- A really sexy sportscar chassis just became available, but I don’t have an engine for it. Could it be made available to “source” an engine from another company’s factory?
- I have created the world’s most powerful V8. Could rival manufacturer’s message me to buy copies of the engine, a # per month? Or purchase the licensing rights for them to manufacture it themselves, saving the engineering time?
- Could I buy licensing rights for an engine, and therefore not have to engineer it?
- Could I “partner” with a rival company to produce an engine or a car, splitting the costs and profits? A “jobs board” could be available, showing what companies are looking to partner for what market demographics.
- Could I outsource components - like entertainment features - so as to remove those from engineering times? Do I really have to design and build my own proprietary infotainment system?
And then other suggestions/ideas:
- be able to rearrange factory lists to make better sense to me
- sell factories
- dump the entire “plot size” and just have the player select factory size. Here is why; the player has to choose how much they want the factory to be able to be expanded, however only medium or large make sense, huge is obviously the best, but you can only afford huge if you’ve already “won” the game.
- add a transmission factory
- add a contract system for the purchase of tires, could be tied into outsourcing components idea.
I would also take a deep dive into the factory “addons”
- the # of addons dependent on the size of the factory
- the addons to not impact costs or efficiencies, rather only capabilities
- separate from the factories, the player builds corporate buildings / designates a corporate HQ in one country or another.
Each country needs it’s own set of corporate buildings:
- office to establish ability to build factories / sell cars in that country
- design center to speed up engineering for chassis, 1 design center per new project
- marketing / sales offices to boost dealer network and brand
- re-manufacturing center to decrease costs of recall repairs and to increase customer approval
- administration center to decrease taxes paid / materials cost (through efficiencies)
- race center to unlock the “test track” and to host an IROC style stock car race to increase visibility for the chosen car
There are a lot of directions to go in.
but we wanted the player to be able to even play the game as an engine-only manufacturer.