Light Campaign High Scores

23dutch45man · 2017-09-05 19:51:05 UTC

Killrob, congratulations with setting the highest score for the light campaign ever! I might be able to beat that score in my third attempt, but I will try that as soon as the light campaign is available on the Unreal Engine. And congratulations to Bastormonger as well, you managed to beat my latest attempt with a 4.5K points difference.

Despite not setting a new hiscore, I managed to set some new milestones. I sold 153 million cars during the whole campaign and thus sold more than 2 million cars yearly on average during the whole campaign and the company generated 2.067 trillion dollars in revenue!

I also improved my older hiscore with more than 134K points, while the starting conditions and the difficulty multiplier were nearly the same compared to my first attempt.

As proof, here are some screenshots of my latest attempt. I managed to produce cars for nearly all segments in every market, including the Archanan budget segment. That is quite hard, considering that they like their cars ultracheap.

Killrob · 2017-09-06 02:02:59 UTC

Wow, gratz on that run, never seen tables THAT GREEN!

abg7 · 2017-09-06 05:56:14 UTC

That is a truly record-breaking result! I have never seen such unprecedented levels of sales or market awareness across all the demographics.

bastormonger · 2017-09-06 06:42:19 UTC

NICE - 4.5K Points difference is next to nothing, and the tables are impressively green indeed!

Now you left me curious about two things: How many different models did You produce by the end? And (if it isn’t top secret) would you care to tell us your campaign setup (starting country, tech, budget etc.)?

23dutch45man · 2017-09-06 18:25:50 UTC

At the end of the game, I produced eleven different cars. The last factory was built to produce the ultracheap cars for the Archanan market, which started producing cars in about 2006. After that, I could only spend money on improving the current factories, because the financial crisis lowered demand for nearly all markets segments. I still ended up with 122,7 billion dollars in the bank nonetheless at the end of the game.

If it was possible to have two or more factories for the same car model, I would probably needed a second car & engine factory for the delivery segments + heavy utility and a second pair of factories for the cheap Archana car. Even a fully upgraded huge factory can’t make the numbers for those segments on their own at the end of the game.

I don’t remember the exact campaign setup, because I started the attempt in May. What I do remember, is that the company started out in Fruinia, with about 20-23 points technology and no special talented employees. The starting amount of cash was 800-900 million USD, but I don’t remember the desirability and markup setting. The difficulty was probably between 1.40-1.60.

I spread the tech points over many different techs to have lower R&D costs at the later stages of the game, which is why I spent only spent 65 billion on R&D over the whole course of the game. The only techs on which I didn’t tech points or money on were forced induction, safety and brakes.

bastormonger · 2017-09-06 20:23:21 UTC

I think it’s pretty cool to see that completely different approaches can yield virtually identical scores. I pretty much always go for a low starting budget to get good competitiveness and a high score multiplier at the expense of having to catch up from a slow start, I invest heavily in R&D etc. - more or less the opposite of what you’re doing, and yet both approaches are equally successful. The devs got the balancing spot on, it seems .

23dutch45man · 2017-09-07 08:31:51 UTC

It seems that we took opposite approaches and achieved virtually identical scores. Whereas I had basically no financial problems from the start until the end, you on the other hand start out with financial troubles and those problems only stop when you grow large enough.

But with only 50 million when you start, you can only buy a tiny or a small factory, am I right? But later in the game, the engineering costs are rising so much, you need at least a medium factory in order to earn back the engineering costs. So, could you tell what you did with the small factory at the end of the game?

bastormonger · 2017-09-07 15:54:40 UTC

Yes, it’s typically small3/small1 for bodies/engines (also in Fruinia), and I preset some vital tech so I don’t need to invest in R&D for the first 15 years or so. As soon as I’m out of financial trouble, I focus on expanding to more markets with bigger facilities, reusing the smaller ones for more exotic demos until they get too small to make any sense at all, at which point I abandon them. By then, the money I invested in them is peanuts and reearned dozens of times over anyway.

bastormonger · 2017-09-11 11:38:33 UTC

So yes, a million points is possible

abg7 · 2017-09-11 12:31:27 UTC

How did you obtain such a high score? Did you use the highest possible difficulty settings?

bastormonger · 2017-09-12 05:57:01 UTC

I had a 3.0 multiplier. With a 50M budget, some tech and 1.2x nme competitiveness, I could still “afford” a 1.49 (iirc) markup multiplier, so I could whip out fairly competitive cars and grow fast.

I also think I was actually helped by a weak economy that kept plot costs low for a long time, making it easier for me to step up factory sizes.

23dutch45man · 2017-12-28 15:49:15 UTC

I took me quite some time to finish a third campaign, but Bastormonger still holds the highest reported score ever for the light campaign on the old engine (for now) . With a new score of 951K points, I managed to take the second place from Killrob . Compared to the second campaign, I managed to increase my hiscore with 418K points. This can be attributed due to a higher difficulty setting (2.1 multiplier) and overall improvement.

Just like the second attempt, I made some major improvements with a very similair campaign setting and strategy. I sold 205 million cars and generated 2,65 trillion in sales during the whole campaign, which is 50 million and nearly 600 billion more respectively compared to the second campaign. I also have a higher average reputation (4 points) and prestige score (2 points) compared to my second campaign.

I only experienced some financial trouble during 1998-1999 due to introducing four to six new models and expanding those factories as well , which is all related to the availability of VVL in 1994. And in 2019, I produced more small pick-ups and SUVs for all markets and supercheap cars for Archana than I could sell. This was caused due to using bodies from the seventies , which means that the awareness and sales tables are less green, compared to the second campaign.

As usual, here are some screenshots which serve as proof of my third and perhaps my last attempt on the light campaign V2.