Question regarding DLC items. I have the V16 DLC. Hypothetically, What would happen if I made a v16 engine during the campaign and someone without it would try follow through my savegame? Not saying I would per se, but I’ve made quite a few very successful models sporting a v16 engine.
B4ndit was asking about this in discord, and supposedly V16’s will revert themselves to V10 when opened in the car designer if you do not have the DLC. If I had to guess what happens in campaign, I would expect that the stats of cars currently on sale are locked in, but if you try to facelift it or if you look at the existing trim in the designer, it will change to a V10. Of course, I strongly suspect nobody has tested this with campaign saves. Why not just make a new campaign with a V16 as the first car, and upload the save file so us non-V16’s can download it and see what happens? Just give yourself unlimited money so you don’t need to set anything up carefully. Then we’ll know.
I would vote for not using V16 in our playthrough. Also I would discourage using mod bodies/fixtures. As I have no idea what would happen if someone used body from a mod that a successor doesn’t have 
I hope (and I bet) that sheer fact of having some mod installed wouldn’t corrupt the game for a successor.
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Turn 3: Markus
While Automation Inc’s balance sheet looked frightening on the eve of my tenure as CEO, things were not as a bleak as first appeared. The company was cash-flow positive as a direct result of the excellent sales of the new Poseidon Lineup, and The Aqua Man would soon hit the Market. My first act as CEO was to rush a handful of points into research, in an attempt to convert our present cash flow into some sort of durable market advantage. I figured given our current credit rating was still in the toilet, and the Poseidon was selling exceptionally well, it would be desirable to heal our balance sheet somewhat before diving into a round of upgrades to an already successful model! Specifically, I opted to target 4 barrel carbs and advanced 60s safety. I planned to simply facelift the Bullshark motor and Poseidon Lineup, so we can absorb the engineering time.
By November of ’57 your new CEO was ready to commence the first engineering project of his tenure: The Poseidon 57s. In the mean time the Aqua had gone on sale, and was generating a modest profit. While we’re at it, and since I might as well upgrade the engine anyway, we’re gonna hit the Aqua.
While upgrading The Bullshark Motor, I stumbled upon a peculiar and very intriguing prototype motor not yet in production- the pigeyeshark V12. I’m told it was a passion project of the previous CEO. While promising, it is not in the cards for this particular round of facelifts. Your current CEO’s background is in building primarily budget shitboxes (how I got hired, I’ll never know), and feels that for the moment, the existing bullshark motor has adequate development potential.
Advancements in technology allow us to use normal cast internals, raising our rev limit by several hundred RPM- not that we’re going to use all that, at least for the luxury variant. A slightly more aggressive cam profile (15) and various other tweaks allow us to nurse 160 HP out of the luxury version of the venerable bullshark block!
Upgrades to radial tires, power steering, and the aforementioned safety along with various tweaking yielded the 57 model Poseidons. For the Sport variant of the Bullshark, a “dual quad” configuration is adopted, which along with modest increase in stroke and other tweaks brings peak HP up to a nice round 250. Other upgrades to the Aquaman include radial tires, a 4 speed manual, advanced safety, and various tweaks.
With a relatively short 48 month engineering time and partial financing secured, it’s time to sign off! In the interim period, let’s do some body research to see if we can’t unlock those sweet sweet 65 bodies by the time our facelifts hit the market! Our existing trims continue to generate strong profits for the company, a testament to our previous CEO’s acumen.
Fortunately for us, the launch of the 57 lineup is a hit and the company is almost out of debt! And just as well, since our large markups indicate that we should be looking to expand our production.
For the next generation of nautical themed wonders, I came up with this: The Triton!
Similar in concept to previous models, it grows in size and in power. The most significant upgrade being our new V8 motor, the Mako 5.5. It’s bigger, less undersquare, and uses aluminum heads to save a few pounds!
I also wanted to utilize the pigeyeshark motor as a nod to our previous CEO, so I made a top trim variant of the Triton built to handle the large and heavy, but exceedingly smooth and powerful V12.
To replace the Aqua Man, I decided to go, well, completely mental. I screwed 315 HP out of the Mako motor and dropped into the smallest mid-engine body I could find. Proto-supercar it is!
The Year is 1963, and for the first time in my tenure, Automation Inc is in the black! We do not have a negative balance in our checking account-though I suspect that won’t last. I decided to upgrade the medium factory to a size 3, and I had to buy a new small engine factory to produce the Pigeyeshark motor!
It’s 1966, and our new models have just gone on sale! The Triton is a critical success, though I suspect it will take a few months (and maybe a good facelift) before it becomes profitable. Remarkably, there is still about 100 Million in the bank, but given our current cash flow situation I suspect that won’t last long. The Cuttlefish on the other hand…ouch. Maybe it’s just a little ahead of its time? The supercar market unlocks in 1970, after all. Well, my successor will have to find out, since the board has voted me out of my seat based on my reckless borrowing to expand into unproven markets, and on the basis that I probably stuck around too long any damn way :P. Good luck LoSboccacc !
