Brucemation on: The restrictiveness of the families system

General Chat Developer Questions
1

So I’ve been working on variants of a car I made and while doing so I’ve realized how very restrictive the family system is, like why are the fixtures locked away in the platform family options? What if someone wants to give their performance variant a hood scoop and twin tail pipes to differentiate it more? Well under the currant system they’d have to start a whole new platform family, just to add a hood scoop and an extra tail pipe! It gets worse for those who like modding and giving each variant it’s own unique badging and stuff, they’d have to create a new platform for every single variant and that’s ridiculous. Being so restrictive the family system would probably seem like an annoying unnecessary addition that just clogs up the list of models to those who really like designing variants that differentiate visually, so as great as it is to be able to have dozens of variants all in a collapsible list you’re making it more difficult to like by having all these restrictions.

As someone who likes making just engines more than whole cars I find the situation even worse for engine families, for starters why is the head and block material locked? Surely in real life it would be as simple as pouring one molten metal into a mold instead of another, if not then I doubt it’s any more different than changing between different bottom end parts. Manufacturers giving different variants of the same engine different head and block materials is common place, Chevrolet in the mid 90s for instance with the LT1 gave it aluminum heads if it was on a Corvette or Camaro and iron heads if it was on an Impala or Caprice. Now that I’m on the subject why have you made aluminum heads lower output and reduce efficiency? I’ve always heard that aluminum heads improve airflow and therefore increase output and efficiency which if true would basically mean you’re calling BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Toyota and probably many many more manufacturers who used iron block aluminum head combinations on engines idiots. I hope you don’t plan on replying saying they did it for weight because if that was the reason they would have done aluminum block Iron heads which would save more weight, not reduce output and efficiency and have no worse reliability than the other way around. That’s of course going by what you guys think, here’s the first result on Google by typing “aluminium vs iron heads”: hotrod.com/how-to/engine/ccr … eads-test/

Provided you’ve actually read that article, you should know they concluded their test by saying “Regardless of coolant temp, rate of acceleration, steady state, or through a sweep, the dyno curves for the two styles of heads were identical. If anything, we could squint and guess and mumble that maybe aluminum heads were better by 2-3 hp.”

I personally don’t think number of valves should be locked either as engines like the Dino V8 came in 2 and 4 valve DOHC variates and the Ford Modular engine comes in 2 and 3 valve SOHC variates, but since more valves would require a new mold I can see where you’re coming from if that’s why you did it. I also recon OHV and MOHV, as pointless as I think it is currently, should be interchangeable, that Slim Jim guy did after all link an article which showed how hydraulic and solid lifters are interchangeable.

Finally how does tech pool work on families? Will they receive more tech pool to work with each new campaign year? Because if not I think the biggest problem with the families system is how the tech year is locked, I hope I wont have to explain why.

2

  1. 100% Agreed, That’s just not done yet, when it’s in it’s finished state you’ll be able to make visual changes to each trim of a model. :slight_smile:

  2. It’s not quite as simple as changing over internals, it’s a different set of casting equipment, so you’d lose some of the efficiency of shared production. We’ll have a think on that one. Every piece of information we could find at the time said that iron heads kept slightly more heat in the combustion chamber, translating to a slight efficiency increase, although agreed, in that particular test you linked it seems to be pretty much identical between alloy and iron. I’d be interested to know how alloy heads improve airflow though, as that should really only depend on the shape of the ports and valves.

  3. The number of valves is locked to prevent you from basically designing two wildly different engines (for example the SOHC, 8 valve Toyota 4AC, and the DOHC 20V 4AGE Blacktop) and reaping the benefits of a shared engine family. Those engines should not be able to effectively share the same production line, nor should the 4AGE Blacktop get much of a techpool advantage because you’ve been building the 4AC for ages.

Variants could best be considered “States of tune” of an engine, more than they could be considered full on variants. Think of a turbo version of an existing engine, or a sportier version with twin carbs, a hotter cam and more compression. Maybe one with a different crank thrown in for a shorter stroke. Not one with a completely different head design, once you get to that point then it’s really a different but related engine.

Maybe we should have named them “Engines” and “Tunes” really.

