soooo any possible ETA to when this will be opened?
Hmm - let me make a to-do list:
[ul]]Final balancing - one of the test cars I built is performing a bit too well, and I need to figure out if the scoring system is broken or if it’s just that good. Also, I haven’t set Idiosyncrasy scores for the market demos./:m]
]Fix the break-even calculation sheet on the Market Calculation spreadsheet I’m making for the players to use./:m]
]Make the spider charts for the market demos./:m]
]Make the contest post./:m]
]Run a test of the full calculations using my test cars, so I know I have the method down pat./:m][/ul]
…I think if I can get the first four cracked in short order, I’ll start the contest tomorrow, and let entries run from December 11th to January 11th - four weeks plus one weekend - or until the maximum number of slots is filled. Otherwise it’s starting next week.
…interesting. Developments since this morning:
[ul]]I’ve decided to change the cost-sharing rule to be larger plus one-third smaller, instead of larger + half smaller. The latter makes it too expensive to share production lines./:m]
](That said, shared production lines still have two major advantages for a manufacturer: first, you can make the 99-trim problem work in your favor, at least a little, and second, it reduces excess capacity if one trim is successful while the other is not.)/:m]
]I learned why 0% in-game markup is where it is - it’s hard to break even on a car in the first year! Granted, cars are usually built for more than one year, but they’re also usually given refreshes quite frequently, and generally speaking investors expect some return on their capital./:m]
]…that said, although I was sorely tempted, I refuse to compromise on the principle of the five-day work week! …at least for this competition. Twenty-first century labor management practices will have to wait./:m]
]Also, thanks to timeanddate.com’s Business Days Calculator, I know how many workdays there were in my target year - at least, in the US. (Country-by-country variation will also have to wait.)/:m][/ul]
Assuming I don’t hit any major roadblocks with the spider charts and the writing, I can probably get this started sometime tomorrow - probably not in the morning my time, but sometime.
Godspeed Packbat.
Okay, we’re scrubbing tonight’s launch.
As I said, I wanted to run a CTC in the spirit of yore - which is to say, in the spirit of Der Bayer’s CTCs - but in my head I was assuming that the entire game would take place over the course of one year. What I see when I look back at Der Bayer’s competition, though, is entrants breaking even on investment with factories running at 20-25% of capacity, whereas in my game right now, even at a 30% markup, you would need to run at 90% of capacity to break even in one year … and going from one factory to the next larger usually means a 50% increase in capacity. If I ran the contest in the current rules, most entrants would either go broke or sell out their entire runs. That might be realistic, but it’s not fun. (Especially given how much work I would have to do to handle all the sold-out cars.)
Plus, I designed all the market demos looking at cars sold with 0% markup, and for the cheaper demographics, 0% to 30% markup is a big difference.
The solution might be as simple as explicitly making the contest take place over a three- to five-year run for all models entered, but I want to make sure it is (and decide if I want to revise the market demographics) before launch.
New ETA is next week.
The CTC assumed a three year cycle, so the tooling and engineering costs were diluted over that time.
Aha! That would explain it.
…I’m still going to take the time to make sure I’ve got my ducks in a row and do it right. 
…well. These spider charts are going to be a lot weirder than previously anticipated. I designed the criteria weights in each demographic based on the in-game markets and my experience with the Hoon Competition, and ended up with weights ranging from $250 to $10,000. The final charts look less like the original example I posted and more like … well:
Edward Tufte, please forgive me.
(Yes, I know Utility and Practicality are switched. What with all the formulae already programmed in, I don’t know an easy way to fix that, and I don’t want to introduce bugs trying.)
take your time. as we all know by now. delayed is still better than unfinished.
Appreciate it. 
I want to make sure that the competition is open for a while but still over before the next major update, but last I heard they were talking February for that, so I have breathing room. It might not go up tomorrow, but if I can start it before the New Year then I’ll be happy.
