picture of it with the wing anyway.
Lastly, the Pumpstack factory is being worked close to its limit and there's not a ton of room to improve it (Automation is at 80 and it has add-on buildings already). This is fine for now but might be a problem if we want to keep increasing the Rapture's output. Tooling it close to 100 will make the retool times very long.
The Noble gets like 5 different car and engine variants deleted from when I was trying to turn it into a muscle car with limited success. But, the big change is going to be the new factory, and the Premium and Luxury targeted variants will each be manufactured separately. For the motor, ball bearing turbo scores lower (I think exclusively due to the $100 added material cost? What the hell, cheapasses) but I'm adding it anyway because it makes more power, and earlier. Along with the fuel system improvements come more compression and boost. Not enough change in the graph to really justify a screenshot, I think.
The car itself gets a little wider tires to help with wheelspin, as well as traction control. It also gets a quality notch on the tires, and it could use a quality on the brakes... but it won't get one, because increasing quality actually causes MORE brake fade somehow. It's only 0.1% but still, another weird slider today. Since there's some brake fade still, I end up going to larger wheels so I can fit 350mm brakes. I even added brake airflow to this car too. They still don't want to pay up for vented discs, though... I guess we're already up to $500 material cost for the front brakes alone. Also, I'm pretty sure this window is a typo and should say "Larger Front Brakes."
Interior quality is going up! Just going from +1 to +3 costs us 5 PU, but I think we can afford it since we're going to be moving into a bigger factory.
Lastly, it's going AWD. It adds Drivability, and luxury/premium like that a lot. This puts the handling on a bit of a weird middle ground, but they seem to like it that way. Trying to tune more towards drivability causes them to lose some of their almost-zero sportiness, which I think they like a lot more than the actual zero sportiness they had before. In retrospect though, this removes the need for traction control, so that goes away.
The Luxury version of the car gets EVEN BIGGER wheels, now at 18 inches, and accordingly bigger brakes. It doesn't get any positive interior quality, it's just too expensive on hand made interior. Similarly, there's no interest in a Luxury CD Player.
In the Medium factory, we're only going to make the DeLuxe version. There's something wacky with the recall%... it used to be 0, now it's an astonishing 2.3%, regardless of changing the trims produced in the factory. So, I can safely say that 0% earlier was a bug, either that or this is a bug (or both). Well, the QA slider goes back up and we lose several hundred cars per month, but oh well.
It's a similar story for the engine factory, which is a bigger problem, because we're going to have a major engine shortage. I'll spare you the screenshots, but I basically decided that I can get a new Medium 3 Engine Factory up and running in 37 months, so that's what I'll do. I was originally looking at 35 months engineering, (a lot of that comes from going from -8 to +0 in fuel system quality, and increasing automation on the car) so that's not too bad. When all is said and done, here's the numbers we're looking at: about 7500 Premium and 3500 Luxury trims per month.
The Waterwheel CarsThe Waterwheel is our most prolific engine by far, in the Alpaca, Minecart, Hauler, and Migrant. We get the most benefits from improving it, but it also delays the most cars if we get too elaborate. Playing with the Alpaca as a test bed, we get vastly better fuel efficiency from increasing the fuel system quality and adding VVT. It also gets more boost, at which point it's ready to have the exhaust and intercooler made a little larger too, so it's gaining power as well. Relatively speaking, we've gained about 10% more power and 20% more fuel efficiency, which is crazy.
The engine is going to take 48 months to engineer, so that's the target for all our cars to follow.
The Alpaca itself gets a 4-speed automatic, and while I hoped to consider ABS, it's not getting that, because it would still take too long to engineer. This new transmission gets it up to 62mph without wheelspin in a blistering, uh... time that still wouldn't be impressive if it were a quarter mile time.
At some point, I lost a chunk of score (left before, right after) and I'm not sure where. Now they'd technically like it more with a 3-speed again, but I'm sticking with the 4-speed because I am stubborn like that. Fake Edit: Now I'm leaving that first bit in, but it turns out I went back to the hub and got Archana turned on in the market screen again. Archana throws off the average enough that the accumulated score prefers 3-speed. Dammit Archana!
