Techpool for Challenge Hosts

Community Challenges & Competitions
1

With the introduction of 4.2, all users are now able to use techpool more or less freely on their cars to emulate effort spent into improving technologies via R&D (and copious amounts of money).

In the Automation Campaign, techpool categories are not equal. Specific tech sections have price multipliers based on their effect of usefulness, such as dramatically reducing base cost to produce the tech, or allow for advanced unlocking of new technology before other companies who did not invest as heavy into tech.

When you apply techpool to Sandbox cars, your car prices go down, but this doesn’t reflect the potentially millions to billions of dollars invested into R&D. One reason im posting this is just so challenge hosts know the price multipliers the game expects tech to be paid to use these techpool features.

The multipliers are as follows. (May change at a later date.)

Engine
Engine Architecture: 4
Bottom End: 1
Top End: 2
Aspiration: 1
Fuel System: 3
Exhaust: 1

Car
Body: 1
Chassis: 2
DTrain: 2
Wheels: 1
Brakes: 1
Aero: 1
Suspension: 1
Steering / Assists: 1
Interior: 3
Safety: 1

Items with a 1 carry their base cost to use, while items with 2, 3, and 4 have their cost multiplied by that value respectively. So, 1 tech in aero is 20k, while 1 tech in interior is 60k monthly for example (before lab fees).

Additionally, the game charges you additional costs for “spreading out” your tech with laboratory fees, since an aero lab usually wont be doing the same work a fuel systems lab will (I’ll figure out a formula for this later). In summary though, youre incentivized to focus on specific techs and not spread your techpool around unless you have the funds to afford it.

For now, Tech with a point buy system factoring in these multipliers may be a good idea.

Simple calculator by @MisterRocketMan

techpool_calculator.zip (8.3 KB)

Additionally @doot made this version of the sheet.

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2

With that in mind it would be nice to have some “example” or point cost built into the tech pool window itself - even as simple as a sum of all the tech points with those multipliers applied to respective categories. However plugging in just the same campaign R&D cost calculations might be even better, as IIRC the further up you go with tech, the more expensive each point is. Could be useful even for pure sandbox, for people who don’t want to go overboard, but don’t have a clue about those differences.

3

If you want to use it as an RPG-esque skill system, you can emulate that by charging for the previous levels when you level up.

For example, say you wanted to dump points into Interiors, and are treating it as a 3pt “skill.” Level 1 would be 3 points, since you have no prior levels in that skill. Level 2 would be 4 points, since you have one level in it already (3+1). But in order to buy L2 you have to have L1, so the real cost for L2 is 7 points (3+(3+1)). A 3rd level would be an extra 5 points (3+2), bringing the grand total to 12pts (3+(3+1)+(3+2)).

Just an idea I totally didn’t steal from an old tabletop RPG…

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4

I’m pretty sure someone can put together a spreadsheet with the costs to use tech. As for the RPG style point buy, that probably makes more sense than a straight up multiplied point buy, but might get a bit complex.

I also forgot to mention the time investment to get to these techs, which is also usually pretty substantial unless you throw even more money out and then pull back.

5

@MisterRocketMan made an excel sheet if you want to use this, similar to other challenge rounds.

techpool_calculator.zip (8.3 KB)
Just unzip it and open it.

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6

As things stand right now, the tech pool system above favors builds with a heavier focus on areas with a 1x multiplier than on areas with a 2x multiplier or more. However, I have found it to be workable.

7

This doesn’t currently factor in the exponential cost to actually go out and earn that technology pool, nor does it factor in the penalties for “going wide” with minimal tech levels in multiple fields.