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Author Topic: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [Castle Motors: COMPLETE!]  (Read 58188 times)

Sensei

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Re: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [1955: Baron Proposal]
« Reply #60 on: July 13, 2020, 02:08:55 pm »

I checked up on what our production numbers would be if we constructed the Baron in the Carsmith's Workshop. Instead of around 4400 Urists, we could make 4000 Baron Wagons, or 3000 Baron Sedans (that's the penalty from the Luxury interior- ouch!) or 2000 Wagons and 1500 Sedans. This would necessitate a Medium 1 engine factory for the V8 engine either way. If we wanted we could also do something like make the Baron Sedan in a Small factory and dedicate the Carsmith's Workshop entirely to the Wagon. I can't fine-tune production numbers, but I can enable or disable the production of certain trims in certain factories entirely.
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Aseaheru

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Re: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [1955: Baron Proposal]
« Reply #61 on: July 13, 2020, 02:40:03 pm »

 Well, 2k+1.5k is enough to handle our awareness-limited numbers and then some(even with standard Family sticking its oar in). It does say to me that that factory will want upgrading in future to handle increased demand, perhaps arround 1st facelift?

 Anyways, my current sketch of a plan is this:
Quote from: plan
Go with the Baron(both wagon and sedan) in Carsmith's Workshop, upgrade Carsmiths to M3.
Upgrade engine factory to compensate(to M2)
In 1960 design revised Migrant and construct new medium factory for it with engine factory in Archana to supply shitbox market. Figure out whats going in the Migrant in 1960 because we are getting new toys, arent we?
Thats about 875m, right? We can still afford that?
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andrea

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Re: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [1955: Baron Proposal]
« Reply #62 on: July 13, 2020, 03:25:48 pm »

hm. I like the idea of building a small factory for the sedan and retooling Carsmith for the Baron. Although I don't know anything about the game, so take that with a grain of salt.

Honestly, being stuck with just one factory seems like a drag, can't do anything without disrupting production.

Sensei

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Re: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [1955: Baron Proposal]
« Reply #63 on: July 13, 2020, 04:54:35 pm »

So, the projected cost of upgrading our Carsmith Workshop to Medium 3, retooling it for the Baron, and starting a new engine factory is about 1.5B. This actually makes it slightly more expensive than opening up a new Medium 1 factory, but we do get a medium engine factory instead, which means we're well-equipped to open two full-size car lines later. This would have a predicted output of 2500 wagons and 2000 sedans. For the record, we should have no trouble selling this many, although the sedans will take a little bit to get going.

If I don't hear too many complaints, I'll go ahead and replace the Urist with the Baron. Then we can get this show on the road. When Archana opens up, we will probably want to start a new factory for a new budget model there. It might need an engine factory upgrade, but we will probably be able to supply both the Baron Wagons and whatever our new budget model is with engines from one factory (possibly a new engine!).

For now, I'm assuming no new 4-cylinder engine prototype, but we will gain SOHC familiarity from our V8. We still don't have a cool name for the V8, so I'm just calling it the Baron Engine for now.
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Aseaheru

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Re: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [1955: Baron Proposal]
« Reply #64 on: July 13, 2020, 08:09:32 pm »

 If we are doing Migrant, I still want a B4, but with us waiting to start on the Migrant for after Baron is in production, well...
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MrRoboto75

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Re: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [1955: Baron Proposal]
« Reply #65 on: July 13, 2020, 08:32:08 pm »

The V8 should be called the Pumpstack.
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Sensei

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Release the Baron

For the final production, I've played around with the engineering a little more and decided that extending to 60 months, plus increasing the chassis quality up to 0 (since we can't change that later) will give our model a lot more longevity. That's an 895 million dollar loan with 161 million in interest- oof.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, hopefully we stay nice and profitable, because I've gone and dumped a LOT of money into R&D. That's 1.5 million per month in total on top- there's a bonus cost to investing in multiple different categories.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We might be pushing it with no Urist sales for the whole factory retooling time, a downside of not building a second car factory. But, the Urists's successor can be built in a new, cheaper to operate factory in Archana. ...hopefully this is all worth it, because the Urist factory will be offline for a full 2 years while it upgrades from Medium 2 to Medium 3 and re-tools. That's around 300 million in lost profits.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As time rolls on, we've repaid our original loans, and our profits have grown. I'm trying desperately to build up extra stock, but our cars are selling fast and the factory still can't keep up. By the way, the partially filled red bar on the timeline represents our back-stock of cars, it's long because I've set a target of 18 months or something. We also got on the hook for taxes. $1.9M per month!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...and make that $4M per month. Ouch! If only we could hide our money somewhere it wouldn't be taxed. Or funnel it into lobbying or something.


