Implementing Car "Looks" to the Tycoon

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I have to say im having a bit of trouble accepting that the car looks, does not have any kind of effect in the desirability of the car in the upcoming Tycoon part. How could we implement it even just a little bit? Well let’s start off by thinking the very basics here for a moment. You might safely assume, that there are lots of people in the world, who think that a Jaguar E-Type just simply looks better than a Opel Kadett from the same era. Although there might be some small % of people in the world who disagree with this, and state that in their opinion, a Opel Kadett actually looks better than a Jaguar E-Type (after all its about personal preference isn’t it?). But the latter doesn’t really matter, since MOST of the people will still say that the E-Type looks better than the Kadett. So the only thing that actually matters here, is what most people think.

So my suggestion is pretty simple, let’s just give some of the body styles a (small?) bonus in the desirability (or whatever you might want to call it)! No matter how you morph it, no matter how many or what kind of fixtures used, no matter what kind of suspension used, no matter what kind of engine used… they would just simply look good for the majority of potential customers.

This way, if you are building only something like sports cars/grand tourers, you would get a bonus to your image because you would be always using the good looking body styles, (and also maybe a penalty if someday choosing otherwise?). If you are a “basic” car manufacturer, then you could slam a cool looking body in top of basic technology, and then produce a car that, if not anything else, then at least would look good in the eyes of potential customers. That would at least be different than just putting a more powerful engine in your basic s*tbox. I Think something like this could have the potential to add something to the gameplay, while not “discriminating” peoples tastes too badly and also being somewhat realistic.

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i think the body is already calculated in prestige base stats but i’m not sure
but nice idea to add if missing or make shown when selecting the body if already existing

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But then why would anyone use a body that had no bonus?

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As far as I know, its not

I’ll answer your question with a question: Why would anyone use them now?

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I think this is actually a great idea. I have wondered if prestige shouldn’t have some kind of inverse correlation with utility as well, as vans aren’t really desirable to buy. Also, if I’m not mistaken, convertibles will have a slight prestige bonus to compensate for their heavier weight.

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Bad looking bodies are usually cheaper to make than really beautiful ones

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I mean, you pick bodies from the same reasons you picked them before. If you are going to make a small efficent car, then you are going to pick a small body. Currently the problem is that if I make a middle sized car in lets say in the the 70s, then if I want to make sportish 170hp car with kind of basic stuff in it. Then why make a new model with new body? Why not just crank up the existing family sedan with 4 doors and lots of space, if the game does not include the looks of the car in anyways?

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We’re going to have a bit of correlation between looks and what makes a good sports car, but only very mildly.

We already take aerodynamic drag of the base body into account as a separate thing for sportiness, which is basically there to reward you for using a low and sleek looking body of any kind.

We’ll probably also give a minor sportiness and prestige bonus to being a 2 door, again to account for them looking sportier.

Convertibles will probably get a nice bonus to something… prestege I guess. But also there will be some buyer types who are looking for a paticular sort of car (Lets say a sports car, or a luxury coupe or whatever) but will specify that it basically MUST be a convertible.

Besides that we really want to avoid heavily doing anything on the basis of looks, as we’d rather people have the creative freedom to make cars that look how they want, without having to worry if some crappy AI system thinks it looks pretty :stuck_out_tongue:

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The correlation should be big enough to battle the fact that I can now fit a 10 litre V8 into 70’s medium sized 4d family car. If the correlation is not big enough, then the best selling “sports cars” in Automation world are going to look like Ford Taunus, not Jaguar E-Type.

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The thing is, if you fit a 10L V8 in a family car, it will have horrible fuel consumption.

It will also be very expensive to run and buy.

Making the car into more of a luxury car just on a pricing perspective.

As for sportiness, if it works anything like Der Bayer’s CTC, you have various types of sports car, going from cheap and practical hot hatches, all the way to super expensive super cars. All of those with very different buyers looking for different attributes. And since most people don’t have a ton of money, the best selling sport cars will definitively be in the cheaper categories, like your Golf GTi or Mazda MX5.