Company as of handoff:
@SenseiB12 @LoSboccacc I need to find an alternate way to send you the save file, forum won’t let me attach it because it says I am too new! Sorry!
Edit : @SenseiB12 I sent you the zip file on Discord- I hope that works? Sorry for any inconvenience!
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https://filebin.net/j19sezmy653c5bd4/Automation_Inc_Markus.zip?t=g98b96lq
Here is the save file from markus. It was too big to upload directly.
A couple more screenshots from the 11.1966 
This is only after the very first month of Triton being sold.
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Turn 4: LoSboccacc
It’s the sixties, a period of transformation, at the end of a large economic boom. Time for fresh air at Automation inc, for transformation and for exploring the new cultural revolution that’s democratizing Gasmea.
But there’s a pressing issue for the new CEO, while the Triton is capturing the imagination of the booming middle class, the Cuttlefish is in deep trouble:
it appears clear how the design bet too much on a strong economy, and finds itself priced out of a shrinking market.
The order of battle is clear: a light refresh to the Triton to ride it’s popularity, and a deep rework of the Cuttlefish to bring it in line with the markets.
The Cuttlefish
This isn’t going to be pretty. The car was clearly a letter of love from a car enthusiast.
Gone are 20kw of power. Gone is the 4 gearbox, thinner the tires, leaner the fuel, and cheaper the interior.
Not everything is lost however! True to the original identity, the car wasn’t fattened with cheap parts. It’s actually 50kg lighter, and improved both in reliability and fuel consumption. But most important of all production cost was reduced 40%, enabling the car to reach a wide range of markets.
It’s a light refresh, 12 month of engineering. But it means we cannot touch the Triton engine if we want to keep producing the base model while we retrofit the sedan.
The Triton
A longer refresh, with just some price reduction from new technologies like two piston brakes and with the top trim even more luxurious, with the adoption of hydropneumatic suspensions.
The markets love them as ever and we’re gaining quite the reputation, so it was decided to capitalize it, raising marketing budget across the regions.
1967 Cuttlefish
After 12 months of furious engineering it was finally affordable, but work was far from done.
It was finally time to get a proper rework of the car, bringing it to the legendary icon status that it was always meant to have:
But now that the Cuttlefish crisis was over, it was evident we were in a great prestigious position to expand from into wider premium segments.
The Boulson
With the new markets opening up and the company reputation growing, I decided to attack the Family Premium market with an economical but refined wagon. They hated it, so here’s the story of the Boulson sedan:
Underneath is a simple front wheel drive scheme with mach person and trailing arms, making it cheap and reliable. The engine is a compact but economical V6, not quite modern, but sturdy and balanced. With a small 1800cc capacity, it sips fuel and puts the car consumption well under the competition average, even if tuned for 91RON fuel, making the car quite futureproof.
The project itself sets us back $$ONE BILLION$$ in construction costs, but it’s otherwise profitable, and that without taking into account that the Fruinia market is right about to open and competition will get smoked by fuel regulation changes.
** The Company **
We had quite some trouble in the production side of things, with three defects found, two of which severe enough to warrant a immediate recall. The whole marketing strategy hinges on not loosing prestige. I’ve let this one pass however:
The cuttlefish is launching in a good economy and is having some margins. Tritons going strong as ever with their retrofit, and projections seems to be surpassing anything previously seen:
The Boulson is about to get released and Furinia marketing is slowly but surely raising awareness. We’re quite not turning a profit yet, but I expect the Boulson retrofit to smash the market once the engineering will allow for some proper cost reduction. Sure we have some debt, but it’s still like under 50% of the company valuation, banks won’t be at our throat for quite a while.
I leave a company that’s not as financially stable, but managed a huge land grab of the various demographics.
save:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y94t226j0pxt8lx/Automation_Inc_Manual.db?dl=1
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“Boulson” - where did all the fish go? 
January 1971
Day one and I’m already one billion in debt, and losing more day by day, sounds like a perfect time to start a long term project that won’t pay off any time soon. That long term project is the Dogfish SOHC an all aluminum 4L 32v V8 with fuel injection made primarily to prototype advanced technologies and will likely see use in the Cuddlefish’s successor.
Image of V8 you’ve all seen a million times here, with stats that don’t matter because it’s not being produced
Next up was making a replacement for our aging Triton. I made some tweaks to the engine to better focus on the luxury demographics and decided to go with a convertible for better market coverage. When I got to the factory screen I noticed that it seems the engine factories are all making the wrong engines, so it seems the cuttlefish will have to undergo yet another facelift as well to get it’s engine factory back.