First month of factory construction. We're selling cars faster than we were ever producing them. I actually wonder if we might have been okay without the billion-dollar loan we took out. At this stage our net income is 15M, with 26M of monthly payouts from the loan, so we could probably be less than 500M in the red by completion without the loan. That's cheesy, of course (you don't pay interest on negative balance, just lose credit rating), but it works in the current version of Automation. In the expenses pie chart, red is the car factory construction cost (per month), blue in the engine factory, and green is taxes- apparently selling all these cars means we need to pay for roads.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Since we're selling premium cars, I'm taking the liberty of opening dealerships in Dalluha a year before release. I'm also upping our advertising in Fruinia to increase our awareness for premium markets.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Launch day! You can see the competitiveness of the new Baron on the timeline- it's so-so.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh no- our first Production Issue! Despite having the lowest chance (0.4%) of our three facilities for a production issue to occur, the Engine Smelter's Workshop has had a problem with our Urist MC Engines, we've made a bunch of bad gaskets that are springing oil leaks or something, and it's affected our engines made in the last month or two. We can basically choose whether we want to issue a full recall, with mail-out letters and everything. Our alternatives would be to pay for it when it gets fixed, but not advertise the issue (Quiet Recall), or try to ignore it. As you can see, this has various expenses and consequences to our Reputation and Prestige. Our reputation gets dinged a little in a full recall, but a lot more if we ignore it and it gets discovered. Our prestige isn't hurt at all by a full recall, it's what a high-end manufacturer would do for their customers, but it IS hurt if a cover-up is discovered. In this case, I'm going to do the full recall, I don't think 2.2M and 1.0 Reputation cost is all that bad. If we get a big one in the future though, I'll pause for you guys to decide.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


June, 1960 Review: The Baron has been out for a few months now and its sales aren't as stellar as the Urist. Right now we're making less profit than we did before, and it's not close to our loan repayments- we're trying to pay back a billion dollars in four years, which may have been aggressive in retrospect. Our credit rating has dropped to B+. You can see on the timeline that the competitiveness of the Wagon is much higher than that of the Sedan, which is sub-par. So overall, keeping the Urist as our main car seems like it may have been the better strategy in retrospect...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
...but not all hope is lost. Remember the Urist got similar performance numbers on launch, so we'll facelift the Baron and see if it has more potential.

Here's our market awareness numbers for Fruinia and Internationally, as well as our total sales numbers. As you can see, it's getting a little hard to judge anything from overall awareness, since some countries have lower numbers overall, or in specific markets.
Spoiler: Fruinia Awareness (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Sales Numbers (click to show/hide)

Another important thing: new safety ratings! The Urist would be barely passing the 10 mark at this point. By 1970 safety ratings are climbing fast, but we don't need to worry about the Baron, it's well ahead of its time.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In R&D, there's not a lot of big stuff on the horizon, but we have unlocked a lot of things, and we have more quality numbers to play with, which will take effect for facelifts and new models. Of the major new techs, Transverse FWD will be a boon for cheap cars. We also have Light Truck Monocoque chassis, which is pretty specifically useful for trucks and vans. Disc brakes will benefit our current car lineup considerably. We also have a couple techs that will require a little more decision making as to whether we should implement them: Advanced 60's Safety, and Mechanical Fuel Injection. The safety would be great for the Baron, but re-engineering the safety basically adds one to two years of engineering just on its own, so we might wait for a new model or a later facelift. MFI is a similar story but for engines: it would be a large benefit to both power and fuel economy, but time consuming to engineer.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What Next?

The Baron needs a Facelift pronto, with better engineering and new features such as disc brakes. The only controversial part is whether or not we should update to the new safety features which just unlocked.
Do we need a new model? It's probably time we replaced the Urist. However, we're not well positioned to build a new factory because, well, we don't have income from the Urist. If we share our existing engine factory which is currently underused, we can afford a Medium 1, maybe a Medium 2 or 3 car factory if we're feeling ballsy, but we definitely won't be able to afford a Large. At least land is about 40% cheaper in Archana, where we will probably want to build our new factory.
New economy engine? If we're making a new economy model, then having a new economy engine to go with it makes sense. We can install it in the Baron Wagon too. If we want, we could always start a prototype now. I would recommend doing this instead of putting it into the Baron Wagon on the first try, because otherwise we won't be able to finish the Baron Wagon's next facelift until the engine is done, leaving crappy Gen 1 Barons on the market for years.

Bonus: Hot Lap
The Baron, an actual performance vehicle, has completed the Test Track in 3:01! It even passed through the Slingshot at a blistering 103MPH! I've recorded a video of me trying to match this time in BeamNG.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh yeah, and the Dropbox folder has been updated with the new cars. Go try them yourself!