Modern OHV is there because everyone was complaining that it was impossible to replicate really well designed modern pushrod engines, but every possible balance change we made ended up making your average mundane pushrod engine way too good compared to real life engines. It’s a bit of a band-aid fix, but it gives the required result of “with enough research and money you can build an OHV engine that revs pretty hard” It may need some further balancing and tweaking on it’s stats though, as some things still do in Automation.

  1. Techpool will most likely be gained by building the same engine for a long time. For example the Buick V6 got a lot better over the 40+ years it was in service, as the engineers learned more about it’s design. A big part of that is that they made no major design changes, they didn’t go DOHC 4v, they just refined the same basic engine over a very long period. That’s your reward for keeping old designs in service and perfecting their engineering.

This mechanic, along with the fact that you’ll gain production efficiency by having similar engines on the same line, are the reasons why there aren’t wildly different choices within one engine family.

3

And I can promise, every single design decision we make is to “troll our fans” and has nothing to do with attempting to make a decent balance of realism and simplicity. :open_mouth:

4

Troll detected. :open_mouth:

In all seriousness, I think it is awesome that someone who joined the forum just two days ago, as Brucemation did, has already invested so many thoughts into what could be changed and what can be improved. It is appreciated.

5

[quote=“Vroomvroom”]Troll detected. :open_mouth:

In all seriousness, I think it is awesome that someone who joined the forum just two days ago, as Brucemation did, has already invested so many thoughts into what could be changed and what can be improved. It is appreciated.[/quote]

Agreed, feedback is great. I’m just referring to and early thread where he said we only created MOHV to troll users.
Killrob Edit: He explained before that with the Steam Launch he no longer can share account with someone else, so now he has his own. He’s legitimately invested in the game (time-wise at least) :wink:

6

[quote=“Daffyflyer”]1. 100% Agreed, That’s just not done yet, when it’s in it’s finished state you’ll be able to make visual changes to each trim of a model. :slight_smile:

  1. It’s not quite as simple as changing over internals, it’s a different set of casting equipment, so you’d lose some of the efficiency of shared production. We’ll have a think on that one. Every piece of information we could find at the time said that iron heads kept slightly more heat in the combustion chamber, translating to a slight efficiency increase, although agreed, in that particular test you linked it seems to be pretty much identical between alloy and iron. I’d be interested to know how alloy heads improve airflow though, as that should really only depend on the shape of the ports and valves.

  2. The number of valves is locked to prevent you from basically designing two wildly different engines (for example the SOHC, 8 valve Toyota 4AC, and the DOHC 20V 4AGE Blacktop) and reaping the benefits of a shared engine family. Those engines should not be able to effectively share the same production line, nor should the 4AGE Blacktop get much of a techpool advantage because you’ve been building the 4AC for ages.

Variants could best be considered “States of tune” of an engine, more than they could be considered full on variants. Think of a turbo version of an existing engine, or a sportier version with twin carbs, a hotter cam and more compression. Maybe one with a different crank thrown in for a shorter stroke. Not one with a completely different head design, once you get to that point then it’s really a different but related engine.

Maybe we should have named them “Engines” and “Tunes” really.

Modern OHV is there because everyone was complaining that it was impossible to replicate really well designed modern pushrod engines, but every possible balance change we made ended up making your average mundane pushrod engine way too good compared to real life engines. It’s a bit of a band-aid fix, but it gives the required result of “with enough research and money you can build an OHV engine that revs pretty hard” It may need some further balancing and tweaking on it’s stats though, as some things still do in Automation.

  1. Techpool will most likely be gained by building the same engine for a long time. For example the Buick V6 got a lot better over the 40+ years it was in service, as the engineers learned more about it’s design. A big part of that is that they made no major design changes, they didn’t go DOHC 4v, they just refined the same basic engine over a very long period. That’s your reward for keeping old designs in service and perfecting their engineering.

This mechanic, along with the fact that you’ll gain production efficiency by having similar engines on the same line, are the reasons why there aren’t wildly different choices within one engine family.[/quote]

2: Well I remember being told how aluminum can hold thinner walls or something than brittle iron allowing aluminum heads to have bigger ports and therefore more airflow, but that could just be a lie I was told growing up.

