So, this discussion have given me an idea for another way to handle vehicle aging a depreciation of ratings.
In the current system a vehicle ages at a set rate each year and once it's past 5 years old it suffers a penalty to it's sales (no idea exactly how this penalty is applied, I just heard Eric say it a few times).
My idea would be to significantly accelerate this rate of depreciation, so your vehicles would have the same stats after 2 years as they currently have after 5. But then give people the option to spend extra R&D funds on a model to extend this out up to probably 8ish years with enough money spent.
This represents a marque making the choice between spending money on an ongoing basis to keep a model up to date and modern or just releasing it and letting it die out quickly, releasing a new year model before sales hurt too badly.
I would think costs would need to be balanced so that doubling the vehicles lifespan would cost a little more than just designing a new year model. Otherwise there'd be no reward for going the quick model turnaround option where as spending funds to extend a vehicles life has the obvious advantage of reducing new model roll outs and updates to sale/marketing set ups.
In the current system a vehicle ages at a set rate each year and once it's past 5 years old it suffers a penalty to it's sales (no idea exactly how this penalty is applied, I just heard Eric say it a few times).
My idea would be to significantly accelerate this rate of depreciation, so your vehicles would have the same stats after 2 years as they currently have after 5. But then give people the option to spend extra R&D funds on a model to extend this out up to probably 8ish years with enough money spent.
This represents a marque making the choice between spending money on an ongoing basis to keep a model up to date and modern or just releasing it and letting it die out quickly, releasing a new year model before sales hurt too badly.
I would think costs would need to be balanced so that doubling the vehicles lifespan would cost a little more than just designing a new year model. Otherwise there'd be no reward for going the quick model turnaround option where as spending funds to extend a vehicles life has the obvious advantage of reducing new model roll outs and updates to sale/marketing set ups.