Number of suggestions

[Eric.B]

Hi,

after countless hours with this (awesome) piece of software...there are a few things that I've been wondering about.

1. Development time and cost for marginally different trim variants of a vehicle should be significantly lower. I like the option of offering different variants of the same car to different target markets (higher classed, more expensive trim variants for a wealthier segment of the population and so forth). In most cases, these changes would merely affect the interior setting. IMO something like this should not take as long as the design of the original vehicle, if the trim variant is developed after the development of the original car and not be as expensive as said development either (the same should apply to trims that are developed at the same time as the original vehicle). Development time and cost could, for example, be made dependent on the amount of changes made to the vehicle with a chassis change necessitating almost a complete redesign and small changes, like the interior rating, only accounting for a small percentage of the original time and cost (with stuff like different engines maybe coming up to 25-30%).

2. Players should be able to select from which factory a branch is supplied to prevent trans-atlantic transportation. In my first game I nearly went bankcrupt due to cars being shipped overseas against my will. I have since adopted the strategy of developing different trims of the same car for different markets to prevent this issue (but that in itself is already problematic, as stated above, though actually somewhat realistic).
In any case, cost of transportation needs to become a little more transparent.

3. IMO a different measure of acceleration is required for the early game years as 0-60 is obviously not a relevant value. Maybe 0-10/20 or even 0 to top speed (which would probably make the most sense).

4. If it is not too much GUI work, maybe consider implementing a statistics screen containing the number and model of cars sold throughout history and similar information. Current report options (IIRC) only contain information concerning the last month's sales.

5. Maybe implement a factory overview screen where all factories are listed underneath each other (as part of the mega menu), as it becomes very cumbersome to change production values once you reach 5+ manufacturing places.

6. An option to automatically adapt wages to the average value would be nice, as the current auto wage is always way too high and adjustment by percentage is not ideal IMO.

Edit: Sorry about the amount of suggestions, I just saw the sticky. Leaving it as it is right now, I think having all of these in separate threads would be a little ...off.

1) You are correct, it's sort of a design flaw in the game mechanics right now.

2) See this thread: http://www.ventdev.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=898

3) Once I fix the top speed bug then this should be less of a factor. Most cars were able to hit 60mph by 1920... (excluding microcars of course)

4) There is a spot for this in the sales book, under "History" It's one of the later features I'll implement as I fix everything else in the game. Your own sales history is located in the showroom.

5) There will be a combo box on the upper right of the megamenu only listing cities with factories in them.

6) Current auto wages prevents any forms of strike, including random event strikes. Also higher wages improves the city's growth somewhat. The more the city grows, the more people can spend on cars.


I don't mind this many suggestions in a post, as long as the forums do not get too busy. When I start getting too many duplicated suggestions in posts then there is a problem.


Thanks for playing, I'm glad you're enjoying it!