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[quote=“FordManFromHell”]

The correlation should be big enough to battle the fact that I can now fit a 10 litre V8 into 70’s medium sized 4d family car. If the correlation is not big enough, then the best selling “sports cars” in Automation world are going to look like Ford Taunus, not Jaguar E-Type.[/quote]

Just out of curiosity, what would you put on the list of “Top 10 Selling Sporty Cars”? In the modern era of the real world, sleek wedge-like cars are on the way out as top sellers due to sporty sedans becoming the norm. So, your medium sized sedan sports car is quite a sporty seller today, and far surpassing sleeker designs because of pricing. FYI, coupes are also on the way out, except in the higher-end markets. They simply don’t sell well enough to justify producing so many of them.

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To be honest, for many types of buyer, they’ll happily buy a fast hatch or sedan over a true sports car. There will be some groups of buyers who are particularly attracted to proper coupes though no doubt, and they’ll probably specifically look at how sleek it looks and it being a two door.

The 10ltr V8 thing won’t help everyone either, some types of sports car buyers will have a specific focus on light weight good handling cars that no amount of power will fix.

Think of the base stats like sportiness, prestige etc. as the coarse measures which people use to pick a car, with then a few “flavour stats” that they look at more specifically. A muscle car buyer might want high sportiness, but also have a particular desire for 8 or more cylinders and the fastest acceleration available. A GT Coupe buyer might want high sportiness and prestige, and particularly want sleek looking (low drag) bodies with 2 doors etc.

That’s our current thinking anyway. We’ll see how it plays.

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[quote=“trackpaduser”]The thing is, if you fit a 10L V8 in a family car, it will have horrible fuel consumption.

It will also be very expensive to run and buy.

Making the car into more of a luxury car just on a pricing perspective.

As for sportiness, if it works anything like Der Bayer’s CTC, you have various types of sports car, going from cheap and practical hot hatches, all the way to super expensive super cars. All of those with very different buyers looking for different attributes. And since most people don’t have a ton of money, the best selling sport cars will definitively be in the cheaper categories, like your Golf GTi or Mazda MX5.[/quote]

My point was, that currently, in the game, the only reason for me to use the 70’s Datsun Z/JaguarE-Type body, over the middle sized 70’s 4 door saloon, is that I can fit a bigger engine in it. But since im allready able to fit a 10 litre V8 into the said 4 door saloon, im surely going to be able to get sportscar kind of performance out of it. Then why use the Datsun Z/JaguarE-Type body? Like at all? I mean after all, the 4 door is more practical. And since the game thinks all cars look the same…

[quote=“07CobaltGirl”]

The correlation should be big enough to battle the fact that I can now fit a 10 litre V8 into 70’s medium sized 4d family car. If the correlation is not big enough, then the best selling “sports cars” in Automation world are going to look like Ford Taunus, not Jaguar E-Type.

Just out of curiosity, what would you put on the list of “Top 10 Selling Sporty Cars”? In the modern era of the real world, sleek wedge-like cars are on the way out as top sellers due to sporty sedans becoming the norm. So, your medium sized sedan sports car is quite a sporty seller today, and far surpassing sleeker designs because of pricing. FYI, coupes are also on the way out, except in the higher-end markets. They simply don’t sell well enough to justify producing so many of them.[/quote]

Ok, im not going to start on this one however.

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Aerodynamism is the first obvious reason. I am pretty sure it’s Cd is lower than the Cd of the sedan. Cd is a modifier in the sportiness rating. A lower Cd also gives better performance, therefore helping sportiness a bit more.

It is also smaller, and therefore lighter, which helps get better performance all around and therefore better sportiness.

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[quote=“trackpaduser”]Aerodynamism is the first obvious reason. I am pretty sure it’s Cd is lower than the Cd of the sedan. Cd is a modifier in the sportiness rating. A lower Cd also gives better performance, therefore helping sportiness a bit more.

It is also smaller, and therefore lighter, which helps get better performance all around and therefore better sportiness.[/quote]

The Z body actually seems to weight more than the 70’s middle sized 4 door. The way I see it, the aerodynamic bonus should be so HUGE that it would actually be unrealistic. Otherwise we might forget using impractical 2 door sports car bodies for anything than the absolute extra-hyper-dyper-supercars, which would take enough benefit of the smallish aero bonus. So Ford Capris, Ford Mustangs and the likes would be better as a 4 door saloons, those roomy sons of b*** can for sure fit a 5 litre V8’s and 3 litre V6’s easily.