Alpaca's markets now look like this, with Archana turned off. Note the 41.8 miles per gallon! Not bad for a 5-door station wagon.
On the Huge factory setup screen, major tooling has deteriorated enough since we last refreshed it that it's going to need repairs. This will cause a downtime of 17 months, ouch! Fortunately the Large factory will still be running for part of that time. In this screenshot, it's increased to 18 because I bumped up some sliders.
The New Minecart's scores are through the roof as soon as the new engine is dropped in, City and related demographics love the gas mileage. It does have some brake issues though: there's brake fade, and if the brakes get any bigger they exceed the wheels grip. ABS improves the competitiveness, but they still don't like brake force to exceed grip (it might just be the cost of larger brakes that is the issue). They also hate brake airflow because it hurts gas mileage, so I guess we're stuck with some brake fade. When we get to engineering we'll see if the ABS is even an option.
There's barely any changes, so we have room for a ton of engineering improvements. Then, revisiting the market screen gets even higher scores.
46 miles per gallon combined! Take that, Geo Metro! Okay, now I have one more concern... even with the sliders pretty extreme (+42% engineering time modifier) the safety engineering for the Minecart WITH ABS is a lot less than the Alpaca WITHOUT ABS. This makes me think the Alpaca is starting to suffer from the Hauler Curse where the safety just takes way longer to engineer than it should, even without changes. I don't know if it's caused by creating and deleting new trims or switching safety features back and forth in the designer, or something like integer rollover with the familiarity, but I definitely suspect something fishy is going on.
The Hauler Mk2 gets a big new feature! Not ABS, no, apparently that's too expensive to be worthwhile for delivery vehicles that have brakes exceeding their unloaded grip. Nobody's interested in tech that helps stop the giant van and 1500lb of stuff it's hauling. But, they're willing to shell out for a Basic Cassette Player! Delivery drivers rejoice. Oh, it actually does get brake airflow- I seem to have overlooked that with a lot of these cars.
[/img][/spoiler]
The wagon version, however, has an interest in full traction control (they do suffer from wheelspin a lot).
The Migrant, last of the bunch, gets traction control, to help with wheelspin which comes from the very low gearing. Other than that I can't think of much to change. Its scores look like they might be slipping, though.
I felt around for new trims, and I think the utility version might actually be worth producing. Despite having only one seat row, it gets okay scores in Offroad Utility and Utility. I thought this wasn't the case earlier, but what the hell, may as well produce it. The soft-top version, on the other hand, seems to score worse in every single demographic, so that's right out.
Lastly, in engineering, I brought reliability up to 65 to give it an extra edge. That should count for these demographics. And then finally, we're ready to move forward! This is what people are talking about when they say the late game can be a slog. I'm going to have to go through this whole rigamarole all over again in the next update. I might not screenshot every vehicle. Heck, to stay sane, I probably won't go all-out in optimizing them.
Into the 90'sSo, finally, everything is signed off. I've dumped $100M or so into dealerships and advertising because we're pushing our awareness limits in some demographics. Since I'm putting it like that, it seems silly to only spend $25M on R&D, so I'll up that too. Here's the new spending:
If I close the details on the timeline, you can see everything in engineering. The only project that will finish after the Huge factory is done is the Colossus- I might stop this episode before it releases. Just off the bat, our net profit is down to $300M. Arguably this means we should be spending more money, but I'm content to let it rake in for now.
Oh boy, my favorite pop-up! I'm probably going to have to close several of these. Basically, it says that our factory has started tooling, but the tooling hit-points were less than expected when I originally signed off on the tooling cost, so the cost will be higher. This happens because the factory is overworked. It gives us the option to take out a loan or have the refreshed factory start with less hit points, but obviously I'm just going to pay it because it's only a few days worth of profit. I really wish there was an option to auto-pay these, or at least auto-pay them if they're under a certain amount.
