Building a Postwar Europe Car is impossible

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It Starts with the Body Types.

Postwar most Cars still had Slabside Bodies and were quite heavily based on the Pre-War Cars. Especially Sports Cars still were built with quite a lot of Wood in the Bodywork.
Most of the smaller Cars were already Monocoque, like the 4CV or the Opel Olympia.
Then of Course many of the Cars were Rear Engined.

Transverse Leaf Sprung Axles were still very common in FIAT and Trabant, as well as Goggomobil, and especially the French had very advanced Cars, especially Citroen using fully independent Torsion Bar Suspension on the Traction Avant, and the 2CV with it’s 4 Arm linked Suspension.

80 Octane Fuel was standard in Europe into the 50s, in Eastern Europe 67 were normal, 72 and 78 were High Performance Aircraft Fuels in their Eyes.
So I challenge any of you Guys to build me a 1946 Engine, OHV, with about 25hp/l, without using insane Cam Profiles, while getting about 25MPG per ton using 80 Octane
You will find that 6:1 Compression is waaay too high, and about 5 were normal.

It’s also rather sad that we can’t have 2 Cylinder, Aircooled or 2 Stroke Engines.

I also find that the Markets tend to be very American overall, and don’t reflect the Values of the Average European Post War Motorist, which were almost entirely Economical, Comfortable and Practical while the
Game discourages Bank Seating and the Game calls Cars underpowered that were perfectly acceptable back then, complains about normal Tire Choices back then etc.

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Have you tried switching the market from Gasmea to Fruinia or have you tried all of them?

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Heyya!

Let me address some of these points:

Postwar most Cars still had Slabside Bodies and were quite heavily based on the Pre-War Cars. Especially Sports Cars still were built with quite a lot of Wood in the Bodywork.

Yes, that is not planned for now, we have to limit the scope of the game and its content to be able to finish it. That is the same answer to many of the things you mention, so I shall not repeat that point more than here saying that it is a really important one (time and money and all that). It is more important to fill gaps in car body styles such that the campaign and AI can run smoothly than to add prewar car styles as a starting point. That being said there will of course be more car bodies coming for every (post war) era.

There will be a ton of rear-engined car options for the early years in the next big update.

Most of the smaller Cars were already Monocoque

Yes, that will most likely be possible in the campaign via engineers and the tech pool system.

80 Octane Fuel was standard

In regards to fuel I’m definitely looking into changing how it is dealt with in the campaign from a gameplay point of view. Indeed I find there to be a lack of progression, but that is more or less a “simple” balancing issue which can only be addressed properly in an environment in which the campaign is fully playable. The problem arising there is the massive jump between 80 and 90-something octane, leading to all kinds of complications. We probably can pretty easily add a bit of space down in octane on the compression slider, OR get rid of 85 octane and replace it with something that would play better, like 85. The latter is a 5min “fix”, while properly implementing it differently might be a lot of effort and needs to be worth it as a whole. As it stands, 80 RON doesn’t work as intended.

underpowered cars were fine

They were fine and they were not. You can’t tell me that if the 4CV had double its power that it wouldn’t have been a massively more drivable car. The issue you are pointing out here is competition. If in Automation there is only YOU in a region competing, then of course they will get over the fact that your cars only have 8hp or what it was. :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you for the feedback!
Cheers guys

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Joke is on you, as my least powerful “Car” is a Piaggio Ape 50, with 250kg of Payload, 2 Seats in the Dry, a Flatbed and 3.5hp. Speeds depend on Wind Speed, but it certainly drives well enough.

And driveability is a bit of a weird concept and highly dependent on the Customer and the Circumstances. More Power also makes a Car more scary to the Normie, especially considering the Suspensions, lack of Sway Bars, Narrow Crossply Tires etc.
A Normie also appreciates low down Grunt far more than high up Scream, which is why Turbodiesels have a 50+% Market Share.
I am perfectly happy with my 75 Diesel PS, and am still able to pull 1.2t Trailers no Issue.

Most Car Manufacturers in Europe definetly knew how to make Cars more Powerful, but it wasn’t what the Customers wanted, and the 9 and 12hp Citroen 2CV, as well as the 13 to 17hp Goggomobil, the FIAT Topolinos 13 to 16hp and BMW Isetta all sold perfectly well, and were perfectly good with the Power they had, and most of them were built to be nippy up to about 60kph, and built to pull at low to Medium Revs.

I learned to drive on crappy Trabant P50, and with just about 20hp that thing was nippy enough, and only got slow at Speed, but even that Shitbox (it is now in better condition and lovingly being taken care of) managed almost 120 indicated, which is almost 110 GPS.

