I realised recently that there is no penalty when you use a highly optimised but incredibly obscure tyre size. In reality a rare tyre size would reduce the desirability of a car directly (it’s harder to obtain replacement tyres and there is less choice), and/or increase service costs. I suppose this may be more trouble that it’s worth generating a table over the years approximating how common each tyre size is and reflecting how common your car’s is in the UI, but it’s an idea anyway.
(On a related note, what of different sized tyres at front and back and spare tyres? Spare tyres and tyre repair kits don’t exist in the game, but in case they do get added, whatever bonus a full sized spare would give should be docked for cars that use two tyre sizes.)
Yeah, rarity would be odd, as tire sizes are only rare because manufacturers choose not to use them, so if you’re choosing to use them, and making a lot of cars, would it then decrease the rarity of that size? Would you have to keep track of every other car on the market, what tire size they use, and dynamically adjust the service costs of every car that uses that size? It’s a bit of a mess to do in a good way.
That’s more of a full sim approach, I was only thinking of static tables roughly representing historically common tyre sizes. It probably is too much work, but it seems silly to me that a car manufacturer can mysteriously source any tyre dimensions they desire (within the limits of the tech) and that it is implied that regardless of the obscurity of the size, there is ready and equal access to replacements. (Props for different classes of tyre having different service costs, though.)
I still can’t really see it working, for one thing, where would you get the data from? For example, how much cheaper/more common is 195/50/15 vs 195/60/14, and how does that compare in 1990, vs in 2010?
Tyre size rarity would have to change as time passed, for sure.
Are some of the sizes in reality common because one specific car started using them, sold in volume, and then others started using them too? Are 235/40/18s much more available in the USA than they are in Europe, due to more larger cars being sold there?
Also I’d say that a manufacturer CAN source any tyre really, there are plenty of cars that even have a specific tyre designed for them (usually quite expensive stuff with expensive tyres though)
I think the only thing we can really do that makes sense, is have large, low profile, high performance tyres be more expensive than narrow, high profile, low performance tyres.
I have to say, I always welcome more simulated aspects, but this is one of those things where the variables would be just as inaccurate as doing nothing. It would just end up being frustrating trying to plan out which tires to try and make popular “long term” or, even worse, being stuck to using just a few sizes of tires because that’s what history tells us is common. The way it is currently in-game is the best-case scenario already.
On a somewhat related note, will things like manuals be affected by the passage of time? While they were once popular, it’s now getting more and more difficult to find a good manual car in North America (And even Europe is backing away): Will the game replicate this, or can we “make” manuals popular enough in our game to keep them common?
The reason for that is because automatics are getting better, meaning manuals loose the advantages they once had, especially when it comes to fuel economy.
AFAIK they plan on balancing transmissions so pretty much the same thing happen in game.
It’s already kinda in the game with the various demographics modifiers that are applied to the current fictitious nations, although the effect might not be strong enough still when it comes to auto vs manuals.
Things like driver skill, racing heritage and other factors affect the wants of all the demographics, resulting in buyers from European countries for example wanting to trade a tad of driveability for a bit more sportiness.
And OFC varying costs of fuel and varying budgets between various countries is also going to make a big difference.
Yeah… But still from some point in time (90s maybe? I don’t remember) in my campaign even Fruinia prefered automatics in all cars other than sports ones. In fact the only really visible differences between the regions are bodget, available fuel and prefered car size.