Shortly after this, I paid out $16.8M and 0.2 Reputation over an Alpaca factory quality issue. Two months later, $7M for the Pumpstack factory. Two months after that, $10M for the LMP factory. I get it, the factories are overworked, I know, just let me play the game. Three months later, the Noble factory...
Rapture/LMP release!I'll have to see how these stabilize, but immediately on release, the margins for our sports car facelifts are far better than for the initial run. Things seem to be looking up for our Pumpstack-based cars.
This also calls for an immediate refresh! More compression on the Pumpstack, and the LMP gets more camber all around for a higher cornering G (a stat I usually ignore during tuning). The LMP and Rapture both get wider gearing for a better 0-60 time, since they aren't close to having wheelspin issues, and the LMP gets brake airflow (did I really not add that already?) There's probably some quality in there from R&D too. We've unlocked a cool-sounding active wing and cooling flaps, but the demographics just don't like them, not even Super. Same story for Premium CD players. When it's all done, I'll spare you the details but the good numbers (including production amounts) are a little bigger, and the engineering time is 22 months. The bad number (time I've spent on this post) is getting steadily bigger, though. I've got to the point where I'm skipping setting a minimum price margin because it loads every time I click the button for 5% more and I just can't be bothered.
Oh shit, 330,000 Waterwheels are bad. I blame Archana again, lazy sloppy workers! $197M isn't THAT bad, but I'm gonna risk it with a quiet recall and see if that works out for the better.
Shortly after this point, our Huge factories begin their long retooling. The remaining Waterwheel factory is badly overworked, at 2.8 shifts. At this point we begin losing money for the first time in a while. Oh yeah, and HIGHER REFRESH COSTS. In the month following this, I get two more Higher Refresh Costs popups, totaling to $200M.
In 1991, the
Noble facelift releases. The sales numbers are slightly weird. We're not hitting 3 months of stock for the DeLuxe version, but we're also selling less than that factory's maximum output, I think. It shouldn't be an engine shortage either. I hope I didn't mess up the factory/trim configuration. Either way, the margins look good and we're selling a lot of them.
Hey, I maxed out advertising in Fruinia! Most of out sales aren't to here, but it's cool to know that we can.
Oof! The issue with the Waterwheel engines has become a public issue. Goodbye, 1.7 Prestige (we still have 22). Oh yeah, shortly after this, I got another Higher Refresh Costs popup. I've not been keeping track but I think we're at risk of exceeding my estimate of "several" and going into "a dozen or more".
Waterwheel Releases: In February, 1992 all our Waterwheel-based cars finally update, after another earnings drought. Pretty quickly, we're earning tons of money again.
September, 1992 ReviewOur Huge factories have finally finished! We have two Huge car factories and two Huge engine factories, all ready to expand existing models or start new projects! We're also back in the black and raking in money in a hurry. Estimating for factory construction costs in the previous month's earnings, we should make a $1 Billion profit this month. If we want, we can pour it into expanding again. We might also see how high we can get our R&D.
I'll skip summarizing in detail, but basically all of our cars are earning a lot of money, you can get exact details in the screenshots above. The Alpaca is still our biggest earner, but it's the only one with a Huge factory, so that could change. The Hauler is second, with its L2 factory, and the Noble is continuing to impress. The New Minecart is bugged in this screenshot, infinite stock and no sales number, its factory has a number of production shifts so I have to assume it's actually selling something. The Colossus won't be on the market for five more months.
Markets:Here's our monthly sales numbers. Don't forget the percentage is the portion of the market we've sold to, relative to our awareness. If it's low, there are more customers that could be buying our cars, and we might want to make more cars that appeal to that category. Of course, the competition can account for a lot of that too. At this point it's a little difficult to say which cars are responsible for which demographic. The Alpaca takes up the majority sales in a wide swath surrounding Family and City, even stuff like Utility Sport or Sport Budget (somewhere there's a bunch of lowered Alpacas with loud exhausts and tribal design vinyls). It looks like we really might not be selling any New Minecarts, I guess I'll just have to hope it fixes itself on a facelift or something.
