well i actually could submit mine right now…
i’m just at the stage where [size=50]i doubt my life[/size] i’m not sure to go with only 1 or 2 cars.
i got one that im happy with, but the other one… im really not sure.
edit: extra question, extra hassle 
to clarify again… [size=65](im sorry this is redundant, but i’m still slightly overwhelmed by the rules)[/size]
if i submit 2 car trims of the same family, with the exact same engine family and variant. that means:
- engineering cost and tooling cost of the engine are only paid/counted once
- the car engineering time is the full bigger number and a third of the smaller one
- tooling cost is also the full bigger number and a third of the smaller one?
- the max production capacity of the factory is shared between the 2 trims[size=65] (although im still not sure how is it ‘shared’, i’m assuming it’s comparative?)[/size]
is this right? or am i missing something?
also, how do you read the ‘break-even’ box? like if i get a number of 0.23, does that means i have to sell 23% of my maximum production of said trim?
if so, is this per year or per 3 year?
Speaking as a contest organizer, I’d love to see both.
Seriously, though: if you think the second car will make a reasonable profit, go for it. It doesn’t need to be as good an investment to be a good investment.
[quote=“koolkei”]edit: extra question, extra hassle
to clarify again… [size=65](im sorry this is redundant, but i’m still slightly overwhelmed by the rules)[/size]
if i submit 2 car trims of the same family, with the exact same engine family and variant. that means:
- engineering cost and tooling cost of the engine are only paid/counted once
- the car engineering time is the full bigger number and a third of the smaller one
- tooling cost is also the full bigger number and a third of the smaller one?
- the max production capacity of the factory is shared between the 2 trims[size=65] (although im still not sure how is it ‘shared’, i’m assuming it’s comparative?)[/size]
is this right? or am i missing something?[/quote]
That’s all correct. 
To explain shared production: imagine that you have a bar which represents each day’s production. If one trim can build 150 cars/day, then each car you build of that trim slices off 1/150th of the bar. If the other trim can build only 100 cars/day, each car you build of that trim slices of 1/100th of the bar. The maximum number of cars you can build is however many you’ve built when you run out of bar. So if you build 75 of the first trim, that used up half the bar, and 50 of the second will use up the other half; if you build 90 of the first trim, that uses up 60% of the bar, and 40 of the second trim will use up the remaining 40%; if you build 15 of the first trim, that uses up 10% of the bar, leaving 90% with which to build 90 of the second trim, and so forth. What percentage of the bar goes to each trim is determined by which cars you actually sell.
[quote]also, how do you read the ‘break-even’ box? like if i get a number of 0.23, does that means i have to sell 23% of my maximum production of said trim?
if so, is this per year or per 3 year?[/quote]
Oh, this is something I probably should have fixed but didn’t because it was a massive pain: are you typing in the engineering and tooling costs as millions of dollars, or as dollars? If you’re typing something like “16.32” into the boxes, you’ll get the wrong answer - you need to type “16320000”. I think that effectively works out to multiplying the break-even by a million (so 230,000 cars), but I don’t have the equations in front of me to check.
I am working on an entry. I am in kind of the same boat as koolkei in that I can’t decide if the 2nd car is worth submitting. I tried the spreadsheet, and I don’t understand the output well enough to know if what I have is a big fat piece of shit (most likely) or decent. In the categories, what should we consider to be a good output for each car? Like, obviously (-$2790) is a bad output for that category, but is $2790 a good output? Should it be $5000? $2000? Not sure what the number means.
Mmph - that’s one of the unfortunate side-effects of the system: the actual winning values aren’t determined until the end.
…I’m trying to decide what I can justly say as the organizer of the competition - and I feel a little bad saying anything, given that a number of people have already submitted. That said: I think only one person has taken their one resubmit, and I’d probably be willing to allow them another for unrelated reasons. So I guess I can say this much: When I used the same equations from the spreadsheet I posted on my test cars, the highest score in each category was in the ballpark of ten times the Idiosyncrasy score for that category except in Luxury and Track, where it was significantly higher and much higher, respectively.
[quote=“Packbat”]
Oh, this is something I probably should have fixed but didn’t because it was a massive pain: are you typing in the engineering and tooling costs as millions of dollars, or as dollars? If you’re typing something like “16.32” into the boxes, you’ll get the wrong answer - you need to type “16320000”. I think that effectively works out to multiplying the break-even by a million (so 230,000 cars), but I don’t have the equations in front of me to check.[/quote]
[quote=“Packbat”]Mmph - that’s one of the unfortunate side-effects of the system: the actual winning values aren’t determined until the end.