The more expensive Middle Class Cars, like the Käfer, Opel Olympia, Peugot 202, Traction Avant, Morris Minor, Ford Anglia and so on all had Power outputs of less than 30hp and were still considered on the High End, not really that much faster, but getting to 100 in times measured in Seconds rather thatn Minutes was already good back then.

Power Outputs of 50hp and more were something of the upper classes.

The Perceived Power is more important than the actual Numbers, and most of the time the normal human barely uses the Power he has got, but shifts early and rides the Torque, and when you never rev over 2500, wether you have 30hp at 3000, or 90hp at 6000 makes no Difference to the Ottonormalverbraucher.

That’s why I think the Algorithm should reward Grunt, early Torque and even Power through the Revs more than High Power.

But nonetheless, thanks for the Answer, I know you Indygame Producers have more than enough Shit to put up with from Cunts like me, so take this as it is meant, and I still love the Game, just that it really doesn’t do my beloved 50s as well as it does my also very beloved 80s.

Keep it up. (or down, you kind of are on a weird side of the Donut we call Earth.

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There were some good points made here! It wasn’t all down to power during the early times, to the point where small displacement 2 cylinder engines were perfectly acceptable especially in postwar Europe (which is represented by both Fruinia and Archana in the game). However, I know that while inline and boxer twins would be a wonderful addition, the I3 will be the smallest engine type that will be considered for the core game, as it still sees widespread use throughout time until today IRL.

I do agree with the minimum possible compression, it could be lowered from 6 to 5. I’ve seen myself way too often increase the AF-ratio to points where the single barrel eco will consider it too rich when I want to try and tune an early engine for 80RON, even though compression ratio and ignition timing were at minimum. So I sometimes just use leaded 92 just because of the about 3 RONs I’m away from a reasonable economy low octane tune. There were quite some engines back in the day with such low compression to back that change up.

Also, as far as I know, the rear engine layout was more popular back in the day since it was easier to produce, relatively speaking. Reasoning was that the engine and rear axle could be assembled as one connected unit. And I sometimes think the game exaggerates the service costs of a rear engine.

Though, you should consider that drivability is already considering the shape of the engine’s torque curve in the game, early torque does increase drivability.
But what I think is going on is that it also considers acceleration, and if there’s simulated competition that does perform better, it is considering that as “trouble keeping up with traffic”.

Don’t worry, the devs are aware of the markets and the European post-war scenario, the team is partially European!
But take it with a grain of salt and notice that in this game, the current fantasy markets of eG Fruinia may not have experienced a war and depression, even if they are inspired by real regional characteristics.

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Well, Rear Engines are mostly Space Efficient and offer improved Traction. The Issue with Humans is, that we have a tendency to sit with our feet down and Buttox up, so a Rear Engine can sit under the Rear Seats without Sacrifice to Interior Space while a Front Engine has to Sit entirely in Front of the Seats if you have limited Width thus adding unnecessary Length.

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I will agree with the lowering compression bit. I was trying to build a 1950s Trabant replica, and even with 6:1 compression and 0 spark, I could barely get it to run on 80 RON. Engines built for terrible fuel quality, such as the Ford Model T, ran compression of 4:1 or maybe slightly higher. It seems rather arbitrary that 6:1 is the minimum. The Ford Flathead V8 was also still in use after the war, and that used anywhere from 5.5:1 to 7.2:1 compression.

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The Model T was a side valve engine built in the 20’s.
They have shitty comp ratio with huge combustion chambers.

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The vast majority of european cars in the 1950s were front engined, rear wheel drive, with a leaf sprung live axle and an OHV Inline 4 engine. Just because some cars differed from said norm doesn’t mean we need a complete overhaul of the game plus a massive content update.

Automation is not a true Sandbox, but a generalization of a MASSIVE breadth of automotive components that it needs to simulate working together in any possible configuration.

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Not really. that was pretty much only Britain and the Americans. The French pretty much all used some form of independent suspension and weird Engine Layouts, the Citroens using longditudinal FF and aircooled Boxers in the 2CV, Renault was using Traditional FR, but the 4CV was RR, and the Estafette was longditudinal FF. And Peugot were using Transverse Leafs, Coil and Panhard and indepent on most Cars but no Parallel Leafs.

VW used it’s Torsion Bar System in the Käfer and RR Aircooled Boxer
The DKW F89 used the Schwebeachse with High Transverse Leaf Springs and 2 Stroke Engines
The NSU Prinz had Transverse Leaf and 2 Cylinder Aircooled RR
Goggomobil, Lloyd and the other Microcar Manufacturers used Transverse Leafs and 2 Stroke 2 Cylinders normally, either RR or FF.
Mercedes used Coil Springs allround and Full Floating Axles
BMW used a Mix of Transverse Leaf Springs and Torsion Bars

The Dutch only did weird CVT Cars

And the Italians built Longditudinal FF and Transverse Leafs in the Topolino

The only ones using the FR, i4, Independent Front and Parallel Leaf in the Rear was Opel and Morris.