Replies to posts while I was writing this post: Pumpstack, heh. As for B4, I don't think it's likely to be worth it over an I4 at this point, but I'll do it if people vote for it. Either way, it's time to design a new engine model... PROBABLY. If we want our car to UNBELIEVABLY CHEAP then there is still no beating pushrods, which means we can still stay with the Urist MC for a while. But, in my opinion it would be very wise to design a SOHC economy engine.
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mightymushroom

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Whatever else we do, get the Baron refreshed as quickly as we can this time around.

It appears in the screenshots that any given project has a unified design time? Maybe we can work on the new cheapo engine and the the new cheapo car side by side, using the Urist MC as a stand-in to get the Migrant started, and then a pre-production "refresh" to combine the two? Does that make any sense?

@Aseaheru, is there any advantage to the B4 in the budget market that would override our considerable knowledge of how to make I4? My understanding is that the main advantage is smoother running and maybe fitting into tight spaces, doesn't seem to be an issue so far.

-----
Watching the video, it reminds me how my father had a car with rather "soft" steering at the time I was learning to drive. Man, I couldn't stay straight for two seconds the first few times I tried it.
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MrRoboto75

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The boxer engine sits lower in the car, lowering center-of-gravity.

If the eco car is going to be transverse FF, a boxer won't fit very well, as they are fat.  You'd have to use an inline or one of those 60 degree V engines if they exist yet.
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Sensei

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Whatever else we do, get the Baron refreshed as quickly as we can this time around.

It appears in the screenshots that any given project has a unified design time? Maybe we can work on the new cheapo engine and the the new cheapo car side by side, using the Urist MC as a stand-in to get the Migrant started, and then a pre-production "refresh" to combine the two? Does that make any sense?
Projects don't automatically have unified design times, but I almost always tune them so that they're unified. There are a few reasons for this. If I were to start an engine facelift that takes 12 months and a car refresh that takes 32 months, and assign the engine refresh to the old engine factory, then there would be a gap between the engine being done and the car being done- during which we couldn't manufacture the old car, because the factory has already been re-tooled to the new engine and we have no old engines to put in them. Similarly we can't finish the new car before the new engine. So, you can leave those little tick boxes checked on the sign-off screen, which they are by default, and they'll all get done at the same time. But, then you're wasting potential engineering benefits. So, I go back and give the Urist MC Engine 100 Reliability etc until it takes the same number of months.

This can get pretty inconvenient later. I think we can re-tool factories without a project facelift, or maybe that's in a coming update, but I've never done it, and you can't see tooling/construction times easily. So once we have multiple cars using the same engine, basically everything has to update in lock step. If there is a new engine type, all cars must use it instead of the old engine type, and you can't leave some on the old one. So they need to be facelifted, so the engine needs to get done at the same time, etc etc. It can be very inconvenient, especially if you do something like make a new model with an old engine which will take a long time- you can't update the engine in the middle, or if you do, the new model of car will find itself with no engines.

Anyway, I came in because I forgot something: new bodies! Don't forget the '55 2.0m "mini cooper" style body either, if we're going for an ultra-cheap car, small can do well. It will just tend to overlap with city/commuter instead of family utility. The trucks that go off the screen have convertible and non-convertible 2 and 4 door utility variants, and vans, I believe.
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Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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King Zultan

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A face lift for the Baron sounds like the way to go, and I think the new economy car should be the ugliest thing we make so I say we go for the Volkswagen van looking thing and put the cheapest I4 engine we can make in it.
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Fishbreath

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The Baron's 'hot' lap is maybe the funniest thing I've seen so far today. Look at that luxurious roll! I'm going to plug in my racing wheel tonight and see if I can match the computer's time in Beam NG.

I agree with Zultan on next steps.

In my own Automation game, Linguini Motors has thus far not survived past about 1960 on three attempts—I don't have a very good sense for when I have enough money to expand.

mightymushroom

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-explanations-
Ah, I had some odd conceptions about how it all fits together. Never mind, then.

-----

So what we're looking at long term is to start the Migrant and a new cheap engine to go with it. Keep track of the time, and refresh the Baron on a schedule such that the Wagon trim gets an engine upgrade at as close to the same time the new engine produces as we can manage.

We can give the Baron one, maybe even two minor facelifts during the wait. One is much needed immediately.

A face lift for the Baron sounds like the way to go, and I think the new economy car should be the ugliest thing we make so I say we go for the Volkswagen van looking thing and put the cheapest I4 engine we can make in it.
You mean the '60 2.2m truck/bus/van with the cab over the front axle? It's just so goofy yet also spacious looking, it's perfect for dwarves. Gets my choice.
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King Zultan

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You mean the '60 2.2m truck/bus/van with the cab over the front axle? It's just so goofy yet also spacious looking, it's perfect for dwarves. Gets my choice.
Yeah that's the one, forgot to mention the numbers.
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EuchreJack

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Well Sensei, I think you'll have to give up on your career as a Gran Turismo driver, but you could probably find work as an announcer.  :P
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