So what is subtracted from revenues on the finance sheet? Is it the manufacture cost of any unsold cars? I’m just curious.
I’m don’t know myself yet. 
“Unsold” cars are not even produced in this challenge. Expenses are all the things covered in the break even calculations: Distribution cost, engineering and tooling, R&D cost (based on revenues) and cost pf production of sold vehicles.
Ohh man. I should have coughed up for a bigger factory!
Yeah, doubled the number of sales for break even and a return of sales of 35 %. sadly no trophy at all, but 17th rank in market share with faboulus 2,27 % market share 
I liked this challenge, thanks to Der_Bayer and all people involved!
If there will be an CTC #2 it would be nice if the target goups have some ‘must have’ criterias like semi-slicks for track day or AWD for offroad etc.
p.s. here’s my contender.
Sebulba - Rev0.lua (98.5 KB)
Only thing I found to be a bit stupid, is that apparently our 1988 hatchback should have costed like $32500 per car, which is ridiculous. Thats one of the reasons we kept our price too low, which costed us a lot of sales and thus profit. Definetly should be restricted/recalculated in my opinion.
Yup, I think some ball park estimate of game prices for the various target groups would have been useful.
I was thinking about 1988 real world uk prices.
That was the suggested price if you aim to the maximum profit. The chart was suggesting me to price the car 29.500$ but with that price I could only sell 110k-ish units. Huge profit, but not my goal. I was aiming for the biggest marketshare.
I disagree: the game’s pricing is roughly equal to 2012 dollars. Since 1988 the dollar has devalued a lot, $100 then would buy the same stuff as $200 today (recalculated official numbers) and $800 when using the official way CPI was calculated in the 80s. Your $32500 suggested price tag would be $15850 (official numbers) or $4060 (unrevised calculation). Sounds better? My conclusion: Yes, it is ridiculous that governments devalue currency that much, but that definitely doesn’t extend to the CTC. 
But it doesnt make sense. How would you justify a hatchback in 1988 costing 32500? no one would buy it, thus how can it be your max. profit value?
In comparison, take a Honda Civic. Im 100% sure that wasnt close to 32500 dollars in 1988 being sold. Not even with all top line accessories added to it.
And lets say your official number 100 dollars then is 200 dollars now. That means our car then should have costed like 16250 dollars.
In short: 32500 is too much. if it would have been lets say 22000 or something, I could still slightly understand. It just doesnt make sense that people back then would pay that much for a car like that.
Even a Volkswagen Golf comes at approx. 18000 euros (23600 dollars) right now, which is with a lot of extra electronic stuff etc. Then how does that justify our simple car in 1988 having to cost 32500?
I’m not exactly sure but I think Killrob is saying inflation doesn’t exist in game right now, so values in 1988 are the same as 2012 at 2012 levels.
I think.
So the equivalent 1988 version of your 26k golf although technically inferior would also cost about 26k
Yes maffc, that is correct.
@Wizzy: It makes a lot of sense actually. Real income was a lot higher back then too, don’t forget about that. The official number is just bogus, the calculation has been revised numerous times over the years to fit the government’s needs. In the US of the 50’s, a single average household income could afford to feed a family, a house, a mid-class car and save up some money for worse times on top of that. I don’t have to explain to you what that looks like today. The 80’s are somewhere in between. Your perception of currency/value as a function of time seems to be warped, for which I cannot blame you considering the utter BS the media and economists featured therein bombard us with every day.
And we must not forget that the suggested price indicated in price analysis, is the price that maximises the profits. Most companies wish to maximise profit in certain products, but due to variety economic reasons (markets, consumer behavior, offer vs demand, etc), not always was possible to obtain the maximum profit.
My graph didn’t exactly tell much. It doesn’t even have curves, only straights.
[quote=“Killrob”]Yes maffc, that is correct.
@Wizzy: It makes a lot of sense actually. Real income was a lot higher back then too, don’t forget about that. The official number is just bogus, the calculation has been revised numerous times over the years to fit the government’s needs. In the US of the 50’s, a single average household income could afford to feed a family, a house, a mid-class car and save up some money for worse times on top of that. I don’t have to explain to you what that looks like today. The 80’s are somewhere in between. Your perception of currency/value as a function of time seems to be warped, for which I cannot blame you considering the utter BS the media and economists featured therein bombard us with every day.[/quote]
You are entirely correct.
