I don’t know if someone gave this suggestion before, but here it goes:
What about buying technology for our cars from suppliers such as Magna International, Bosch, Magneti Marelli…
Also, having some conditionants such as technology price, technology level from our company and our country…
Basically the way technology works is that there’s a general “world technology level”. That means that at any given time the minimum tech you have will be appropriate to the period in time you are at in the game. As time passes in the game, you’ll get new tech appropriate to the period. You can advance past that level by doing research but the further beyond baseline you get, the more expensive the tech will be to use.
I’m not sure if they had planned on allowing companies to buy/sell tech to each other. But then again I haven’t really been that active on the boards lately.
I could see something similar being done by having companies that make only certain things and just licensing technology from them… So you could have companies like Cosworth and Yamaha selling engines, and stuff like that.
This would be even more interesting in Multiplayer where you could even roleplay being a Company like Cosworth and having other players request you design an engine to certain requirements, then have them License the engine… And to Zeussy & Daffy: the more options for these kinds of transactions and contracts between companies the better… Being able to specify things like exclusive rights to a certain part. Or having the ability for one company to design AND manufacture the part and sell it, instead of just licensing it out for the other one to build… Although some of these features would be too advanced for the AI to properly understand, It would still make for a VERY interesting Online game.