For the taxes I think taxing rich people car is best because rich people have tons of money, and tax high displacement engines but have an exemption for utility vehicles. I don’t like taxing turbos because turbos are a new innovation I think it’d be really cool to see what kinds of news vehicles people create now that we have turbos
I have another tax idea too!!! An emissions/fuel efficiency tax. A tax with a negative correlation to emissions and fuel efficiency. Maybe have a flat tax for every car below a certain MPG number, or a progressive tax that increases the lower the MPG.
We could also tax sports cars if we wanted too. Maybe a flat tax if a car has sport compound tires, or a tax based on wheel width (utility vehicle exemption of course).
So will spending and lobbying be open to all who have previously entered this challenge, or will it be limited to only those who entered the last round?
For the schools, I think industrial design is the best. It has many uses outside of just car manufacturing, and also applies to other industries such as railway building and machine tooling. Plus most industrial factories will benefit from industrial design. This is especially useful with the nationalization of car companies. Industrial design will help achieve greater efficiency and throughput.
Lobbying is only open to people who participated in the latest round, because I don’t want to create a situation where a bunch of people are lobbying with no intent to continue participating.
Hey all did you see the tech school lobbying! Real interesting stuff. I’m sure you’re all carefully deciding which school to invest into. This is a big decision after all! Which is the most effective school to invest into is the question you’re all asking, and for that question, I have an answer! Indeed, with the power of mathematics I have determined the most efficient and cost effective school! Do you know want to know which it is! Well I’ll start with the least efficient when it comes to tech pool. It’s art of course.
Before I tell you the most efficient school, let me explain something someone might have missed. You see that each school has a value of either 13, 16, or 17. Each school then adds value to a different tech pool category. For example, mechanical engineering has 6 points of value into ‘Engine Architecture’. This value is then converted into tech pool points in a ratio unknown to us. Now if the value converted into tech pool points was equal between all categories, then the tech schools with a value of 17 would be ever more efficient to invest into then the ones with 16. But that is not the case! Each tech category has a different ratio for converting value into tech pool points! You see, engine architecture needs 20 value to improve tech pool, whereas bottom end only needs 5. This means that if 20 investment points are put into improving each of engine architecture and bottom end, engine architecture would improve tech pool by 1 point, and bottom end by 4! That’s 4 times the efficiency!
Now with that explanation, let me get onto the results! Here is each tech category in ascending order by amount of tech pool points per investment, and that value for each category.
Tech school
Tech pool points per 1 investment
Art
1.533333333
Electrical Engineering
1.733333333
Materials Science
1.75
Mechanical Engineering
1.8
Chemical Engineering
1.95
Industrial Design
2.2
Aeronautics
2.333333333
Pure Physics
2.7
With a whopping 2.7, pure physics is by far the most efficient school to invest into! Very fun. Pure physics also has the most points into aspiration, which will make turbochargers cheaper to make!
But we also need to think about the other stuff each school will give! Pure physics is very useful as physics is important and will lead to scientific discoveries and inventions and stuff being made in Araga! Cool! Industrial design will help manufacture these inventions! So I think it would be best to invest in both pure physics and industrial design!
I hope this explanation has been of use to you in deciding which school to invest your spending tokens in!
I wouldn’t normally correct someone on stuff like this, but your analysis misses something pretty important: Some techpool is worth more than others. A free point of quality in engine architecture will often be as impactful as four free points in bottom end (and sometimes more impactful).
The discussion has been had elsewhere about how much different sorts of techpool are worth. This sort of thing is why challenges with free allocation that treat every area identically have had balance issues.
If you want to value one point in engine architecture identically to one point in bottom end, be my guest. You shouldn’t though. With the exception of art, all the schools are designed to be roughly as useful as one another. I couldn’t find more uses for art in techpool, which is why it lags behind.
OH, BOY! November 18th, 1969 sure is a great day for cruising around in my HAMFA 3000 that I bought with cash one year after starting my first white-collar job! I sure hope I won’t still be driving it in 2023 with a million miles on the odometer and a Chinese diesel under the hood!
Without sharing further details about MWara’s investment plans, let’s just say Pure Physics is one of two schools I am not going to make any investment in (and the other one is excluded more from a RP standpoint than a grounded / rational one)…
Question: is it possible to spend lobbying tokens negatively, against a school? (e.g. say I want to spend 40 lobbying tokens to level down Aeronautics?)
First things first, the column on the far left is not how many spending tokens it takes to level up a school. It’s just the sum of how much techpool it gets you, in terms of “value for money”. Everything but art is worth about 16-17 arbitrary points (adjusted for how useful different sorts are). Art is worth less than others, but has benefits elsewhere. Different ones will take different amounts, but it’s all a bit of a fudge factor and I will keep that a little hidden so there’s some variability. @MrdjaNikolen I finally posted this, there you go.
