Since you guys are working on a new UI right now, I thought it would be a good time to post these suggestions
Since I organize my engines by year, I tend to go back and forth from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s to the 70’s and onward pretty often. But it was around that time (in the U.S. anyway, that automakers started the switch to metric units. As such, most of my engines before 1970 are designed with Cubic inches and Feet as measurements, but from the 70’s onward they’re done in metric. As such, I think that there should be a “mixed” option in the metric/imperial unit selection.
Also, when trying to find engines that fit in car bodies, I noticed that all the engine bays are measured in “volume”, while the engines have individual height, width, and length dimensions. In my opinion it would be much better for “engine volume” to be replaced with “Engine dimensions”, and list the maximum height, width, and length.
I also have a question about the Quality slider, does it mean “quality of design” or “time taken during manufacturing”? Because those two can be quite different things.
For example; I’m sure it doesn’t take a lot of man-hours to manufacture an LS7, but the design of the valvetrain allows it to rev to 6500 and sometimes beyond. Yet in the engine designer, I have to move the quality slider up to 6 or more (which makes the heads VERY expensive) just to get it to rev past 6000.
The term displacement refers to the amount of fluid, or air or stuff, moved by adding more matter to the same space. Adding an object that has a volume of 1ft x 1ft x 1ft, displaces 1 cubic feet of space. So, while the engine bay reads in volume, it can easily be translated into physical dimensions.
The quality slider is something the dev’s said would be more important in the campaign than the sandbox mode. It determines the amount of available advanced tech to be used on the part your building, the more you move the slider to the right, the more your “company” in sandbox, has access to advanced tech. As of right now, it gives an overall percentage increase in the build quality of whatever your doing, while increasing the build time and man hours.
Quality is machining quality and tolerances, etc., while engineering time is a measure of how complicated that is to achieve. Engineering time will be a major factor in the tycoon part of the game.
Your question about the LS7 is a bit different. If there is one thing American V8s are known for, it is their stubborn use of OHV. Since they have gotten so good at that, they are able to build higher quality engines for a cheaper price. In the tycoon, this will work similarly. If you continue to use a certain feature in your engine, that part will get a quality boost, for no cost. For example, American OHV V8s would get about 10 free points on the top end quality because of their history of using that configuration.