Here's our Awareness, and the latest demographic sizes. It seems like everything fun-related is continuing to shrink. Actually, everything but Budget and Utility is shrinking, the economy is just down again. I basically never plan around this because the economy will be different whenever my next facelift or model comes out anyway.
Lastly, here's our Untapped Revenue and demographic budgets, just since I haven't posted those in a while. Muscle isn't bad, which bodes well for the Colossus. Family and Delivery are the other big areas. This maybe indicates we should be building more Alpacas or Haulers. Of course, the New Minecart might have good Family overlap appeal if it un-disappears too.
R&D:We've unlocked a whole bunch of chassis materials I talked about last time- those will be worth looking into if we build a new fancy-pants sports car or maybe a very premium lightweight economy car. We've also unlocked VVL and Direct Injection. VVL would require a new engine family, but with these two technologies, we can create the ultimate fuel economy engine. DI is insanely time consuming to engineer and it's an early unlock, so this might be a good choice for a prototype. We've got Standard CDs, Standard 90's safety, and Electronic Stability Control (ESC), the penultimate tech in the ABS/TC line, with ends with Launch Control in like 2011. Semi-Active suspension is here, which will benefit our premium sports and luxury vehicles. Lastly there's exhaust bypass valves. I'm told the way these work is they let the exhaust open up under load, giving you the benefits of loud exhaust for Sportiness but quiet exhaust for Comfort. We also got active aero features, which currently seem to be not beneficial even to Super buyers. Lastly we've unlocked cheapo electric power steering.
Coming up is a much shorter list, we're getting into the late game. As soon as we finish CD's we're getting Satnav systems (3 years). These are unique in that only a Luxury and Premium variant exist, we won't get new Standard/Basic until Infotainment comes along much later. We're also getting Sequential Transmissions in 2.5 years, a transmission only for sports use which also builds familiarity in the more versatile Dual Clutch transmission which unlock much later (I think it does anyway). There's also another VVT unlock coming later, probably VVT with dual cams or something. This stuff isn't labeled clearly!
Bodies! Don't forget we also unlocked all the 1995 bodies, and I've included them in
this previous post. This unlock is comparatively sparse. The '00 2.5m hatch has a slightly taller "people mover" variant similar to the New Minecart, and a van variant in the same shape.
Meeting TimeHuge Factories! It's time to decide what should go in them! Remember we can use a new model or an existing one.
New Models? The LMP is only on its second facelift, but we've just got some great new bodies if we want to make a new Super car. We could make it steel, or we could make it aluminum or something in a small factory if we don't want to replace the LMP. We also might take another stab at replacing the Alpaca. There might also be room for a normal-sized utility vehicle, or even a dedicated Track car, two demographics we aren't selling to much.
More Spending: We're raking in a ton of money. We can dump it into more factories, or continue to increase our R&D. We might also still improve our dealerships. They're getting into diminishing returns, but we do need to move a lot of cars.
Facelifts: Every car is up for a facelift except the Colossus, which isn't done yet. You're free to suggest particular changes.
The
Dropbox is updated! You won't find the Colossus, however, until it gets on the market next episode.
Hot Laps: Nothing big enough for a new video, but I thought I'd see some of the new times. The LMP has shaved off a few seconds to 2:18, not as big a difference as I thought 70 horsepower would make but it's something. The Rapture has also sped up a bit, beating the LMP's old time at 2:21. That's the hard top version- the soft top is half a second slower for whatever reason. The Alpaca is also sliiightly faster, at 3:07 compared to 3:09 when we first upgraded to a turbo. Also not as big a difference as I expected, the Automation track seems to value handling over horsepower.
Bonus Pic: The elusive difference between "Multipoint Single" and "Single-point Per Cylinder" etc fuel injectors: it's the number of throttles.
This does mean "Single-point EFI per cylinder" is, in a literal sense, multi-point EFI... I wonder if there's an actual technical term to distinguish throttle body fuel injection from injection near the valves.
Welp, this one really took me ALL DAY, whew. Let me know if I missed anything important.
Author
Topic: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [Castle Motors: COMPLETE!] (Read 60863 times)