Second of all, the next round will not open until:
LHC5 has closed - I don’t want to have both legacy challenges open at once. Cake posted first and I wanted to wait a little anyway, and I have other stuff to do too.
The first few hotfixes have come out on the open beta. The next round will run on open beta, and I have run into a couple of show-stopping bugs in some of my testing. They’ve been reported on the discord, the devs have been given representitive .car files which exhibit the issues, I have confidence that they’ll get fixed within the first few patches… But they’re there.
I am happy with the state of exporters. This might mean waiting for Endfinity to patch that side of things and get it showing all the new parameters like power limit and emissions. This might mean I create my own separate tool I have been meaning to work on. The route I take with exporters will determine how certain stats will be judged, so it really needs to be ironed out before the round opens.
Due to this delay, lobbying will remain open until I close it. I’ll give 48 hours notice before closing lobbying.
EDIT: Forgot the third thing I was gonna mention. While this challenge initially ran on ten year-ish rounds and ALC copied that, my experience participating in LHC and judging this challenge has changed my mind there. I want to run shorter rounds, I want to tighten it up a bit, around six or seven years. Yes, this does mean that there will be more rounds. Yes, this does mean that the challenge will go on for longer. I see those as positives, personally. Shortening rounds incidentally lines up better with the life cycles of regular commuter cars like the Corolla (4-6 years between generations).
Okay, time for a quick little bonus round. Lobbying will remain open for the entire duration of the bonus round. It’ll be open for three weeks from today, closing on the 29th of October at 11:59PM UTC.
Araga is set to introduce strict new emissions regulations from the 1970 Model year onwards. There are concerns among the public that this will lead to reductions in car performance, making them slower. The government aims to ensure a positive image… but how?
With a good old fashioned drag race, that’s how. The rules are relatively simple:
First off, this round will be run on the new open beta, as it uses the emissions from that.
Second, cars will run on the following 1km strip. This produces the same results as the regular test in most cases, but I’ll be using it for the reviews. You may also want to use it to get your gearing just right. Basic Drag Strip.zip (20.7 KB)
Fastest time wins, with no modifications. Drivability, comfort, fuel economy, reliability… all irrelevant.
Use the default +5 everywhere techpool. Cars must have their years set to 1970 or older.
Cars must pass WES4. I don’t particularly care how they do it.
Cars must also resemble road-going models. Think Funny Cars rather than Top Fuel. Open wheelers are banned, there needs to be somewhere the lights and such would go, etc. Cars must also use Advanced 70s Safety with 0 or higher quality.
– Open wheelers are no longer banned as there are some on the market, but they should resemble what already exists - sensible, reasonably-proportioned, etc. Open wheel bodies are still banned.
Aero is mostly unrestricted. It must be mounted relatively close to the car’s body. Don’t make it super far back, keep it attached, etc. In addition, neither set of wheels may lift off the ground during testing - if your lift is higher than your weight over either axle, you are disqualified. The game has a warning for this now.
Manual gearboxes are mandatory.
There are two classes: Free-Fuel Dragsters and Modified Dragsters. You may submit to both.
– Free-fuel dragsters can use any non-leaded fuel in the game. Yes, that includes nitromethane. They have a maximum cost of 80000 AMU as shown in detailed stats.
– Modified dragsters must use 95 RON unleaded fuel, and they have a maximum cost of 50000 AMU as shown in detailed stats.
All other modifications are allowed. Wanna take a commuter car, slap new tyres and a V12 (or 16!) in? Be my guest. Your engine will be literally unable to drive more than a few pulls due to how much wear it will get? That’s how most dragsters are! Advance timing so far that you need a good batch of fuel to run? Again, that’s how dragsters are.
Entries should be named ALC4D - YourForumName
Anyone may enter.
The government will be awarding prize money (spending tokens) to:
The fastest entries in each class.
The entries with the lowest emissions while maintaining acceptable performance.
The best-looking entries.
The purse will be decided based on how many entrants there are.
Changelog: Corrected a typo in the rules. Cars must be 1970 and older, not newer. Also banned automatics.
So uh… Nobody has submitted an entry with an actual .car file. I am extending the deadline out another week, and I’ll also start chasing people for lobbying.
Hey all, just a reminder, you have 15 hours to submit. So far, I have entries from @MrdjaNikolen , @moroza and @Danicoptero - plus a message but no file from @Vento
Based on the DCMW Firebreather, here are two completely unusable monstrosities, fit for nothing but turning large amounts of 95 RON (the red-wheeled Dragstah) or nitromethane (the blue-wheeled Slowpoke) into large amounts of noise, smoke, exploding engine parts due to 0.2 and 0.0 reliability, and Extremely Adequate™ forward progress.