Depending on when the competition is, it seems to me that shorter deadlines for entry tend to be better so that it’s not forgotten about. I mean in the sense of about 2 weeks compared to 1 month. Granted that around the holidays, people tend to be far busier, so longer deadlines make more sense now than in January.
well the middle ground then?
around 3 weeks or between >14 days and <30 days
Hmm - that’s a good point. Two weeks seemed too short for the Hoon Competition, but a month does seem a lot longer. I’ll give myself some more time to prepare while I think it over.
Okay, at the moment I’m thinking that the info I’ll give for each demographic in the image will be:
[ul]
]Weights for each of the 9 scored non-price criteria./:m]
]Mileage multipliers (higher for commuter cars, lower for sports cars)./:m]
]Number of customers per car entered & (in parentheses) number of customers assuming 40 entries./:m]
]Sticker prices affordable to 95% and 25% of customers in demographic./:m][/ul]
I figure the 95% number will let you know how cheap to make a cheap car, the 25% number will tell you when a car is pretty much too expensive to consider, and the width of the interval will give you an idea of how many customers you lose by bumping up the price. The spreadsheet has 95%, 75%, 50%, and 25%, but that seems like a lot of numbers to put on the chart.
Okay, I think I’m ready to go live … would anyone be willing to look over my draft ruleset to see if I missed anything? Reply here or PM, I’ll send it to you.
Posting the competition thread shortly. Meanwhile, here’s a table of all* the information on the nine market demographics in hand-formatted ASCII text:
[size=85]* Not actually all.[/size]
[code] Demographic | Commuter City Family Sport Luxury Offroad Utility Muscle/Super Track
Customers/Entry | 84,000 48,000 16,000 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 2,000
| (40 Entries) | (3,360,000) (1,920,000) (640,000) (560,000) (480,000) (400,000) (320,000) (240,000) (80,000) |
|---|
95% Budget | $8,081.24 $6,419.15 $7,729.16 $11,373.38 $22,879.21 $8,081.24 $6,934.73 $11,366.06 $10,511.96
25% Budget |$22,292.21 $17,707.33 $25,025.79 $48,096.36 $102,060.37 $22,292.21 $20,178.92 $101,517.47 $35,903.16
----------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Drivability | $4,200.00 $4,600.00 $4,300.00 $8,500.00 $8,000.00 $4,000.00 $4,000.00 $4,500.00 $3,800.00
Sportiness | $500.00 $500.00 $500.00 $10,000.00 $3,700.00 $250.00 $250.00 $7,900.00 $10,000.00
Comfort | $3,600.00 $1,700.00 $3,300.00 $5,000.00 $9,700.00 $3,200.00 $3,300.00 $3,200.00 $800.00
Prestige | $1,300.00 $1,000.00 $1,200.00 $3,600.00 $10,000.00 $2,800.00 $2,800.00 $9,500.00 $1,100.00
Safety | $3,700.00 $2,100.00 $3,800.00 $5,300.00 $7,000.00 $2,000.00 $2,700.00 $5,300.00 $900.00
Utility | $500.00 $500.00 $500.00 $250.00 $500.00 $1,500.00 $4,500.00 $250.00 $250.00
Practicality | $2,000.00 $3,200.00 $3,700.00 $350.00 $800.00 $1,300.00 $2,500.00 $2,000.00 $250.00
Offroad | $500.00 $500.00 $500.00 $250.00 $500.00 $5,500.00 $1,000.00 $500.00 $250.00
Reliability | $2,000.00 $900.00 $1,800.00 $250.00 $1,000.00 $3,700.00 $3,000.00 $500.00 $1,300.00
----------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mileage | 150% 100% 100% 50% 100% 100% 100% 50% 25%
Idiosyncrasy | $550.00 $450.00 $600.00 $1,000.00 $1,250.00 $750.00 $700.00 $1,000.00 $550.00
===============================================================================================================================[/code]
what does mileage and idiosyncrasy means here?
nvm i just read your competition thread.
No problem. (There’s also a more technical explanation in the OP, if you love math.)
which i dont. i tolerate them…