With the next big update there will an overhaul of many dependencies in the car designer to make things play better and probably more realistic in the process. As part of that I’m looking into giving the secondary stats Practicality and Utility a revamp. The goal is to give these stats proper “base values” and “factors” that make sense and differentiate cars in intuitive and realistic ways that mesh well with the demographics (which will be rebalanced, too).
So here it goes, I’m asking you for suggestions and discussion around these stats and their dependencies. What I want is not pure statements, but argumentation and maybe even some suggestions for potential progressions. Although the latter you best leave to me to figure out from your arguments, as that is not quite as easy as it may seem.
Each of the Utility and Practicality stats needs three “base values” and as many “factors” as you can reasonably think of.
“Base Values” are the stats on the top of the detailed stats panel that are summed up to form the 0% value of the stat, i.e. the value you get when all factors sum up to zero.
“Factors” are the stats that show a percentage in the big list below the base values. They are all summed up and then multiplied with the base value, i.e. -23% would subtract 23% of the base value.
I think that is all you need to know. Happy to read about your thoughts regarding this to see if we can make this a lot better than it currently is. Of course I have my own ideas, but with so many potential dependencies I’m probably missing something that you’ll point out.
A good post / argument looks like this
Regarding Practicality I think
A * [Seats] + B * [Doors]
would make for a good base value for practicality, as this reflects on how easy the car’s passenger and cargo volumes are accessed, and how usable it is in quick, every-day activities. With A = B = 2, you’d get base value of 8 for a 2-door coupe and a value of 28 for a 5-door, 9-seat minibus. Not sure if you’d want to weigh seats more than doors or not, this might be the place to put more importance on doors though."
A bad post / argument looks like this
Doors should matter a lot and seats too. I find my minibus super practical, and so does my sister and her degenerate dog.
That’s all! Keep the comments / suggestions / arguments and discussions coming.
Cheers!
For the utility stat
Acargo space + BLoad capacity(without bottoming out) + C*pulling power (ie how much it can pull up an 8% grade at 75kph, as well as being able to stop going down that grade without overheating the brakes)
With the pickups maybe increase the cargo space to double the cab height.
I think doors should be valued more than seats for practicality. Look at 2-door SUVs and 3-door hatchbacks. A lot of the hot hatches are only being sold with 5 doors, because people aren’t buying the 3 door versions. The Ford Focus, Volkswagen Golf, and many more manufactures stopped making 3 door hatchbacks because having 5 doors is just more piratical and shows how important the number of doors are to an average buyer.
And the same can be said for 2-door SUVs like the Ford Bronco, in the 1990s the sales dramatically dropped and was replaced by a 4 door SUV, the second year of production doubled the sales of the Broncos best year.
How granular do you want to get? Like do you want the size of side mirrors to affect the utility because they impact how easy it is to tow larger trailers?
Can’t help but think that it might make sense to model carrying capacity as the area of a rectangle, with cargo volume on one axis and payload on the other, as modeling it like this would allow you to gain a high utility score even if the only things your vehicle can carry well are aerogel or uranium (Very large volume but low max weight, or very small volume with a large capacity).
What about smaller earlier year less powerful vehicles that couldn’t even reach 75km/h on such an incline? Wouldnt that make their scores on 0 instantly. Like i.e the 2cv
The issue I see with that is that it would probably make pickup trucks the best vehicles for the delivery demographics, since their cargo volume would be twice that of similarly sized vans.
If anything is changed, I’d suggest instead adding a fixed percentage bonus to utility to body shells with the “Pickup truck” type flag. This would represent the advantages an open box has for utility purposes, since it lets you do things you can’t really do with an enclosed van, like carrying loose material like sand or topsoil. The percentage doesn’t need to be very large, something like 5-10% might be good enough to give a small buff to pickup trucks without making things like SUVs useless in the utility heavy demographics.
As for your other points I agree. Load capacity would have the bonus also of making it useful to run hard suspension on utility vehicles, like they have to do in real life. However, like the current bonuses associated to suspension types, I’d put more importance on rear suspension stiffness since that’s where most of the load is located.
An other thing I would add, similarly to the current system would be to have a factor applied to each of those bonuses that would depend on the chassis type, chassis material as well as the suspension design.
The volume per footprint rewards boxy vehicles with lots of room.
Practicality factors ideas:
+Ground clearance (up to a point)
+All season tires (not sport tires)
+More boxy cargo area
_____How many 50cm cubes fit?
+Roof rack
+Not convertible
+Max height
_____Does it fit in garage?
+Folding or removable seats (think minivan)
______25% of passenger volume is added to cargo volume
+Hose washable cargo area
______People don’t usually put dirt in a car trunk compared to a pickup truck
+Sliding doors
______Easier with kids and car seats
+Room for adults in 2nd & 3rd row
______Can you fit adults in the back seat to carpool to lunch?
+Number and size of cup holders
Edit: How would I make a multilevel list using the list tool? The tab key just jumps out of the text box.
We were considering having the “Delivery” segment being biased somewhat towards vans (or any vehicle with large INTERNAL cargo space) and the Utility/Heavy Utility etc being biased towards Pickups/vehicles with large external cargo space.
The implication here is that the Delivery segment is delivering mail, merchandise, electronics etc. where Utility is delivering gravel, building suppiles etc
I approve of this. Would add some use to the body style tags.
With something like this implemented, would it also be possible for MPV bodies to get a bit of a practicality boost (beyond the 5 door boost) from the interior versatility they all have but that isn’t modelled in the interior options?
The thing is, nothing really prevents companies from having stuff like removeable seats or stowable seats in a station wagon or a SUVs, and those are the main aspect that makes MPVs more versatile.
Damn, you already beat me to the suggestion I was going to make. When I worked construction, vans were used for tools and protected supplies, whereas pickups were used for pick-up stuff (tossing in garbage, rapid loading/unloading of materials, housing loose materials). My suggestion would be that the pickup market is a big one in real life (To the point where the American triplets basically survive off that market), so I would just add/replace a market tab with a “pickup” option, and have a tag on the vehicle about whether it’s a pickup bed or not. Heck, from there, you could even have the prissy/luxurious truck market, and the actual worktruck market, also accurate to real life.
