Industrial spying

General Chat Suggestions
1

What about add industrial espionage to the game?
There could be different levels of that, depending on how much money the player spends on it.

Level 1: you try to get information about what your opponents are developing. If the mission is succesful you will get an info like “*XYZ Motors designs a new compact car. It has a front engine and rear-wheel drive. The design process will be finished in 2 years. *”

Level 2: you try to steal advanced part or technology what your opponent has but you don’t own yet. If the mission is unsuccesful (the spy loses his cover) the prestige of your company hurt -> your sales decline.

Level 3: you try to steal a complete engine design or a complete car design. If your spy loses its cover it would cause a HUGE prestige loss for your company, and would greatly impact your sales.

The higher would be the level of the spy mission the less would be the chance to be succesfull. Anyway, it would have a very small chance to achieve big results this way, to prevent the over-use of this feature in the game.

2

I do not know if such action of espionage would have a major impact on the sales (many people think so or so that business is corrupt), but it would certainly mean that it becomes difficult for the company to get in a legal way foreign technology

In Reality there should also be problems with patent law, in which might result for example compensation-payments or selling restrictions in some regions.

3

Interesting idea… But does this actually happen in the automotive industry?.. I don’t think I have ever heard of a case of a company stealing an engine from another.

But what about Reverse engineering? Buy an engine from a competitor and assign your engineers to take it apart and study it giving you a boost to technology in that area.

I know the engine in the Toyota Sprinter Trueno (Corrolla GTS here in NA) was basically a reverse engineered and strengthened Cosworth BDA Racing motor made for road cars.

4

North Korean Sungri works for example copied the whole bodies of Mercedes 200 and 250 CE even before they were published by Mercedes, some Japanise companies copied as well designs and machines in the 1950s and before. In our modern world it might be useless because of patends.

5

[quote=“Automobilist”]

North Korean Sungri works for example copied the whole bodies of Mercedes 200 and 250 CE even before they were published by Mercedes, some Japanise companies copied as well designs and machines in the 1950s and before. In our modern world it might be useless because of patends.[/quote]

Ah, I didnt know that, but it makes sense…

The Datsun 510 was a scaled down '55 mercedes 180A. The body was different, but the chassis was scaled down, and it had the same suspension and even the same umbrella style handbrake lever.

As long as its not overpowered, spying would be a good addition to the game. But I think reverse engineering makes more sense in some cases… It should be less risky and easier to buy and reverse engineer an engine than to steal the plans and build one yourself…

Even though it was common knowledge among Toyota and Ford Mechanics at the time, there never was any lawsuits or anyhtign in regards to toyotas copy of the Cosworth BDA motor… Then again, nor was there for the Datsun…

6

Anyway I think industrial spying and reverse engineering should be a very risky operation in the game to prevent the players over-use it in an unrealistic way.

If you play as a small, beginner Asian, Eastern Block or similar manufacturer (which are not that dangerous for the sales of the major companies) the game could be little bit more forgiving for such “dirty little games”.

7

[quote=“Drake”]

The Datsun 510 was a scaled down '55 mercedes 180A. The body was different, but the chassis was scaled down, and it had the same suspension and even the same umbrella style handbrake lever. [/quote]

:open_mouth: I didn’t know that, very interesting.

8

[quote=“RedRiot”]Anyway I think industrial spying and reverse engineering should be a very risky operation in the game to prevent the players over-use it in an unrealistic way.

If you play as a small, beginner Asian, Eastern Block or similar manufacturer (which are not that dangerous for the sales of the major companies) the game could be little bit more forgiving for such “dirty little games”.[/quote]

I agree… it should not be a viable long-term strategy for a company to build its cars purely on stolen technology…

Perhaps it could hurt the companies public image, and if done often the company would get a bad reputation and have a hard time selling cars and making other companies less likely to accept deals.

What about having a relation stat between companies?.. the more you make deals, the better relations and more likely to make deals, but if you steal designs they would dislike you.

I think it should also make the public image worse the more cars your company makes with stolen part designs. If your a small manufacteror that makes 200 cars a year it would go largely unoticed, but make 200,000 cars and people who start to notice.

Perhaps it could also depend on region, so for eastern bloc countries the population would hardly care if you stole ford part designs, but in America it would hurt your image alot more.

9

wow well done guys, this is basically the first original idea for something we have not discussed ever posted anywhere about automation.

Again it is really well thought out, and you seem to have put in a similar effort to what we do, at least as a first pass until you start to implement the feature.

We love the idea, and it will go onto the wish list, it is not a critical feature. We are currently trying to stave off feature creep otherwise we will never get this game released, we do plan on supporting this game for a time after release adding content and features.

But please still keep on suggesting ideas!

10

Your first sentence doesn’t make sense. Punctuation might help?

11

I wouldn’t mind buying my motors and transmissions off of ‘‘XYZ’’ company at first. after a while I would want to be building my owen.

12

Yeah, you can buy engines off another company by making some kind of supply deal with them.

