Automation Autoshite Challenge
Open Beta Challenge!
This thing’s grim as fuck.
What is this?
It’s a car shopping round. Except isn’t.
The year is 2019.
Meet Andrew, he’s an average guy working average job in the north of England.
But Andrew has a nasty habit.
He’s a full blown obsessed shiter.
Andrew has a fleet of shite cars lying around his front yard like an ornament. From basic old hatchback to a really obscure French saloon, he has it all.
The problem arise when his daily driver, a shit old ex-minicab bought for £200, conked out on the motorway this evening.
And pretty much immediately, Andrew grabbed his phone, and start browsing Gumtree, Autotrader and eBay.
Andrew vowed to himself ages ago that he’ll never spent more than £1,000 on a car, ever. Why would you spend that leasing a new car when a perfectly serviceable old chod is available everywhere?
Wait, £1,000? How does that work?
It works with the wonder of Excel Spreadsheets.
A long time ago on a CSR, @Dragawn created a spreadsheet that simulated the used car price. It’s a neat little kit that’s very good for representing used car market value. But that was outdated and wouldn’t work.
So he created a new spreadsheet. Which simulates used car market even more accurately.
It uses in game value to calculate 3 scores for each car. Daily driver value, classic car value, and sports car value. This allows old piece of junk to be worth a few hundred currency while a cherished classics can have appreciated value. Also, sports model can have more value than basic old piece of shit car too.
This allows you to create something that’s utterly worthless. Perfect for Andrew.
More than that, I will also be utilising my own Insurance Rate Calculation, which is much simpler. But also created additional challenge for you. This utilised stats such as Sportiness, Prestige, Horsepower and more to simulate UK Auto Insurance purchase. Do not worry that you’ll be paying £3,000 for a £200 car, however. As Andrew is not 17 year old.
This sounds complicated.
You’re right, it is.
Rules.
Only a few simple rules.
Trim Year: 1970-2006.
The car must be road legal to the trim year. This means a few things.
- Your car must have all the required fixture, headlamps, taillamps, indicators, door handle, visible fuel filler cap, mirror.
- Leaded Petrol is only permitted for any car made before 1989. But you may go Unleaded before then.
- Catalytic Converter is mandatory post-1989.
Cost.
As stated, the budget is £1,000. Using this spreadsheet to determine the price of the car.
Price Calc.zip (10.5 KB)
Also, yearly Insurance rate is capped at £500. Using this spreadsheet.
Insurance Calc.zip (8.1 KB)
Judging
The scoring will be done using anorther formula table that has been through a very thorough testing. The concept used is very similar to the one for demographics formula in the game. Courtesy of Leonardo9613
It utilizes the bell/normal distribution, a concept that is widely used in statistics, to represent the behaviour of several natural systems. By calculating the integral of the curve up to a certain point (the area underneath the curve), it is possible to determinate the percentage of items that are before that car. For example, in the old-fashioned IQ tests, if a certain subject had a score of 130, it would theoretically mean that the subject had a higher IQ than 97.8% of the population. This method can be used for comparing cars, because the vast majority are very close to average, whereas the few outliers will get their score accordingly.
In this case, for this challenge, the automatic scoring sheet calculates the standard deviation, the average and all the coefficients depending on the cars tested, therefore the formula only works with more than one car. If, by chance, all cars are very closely matched in a certain area, the sheet adapts itself to have a higher standard deviation value, thus dampening the otherwise very big variations that could follow.
The scoring works as follows: a value of 50 means that the car is perfectly average, 84.1 means that the car is one standard deviation better than average, in other words, a lot better than the class.
The final score is an weighted average of all relevant stats. The weights were set after extensive testing and are set to represent the relevance of each stat for the buyers.
So what exactly is Andrew looking for?
Everything, basically.
There are priorities to this purchase, but basically every stats is going to be looked at.
High Priority: Comfort, Safety, Prestige, Performance (Acceleration, Speed, Lateral Grip, everything), Cost (To buy, to service), Reliability. Maybe more.
Medium Priority: Drivability, Seat Count.
Low Priority: Design, Practicality, Utility.
There are 2 ways you can go with this. Either specialised the car in specific area, or make a jack of all trades. The cars are compared relative to each other.
Also, the types of car will not have much importance as long as the stated stats are okay. This means anything goes, Sedan, SUV, Van, Shitpost, Convertible Sports Car. As long as it fits in the budget.
You can either go with older, more luxurious car, or more modern but cheaper model. There are advantages to both.
Submission.
Basic naming system.
Engine name: SHITE - [forum username]
Engine variant: [engine name]
Car name: SHITE - [forum username]
Car trim: [car name]
As the ruling is extremely lenient. No resubmission will be allowed.
Inspiration?
Look at the prime chod in the top picture. Alternatively, anything that is going to appeal to Autoshite forum.
