Couple of ideas I’m chewing on for mid-70’s to early 80’s:
Bahnstormer. The Kaffee taught her the basics of car ownership, use, and enthusiasm, and she outgrew its abilities. The Lancier opened up the world of high(er) performance, and after a few years of ownership, she outgrew its abilities too, not in the least because with every passing year, more and more cars she encountered on the Autobahn would show her their taillights no matter how she wrung out that 4.5. Meanwhile, her career progress meant increasing ability to afford an upgrade, both in delivering the goods and in looking the part - that is, Überholungsprestige.
Make said upgrade. Entries will be judged in part for their suitability for high-speed cruising - not just raw power, not just comfort, not just roadholding, but that special blend of these that the Germans excel at - and for their frontal looks in particular - how well the face manages to politely but firmly say “out of my way, peasant.”
Less well-defined, the general idea is that off-tarmac driving has become an interest. Maybe from the AWD rally scene? Perhaps she got into such driving herself? Or from civilized offroaders (Range Rover) becoming a thing? Or from attempting to go on a couple of skiing trips and wondering each time, possibly from the bottom of a ditch, if the some day “in the future, when they’ve accrued enough fortune to simply not care about a [Norðwagen Fenrir]’s outright purchase cost” had not yet come… only to find out it had pulled out of the market for slow sales. But perhaps some competitors had caught on to the idea meanwhile? The heyday of soft-roader sedans and wagons - Benz 4Matic, various VW/Audi quattro/4Motion, BMW X-drive, Toyota Altrac - was a few years later, but on the other side of the ponds, the likes of Subaru and the AMC Eagle were already making waves…
Both. Make a Bahnstormer that can handle a blizzard. An upmarket AMC, if you will.
I thought of maybe getting a first car for Magna’s soon to be teenage child? She wants them to have something safe, cheap, and easy for them to drive, but they want to have something sporty, fast and to attract the attention of the opposite (or same) gender. So the idea is to try and make something that can appeal to both of them. Inspirations could be the late 70s to early 80s hot hatches like Mk1 Golf GTI, 205 GTI, etc
I’m disinclined to do rocket barges in part because I like making them, and as host, I’d miss out on that. But then maybe they’d also be more fun to evaluate? Folks who’ve hosted before - what say you?
Got some great ideas from the Hippo based on historical context. Ties neatly into my #2 idea above. The scenario would be: we’re in a once-a-century deep shit winter and furthermore, fuel got really expensive. Meanwhile, we still have standards and a healthy budget, and come spring, our new ride will be expected to perform on dry tarmac. We could afford a Fenrir now, but our conformist society has long shunned Nordwagen out of the market altogether, and we need winter-competent wheels sooner than importing one from elsewhere would allow. The problem is that drivetrain design is IMO -the- weakest part of the game engine. The solution would be to encourage entries to manually explain their drivetrain layout, otherwise I assume a default and grade accordingly. Does that kind of thing work for competitions, or asking for trouble?
I don’t think the drivetrain idea would work that well, considering that drivetrains cost money (and advanced/novel drivetrains cost a lot of money - see, again, Jensen FF). And we’d be explaining how they work just pen-on-paper, without the approx cost system in-game.
The next update will include a drivetrain (and minor suspension) overhaul, including center differentials and full-time 4x4 - so best believe there will be time for a challenge with intensive AWD tuning. Just not right now.
As for rocket barges, sports sedan challenges pop up relatively often. But judging them could definitely also be fun given that it’s a sector with a high amount of variation and you can really choose to do anything - expect a lot of originality from entrants.
News to me and music to my ears. When will it be, though? And yes, that’s a solid reason not to do an AWD challenge.
Something involving the Autobahn is the current default. I’ve got a couple more idea fragments:
“Tuning” along the lines of Lorinser, Gemballa, AMG, Alpina et al.
1a. Take a given car (perhaps the Lancier) and give it your own tuning.
1b. Enter two cars: one normal, one “tuned”.
1c. ???
Not sure if it’s appropriate for this particular challenge, but somewhere sometime I’d like to see a “rematch” mode where the finalists for a challenge in year N, having had a chance to see the competition, come back in N+1 to do the same thing. It certainly reflects an element of real-world maker competition that is absent from most challenges.
We are not sure because the devs don’t like setting expectations by announcing release dates. We will almost certainly have a public beta - which most people here will eagerly switch to - sometime this summer. You can find videos discussing upcoming content on this game’s YouTube channel, just search for “Automation Little Dev Update” and watch the first couple.
While factory tuners really took off in the later 1980s, I see no obstacle to Magda - now a wealthy thrill-seeker who’s seriously into cars - seeking a more exciting car on the aftermarket. It’s a novel idea. And if you want to see more “unusual” cars like the type you like making yourself, this is a good way to solicit them. But I must stop you here at 1b: challenges /mandating/ multiple submissions can be complicated, and people don’t like perceiving that more work is required of them.
Speaking of multiple-car challenges, LHC is like that to an extent - while you don’t get to see every aspect of the competition, you do get a market reaction for both your car and others - allowing you to make a more appropriate car if yours did not succeed.
Indeed, this is not an idea for JOC3C - but it does make me think of something. We have a design-only CSC competition, which has you design the exterior and interior for somebody else’s next-gen car, but what about a competition where a bunch of users play the role of company engineers or consultants who get a Request for Proposal to engineer a brand new generation of a company’s car? And unlike in usual competitions, after Round 1 the finalists get some feedback and are allowed minor redesigns. I might try making a comp like that.
My five cents:
When being relatively new to hosting challenges, keep it conventional.
There is much more behind hosting than one might first think of. On top of that, trying to pull off something new and different, that has not been done before, can make it a heck of a job.
Many newcomers have tried to pull off amazing challenges that was supposed to be groundbreaking and innovative, very few have managed to complete them without lots of struggle coming in the way (if finishing at all).
No, I don’t doubt your capacity, but I still recommend you (and everyone else new to running challenges) to stick to tried and true formulas until having a bit of hosting experience.
Brief actually sounds like great fun, I am looking forward to this round.
Two things this far:
Am I stupid, or am I not seeing any maximum price yet?
I would suggest to maybe consider to raise the noise limits. They are a bit borked now, the game seems to put too much emphasis on intake noise. Under 50 and that more or less eliminates performance intakes on…performance cars.
I’m more appalled that timeline-wise (1969) the first thing you have happen since the Lancier’s purchase is the death of Magda’s children. As Magda’s initial writer I absolutely veto this.
Especially since this seems to have been done for the petty reason of letting the two work-travel all the time, make enough money to get supercars, and let their car rot for years.