Two rather small things inspired by my latest f…up in the campaign:
Ability to revert the sign-off of a project if the time wasn’t unpaused.
Well, sometimes the player forgets about sth that had to be done in a project and remembers it right after signing it off, or while working on another project in the same paused time - that’s a really frustrating moment. It’s not like those virtual engineers actually started anything, right? Yet we can’t fix it anymore. Such project could display in a special state “just signed off”, for example with a mixed yellow/green bar and a tooltip saying “This project will enter engineering as soon as you unpause. Until then you can make last minute changes!” and of course still being editable.
Inability to sign-off a project with red warnings.
Red warning is definitely something the player wants in their project - it’s basically a sign that something is very much broken and requires urgent fixing if the project is to make any sense. Yet still, even such a warning can be ignored with enough lack of attention or knowledge about the game. The idea is to show a message right in the middle of the screen when the player tries to sign-off that it’s not possible due to a red warning shown below, with the option to go back to the project or exit to the hub (in case fixing that needs something outside of the current project).
It would be nice if the factories in project engineering screen had their automation level shown, and a tooltip reminding that setting the project’s automation level the same is the most efficient. Right now we still have the way to pinpoint this by fiddling with the slider, but it’s a bit inobvious and easy to forget.
Possibility to wait for a factory, if there is more than one in a project - I’ll explain this on an example. I have an engine project with two engines, N/A and turbo, two factories and two target cars. Turbo is used in a low production sports car which gets just a facelift now, so I want it out sooner, in 48 months. It will be produced in a medium factory, which needs not much more than a retooling, so it will be ready in 14 months. All good so far. N/A is used in a new generation family car, which comes out in 60 months and the engine will be made in two factories - the medium one, and a large one, which needs a major upgrade and thus will be ready in 56 months. Engine’s engineering is set up for 48 months to match the sports car, but I still have to wait additional 8 months for the large factory - even though it is not needed for the sports car engines, they won’t even be made there. Sooo it would be perfect if I could just engineer that project in the 48 months I’ve set it up to, and the turbo variant would enter production then, while the large factory would just end it’s upgrades after that, still in time for the N/A variant usage.
What is it with suggestions that I always have them in pairs?
Show the plot size for factories in factory manager - I’m trying to plan my production capacity expansion, yet I don’t know how much I can expand each factory on its plot, and since all of them have some project in engineering assigned, I can’t open them and check.
If the factory is in construction, show - even in just a tooltip - when the construction will finish. Also both the current size and the one after the refresh would be helpful.
PS I think I’ll renumber all points in case anyone would want to discuss them.
Add a text field indicating current “availability” of an engine on the “select existing engine” screen. It’s no good telling me the 4 cylinder is an option if the factory making it is already at 3.0 shifts because I have the same engine used in two other car projects.
Allow a factory being expanded in size to continue working at it’s current capacity until the additions are completed, and then the factory works at the newer, increased capacity. Upgrading a Medium 1 factory to a Medium 3 is as punishing as upgrading to a Huge 1 - but why should it? You end up with a situation where to maintain current production, you buy the factory as something separate to a project, and then assign it to the car on the next facelift.
Fine, that’s great. Can I cancel a car from being produced in a factory? Yes, if you click on the factory to assign new tooling, but this feature isn’t fleshed out so there’s no selection you can make towards another car.
But if you didn’t know to do all that and pursued the project system, then you create a new car project and assign it to the first car factory that the new gigafactory replaces, and the old factory continues creating the prior car project to which it was assigned.
It’s… a complicated criticism because I get the sense this part of the game is so under-developed that I’m not sure what the vision was supposed to be, and so cannot provide feedback to point it in the right direction.
Allow factories to be moved up and down in the Factory Manager screen, so the player can group like-factories together (all making this model of car)
either remove or change the Steel Press restrictions on tiny car factories, as I think they’re useless. There currently does not seem to be a purpose to any car factory smaller than Medium.
better tooltips / indicators to the player as to what body styles or chassis choices are preferred by different market demographics
or at least allow the market column box to be viewable whilst making those choices, so the player can better set themselves up for success
clearer indication that the suspension section is the make-or-break for a car. I built a 1947 Premium car that was able to hit a score of 412.3, out of a stating score of 214, only from playing with suspension. Either suspension is incorrectly de-prioritized or is massively imbalanced in how impactful it is to the car.
There very much is a purpose for them. I even use one in my campaign and don’t intend to stop, despite having many medium to huge ones. That purpose is low scale. For niche manufacturers, like luxury or supercar brands, those small and tiny factories are a necessity. It’s quite obvious that they aren’t useful for a typical, mass producing company.
As for body styles and chassis - desired body style is indicated in the market tooltip, and if there isn’t one then it’s just a matter of balancing stats, and the latter goes for chassis - you can choose whatever you want, as long as it works good enough.
