To begin, I want to say that I love all of these numbers in the game. Having htem all out there gives you a certain control and lets you see exactly what has an effect on what else, and how. It's great that they are all there, but sometimes, I'm not looking to sift through numbers, but just want a very quick, at-a-glance summary of the situation in a factory. While thinking about how to do this, the various component creation feedback you get got me thinking - what if you had something along those lines for the factories? This wouldn't be something that replaces, but instead augments it, adding either at-a-glance information that you can skim through without having to make sense of the numbers OR simply serves as nice flavor text to help get a better picture in your head of just what sort of facility it is that's in the city.
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For instance, in the Car Creator you get little hints that say things like:
"This car engine is poor. The engine's size and weight make it impossible to reasonably fit in any chassis. Never mind that it's terribly underpowered. Why anyone would want to use this, I have no idea"
(Paraphrased in the most terrible way, I know)
Is it possible to get something like a fluff summary of your factory, so that it says things like:
"This factory is little more than a handful of workers hand-crafting vehicles in their spare time. Cars are made to order, and even keeping up with that can be difficult for the workers here without sufficient tools or space." (For the lowest levels, c.1895-1900 and likely what you start out with on Normal/Hard - low technology, low capacity)
"Considered state-of-the-art, this factory uses innovative techniques including an assembly line where the car moves from station to station and the workers remain in place, further reducing the time that workers spend being unproductive. This vastly increases productivity, and with ten production lines and three shifts, vehicles produced can easily meet demand. Of course, maintaining this sort of pace will be expensive as tools will wear out quicker from near-constant use and you will require a greatly-increased workforce to ensure the factory works at maximum efficiency." (a top of the line factory, c.1910 with 10 production lines, likely with high technology and capacity)
An example of how it might look in-game
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I think that it would definitely help better qualify what sort of factory you really have, without throwing massive amounts of numbers at a person who may not be inclined to them. Not to say that the existing numbers interface should go away, but that having some sort of written summary of all of that can make it easier to make sense of the pips and numbers in the game.
Also, while doing up the mock-up I've attached, I thought of also adding an advice layer which analyzes the factory and gives you a suggestion about what it's greatest issue is, as well as (perhaps) how to solve it...if you feel like having that sort of thing also available.
Now - I know, with the way things are, the basic factory DOES have 5 lines on Hard (not sure what the other difficulties are), so obviously these descriptions would probably need to be tweaked somewhat, but the basic idea stays the same.
And I think I'll leave it here, before even more comes up and I suggest something that's more than just an improvement/tweak.
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For instance, in the Car Creator you get little hints that say things like:
"This car engine is poor. The engine's size and weight make it impossible to reasonably fit in any chassis. Never mind that it's terribly underpowered. Why anyone would want to use this, I have no idea"
(Paraphrased in the most terrible way, I know)
Is it possible to get something like a fluff summary of your factory, so that it says things like:
"This factory is little more than a handful of workers hand-crafting vehicles in their spare time. Cars are made to order, and even keeping up with that can be difficult for the workers here without sufficient tools or space." (For the lowest levels, c.1895-1900 and likely what you start out with on Normal/Hard - low technology, low capacity)
"Considered state-of-the-art, this factory uses innovative techniques including an assembly line where the car moves from station to station and the workers remain in place, further reducing the time that workers spend being unproductive. This vastly increases productivity, and with ten production lines and three shifts, vehicles produced can easily meet demand. Of course, maintaining this sort of pace will be expensive as tools will wear out quicker from near-constant use and you will require a greatly-increased workforce to ensure the factory works at maximum efficiency." (a top of the line factory, c.1910 with 10 production lines, likely with high technology and capacity)
An example of how it might look in-game
==
I think that it would definitely help better qualify what sort of factory you really have, without throwing massive amounts of numbers at a person who may not be inclined to them. Not to say that the existing numbers interface should go away, but that having some sort of written summary of all of that can make it easier to make sense of the pips and numbers in the game.
Also, while doing up the mock-up I've attached, I thought of also adding an advice layer which analyzes the factory and gives you a suggestion about what it's greatest issue is, as well as (perhaps) how to solve it...if you feel like having that sort of thing also available.
Now - I know, with the way things are, the basic factory DOES have 5 lines on Hard (not sure what the other difficulties are), so obviously these descriptions would probably need to be tweaked somewhat, but the basic idea stays the same.
And I think I'll leave it here, before even more comes up and I suggest something that's more than just an improvement/tweak.