What is factory retooling?

[Giacomo]

Question:

What exactly is factory retooling meant to represent? A replacement of worn down machinery? An upgrade of tools? An expansion in factory size?

In my most recent game I've retooled my starting factory. It had five assembly lines. It was operating at 78% capacity. I wasn't concerned about the wear, but I wanted to increase the number of assembly lines with the minimum investment possible. The minimum amount of investment I had to spend to increase the number of lines I had from 5 to 15, turned out to be zero. I spent no money to receive 10 extra lines. The wear on my machinery remained at 78%, but I suddenly had extra capacity for no extra cost. Add to the fact that retooling works instantly and doesn't require any build time, I'm now unsure of what exactly retooling represents.

[Wi1dcat]

Well I was a Mechanical Engineering major whose stream happens to be Manufacturing, so I can tell you that factory retooling basically means that you change the metal stamping molds so that new shapes could be produced. Retooling costs a lot more than just making more copies of the same molds which is what an increase in the number of assembly line require. I suppose the money to make more copies of the same mold in this game is "adjusted" for game-play purposes to balance difficulty, but wait for an official answer from the dev...

[Giacomo]

Thanks for the interesting insight!

[Eric.B]

If you were able to retool without cost then it's a bug.

Retooling is meant to be a replacing of tools/molds etc, not an expansion of physical factory size.

Anyway I'll be looking into cleaning this up some in the near future.