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One thing you have forgotten, though. The core game mechanics and content are built with futureproofing in mind. There are good reasons RR, Swing axles, Two stoke engines etc. are just not used in passenger cars anymore. That is not to say these ideas didn’t work, however there is no discernible advantage to using them over the conventional methods already available either. Kanzler Killrob said many times before that it just doesn’t make any sense to add technologies that were common in the 1940s and into the 50s but largely abandoned by the 1960s.

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That, once again is a very Ally centric Point of View.

The 2 Stroke Engine went out of common use in Western Europe the same time as the OHV Engine and the Leaf Spring in General. In the 1970s you will be hard Pressed to find either Leafs, 2 Stroke nor new OHV Engines. And DKW/Auto Union were soldiering on into the 1970s with some breathtakingly beautful Cars and 2 Strokes.

But then of course Eastern Europe ran on 2 Stroke, with the Trabant, Wartburg, Barkas, Melkus and Skoda Octavia. until the End.

And in Japan the 2 Stroke lived happily through the 1980s up to 1990 in the Kei Cars.

So I think my case still stands

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You make it sound like Eastern Europe is East Germany only. The majority of cars produced in the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia were 4 strokes.

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Auto Union, as I am sure you’ll know, was bought by Daimler-Benz and later sold to Volkwagen. There were no new DKW or Auto Unions made after 1965. They used a new name and a new engine after that, to rid themselves of the negative reputation their two strokes carried. The name? Audi. The engine? A high compression four stroke developed under DB. Solid rear axles and OHV engines were used well into the 1980s and even 1990s. Even the mighty Citroen CX used a highly modified version of the Traction Avant’s OHV engine right until its very end in 1990. Makes like Opel, Peugeot, Volvo, Ford, Rover, Fiat, Saab, Audi and Alfa Romeo all still offered cars with solid rear axles during that time, and that is obviously not counting utility vehicles and early SUVs. The last european built car with a leaf sprung live axle was the 1986 Ford Capri. Afaik the last european made OHV vehicle was the Land Rover Discovery V8 in 2004.

Eastern bloc was a completely different story as planned economy mostly squashed any attempts at modernizing cars in a grand scale. The engineers were definetly ready (and able) to move on from the two stroke engine, which was a relic of the 1940s, that only survived thanks to the lack of a competitive market that demanded periodic modernization to keep ahead.
Trabant had working prototypes of modern, water cooled, four stroke compact cars by the early 1970s. Skoda never made two stroke cars, but they replaced their rear engined 130 with the FWD Favorit in 1986. The Skoda 1.3 OHV engine too still saw use into the 2000s in the Fabia.

Speaking of Japan, Nissan, as part of a cost reduction program, replaced multi-link independent rear suspension with simple beam axles in the Maxima, Primera and Pulsar/Almera models and probably more in the mid 1990s. Some of them were also built in europe.

PS: My grandmother stems from east of the Oder-Neisse-Linie, an expellee who found refuge in the West after Prussia was absorbed by Poland.

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OK, I want 2 Strokes because they are what I know and what I love and they played and important Part in the rebirth of the German Car Industry.

And I want to build French Cars.

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And the Mercedes McLaren SLR, and E55 AMG, with the OHV 3-valve V8?

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SOHC actually. MB car engines switched to OHC by the 1950s. The M113 was however a technological downgrade compared to the DOHC, 32V, VVT M119 it replaced.

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Just because the early eras aren’t quite as focused yet in the core game doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen after the full release. Pretty sure that a lot of consideration has went into it already, but it won’t be “Post-war Car Company Tycoon Simulator” anytime soon because that will require quite a bit of effort in modeling the suspension components, the 2-stroke engine types along with usable simulation and sound, as well as air cooled variants of both those and existing 4-stroke layouts.
So, maybe not now, but the game seems modular enough to eventually support that as an update or even big add-on down the line.

What I would however strongly suggest again is allowing compression ratios at least as low as 5:1, since I’m pretty sure the Archana market will favour low quality fuel in career mode, especially in the early decades? In that case, it seems like 6:1 compression is imposing a bit of a hefty balance barrier unless carburettors are made more lenient with the low octane.

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Yeah. SOHC.

And, anyways. Diesel engines. For example, the current 8-valve 1.6 HDI

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Yes, it is indeed an engine