Creation of markets

[GreyParrot]

I would really like to have an option to create different markets that to don't have to relate to continents, but to cities you would like to include in those markets; for example, creating a market for Spain and Portugal without having to be included in the European market, or a Japanese market without having to be included in the Asian one. This would mean that the same model could be produced in factories that you built in a country, but that the factories that are within that market's area could have an option to produce for the local market or to export it to the other markets. That could make you save a lot of money in transportation if you produce a model and you want to sell it far away from the factories you have.

[freeman2344]

One of the main problems is the current transportation system in general...it makes competing in multiple markets a real hassle. Eric is aware of this problem, as it has come up multiple times in the past. I do believe that some sort of workaround will be implemented here. Your idea of separate markets could surely be implemented, though it's probably not the most elegant solution.

[Arakash]

Welcome to the forums

Afaik, transportation is currently just a figure based on the distance between the city your producing vehicles at (factory) and the city your selling them at (the branch).

So i dont think the game makes any distinction between vehicles produced for local and export markets beyond the often huge differences in how you design them to fit the different needs of different cities.

Ill float an idea and see if it is what you were thinking.
How about some kind "Built for Export" checkbox that means your vehicle will cost a ton to transport locally but will be much cheaper at a distance?
The exact details of how that would works in reality vs the game are beyond my knowledge, but several people on the forum have shown they have a lot of experience in this area.

I can link two suggestion threads that are about how to construct the transportation system that you might be interested in contributing to.
The largest is this one but there is also this one

[GreyParrot]

Thanks for welcoming me
The checkbox would be a good idea in terms of transportation prices. What happens is that for example if you create a model for North America but you also want to sell it in Australia or in Spain you set the factories so you produce it in those countries too. The exporting checkbox would be kind of useless without the existence of predefined markets because the cars produced in those factories are already exported, leaving the local market empty. That's why I would like the option to create a market by myself too.

[Arakash]

The exporting checkbox would be kind of useless without the existence of predefined markets because the cars produced in those factories are already exported, leaving the local market empty. That's why I would like the option to create a market by myself too.

Im not sure what you mean by this, could you elaborate a bit?

I was thinking of something during the design process rather than something that you could do at a factory.
So you would perhaps take an existing design and using the trim or new year options, create one that is built for an export market.
I dont think this would require markets(though im not sure whether you mean regions?) as it would just decrease the transport cost of that model.
Ill just mention again that i dont have any practical knowledge of how these kind of build for export systems work in reality, so im brainstorming here.

I think the dev (Eric) will have to comment on how practical having two different factories producing the same design with one set to export only and one set to local would be.

[GreyParrot]

Sorry haha.
I would explain you better now. Many car companies arround the world have got defined markets to sell their cars. Those markets can or can't be the whole of the continent (which in the game are regions like NA, Europe, Asia) or a group of countries within that continent.
When a car is designed its then assigned to a market. Sometimes companies decide to create a global car or a car that is sold in many markets arround the world. After the design is made, it is assigned to a factory and then when produced some units remain in the local market while the rest is exported to other markets.

[Frankschtaldt]

Interesting idea.
This would interact well with a suggestion I made earlier about dividing regions into sub regions.
To be honest though, I really can't think of a way of implementing it into the game that would work. Not saying one doesn't exist. Just that I can't wrap my head around it right now.

[freeman2344]

Here's the thing: I think we can all agree that in the early game years (1900-1945) shipping costs should be colossal and thus shipping vehicles across, say, the Atlantic, should be pretty much prohibitively expensive. What bugs me the most is the often repeated problem that you cannot keep a vehicle from being shipped, if you sell a vehicle in, say, the US and France and also produce the model in factories there (at both locations) - the vehicles are then shipped wherever there is demand. This problem can easily be handled by implementing a factory-to-branch interface, thus adding the capability of restricting a certain factory from shipping to certain branches or all branches of a certain region. That shouldn't be too hard to implement and could be the simplest solution. It should thus be a necessity to build factories wherever you would like to sell your vehicles...which would be very realistic in the early years. As time progresses, shipping costs should decrease, making production in, say, Mexico, profitable.

This problem could also be handled by making it FREE to COPY a model without modifying it in any way (and to finish it instantly). Then you could easily and at no cost make variants of a vehicle for multiple markets. This still adds a lot of micromanagement, but at least the player is not penalized for it. As I suggested in an earlier thread, small modifications should, in general, not take as much development time and cost as much as the original vehicle...I'm sure Eric will address this at some point.

[Arakash]

Here's the thing: I think we can all agree that in the early game years (1900-1945) shipping costs should be colossal and thus shipping vehicles across, say, the Atlantic, should be pretty much prohibitively expensive. What bugs me the most is the often repeated problem that you cannot keep a vehicle from being shipped, if you sell a vehicle in, say, the US and France and also produce the model in factories there (at both locations) - the vehicles are then shipped wherever there is demand. This problem can easily be handled by implementing a factory-to-branch interface, thus adding the capability of restricting a certain factory from shipping to certain branches or all branches of a certain region. That shouldn't be too hard to implement and could be the simplest solution. It should thus be a necessity to build factories wherever you would like to sell your vehicles...which would be very realistic in the early years. As time progresses, shipping costs should decrease, making production in, say, Mexico, profitable.

This problem could also be handled by making it FREE to COPY a model without modifying it in any way (and to finish it instantly). Then you could easily and at no cost make variants of a vehicle for multiple markets. This still adds a lot of micromanagement, but at least the player is not penalized for it. As I suggested in an earlier thread, small modifications should, in general, not take as much development time and cost as much as the original vehicle...I'm sure Eric will address this at some point.

A couple of points ill make.
Those links i provided earlier about the suggestion threads on the transportation system go into a seriously detailed discussion on how it could work, id really recommend contributing to them I Certainly dont want to start off another thread on a similar subject again, especially when there have been some really knowledgeable contributions to those ones.

Im not sure i would describe having certain factories producing only for certain areas as "the simplest solution". As i said earlier, im unsure whether the game would even support it or if it could be coded.
At the moment the simplest solution and the one most players use is to create a trim of the design then produce it locally in the area they want to sell it.
I dont think we need another system to straight up copy a vehicle when the trim system can do it already fairly easily. Vehicle design isn't expensive enough to make this cost prohibitive either, so i dont see why it should be free.

As a final point, the problem you talked about where you cant stop a vehicle from being shipped overseas, which makes managing global distributions of vehicles very difficult has been brought up before several times. Here is one for example.

[Eric.B]

User divided sub regions is a good idea. I remember Zastava (Yugo) doing this with their cars. They would build the same cars in the same factories, but they had a specific line set up (with better paided workers) for export to only the US market. (Not including Mexico or Canada)

Transportation is a separate issue that I will deal with in 1.13.

The hard part is implementing this idea in what we have now. I could easily implement some auto-tools based on country thus allowing you to set distribution,prices etc, in selected countries. But anything more would be difficult and require some rewriting. Maybe in the expansion.