Don’t know if this is in the works or possible not worth implementing:
I’d like to have the ability to choose several paint color options for my car models, rather than just one per trim. The way I see it, having more colors would cause a slight increase in production cost, but also a slight bump in desirability or maybe prestige.
You could be like Henry Ford and sell all your cars in black to save money, or produce your 70’s Plymouth in all shades of Orange, Purple, Green, Tan, etc. and make up for the production cost with more sales.
This may be just on the edge of what’s worth implementing. However, if the idea is that these cars are going to be sold to a global market, it would seem a bit strange if every car only came in one color.
And if you wanted to go crazy, you could designate exactly what percentage of cars will be in each color, for limited editions, and make certain colors more expensive. I don’t think I need a response to realize that’s probably overboard, though.
Anyway, I think multiple paint choices would increase the “Tycoon” feeling of the game and add a minor gameplay decision as well. Let me know if it’s feasible.
I think having to choose multiple colors for your trims would be quite a chore! Say you create 200 trims over the course of a campaign (that’s probably on the low side) and offer 4 colors per trim. Choosing 800 colors? How is that actually a fun and/or intriguing decision to make?
I would assume you wouldn’t pick 800 different colors. Most cars would probably have the same few options.
If, when making a new trim, the colors carried over, it would save a lot of time. Saving colors would also help but might be unnecessary programming. Being able to see and input RGB values would allow the same thing but perhaps be more tedious.
Of course, as adding more colors would be entirely optional, it wouldn’t matter much to those who aren’t interested.
Throughout the game we have made aesthetics optional, if a choice at all. Colors definitely should not affect gameplay, so why should we invest time into making company line-up color selection, instead of for instance improving the UI?
I definitely didn’t suggest ignoring UI for the sake of colors.
Why are we able to place headlights, badges, and door handles on our cars? Why are we able to choose paint colors at all? I was under the impression that aesthetic choices, while not related to core gameplay, were still included because people enjoy it.
If you take issue with the idea of it affecting the value of the car, that’s fine. That was just an idea to make it more interesting.
Finally, I never meant to suggest that this take priority over anything else. There are already plenty of things going into the game which are not strictly necessary, and I know from watching the dev streams that purely aesthetic, non-gameplay features are being developed right now. So I thought I’d throw this out there.
True that, we are working on purely aesthetic things too. That doesn’t make all aesthetic things equal though. For the most time in the game you are working on “a car”. “A car” has a color (as in one), which is necessary for us to really call it a production car. As are vents, headlights, etc. Having no color selection would be immersion breaking, just as much as you not being able to build cars that have no headlights or door handles. Other things like that will be added too.
As you can see, multiple colors for a trim don’t fall into that category and hence can’t be considered important until we run out of things to do in the first category.
The suggestion itself isn’t bad, I’m just not seeing how it adds much to the experience, which might be an entirely personal thing.
I often wondered it as well. However, I often consider the multiple colour paintwork to be abstracted in the game, not assuming the colour you choose would be the only one available.
I’ve always imagined that the single color you select is the main “presentation/marketing” color for the car, like when it’s revealed in an auto show. Like Volvo would have champagne often and Mercedes would have silver or something. I don’t think having to choose multiple colors for a car would add anything to Automation – only perhaps giving “factory” paint options for BeamNG.
I think for the tycoon portion of the game you would need a way to give cars different customization options (or abstract this somehow), especially for coach built supercars. The game could even show you a breakdown of which options your customers bought the most so you could make them standard on next year’s model