So in my latest game, I purposefully built a Tiny car factory just as the lowest-cost laboratory to push out new models, and Tiny car factories cannot build the Steel Press, so the game wouldn’t even let me select the Tiny factory for the new car project.
So I’m making a 1967 mid-engine sports car, and only by making choices, advancing along to the tuning options do I go back to car model > chassis, am I able to pick and compare options. You can achieve what I’m looking for, if you’re clever about it, but it is not intuitive.
For the same options, for what I’m building, there’s a 50 point market score difference between MacPherson Struts and Double Wishbone for the rear suspension. If you’re a new player, and you see MacPherson Struts as a new option, you might think “oh this must be better, because it’s new”. And it isn’t, not by a long shot.
And the same goes for Panel Material - if I pick Fibre Glass, I get a score of 326.6 for the Sport category. That’s not bad. But both Steel and Aluminum both boost the score to 370 - even better. Corrosion Resistant Steel is also better than Fibre Glass, but only to an increase of 356.7.
Again, if you’re making a mid-engined sports car in 1967, you would think picking a material lighter than Steel would be better - but it isn’t.
Some of the settings are wildly sensitive. For this car, going down from a top speed of 211.5 to 205.8 also drops the Sports car score from 410.1 to 314.4. That… just seems like a lot.
if I pick Fibre Glass, I get a score of 326.6 for the Sport category. That’s not bad. But both Steel and Aluminum both boost the score to 370 - even better. Corrosion Resistant Steel is also better than Fibre Glass, but only to an increase of 356.7.
Or this could be due to changes in handling characteristic of the car due to changes in weight. Or because of price. I don’t know the formula, but if you increase affordability you are also increasing competitiveness, at least in some cases (lowering quality sliders can actually increase competitiveness of the car).
You’re right, it is making a difference in the score for the market segment, however I’m saying that the equation for the score is skewed with improper or undesirable variables / coefficients.
For a sports car, it should never be preferable to have steel body panels over fibre glass.
And we are asking you to first take a look at those stats what is actually changing. It can be a number of things, starting with heavier car having more neutral handling characteristic, scoring higher sportiness score. Or your brakes are more drivable. Or there is less wheel spin. Or the springs are effectively less harsh. You can not just swap chassis materials without affecting those things.
That sounds… scary. Not sure if such a thing is a smart thing to do code wise.
Added to the list!
Certainly, yes! That interaction is important, it needs to be on the screen. Added to the list, wanted to have that too anyway.
If I understand this right you’d want it so that you could tick or untick factories to be considered in aligning the project times? Maybe that could be done, we had something like that in mind, question really is where to put that so it makes sense in all the possible situations.
Yepp, easy to do and useful. Added to the list.
If the factory is in construction, why would the old size matter? You’re not going to get back to it anyway.
Adding a text field indicating current “availability” of an engine on the “select existing engine” screen would potentially be very misleading… how do you know the situation will be the same 5 years down the line when this project is out?
Size upgrades are indeed rather punishing at the moment, that will change with 4.1
Factory grouping could be interesting, keeping that in mind.
“Better tooltips / indicators to the player as to what body styles or chassis choices are preferred by different market demographics.” The size of the desire for a certain body type certainly should be added. Good point! I ignore the rest of that suggestion, because it is a case of “u wot m8?”.
“allow the market column box to be viewable whilst making those choices, so the player can better set themselves up for success” This is the thing with making suggestions, they are often not very useful. What is useful however is pointing out flaws, because then we know you have an issue that potentially needs fixing, and most often it won’t be in the way you describe anyway. So here I would say the body selection screens probably need some kind of info on which demographics prefer that body style. That sounds handy.
Suspension is as important as it should be. You can’t sell a premium car that rides like a skateboard, all the fancy interior is worthless as soon as the car starts moving if the suspension settings are fucked.
… just an observation: you seem to be rather confused as to how the game works and underestimate how nuanced and complex it is in the part choices you are making. There is no such thing as “these customers prefer that item”, there only is “this item influences these 20 stats, and these 60 demographics all value those stats differently”.
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions guys!
Cheers
When on the Car or Engine family creator menu it has happened to me that after spending 30 mins making a new model, I decided to make another trim which sucked, so I wanted to remove that trim but instead of clicking on the trash bin icon I clicked on the X a bit more to the upper right. It deleted the nice model I had just created. I know it’s my fault(technically) but it would probably help more people to add a pop up saying something like ‘are you sure you want to cancel the whole project?’
I’d like to second a couple of these suggestions. I would really like the ability to group factories, and maybe to be able to set them all to the same sliders at the same time. I also actually like the idea being able to cancel signed off orders in the same month. You might be able to accomplish this by adding an additional “Sign-off pending” state which they stay in until the month advances. Then, only at the monthly tick, do they “actually” sign off, doing all of the things that normally happen when you press the sign-off button. That way, you can cancel them.
