Hello! I’ve tried searching for this answer but couldn’t find it. Are we going to be able to build a factory and have multiple cars in each? Last time I played (before UE4 conversion) you had to build a factory for every car and engine you made. Are we going to in the end build a big factory and have multiple lines in it?
No, we’ve decided against ever allowing more than one model per car factory (as many trims as you like) to keep things a bit simpler for us and the player. Otherwise it becomes horrendously complex to manage productions and the interactions between them.
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Is that a 1 to 1 ratio, I.e. one factory per model as well as one model per factory?
When playing the lite campaign I’ve often wished I could build a second factory for an existing model that’s selling well
More than one factory will be able to produce the same model. That will change.
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Is there going to be a wider variety of “trims” on the same base to simulate increased platform-sharing (to potentially allow the one ‘model’ per factory to produce more distinct cars), or is the current variety basically it as far as variants buildable on one line goes?
Another, only somewhat-related factory question: I’ve heard that many obsolescent cars had stretched-out production lengths because “they were [more] profitable thanks to the tooling being paid for.” Is this A: True, and B: Included in Automation (if only as something folded into the development costs)? I could swear I heard in either a little dev update or a Killrob Plays video that plants needed to retool after a few years.
Nowadays we have flexible factories that can build many different models in the same line.
Would it be too complex to manage? I don’t think it would. 2 models with 2 trims means 4 production sliders, the same as 1 model with 4 trims.
As a tycoon game, being able to make more than 1 model in a factory would be a nice thing to have, if you have the tech (there should be a line of R&D called “industrial engineering” that allow you to do that, first with an output penalty, later with no problems at all).
We could also work with different lines in the same factory lot. In the early days you can’t make the same model in the same line, but you should be able to make something like a huge lot with 3 different lines and some cost reduction because of that. Imagine 3 models with the same engine, all in the same site (3 car lines + engine production) means a more efficient production than 4 different sites (3 car fabs + 1 engine fab).
To add a little bit more of choice, you could design different sizes of chassis/body/paint/assembly (the 4 main processes of car making). Something like a large chassis/body/paint factory of 2000/day fueling two smaller assembly lines of 1000/day each. It is easier to use the chassis shop for more than 1 model (that would be an earlier tech), and is more like '90 and onwards to have widespread “unitary batch size” (one piece flow) assemblies that can make a lot of different models in any order, thats one of the main features that makes the toyota production system really flexible.
It is nice to keep things simple, but 1 factory = 1 model is an oversimplification.
“Would it be too complex to manage?”
Yes it would!
“It is nice to keep things simple, but 1 factory = 1 model is an oversimplification.”
No it isn’t.
I guess from that you can gather that there is no discussion to be had left in this topic. 
We’ve been through this so often and the simple answer is just no, we’re not going to go there, you are vastly underestimating the complexities of this.
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I understand the final design of “industrial management” in the game is decided and final, no problem with that. Thanks for listening, anyway.
“No it isn’t.”
As an industrial engineer, I must disagree. It is an OK simulation for 46-90 or maybe 49-2000 pushing it a little bit (and thats a lot of time and fun), but it is not a good modelling of the current way cars are produced.
So, if you guys plan on making a future DLC package with electric and hybrid cars, it would be nice to have an improvement also in the industrial aspect of the game, so it can be a good overall 2018+ simulation.
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“It is nice to keep things simple, but 1 factory = 1 model is an oversimplification.”
No it isn’t.
As an industrial engineer, I must disagree.
It is not an oversimplification, it is a simplification, a good one. Like in all areas of the game there need to be simplifications to make the game function and fun at the same time. Having more than one model per factory achieves neither of these for us or the average player as far as we can see.
I think the difficulty would be when choosing which factory to build a model in.
It would be a nightmare to a new player who might choose an existing factory and not realise it is already being used to manufacture several other models - maybe they just got the sliders balanced the way they wanted on the existing model only to have production fall off a cliff and demand spike for that model when the new one muscles in on productivity, or else to only realise when the new car enters production that they have to put that new car’s production to zero (having spent a lot of money and waited a long time for it to enter production).
Because of this time difference, a huge amount of gameplay might be lost if they choose to go back to a previous save. I will sometimes design 5 or 6 totally new models in the time it takes for the first design to be engineered and enter production.
You can always use your imagination and name your factories A, B, C of the same city or something and think of them as being on the same complex.
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I’m surprised this got answered for so long and stayed alive.
I was thinking, maybe I’m approaching this the wrong way and my question about these lines already has a solution in a different way, so I’ll post a few issues I think I might come across, maybe Killrob can answer them.
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I built a car and think it will be really popular in a few years, so I built a larger factory, but I don’t want to spend all the money on manufacturing tons now, can I adjust the overall output up to utilize more of the factory?
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Above also ties into this problem. I built a car and overestimated it’s popularity, and I’m now producing tons of cars I don’t need, can this output be adjusted down to save money?
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My cars are obsolete at factory A. I don’t want to spend the money to rebuild factory A, just retool it. Can I switch the production line to produce a new car, or will the new car require a whole new factory?
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I underestimated the popularity of a model and now I already maxed out production on it’s factory (assuming output is adjustable). Can I build a new factory to produce more of that car too, or is it ONLY one car -> one factory, or can I make it one car -> multiple factories?
Did you play the lite campaign in Kee? First three of your questions already have answers there. Yes, you can adjust the output at any moment, with shifts. Yes, you mostly retool your old factories, instead of building new ones all the time. I think I had only one unused factory at the end of my only finished lite campaign. As for the last question, the answer is already included in this topic, a bit higher. Answer by Killrob:
Wow, would have been nice of me if I read my own post. Thanks for taking the time to summarize it and not make me feel like a moron at the same time.
One last question, obviously factories have maintenance costs, as we lower production, materials will obviously be cheaper, but will factory maintenance also be cheaper respectively? Logically it could go either way, one could argue, no, maintenance would stay the same because the building is still the same size and needs to be maintained no matter what is inside, or you could argue that less machinery is in use and as such should cost less to run.
Maintenance depends on factory usage, yes. Also, if you run too many shits your factory cannot be properly maintained and your tooling suffers. Well, it will in LC V3, it doesn’t matter in LC V2 yet.
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