Hi there!
Will there be different car demands in different countries?
Btw, you’re doing a great job with this!
And one more thing, will some constructions be more reliable than others? For example you choose materials with bad quality, and therefore the reliability of the car becomes worse?
IMHO, answers for these questions are pretty obvious. I think this game will definitely have some reliability computing mechanisms and I think different demand for different regions will definitely be included. But I’m not a developer, and that’s only my opinion.
If this is true, I will be extremely happy. Concerning demands for different regions, in Norway we have extremely high taxes on new cars. For example a new BMW 523i with some extras costs about 80,000£, this makes the demand for “premium” cars with small diesel engines and automatic, gearboxes very high. And cars with slightly more powerful petrol engines very low.
In regards to the quality question, look at the second engine designer video. They have values for quality as well as major service interval. I assume both of these will play into the reliability of the vehicle.
Ah, didn’t notice that.
Welcome
Firstly, I was checking out the site traffic today and saw loads of new people from norway,
Im assuming its you spreading the word
Many Thanks, we are always trying to get new people to join the community!
Ok, your questions, I will answer them how they stand now, but things might change a bit in the final game.
Reliability - this is computed on a few things, how much effort you put into manufacturing, and engine variables. So if you have some kind of lightly built high-reving race motor, its going to be less reliable than an overbuilt, low revving tractor like engine.
There may also be some things you can research to improve your manufacturing quality.
Unreliable cars will make for dissatisfied customers and ruin the reputation of that car, and to a degree your brand.
Country Preferences -
Yes indeed! Different regions will have different national preferences, that will change over time, they will prefer more economical cars during an oil crisis for example.
Each region will have a population that changes over time, with more rich people during economic good times etc.
All this will be used to work out how many people buy what cars, its a quite complex and sophisticated system, that we shall talk about further.
Sorry if that didn’t really answer it in detail, we are still working out a lot of things, and we don’t want to give too much away about how the buyer system actually works, as it might make it a bit to easy to exploit the system and ruin the fun of it
I realized we have only really posted art so far, and not discussed the functionality of the game a great deal, Im going to endeavor to post a few updates explaining some of that sort of thing too, because a lot of it is quite interesting
Oh, and taxes/registration costs will be different per region, so some will tax by emissions, some by bore, some by weight etc. and these will change over time in the places where the rules changed.
This will translate into higher running costs for some cars, and so people will not want to buy them as much
Absolutely greeat news! And, yes I did post this game at a couple of forums which I am a member of 
Few things I was pondering about…
Are you planning on making an economy system that will go hand in hand with real world history (oil crisis, global depressions etc.) or there going to be some dynamics there to keep us guessing?
Another thing… Christian’s question about reliability somehow made me think of Lancia and their problems with low-quality steel and the ensuing corrosion. So, with that in mind, have you thought of giving the player a choice of material suppliers and that having a potential effect on the cars quality / reliability?
[quote]Are you planning on making an economy system that will go hand in hand with real world history (oil crisis, global depressions etc.) or there going to be some dynamics there to keep us guessing?
[/quote]
Everything in the game is driven by lua scripts. This allows us to do a lot of configurable gameplay items, and to easily configure unique properties of countries demands etc. This also should allow for user created content such as mods.
There will be scenarios available for games, real world history events will be one of them, or scenarios with random events, or countries mixed up and not normal.
We did have an original plan to have suppliers for almost everything, but the scope to manage all of that broadens a lot wider, and causes a whole lot of issues you do not see at first, both in gameplay aspects, and in implementation in code. So that feature was cut. Items will just have a material cost associated to them in dollars. The quality of the item is based on the equipment in your factory, and how many man hours you are will to dedicate to each part.
[quote=“Daffyflyer”]
Reliability - this is computed on a few things, how much effort you put into manufacturing, and engine variables. So if you have some kind of lightly built high-reving race motor, its going to be less reliable than an overbuilt, low revving tractor like engine.[/quote]
Then what about Honda? Almost every single engine they make are small high-reving engines, and still they make some of the most reliable engines on the market.
Yes, you could built Honda style engines and make them very reliable, however you would need to put quite a bit of effort into making sure they were built to a high standard, and you’d need to have researched some quite high tech stuff to do it (Just like Honda has really!) 