3: It’s interesting you say that because before when Killrob said if you played as Chevy you’d get tech pool for pushrods in the big 2014 Q&A video without really explaining how that works, I assumed he meant that other valve-trains would get penalties just like how you get penalties for using advanced tech in the scenarios. But definitely having a DOHC 5 valve engine being built on the same production line as a SOHC 2 valve engine would slow down production of the SOHC 2 valve engine due to the extra time to assemble the DOHC 5 valve engine, so for efficiency reasons it doesn’t make much sense to have them on the same production line.

I like that next point you made of variants being “states of tune” and support the idea of naming them “Engines” and “Tunes” as it would make things clearer.

I haven’t seen people complain it was impossible to replicate modern pushrod engines, I for instance have been able to replicate all the LS engines in previous game builds. But certainly if people don’t consider the GM LS engines as well designed pushrod engines then they definitely have a point, so far in this build I’ve only done the LS7 and it needed +10 with OHV so if there are much better designed pushrod engines than the LS7 then yeah OHV wouldn’t be up for the task. If on the other hand they did mean the LS engines then 1: They’re wrong and 2: You’re totally ignoring the real impossibility with pushrods, replicating classic American muscle car engines from the mid 50s to the early 70s.

4: I was hoping you’d say something like that because with each tech year parts get better while staying at the same price, so unless if your older families got tech pool points to compensate you’re really handicapping yourself by keeping them in production verse starting a new family. But can I ask how building a new variant of a engine family started in the 70s in a campaign year in the 90s would compare to building a whole new engine in the 90s? For I’d like to have long running families like the Buick V6 you mentioned, but not if doing so would just be handicapping myself.

7

[quote=“Daffyflyer”]

[quote=“Vroomvroom”]Troll detected. :open_mouth:

In all seriousness, I think it is awesome that someone who joined the forum just two days ago, as Brucemation did, has already invested so many thoughts into what could be changed and what can be improved. It is appreciated.[/quote]

Agreed, feedback is great. I’m just referring to and early thread where he said we only created MOHV to troll users.
Killrob Edit: He explained before that with the Steam Launch he no longer can share account with someone else, so now he has his own. He’s legitimately invested in the game (time-wise at least) :wink:[/quote]

If allowing me to make better engines is trolling, i cant wait until the real trolling starts!

8

[quote=“Brucemation”]2: Well I remember being told how aluminum can hold thinner walls or something than brittle iron allowing aluminum heads to have bigger ports and therefore more airflow, but that could just be a lie I was told growing up.

3: It’s interesting you say that because before when Killrob said if you played as Chevy you’d get tech pool for pushrods in the big 2014 Q&A video without really explaining how that works, I assumed he meant that other valve-trains would get penalties just like how you get penalties for using advanced tech in the scenarios. But definitely having a DOHC 5 valve engine being built on the same production line as a SOHC 2 valve engine would slow down production of the SOHC 2 valve engine due to the extra time to assemble the DOHC 5 valve engine, so for efficiency reasons it doesn’t make much sense to have them on the same production line.

I like that next point you made of variants being “states of tune” and support the idea of naming them “Engines” and “Tunes” as it would make things clearer.

I haven’t seen people complain it was impossible to replicate modern pushrod engines, I for instance have been able to replicate all the LS engines in previous game builds. But certainly if people don’t consider the GM LS engines as well designed pushrod engines then they definitely have a point, so far in this build I’ve only done the LS7 and it needed +10 with OHV so if there are much better designed pushrod engines than the LS7 then yeah OHV wouldn’t be up for the task. If on the other hand they did mean the LS engines then 1: They’re wrong and 2: You’re totally ignoring the real impossibility with pushrods, replicating classic American muscle car engines from the mid 50s to the early 70s.

4: I was hoping you’d say something like that because with each tech year parts get better while staying at the same price, so unless if your older families got tech pool points to compensate you’re really handicapping yourself by keeping them in production verse starting a new family. But can I ask how building a new variant of a engine family started in the 70s in a campaign year in the 90s would compare to building a whole new engine in the 90s? For I’d like to have long running families like the Buick V6 you mentioned, but not if doing so would just be handicapping myself.[/quote]

2: That could be true in some but not all cases I can imagine. Not every engine is limited in port size by wall thickness though, it very much depends on the design of the head casting as to that being an issue or not. Also some engines don’t want bigger ports than they have to make more power, so it’s not really a consistant effect. I think what you were told would be true for some designs though yes.

