The quality sliders range from -15 to +15. Obviously what that means differs from year to year, but what would be a good representation of the various qualities? Is it something like this?
-15 quality: South American and Soviet cars and engines based on decades old American and European designs.
-10 quality: A car or engine built as a modification of an older generation design, such as the Volkswagen Beetle in the 1960s.
-05 quality: A car or engine with less extensive engineering and lower quality components and machining.
000 quality: Production cars.
+05 quality: BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Production cars (where applicable) and engines modified for consumer racing, such as homologation models.
+10 quality: Ferrari, Lamborghini, and other supercar companies. Production cars (where applicable) and engines with extensive modifications for professional racing such as NASCAR, etc.
+15 quality: Race cars and engines.
As far as I understood, the tech sliders represented how many years in advance/behind the technology was for the standard technology in that year. That is why increasing tech slider in body panel/chassis will increase the weight. This will make a lot more sense if you play through the scenarios, and in the eventual Tycoon mode, where the technology is unlocked with a certain tech pool requirement and must be researched first, and unlocking it early will impose a certain tech penalty because it is ‘ahead of its time’.
So in terms of representation as per car companies, this too would vary depending on how advanced those companies were at what point in time.
To elaborate on strop’s comment, each quality slider point is based on advancing the clock 2 years from current tech level (year in sandbox). So if you’re building a car in 1975 and have done no research into a component, your tech year will be 1975. When you give the component a +6, you will be advancing the technology for that component to 1987 technology. As an example, if the component were entertainment, you will have gone from an 8-track player to a CD player.
Below is a search related to Killrob’s discussions on quality sliders and tech pool. You might find it explaining things better than I have done above.
Correct, 07CobaltGirl, but one correction to your last statement: when you unlock future tech, each year costs one point otherwise you could have CD players in the late 50s
Yes, after reading your comment I went back and looked at the previous posts you made. I missed that part the first time around! I bet those beatniks and hippies would have loved CDs though!!!
So, to sum it up, each +1 quality slider click unlocks 1 year of tech and two years of quality.
Assuming that we have car X and Y. Both car is competing at the same price range, let’s assume they’re both premium cars.
Car X has very typical Premium car interior and entertainment technology, but is built very solidly and has top notch reliability, while car Y incorporates more cutting-edge/experimental technology and is not very reliable while still not regarded as Luxury vehicle.
If quality sliders are representing technology years, how am I going to achieve the scenario assuming they are both set to Premium? I think we should have both quality slider and tech slider so that the quality slider will indicate how well built it is while tech slider will indicate how advanced the technology is.
[quote=“kalsylum”]Assuming that we have car X and Y. Both car is competing at the same price range, let’s assume they’re both premium cars.
Car X has very typical Premium car interior and entertainment technology, but is built very solidly and has top notch reliability, while car Y incorporates more cutting-edge/experimental technology and is not very reliable while still not regarded as Luxury vehicle.
If quality sliders are representing technology years, how am I going to achieve the scenario assuming they are both set to Premium? I think we should have both quality slider and tech slider so that the quality slider will indicate how well built it is while tech slider will indicate how advanced the technology is.[/quote]
Car X has the entertainment and interior at higher Quality slider position, allowing them to be more reliable.
Car Y has some “future” entertainment system, thanks to its company’s Tech Pool. Tech Pool can be gained by investing money into R&D (it’s not in the game yet, wait for the full-blown tycoon mode), and one of things it can do is provide future tech (for example, giving direct injection in the 90’s). The tech pool concept includes a hit to reliability for the future tech.
Note that Tech Pool can also allow you to perfect non-future tech, meaning that Car X’s company can also benefit from it, achieving that higher quality at the same cost as the normal quality from company with no Tech Pool.
otherwise you could have CD players in the late 50s 
