I also just want to ask… Can you explain the decision to post the rules in a clearly half-finished state? Having slept on all this, it really doesn’t sit right with me, having slept on it. Based on the timeline you’ve given, we could be sitting around quite a while waiting for the rules. It seems odd, and it’s not the best omen for the challenge, at least not to me.
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I’d expect the deadline to be updated when things are fully narrowed down.
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Sure, but… Is CSR the “put up a flashy post and wait for the host to nail down a functional ruleset” challenge? It just feels bad having to wait to find out such important items as “how much my car can cost”. This functionally feels like a teaser.
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i believe alot of challenges do a rules delib as a way to see how potential participants feel about the challenge, imo its a good way to see what people like and dont really care for.
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There’s a difference between “rules deliberation” and “rules not all present at the time of posting”. Has any other challenge ever come out with zero indication of what the budget is and what the techpool should be?
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i believe so yeah, i think there’s another challenge starting up now that doesn’t have all the info listed on the main post. i will say that this gives more time to design a car so i have no problem waiting.
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Considering that this challenge’s timeframe is rather different and more difficult to narrow down and pinpoint, I think that having the community help to form the ruleset is a much better idea than waiting weeks to get a more “polished” ruleset posted.
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No, I wanted to get the theme out fast so people can start thinking about the builds and start thinking of possible things to design. Within the timeframe there is plenty of time to optimize your engineering I believe. If people need more time I am more than willing to extend the deadline too. I can guarantee the intent was purely to get this out early so people can get started brainstorming ideas and thinking about what to build.
The reason the budget and the techpool is TBD and feels unpolished is a lot of different people have different ideas on what is realistic for the era, not to mention the quirks automation has trying to extrapolate to years before the game’s official start date. If I did a modern round or 80s or 60s round it would be more polished for sure.
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So for further clarification on this:
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We - meaning, the Dev team, the community admins both here and on Discord, and myself - do not want to see AI-generated or enhanced content in any Automation-related spaces; Community Challenges and the Sharing subforums being the specific areas where this rule is the most important.
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Because of the timings of this rule dropping, I have granted Oreology a one-time exception for the content he has already generated. But for future community challenges, the AI ban applies to any assets you may generate in support of your challenge as well as any Automation-related submissions as well.
I have updated the Forum FAQ with this already, and will be making a general post about this shortly.
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I think that recognizing the complexities of extrapolating to the 1930s while trying to respect a semblance of realism, especially since the changes of Al Rilma, is commendable, not a half-assed teaser. It may take some more ironing out (or may not, given the likely arguments that’d’ve ensued had Oreo simply dumped the first numbers that came to mind), but it’s nothing to lose sleep over anyway.
The AI dispute was a distracting sideshow, now thankfully settled.
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Whilst I don’t know a whole lot about engines, to get an engine that won’t blow up like a Renault F1 car from the 70s, whilst not increasing techpool beyond the standard +5s across the board, you’d need to artificially kneecap the engine using a lower springs & lifters and have around a +4 - +6 quality across all engine components. Which does make the engine actually.. run but at the cost of a dip in power, and the reliability isn’t all that good either. It would also need a harmonic damper to lessen the reliability strain, and this is just for a car reaching around 4500RPM.
I’m sure people far more used to this will be able to work out a way.
And this isn’t really a very realistic engine for the time anyways in terms of specifics, we’ve already seen earlier from someone else that an actual replica stands no chance of working.
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Engines & Techpool Unlocks
I’ve started playing around with aluminum blocks & heads (unlocked at 14 techpool for alu block, +4 for alu head) and forged (not heavy) pistons (unlocked at 10 techpool). This leads to literally 839M of techpool which is insane. This is mainly contributed to the engine block TP, which is a very significant mover and at +14 it grows almost exponentially upwards, just to get an aluminum engine block that blows up your cost and isn’t entirely advantageous in stats anyway, since we placed smoothness and reliability greater than performance. An alu head makes more sense here.
This is more feasible and more realistic, since more cars had forged internals rather than fully custom aluminum engine blocks unless its for racing, or (as far as I know) the Rolls Royce Phantom III which was said to be somewhat unreliable due to the aluminum block (ie. cylinder liners or thermal expansion during startup and whatnot).
I also tried to make a couple of engines and was able to make above-realistic horsepower (250+) and torque numbers (650+) using lots of quality and just using forged heavy or regular ‘forged’ pistons, at RPMs around 5000rpm too. Yes there is “stress” in the pistons (around 20%), but I feel like when most realistic engines of this era (even large displacement V12s) only made around 130 or 200hp max (the Duesenberg had 265hp and this was considered super high).