13

Buying parts of competors/independend companies seems to be an intersting feature. I would manage it that way (I haven’t to programme it of course and so I can get on your nervs with such suggestions :wink:)

[ol]
] it would be possible to buy and sell parts/:m]
] independend companies and competors will have only limited capacity so that you can get in trouble if you need more, while your supplier is not able to provide/:m]
] depending on the quantity that you and other companies buys of marked-sold parts it would be possible that production is stopped because of economic reasons/:m]
] there might be cartels and so on that prevent to receive parts because your competors doesn’t want/:m]
] if you receive parts that are outdated, it might be that production runs out (maybe not if you take big quantities)/:m]
] there could be unreliable suppliers that sell their producten twice or sell it again when the price begins to rise/:m]
] if a supplier went bankrupt you could be constrained to buy this company, because your production would collapse/:m]
] there could be long timed agreements that make parts cheaper but bind you on your supplier (of course also in te contrary way)/:m][/ol]

14

[quote=“Automobilist”]Buying parts of competors/independend companies seems to be an intersting feature. I would manage it that way (I haven’t to programme it of course and so I can get on your nervs with such suggestions :wink:)

[ol]
] it would be possible to buy and sell parts/:m]
] independend companies and competors will have only limited capacity so that you can get in trouble if you need more, while your supplier is not able to provide/:m]
] depending on the quantity that you and other companies buys of marked-sold parts it would be possible that production is stopped because of economic reasons/:m]
] there might be cartels and so on that prevent to receive parts because your competors doesn’t want/:m]
] if you receive parts that are outdated, it might be that production runs out (maybe not if you take big quantities)/:m]
] there could be unreliable suppliers that sell their producten twice or sell it again when the price begins to rise/:m]
] if a supplier went bankrupt you could be constrained to buy this company, because your production would collapse/:m]
] there could be long timed agreements that make parts cheaper but bind you on your supplier (of course also in te contrary way)/:m][/ol][/quote]

Good ideas.

It would also be interesting to have some companies that only make certain parts. For example buying bodies from coachbuilders like Ghia or Pininfarina, Or buying Engines from Yamaha.

In the case of coachbuilders it would only be very limited production because they are handmade bodies, but they should be very high quality and very desirable… Perfect for making limited production sports cars.

The Ghia 450SS is a good example of such cars: conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z117 … 50-SS.aspx

It would also be cool if you could tune engines and such that you buy… So for example you might want to build a small tuning company, Focus on engine tech and buy the parts to build another companies model but tune their engines for higher performance.

15

pininfarina isnt just a coachmaker, they also design for ferrari, who then build the “coaches” in their on prod. lines

on the tuning front: alpina ( alpina-automobiles.com/ )

they get the prototypes of bmw, after bmw is through testing them, bmw delivers the more or less complete cars they ordered to them (alpina has some special colors for the cars, and bmw paints those too…)

and iirc one of the US M-models isnt the same as in EU, but has the alpina engine.

spying isnt reverse engineering, and patents only help if the government of the country the copying one resides in cares.

some chinese car looks like the old X5, an austrian ropeway (sry, thats a dictionary translation) designer once was called to repair a ropeway of theirs in china, even they never built one there. they copyed the mounts and included the nametag of the original producer.

any toughts on counter measures? in the company, and/or with the governemnt.

16

[quote=“Deus ex Machina”]pininfarina isnt just a coachmaker, they also design for ferrari, who then build the “coaches” in their on prod. lines

on the tuning front: alpina ( alpina-automobiles.com/ )

they get the prototypes of bmw, after bmw is through testing them, bmw delivers the more or less complete cars they ordered to them (alpina has some special colors for the cars, and bmw paints those too…)

and iirc one of the US M-models isnt the same as in EU, but has the alpina engine.

spying isnt reverse engineering, and patents only help if the government of the country the copying one resides in cares.

some chinese car looks like the old X5, an austrian ropeway (sry, thats a dictionary translation) designer once was called to repair a ropeway of theirs in china, even they never built one there. they copyed the mounts and included the nametag of the original producer.

any toughts on counter measures? in the company, and/or with the governemnt.[/quote]

Im well aware that Pinnifarina isn’t just a Coachbuilder, All I am saying is it would be nice to have such companies that you could buy bodies from, or maybe even have them design a body for you.(not sure how well that would work though…)

There are many such companies, and atleast a few would be nice, others could possibly be modded in later.

I wonder how easy it would be to mod in new body designs for the game… or any graphics type stuff.

Companies like Alpina could be represented in the game. The devs have confirmed that you will be able to buy whole car models and rebrand them. What they haven’t confirmed is whether we will be able to modify them… but I suspect we will.

I think relations between companys should play a big factor when it comes to tuning companies. Companies like Alpina don’t just pop up overnight and I highly doubt BMW would send prototypes to a new company… The more deals you make and such, the better relations get and unlocks more options and better deals.

IMO tuning companies should be left out for the release and added later… There are much more important things to add to the game, and the player should be able to make his own anyways… Plus since they will all be using models based on existing ones it should be quite easy to mod them into the game.

As for the counter measures for spying and the like… If caught it should affect your companies public image, but moreso in the countries where the company you stole from reside.

Perhaps government fines if caught?

Maybe the player could hire security personel, and buy security buildings and security upgrades(keycard, fingerprint, etc… They would be unlocked in certain years) to help prevent stealing.

Maybe random events if your engineers are poorly paid they might defect or sell secrets to competitors.

17

i can agree with all u said

18

Quick note: someone mentioned the word ‘Prestige’

Could these be some modifier/stat for your company? Maybe regional prestige? Sort of how well known you are, like reputation (but Prestige sounds better…).

19

[quote=“Savoyard”]Quick note: someone mentioned the word ‘Prestige’

Could these be some modifier/stat for your company? Maybe regional prestige? Sort of how well known you are, like reputation (but Prestige sounds better…).[/quote]

I was thinking something along the lines of “Public Image”, and it being region specific… Prestige would work too

Although Prestige might be better represented as a more overall company image. Kinda like how everyone in the world knows what a Ferrari is even if they have never seen one in person, or they don’t sell many where they live.

20

It’ll be pretty much as you say.

Prestige - What Ferrari and BMW etc have, class and desirability, performance
Reputation - What VW and Honda have, a reputation for making a good quality, good value product that does the job well.

Oh and those will be both per model, and averaged out for the company as a whole… sort of (still designing that bit!)