In one of your videos you guys mention that you can have techology that is beyond the in-game time but it would be more expensive the further out you get. Does that mean technology will get cheap over time to allow you access to tech at the appropriate date? Or is there research invovled? How does cross company tech work? can you only buy a engine and plop it in a car or can you modify it?
On a side note: In my dreamworld (I realize this probably isn’t possible) I would have a sort-of-technology tree. It would be a technology tree in the sense that you could research new tech (like a diesel, hybrid tech, EV, etc). Then when you researched the new tech you could pour money into that tech to make it more efficient/cheaper to produce/reliable/etc.
As far as cross company tech. I would say it would be cool to “rent” tech. Meaning that if I wanted to rent diesel tech from some company, I could use their tech to design my own engine but could only use it so long as the agreement is in place or until I research up to/past that tech level. Now that I think about it, it would also be cool if you could buy an engine from another company but for cheaper but as a draw back couldn’t modify it.
All of that was pipe dreams. I’m sure you guys have better (or at least more reasonable ideas). sorry for the mostly incoherent rambling.
Basically there will be a world technology level, that progress’s that unlocks developements for free, so everyone can access them.
You can pay for research, to get ahead of this, but gets prohibitively more expensive, so you cannot push much further than 5-10 years past the normal technology pace.
Hehe when you said that I instantly thought about “Motor City” a.k.a. “Oldtimer”… where you had to GRIND through your frigging locker in order to discover new ideas for new technology I am perfectly sure it won’t be done in that way at least
What we have in the alpha/beta right now is a general quality slider that is the manufacturing year. This is “area specific”, i.e. fuel system, top end, exhaust, etc.
Now starts my guessing: In addition to that new system sub-types will be unlocked at certain years per default, and the more you invest into research in a specific area, (get a bonus to “manufacturing year”… kinda), you unlock that technology earlier (ahead of the release to general public xD) than your competitors, for example direct injection or a baffled exhaust system.
So instead of making yet another thread i’ll just keep posting semi random questions in this one
Not sure if you guys have gotten this far in the planning but how will managing employees work?
Will we have to negotiate with unions? I assume work forces in poorer countries will be cheaper to employ. Will there be a way to view a country’s economic strength? Maybe like seeing the strength of the currency?
can we raid the north pole and force the elves into slave labor?
just a few more thoughts rolling around in my head.
hehe the elves and the north-pole will be the secret cow level of Automation xD Good questions… the different countries and their worker/labor costs are indeed implemented. For the rest we have to wait for the devs to talk about the prototype they produced a while back
That’s a good one, don’t know if it’s been hammered out yet though Being able to get a loan would be a useful feature to expand or retool so you can make higher profits rather then waiting and waiting for profits to trickle in with the old stuff before you can expand or update.
Actually on that note, will there be government mandates and incentives like real life, e.g. pollution caps or loans for low-emissions tech?
Commercial loans would be an interesting addition - they’re certainly used widely in the real world, as vehicle development programs can run over $1 billion and companies would sometimes rather take the loan and pay interest than dip that much into their cash reserves.
Regulations on octane ratings, safety, and emissions has already been stated as going to be a requirement for the various markets you sell cars in and will vary by where they are sold (ie different governments have different regulations)
Something I was curious about though, will tech research just be a blanket advancement of everything or will we have options to focus reserch in different areas so more effort it put into advancing in specific areas?
so it’s like packages that are all opened up as you progress to tech levels (such as getting EFI, disk breaks, DOHC etc in a bundle), either though reserch or standard rate, or is that all for individual techs, like EFI, Disk Breaks, Overhead Cams, etc that open up on their own. eg. put reserch into DASOHC and get those ahead of everyone else while techs you don’t put effort into you have to wait for the ‘normal’ time?
In-game legal issues! let’s say I make a really crappy car. I cut skimp on quality building supplies, low quality controls, etc. As a result my cars spontaneously explode. Will my company have to worry about class action law suits or will it just destroy my reputation as an automaker?
Reputation absulutly. If you make crappy cars your company will have a low reputation with the public as one that makes bad cars or deathtraps.
As for lawsuits, that I think will have a very big with as there would have to take into account the various laws of every jurisdiction around the world. Plus for any award of punitive damages it would also have to be programmed in to show recklessness or knowing disregard to be awarded. Even Ford wouldn’t have been so heavily nailed on the Pinto of it wasn’t shown that Ford knew of the problem and considered the price for paying wrongful death suits to be less than correcting the design defect.
[quote=“serothis”]Another question to add to my ever growing list!
In-game legal issues! let’s say I make a really crappy car. I cut skimp on quality building supplies, low quality controls, etc. As a result my cars spontaneously explode. Will my company have to worry about class action law suits or will it just destroy my reputation as an automaker?[/quote]
Those are things that we want to eventually do, all in good time.
But it is always fun running anyway in the tech tree from the AI.
I am perfectly sure it won’t be done in that way at least 
As usual you guys are awesome