…I’m trying to decide what I can justly say as the organizer of the competition - and I feel a little bad saying anything, given that a number of people have already submitted. That said: I think only one person has taken their one resubmit, and I’d probably be willing to allow them another for unrelated reasons. So I guess I can say this much: When I used the same equations from the spreadsheet I posted on my test cars, the highest score in each category was in the ballpark of ten times the Idiosyncrasy score for that category except in Luxury and Track, where it was significantly higher and much higher, respectively.[/quote]
well then… screw me. but so glad i haven’t submitted mine.
so i just figured out, the aggresive low pricing is going to need me to conquer at least a single market to break even…
but then you said the other one… my car sales price as is… about 15x the idiosyncracy value of the market im targeting…
so 2 options right now. up the price or make the car more shit.
this clears up a whole lot more 
EDIT:
NOT!
i can’t math…
I’m not sure if I just misread your comment, but I wasn’t talking about the sales price, I was talking about the desirability. If your car has a desirability of 15x the Idiosyncrasy, that’s very, very good, and you can probably afford to increase the markup to make a bigger profit. (…probably.) If your car has a sales price of 15x the Idiosyncrasy, that doesn’t indicate anything at all - sales price needs to be compared to customer budgets.
oh. then i was the one that misunderstood… okay. sorry bout that
just a heads up. my desirability scores are… not even close to half of 15xidiosyncracy
although that said. now it’s in perspective, both of my cars are similiar in terms of desirability : idiosyncracy score ratio. i’m going with two cars then
[size=50]after i’m done with homework that is. so much homewoooooork[/size]
the time limit is today right?
also i shoved myself even deeper in the hole. late last night i decided to try to make a luxury car for this competition just for fun… on the second iteration i got a score of roughly 11x the idiosyncracy scores while only needing to produce a bit more than a quarter of full production to break even…
FML…
If there are people who still want to enter and are concerned about the deadline, I can extend it.
Talked to some people in the IRC channel tonight, and on the basis of that and some comments in the thread, I’ve decided: the deadline is being extended one week, to January 25th. Between the holidays and the glut of interesting competitions being posted, a lot of people who might have entered haven’t gotten to making their cars yet, and I would like to give them time to.
Thanks,Packbat. I am still working on mine.
Well, now. This is quite interesting.
I decided to fix a stupid thing I did with the spreadsheet I’m using to enter the data on everyone’s entries: instead of having one column for the fixed costs of engineering and tooling for each factory (a system which doesn’t handle multiple cars in a single factory at all, besides being completely obscure and impossible to audit), I would have all the data for each car: engine engineering costs, engine tooling cost, whether the family and/or variant was shared; trim engineering costs, trim tooling cost, and whether the model was shared; whether the factory was shared, what size the factory was; and, finally, the net fixed costs for each individual car after accounting for all shared expenses between cars. At the same time, I decided to take advantage of the fact that costs are listed in the .lua files to get more sig. figs. than is given in game.
Which is when I discovered that the game freaks out when trying to save tooling costs for engines into the .lua files whenever you change the factory size.
I ended up having to do the following procedure to make it work:
[ol]]Open trim in Sandbox./:m]
]Set factory size in Detailed Stats./:m]
]Go through all the tabs to settle out the numbers./:m]
]Close Sandbox entirely./:m]
]Open trim in Sandbox again./:m]
]Go through all the tabs to settle out the numbers./:m]
]Open the .lua files to get the costs./:m][/ol]
I have no idea what’s happening under the hood to make the numbers fall out the way they do in the .lua files, and the numbers are correct in-game, but that’s my bug report.
Also, now my spreadsheet is much nicer.
(And it’s a good thing I did this, because I had messed up my calculation of at least one person’s fixed costs.)
Alright, I have submitted something. I have no idea what I’m doing, so it will probably suck, but I’m quite used to being slaughtered in forum competitions. 
Introducing the
Kasuar Excellent. Family and City trims
for all your family hauling and city driving. with fuel economy reaching up to 24.2 Mpg
your reliable, easy to maintain, cheap to run, trusty Friend has come.
get yours now for as low as $9500 & $9300 respectively
[size=85]also packbat. i derped my submission a bit. the city car was supposed to be a 2 door variant. could you change it on your side? thx 
[/size]
Heads-up: I live right in the path of a snowstorm coming this weekend, so there’s a chance that I will lose Internet and it will delay the competition. Further updates as events warrant.
just found an image on reddit that’s way to relevant to not post
Well, it didn’t get downgraded to rain, but it didn’t cut off power or Internet either. Tournament ends on schedule tonight (~16 hours from this post). Submit your cars if you haven’t already!
Still working on the results (running into a few … issues), but here’s some trivia to hold y’all while you’re waiting:
[ul]
]Most expensive: Žnoprešk Z5755-V12/:m]
]Least expensive: GSI Pigeon/:m]
]Highest engineering costs:
[list]]Vehicle: Žnoprešk Z5755-V12/:m]
]Engine: Žnoprešk V12-200/:m][/ul]/:m]
]Lowest engineering costs:
[ul]]Vehicle: Kasuar Excellent City/:m]
]Engine: Storm Literblock Cast Cruiser/:m][/ul]/:m]
]Most power (and worst economy): Solo Motors Jetstream Deluxe/:m]
]Least power (and best economy): ABR Cricket Econo/:m]
]Fewest seats: tie between Storm Prince Deluxe, ABR Cricket Econo, and ABR Cricket Sport./:m]
]Most seats: DMA O55 F/:m]
]Lightest: GSI Pigeon/:m]
]Heaviest: Solo Motors Jetstream Deluxe/:m][/list:u]
(Apologies if I screw up any of the names.)
Thank you all for your patience!