December 1973
The last three years have been fairly eventful with the launch of the Boulson, my has gone down to what it was when I was put at the helm of the company and we are continuing to lose debt at a reasonable pace, and the facelift of the Cuttlefish just just been put underway, now equipped with a turbocharger to help regain the power lost in the last facelift.
December 1975
We have figured out electronic fuel injection, and the Boulson is long overdue for a facelift, Slapped them together, leaned out the fuel mixture, retuned suspension, gave it some interior quality and sent it on it’s way. In the mean time the factory switch is underway and it looks like we may have actually built up a bit too much stock.
December 1976
It’s been just under 6 years and I haven’t run the company into the ground yet, so that’s a slight surprise, and I’ve got our debt down to just 200M from the one billion it was at, and looking at the current company valuation I probably could have got another factory.
Save file: https://mega.nz/file/HDxxRawY#Mw23u9AXr0n2hPYmE5UjmqesNfh24bPBjXc2qp3kXS4 @pcmoreno
I should have taken more screenshots but it’s not like there’s much to see.
Wow, it’s my turn already, nice. I’ll go into it tonight(Amsterdam time). Looking forward to see what the Dogfish can do.
yeah that something I’ve noticed, you either spam the living crap to show a car build whole, or one-two screens are as good as zero. it’s so much better in video format like killrob does, because the interesting part is what happens in your mind, not in your screen, why you do some decision and not other.
That’s true to an extent, depending on what do you want to focus. Design process of a car? For the most part video will be better. General overview of what has happened during your term? Text/screenshots win.
Live video format, without a proper script/editting requires usually too much time to get the same amount of information. Couple of screenshots with revenue charts, competitiveness, demograhics coverage tells more then hundred words or a couple of minutes of video For example after your description @LoSboccacc I didn’t need to load the game to get the feeling how are we doing.
Also once you roll out a new engine, posting a screenshot (maybe with a comparison to the predecessor) also tells you quite a lot. For example on the power/torque chart of the first Bullshark engine, it’s quite clear that intakes were not keeping up
I definitely think I might consider doing a livestream if I do another let’s play by myself. Especially in mine where I wanted to convey enough information for the audience to vote on decisions, writing up the post with screenshots was a lot of work.
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“Taxes!? What are these?” Asked the new CEO as he took over the company in Jan 1976.
“No, no, no. We must to something about this. I know, let’s invest!”
But first the first order of business was to gather some market visibility and up the dealerships and marketing.
“A good car does not sell itself, we have to do that for it!”
“What about R&D? Yes, that’s must be better too! Look at all the money flowing in, we can’t let it get bored.”
After some administration business to achieve the above the ‘Cuttlefish’ needed some attention. “I like this car, and I like this name”, said the CEO just before remarking… “What about that brand new engine? Yes, yes, the dogfish, we should give it some use…hmmmm”
A so a new facelift was created for the Cuttlefish together with the Dogfish engine:
The CEO was pleased with the statistics brought by the marketing department:
“We’re still missing something…That’s it, roof out!”
Two trims were created for the Cuttlefish and the CEO was so happy with it that he found it insulting to only have a small factory producing it…
That had an easy solution, but the engine one was stuck in a plot too small to expand.
“But look at those stats! It will sell like cupcakes. Build me a new factory just for the Dogfish engine”
And so it was. The small factory lay abandoned until 1979 when the CEO desired for something “small, but fast! And we need to give that factory some use anyway.”
With this the Squid was created with a specially designed new V6 aluminum engine.
Yes, it’s the Squid that’s on the background of the nice phot0 
Yep, it’s a Shrimp inside the Squid 
The Boulson was released and even though it selled just fine, its reviews were abysmal. A facelift was done and the Boulson 1.5 Turbo was re-engineered with a facelifted engine(smaller but with a fuel efficient turbo).
The Great White is still doing great and providing a nice steady profit. A recession came and went by and the market is looking awesome. Both the new Boulson 1.5 Turbo and the Squid are due to hit the markets in less than 3 years. “Time for a vacation” said the CEO as he drove off into the sunset with one of the Squid prototypes.
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Forgot the savegame:
and a bonus:
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I would just like to point out that our "super car " is on a 20 year old chassis and we haven’t even begun to design a replacement. Ideally we’d want to make use of the upgraded factory size and the ability to get steel presses.
I’m delighted to see the Cuttlefish has had a long and useful service life! Also, it looks like I am at the top of the wait list but I believe it is @B4nditOo’s turn because he went before me?
Yeah, it looks like I got that out of order by accident. @B4nditOo is up next. I’ll say, I’ve been awfully surprised at the rate this is going. You guys work fast.