3: Awesome, glad you can see the logic in that plan :slight_smile: Regarding pushrod stuff, just hang tight, it’s something we need to do further tweaking on to make sure you can replicate the widest range of engines in a logical way, for now it’s staying how it is, but we’ll have a think about the best way to handle it.

4: I would say that to actually take advantage of your tech pool points you’d have to “reengineer” your engine. In the tycoon game you’ll need to send your engine designs to the engineering department to spend a while testing and perfecting the design for production.

So our current thinking is that if you wanted to take advantage of the bonuses for a long running design, you’d go back to that design after 10 years of production or whatever time you want, then send it to the engineers again, they’d spend a few months doing things to it and come back having improved it’s reliability or smoothness or something. Imagine it as the engineers going “Well, in the last 10 years we found out this bearing can fail due to bad oil gallery design, so lets make this oil gallery bigger” or something like that. Small changes that can only be learned by long service of the same design.

This makes an entirely new engine design less reliable and generally less well engineered, but in many ways better because of the cutting edge tech used. I’d imagine that by far the biggest thing improved by the engineering bonuses of a long service engine would be reliablity, with more minor bonuses in other fields.

9

That kind of thinking makes sense, and is kind of a relief. To be competitive after about, oh, 1975, my ancient pushrod designs had to be updated with SOHC or DOHC depending on the application, which doesn’t really make sense in the context of an American car company. While more and more DOHC applications are popping up, there are still to this day a large number of pushrod applications… and there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

Now is this also why when you’re working on a family of engines and make a “variant” that’s a different year, it changes the tech year of the entire family?

So your explanation also explains that. The intention that I had is once the main block was set for a specific series, it would carry on with no alterations (except maybe stroke) for decades. Fuel systems would change, possibly even internals would change (composition of the conrods and pistons, but still no dimensional changes).

But if you keep the same “design” and it gets significantly better over time, that makes sense.

(It does, of course, mean that I will need to keep a spreadsheet on my desktop with the bore/stroke specs of each of my series and variants, to keep them the same over the decades, and keep canon in line… but that’s relatively minor)

10

[quote=“Daffyflyer”]2: That could be true in some but not all cases I can imagine. Not every engine is limited in port size by wall thickness though, it very much depends on the design of the head casting as to that being an issue or not. Also some engines don’t want bigger ports than they have to make more power, so it’s not really a consistant effect. I think what you were told would be true for some designs though yes.

3: Awesome, glad you can see the logic in that plan :slight_smile: Regarding pushrod stuff, just hang tight, it’s something we need to do further tweaking on to make sure you can replicate the widest range of engines in a logical way, for now it’s staying how it is, but we’ll have a think about the best way to handle it.

4: I would say that to actually take advantage of your tech pool points you’d have to “reengineer” your engine. In the tycoon game you’ll need to send your engine designs to the engineering department to spend a while testing and perfecting the design for production.

So our current thinking is that if you wanted to take advantage of the bonuses for a long running design, you’d go back to that design after 10 years of production or whatever time you want, then send it to the engineers again, they’d spend a few months doing things to it and come back having improved it’s reliability or smoothness or something. Imagine it as the engineers going “Well, in the last 10 years we found out this bearing can fail due to bad oil gallery design, so lets make this oil gallery bigger” or something like that. Small changes that can only be learned by long service of the same design.

This makes an entirely new engine design less reliable and generally less well engineered, but in many ways better because of the cutting edge tech used. I’d imagine that by far the biggest thing improved by the engineering bonuses of a long service engine would be reliablity, with more minor bonuses in other fields.[/quote]

2: I came across an article that did claim iron heads improve power by keeping more heat in and therefore more pressure and compression, however they said to get that power back with aluminum all you have to do is install higher compression pistons.They didn’t show any data backing up this claim so I don’t find it as believable as the other one I linked, but their reasoning does suggest that provided you install higher compression pistons to compensate for the compression lost via heat escaping with aluminum that iron and aluminum are equal. That article was aimed at car modders on the fence of whether to go with iron or aluminum heads, their conclusion was that if your current engine already has iron heads you should stick with iron unless if you also have the budget for new pistons as well. I’ll link you to it if you want but it was really long and boring so I don’t really think it’s worth your time, just let me know if you do want to see it and I’ll PM it to you or something.