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[quote=“FordManFromHell”]
The correlation should be big enough to battle the fact that I can now fit a 10 litre V8 into 70’s medium sized 4d family car. If the correlation is not big enough, then the best selling “sports cars” in Automation world are going to look like Ford Taunus, not Jaguar E-Type.[/quote]

Typical american attitude. Why does everything have to come down to what has the biggest engine?.. There are far more important stats when it comes to sports cars than how big the engine in. The Sportiness stat takes into account alot of different aspects, and a large V8 motor is not a very sporty choice. Infact, I don’t see any reason to use a 10L V8 ever unless its for a truck or van and has a super low cam profile just to maximize torque… Light weight, high revving, small engines will be much sportier than a large V8…

I also expect that by the time the game is released that chassis rigidity will play more of a factor than it currently does. You can’t just throw a 10L v8 in a 4 door family car and expect the chassis to handle the torque. It should have a massive penalty to sportiness with such a design unless you strengthen the chassis, which would add even more weight… Nevermind the penalty for drag, poor handling for weight, etc…

If the developers do as good of a job on the Demographics as they have with the engine designer(and I fully expect they will) there will be a market and a reason for every car body. But There will also be good designs like the ‘not a 240Z’ with a lightweight high revving motor, or bad ones like the same car with a overly large V8 with far too much power to make use of…

Now what you’ve mentioned as your idea of a ‘sports car’ fits more in line with a Muscle car. There is a huge difference, and there will be different markets for these cars…

That said, there is no reason why you can’t take the Ham-fisted, Powaaaahh!! focused, engineered with a hammer by Jeremy Clarkson approach to sports car engineering in Automation, I just wouldn’t expect to be very successful at it… :stuck_out_tongue:

As for the whole “looks” thing I think what daffy has planned with the Prestige should work nicely… Also I imagine that the image of your company will play a fairly large role as well. There are other factors like body material which can make a big difference too. Take the Corvette for example. It is fast, it handles, its got alot of power… But it isn’t a very prestigious car; its just a plastic sports car. It will never be a Ferrari, or a Lamborghini, or even a Jaguar. The game should reflect this sort of thing with a combination of your choices in design and the image of your company as a whole. GM cannot possibly ever make a car as prestigious as a Ferrari. They just can’t; not possible. This should be reflected in the game… That’s why companies have sub brands. That’s why Acura, Lexus, Infinity, Cadillac, etc exist.

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Exactly. But currently, in the game, that’s the ONLY difference between a sports car body and a ”normal” body. That you can fit a bigger engine in it. I also never said that I would want to put a 10 litre V8 into a sports car.

I also do understand that devs do NOT want to restrict peoples creativity, and therefore they want to allow players to produce sports cars from whatever s*tbox body available, that is able to fit big enough engine. (Like the middle sized 70’s 4 door saloon that is able to fit a 10 litre V8, -which of course is a complete overkill-, but showing that this body is not really too restricted in engine size. Which is the only “pro” that the Z body currently has over it. Also not saying it should be too restriced in that department.) But this kind of “freedom of creativity” creates a problem. So currently, the middle sized 4 door has only pros vs the Z body. This means that right now, with this kind of system, creating a company such as Ferrari or Aston Martin, you would be only producing 4 door “sportscars”. Since there’s no real point of producing good looking sleek coupe bodys. Because the customers are obviously blind, but they do seem to have a need for utility. So hardly a “freedom of creativity”, more like restricting in the most unreralistic way. That was the point I was trying to make.

Also, im obviously not trying to bash your favourite game here. I was just voicing my concern.

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We’re starting to develop the different buyer categories right now in fact. And trust me, we’ll do our very best make sure that there are certain buyer types that will want sporty shaped coupes and won’t go for sedans.

/Thread.

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[quote=“Daffyflyer”]We’re starting to develop the different buyer categories right now in fact. And trust me, we’ll do our very best make sure that there are certain buyer types that will want sporty shaped coupes and won’t go for sedans.

/Thread.[/quote]

Newly divorced men in their mid 40s early 50s? :wink:

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I already suggested this somewhere but here it goes again. Why not have a system online for people to vote the best looking cars? Like a Hot or Not type of vote. " cars appear, people vote, repeat. Everytime poeple vote they get some small amount of something to incentivate voting.