I feel like these allowances should make it easy enough to make a (somewhat) realistic engine for this era, without necessarily sticking to replicas 1:1. Engine horsepower regardless of displacement or cylinder count was around 130 - 200, including supercharged ones. (Correct me if I’m wrong or if you have additional thoughts/inputs)
So: Internal Forged is fine, putting 14 techpool in Engine Block just for aluminum block is kinda overkill and I think at this stage unnecessary. I think a better way is to just have a more reasonable +4 TP on engine block for the aluminum head, and focus on adding quality instead, for a close-enough method of ‘lightweighting’ an engine - you can just define it in lore if you put a ton of quality and emphasis on the engine that there was significant work on the aluminum materials science and lightweighting of the engine (in lore only).
I also ran through a couple of mules, and landed at around 200k-300k AMU cost using around 10M to 20M techpool. So I think a preliminary initial cost cap of 200k with around 80M of techpool is significant enough already - let me know y’alls thoughts on this please.
Sochaux & Rolls Royce Body: 
I just tested it in-game, and tried to get a better feel of the stats, and yes there’s no big stats difference due to the age of the bodies - it was mainly due to the size difference or the compartment sizes, so this is fine. Some of the 1930s mod bodies outperformed the sochaux, and the rolls royce can outperform the 1930 mod bodies, and vice versa, depending on your morphs and wheelbase and choices. I will also say that there’s a reason I put “design” in its own 5 star category, just to note that it will directly be judged at a much higher priority than statsmaxxing internal passenger volume or cargo capacity, so ideally the Sochaux or Rolls Royce 1940s bodies would mostly be used to make it easier to build a 1930s car.
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I know I am asking a bucket load of questions.
Given this appears to be France, should the cars be LHD with EU plate size?
Also the cost cap, from what I’ve managed currently, seems to be a fine enough amount, still am a bit confused by the Techpool situation, but I am sure I’ll work it out eventually.
Techpool
Hi, “Total Techpool” is the ‘Total Costs’ above (car techpool) which is currently at $0.00 + the ‘Total Costs’ below (engine techpool) which is currently at $20.4M, thus my current techpool for this is $20.4M total. For $80M, this means you can distribute it as you like between ‘car’ and ‘engine’.
LHD + European Sized Plates:
Honestly I haven’t thought about this at all. A cursory quick lookup told me that actually although they drove on the right hand side of the road they were still right hand drive. But tbh whichever LHD/RHD I don’t really mind. For license plates,
it would look something like this:
(White characters on a black background, on a rectangle, 4 numbers and a couple area letters or numbers) - I’m not sure if there was any specific sizing requirements though, so just make it look somewhat realistic and it should be fine.
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So the techpool amount is set in stone at $80 Million?
No, I said this was preliminary guidance and I wanted everyone’s opinions on this, and is subject to change either to be tighter or more freer later.
So I think a preliminary initial cost cap of 200k with around 80M of techpool is significant enough already - let me know y’alls thoughts on this please.
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I built a few test mules myself, and while there are stat and price differences, they don’t follow a discernable pattern of body age.
Details
For example, here’s this one, based on a Teardrop '37 with 690mm 165/80/16 tires:
Here’s as close to the same car as I could make, with the same engine, same tires, same techpool, same interior, same convertible top, and a similar width (2.70 vs 2.65m wheelbase, 1.28 vs 1.30 track width), on the Winga Dinga body:
And again, this time on a “1955 Coupe” body (2.58 x 1.30):
Note that unlike in Ellisbury, techpool for body quality and body year unlocks are different.
One might want to do a 95% 3D build using, say, just part of the roofline from a 1961 body. If design is such a priority, then you should absolutely give the designers the freedom to do that.
The budget seems too high, if anything.
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this sounds very workable as a budget and techpool. enough to give us options to play around with on other areas while not being crazy low either like original estimates. It also works with the expected luxury level we’re going for.
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I have been testing with the new merlin body a bit as well but I feel like the budget could be at around 100k instead of 200k. Since with the techpool we have it’s kind of hard to reach that limit unless you quality spam everywhere…
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We are making uber luxurious cars here. quality spam is to be expected. Also you don’t have to be reaching that limit. there needs to be space to breathe and play with going cheaper or not.
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