4: I’m liking where this is going, but how does new tech come in to play? Like if I was playing as an American company and started a new inline 4 in like 71 for an economy car because of the fuel crisis starting at the time, what would happen in 75 when I need to put a catalytic converter on to meet new regulations? Will it just become available to use without penalties like it would on a new design or would it eat up the tech pool I’ve been earning by having it in service for 4 years? What would happen in lets say 83 if I still had that same inline 4 going and I wanted to upgrade to EFI? By then I’d have a huge tech pool for the engine due to 12 years of service but now we’re talking advanced tech, does stuff like new tech get unlocked via a separate tech pool or from the tech pools of the engines themselves?

11

The tech pool rewards will be mostly for keeping an engine FAMILY in service I’d say, so you won’t throw too much away by just putting a new fuel system or a different cam on your Buick V6 or what have you.

12

[quote=“Vroomvroom”]
In all seriousness, I think it is awesome that someone who joined the forum just two days ago, as Brucemation did, has already invested so many thoughts into what could be changed and what can be improved. It is appreciated.[/quote]

People complained I “bitch too much”. Now that the game is on Steam you will see how real gamers “bitch”. Just need to deal with people with different and valid opinions and respect them.

But man, this thread sure has some walls in it. I read it diagonally but I’m going to give my opinion on engine families.
Right now you have the familly bore stroke at max by default. I think it should be on min by default. Because usually you start with a good solid reliable block and then you stroke it and bore it to get more power. So it’s a little confusing to start with the best bore/stroke and downtune it.
e.g.: I was trying to build a commuter. I wanted a 1.0 but I wanted to be able to bore and stroke it to 1.6. I kept getting to go back and fourth to mess with the original sliders to get it to the min and get 1.0l at the minimum. It ended up spoiling my experience in a way that I found out right there that to get 1.6 I needed a min 1.1 engine.
It would have been much cooler and realistic that I started with a 1.1 and then trying to increasing the displacement to the max, even though it would fell short to my expectations that exactly what happen in real life.

On that note. If not being able to extend the flares of the car on the tire selection was pissing me off before, now with trim version it gets me MAD.

13

Starting with a small engine and making it bigger is not the ideal solution - especially in real life. When you’ve built a block too “small”, like the Ford Modular V8 (ask me how I know), there comes a point where you can’t easily bore it out without significantly weakening/destroying it…

Starting with a larger block, then downsizing is cheaper and easier, from a manufacturer’s point of view (the Cadillac 500 V8 from the early 70s was designed this way).

From a gameplay point of view - if they started out “min”, you’d realistically only be able to add a SMALL amount of bore (maybe 3%). The way it is currently, you can downsize the bore up to 10%. It’s not hard - you’ll get used to it.

14

The GM v-6 fitted into SAAB and Opel, was at 2.8l. The larger versions of this engine is at 3.6l, with a estimated max of 4.0l

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_High_Feature_engine

15

Ahh, maybe it’d be better if we specify on the family tab what the MINIMUM capacity that would be possible for that size is too?

16

Yes, I have to say that would be very very good, Daffy. :slight_smile:

17

Seconded

18

Yes, it is planned to put this into the tool tip for the family bore and stroke sliders because it is tight in the UI :slight_smile:

19

[quote=“RobtheFiend”]The GM v-6 fitted into SAAB and Opel, was at 2.8l. The larger versions of this engine is at 3.6l, with a estimated max of 4.0l

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_High_Feature_engine[/quote]

In other words, it was designed with a 4.0-liter capacity in mind, first. Then downsized to a 2.8. :wink: The 3.6 version came out before the 2.8 - further making the point. Start with the largest capacity you intend to use for the engine - then downsize as needed.

Awesome!

20

I might be very wrong here, but could it be that the aluminium cast would result just slightly smoother surface in ports vs iron cast, therefore, giving a better airflow?