if you ask me, i i’d say just wait until open beta becomes stable, because the last thing you want is for it to switch mid-competition
I’m going to wait for the next stable version. I’ll make a new thread then. This’ll give me some time to work it out.
I think cars will still be compatible, so if people start sending me cars for the scrapyard I’ll start working on the catalog.
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ok, i should probably update the communitasia’s for the new open beta before sending 'em in 
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Okay, just sent a handful of old cars (both in that I made them months ago and in that they’re 1967-1988 model year) off my hard drive over to Absurdist. Will probably have a couple more cars to send shortly; I think a nice, modern, incredibly crappy kit car sounds like an excellent addition, don’t you?
Just had an idea re: pricing: what about an auction? You could probably run it like this:
- Upload a .zip file with the complete catalog of vehicles, bodies, chassis, engines, turbos … however you want to divide it up into items.
- Give each player a starting bankroll for bidding with.
- Split the catalog into three to five pieces, each corresponding to a separate auction.
- For each auction, have players submit sealed bids on all the included items. The sum of the bids each player submits must be less than or equal to their remaining bankroll. At the end of each auction, the winning bidder for each item will pay the second-place bidder’s price (Vickrey auction) and collect what they’ve won.
- After all items have been auctioned off, players can use whatever they got to build their competition vehicle.
@Packbat What if you end up not having an entire car? such as you get a chassis/body and Turbo, but no Engine? What if you only get a body? What if you get nothing?
On the one hand, that’s why I suggested multiple auctions: if you don’t win anything in the first couple rounds, then you have a lot more money left over than the people who did, and therefore you can outbid them for what you need.
On the other hand, that’s still a good point. Especially if lots of people save up for an item that doesn’t show until near the end. It might be good to give everyone a complete starter car as well, just to avoid that situation.
One way around that is have a dud part in each auction, where everyone who doesn’t get another part gets that.
I could have it so you nominate, say, for engines which ones you want in order, and give a price that’ll determine who gets what.
So, to give an example to make up for my lack of English language skills.
There are three engines, Engine A, B and C. C is the worst (dud) but doesn’t need to be paid for. But can be used by multiple people.
Packbat sends me a msg, his bid is 400, and nominates
A, then B, then C.
Vri nominates the same, but bids 300.
CPUfreak bids 350 and picks B, then A, then C.
So, packbat bids highest, so she gets A for $400
No one else can have A.
CPU freak bids next highest, so he gets B, his first pick, and loses $350.
Vri bid lowest, so picks 3rd, A and B are taken, so is left with item C. But pays nothing.
The upside to this is that, it’ll be easy to work out, I can make a catalog for each item type and we can do a round of bidding.
The down side, is that it could take a while to make the cars. At minimum we’d need say, 3 days, probably a week between bids so people who have lives can also play. Maybe I can do several parts each week. So, week one might be, the Engine and the Chasis. Week two might be, the body and the gearbox. Last week is a tuning week where people make the cars in Automation, are allowed to tune certain things, then submit.
And, well the other downside I see is that, my competition at the end might not be cool enough to match the picking process. I would be tempted to ask if Der Bayer would let me run a single race on BROBOT. but that would be a stretch. Will have to think on that too. Otherwise I could, make a simulated race and maybe write a bit of a story for that.
I think that would be a more exciting goal that my, various events idea. Not sure, thoughts on that?
Certainly I think we are going in a good direction with the auction. As it will mean, not everyone picks the same parts.
Also thank you for all the help on working this out,
Hrmm … yeah, the time issue was a big part of why I was suggesting the whole thing be divided into a handful of pieces. But I think the idea of free parts being available is good - and there probably ought to be multiples available of a lot of Scrapyard items. (Peppermint Automobile Company made a lot of economy NE-1 hatchbacks, frex. Although a lot of them the bodies would have rusted out, so maybe the engines are more common than the bodies.)
How about this? Auction divided up into several days, each played out a week apart, and players fill out a proxy instruction form to determine how they bid. Something like:
[code]Maximum budget for drivetrains:
Maximum budget for bodies:
Maximum budget for turbos:
Max bids for individual items:
That way, players can bid as much as they see fit for every item they want but avoid blowing their entire budgets on engines, and it’s still not too complicated. You still split it up into multiple days so players can see what they’ve gotten and adjust their strategy accordingly (if, say, I won a big engine in the first day and no bodies that can house it, I might turn around and put all my money into getting a body, day 2.)
Ok, so then I can use Vickrey option still. Good point.
I think you are right on the quantity as well. I think I’ll base that off both how many cars get sent and how many entrants I expect. But I’ll see where I am on that point later.
I think I have the format sorted now, Catalog, should not take too much work and if I do bits each week that means I don’t need that done upfront so that’ll make it easier. Still thinking a straight race for the event, I can relatively easily simulate a race in excel then write about that.
What kind of cars are you looking for? I’d be willing to make some(but I also want to enter the competition so I’m not sure if you would allow that I’ll try to stick to somewhat reasonable cars though) I’m honestly not too good at making anything even slightly fuel efficient or reasonable, I tried to make a hyper efficient car and I couldn’t even get over 70 mpg …with a lightweight deathtrap purposely built for fuel efficiently.
Anything from 1940’s to 2016. I’ll probably go and revise the quality sliders to match the year. Just, normal cars, the more mass market the better. And like mass market cars, they don’t have to be that good haha, just, anything you think is good to send.
Okay - just built a new 1998 pickup truck for Peppermint Automobile Company, and just recreated (possibly with minor improvements) the 1990 PAW Helvum ST all-terrain station wagon that I made for the Out of Africa competition. (Sort of. The Helvum AX was the car I entered; I built the domestic American version.) I’ll be shooting those over to you shortly.
Re: the contest rules, just had an idea: what about a trading phase after the auction phase?
Well I don’t know if what I send will be normal cars really, the normal an in my opinion somewhat underpowered 1985 SUV it got just over 10 mpg and had 0 sportyness but it was still competitive in the muscle and pony categories, but also scored high has an economy city car somehow…
I hope I’m not inviting trouble upon @Absurdist by saying this, but I feel that, for this competition? The more cars the better.
Also, I think the muscle and pony categories are broken at the moment - pretty much every car scores well in those two. (Might be fixable with some new pony cars added to the Competitors list, but who knows.) So, well, use your judgment I guess? If you like the car, it’s probably good enough to send in - and in the worst case scenario, @Absurdist will just leave it out of the final catalogue.
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Also, if you need some cars, Trawl through the “Open Source Cars” thread, as there are quite a few good cars in there that could be used.
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count me in
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I wrote a reply but forgot to send it!
“Yes absolutely send cars if you like, the more the better, if I don’t get enough I’ll add in parts myself, if I get too many I’ll pick and choose from the cars I’m sent”
I’ll be making a thread tomorrow and there will be one week from then to send in cars before the first round starts which is when we get to finally see the catalogue for the first group of parts. I’ll also explain the final rules and have a bit of time for tweaking if needed.
Thanks for waiting so long, I think it was a good idea to wait for the latest public update.
What mods do you have? or are we using vanilla fixtures?
Let me know when this the new thread launches, as I’m back to updating the Challenge Tracker!