Most numbers such as inflation, unemployment, and economy growth that are released by governments its utter BS in a major way. Those numbers are generated by the government and only really exist to verify what a government is doing. If they dont like the results they simply start changing the way its calculated or just release a number that is an outright lie. Earlier this year it was released that the US economy grew by around 1% to 2% in the first quarter, that number was quietly revised down a couple weeks later to a shrinkage of around 2%, a 4% point swing to the negative. If you watch very closely after the quarter numbers are released by the government all you do is wait a couple of weeks and suddenly the growth is cut by upwards of 2% nearly every time. But two weeks after the initial release of the numbers nobody is paying attention so few see it.
Now take inflation. Inflation is suppose to be measured with products or items that can be easily converted to currency (say tables). So if a table costs about 100 bucks this year and 110 bucks next year that’s 10% inflation. On the other hand if next year it costs 90 bucks that’s 10% deflation. Oversimplified but that’s what its suppose to measure. The US government doctors those numbers now by excluding certain things like food and fuel prices because they are “volatile” (basically, they keep going up) and instead base it on things like electronics because they are “not volatile” (keep going down). That produces a REALLY skewed inflation measurement which they claim to be 2% when in reality its 3 to 4 times that.
To get a better idea you can look at the current in Zimbabwe with what happened to their currency. It got so bad Zimbabwe simply stopped releasing official numbers.
All these numbers are released by the government for the purpose of government, if the measurements stop serving government interests how they are calculated is changed, or if its bad enough, they stop releasing them. Something to remember.
True that, well said. For anyone interested in this, I can recommend two sites: shadowstats.com and zerohedge.com
Cheers!
[quote=“Killrob”]Yes maffc, that is correct.
@Wizzy: It makes a lot of sense actually. Real income was a lot higher back then too, don’t forget about that. The official number is just bogus, the calculation has been revised numerous times over the years to fit the government’s needs. In the US of the 50’s, a single average household income could afford to feed a family, a house, a mid-class car and save up some money for worse times on top of that. I don’t have to explain to you what that looks like today. The 80’s are somewhere in between. Your perception of currency/value as a function of time seems to be warped, for which I cannot blame you considering the utter BS the media and economists featured therein bombard us with every day.[/quote]
I found it a bit, offensive, to call me someone who has been cluttered with governement BS. I am aware of whats going on. But if the persception is that (for the masses) certain prices seem decent, then why kick against the bottle? Isnt the masses going to play the game and feel this is overpriced? I am aware of things like a petrodollar and how the US uses this in their advantage to, well, kind of blackmail the whole world really, so don’t even start. Anyway, I still do not agree on the price part. If it is to be correct according to your ‘calculations’, I think it still should be so that the majority understands instead of those few who DO know how to calculate these numbers.
That was an awesome competition all around, looking forward to the next one!
I thought I had a brilliant idea to go for the cheap off-road segment, figured everyone here would go after the sports car and hot hatchback segment and leave that end of the market alone. Unfortunately for me it seems killrob had the same idea…
Ah well, still made a decent profit due to sales volume and being priced a couple grand below him (at the expense of profit/unit though). I think I may have put too much engine in it (3.5l 6, terrible economy but what a torque curve!), didn’t gain anything with my target demographics and killed me on operating costs. Lessons to learn for next time!
Here’s what I entered (click for big):
i.imgur.com/FE7AWVSl.jpg
I am aware that the optimum price estimations are sometimes a bit high. This has got various reasons:
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The price estimation is only an estimation and not 100% correct. It does not take factory sizes of other players into account. If it would, the calculations would take around 10 days if I .
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Annual costs are read in from the .txt-file. These do increase with higher price (due to increased repair cost), but the calculation works with a constant value. Therefor the estimation will always give you a higher optimum price tag. It will change for next time.
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The overall price level is set by the competition. If there is no good and cheap competition (especially for the wealthier customers), you can sell them anything at any price.
I will look into it whether fixed price look-up tables work better, although I am not a friend of fixed values. -
This is only a forum game made by an unexperienced guy in terms of game development (me). For the first round I am happy with how everything worked out. For next round I will adjust some of the magic coefficients and the results will hopefully be a bit better than next time.
And by the way: There will be never be fixed limits like for example “Semi Slicks only” as long as I’m in charge of this challenge. 
This makes it way too complicated for a forum game. If you want something like that, play car scenarios. I want my challenge to be like: If I use Semi Slicks, I will automatically sell more cars in the trackday category. And that’s totally the way it works.
There is another reason, perhaps. The real world has actually got some cheap and good competition, the used car market. The CTC does not. (and frankly, I don’t think it’s within the scope of Martin to simulate that)
- The game is fixed at a 2010-ish price level at the moment before any tycoon parts are in. That will change in the tycoon part.
- The challenge adjusting these values so that they correspond to realistic levels is a) unrealistic and b) creates an unnecessary layer of abstraction.
- I doubt people have a good understanding of what things cost almost 30 years ago.