String of suggestions.

[Eric.B]

1: I don't like the "prediction" tab when predicting how well you car will do. I get that there's a point when it becomes generic, and stuff like final weight and mpgs etc may be skewed or slightly wrong the designing the actual parts. Specially when you are accounting for missing parts you didn't design.

This is because the game can not predict what or how you're going to adjust sliders in the future. Also because the body's aerodynamic drag and surface area are guesstimates for the time period. When we get predesigned vehicles, we'll probably use the drag calculations for them.

That being said the prototyping code uses the same code as the assisted designer to fill in the blanks. So say you're designing an Engine, but don't set anything else, if you were to use the assisted designer to create the chassis, gearbox, and vehicle, your results will be much closer (minus the aerodynamic drag and surface area influences) to what's in prototyping.

Despite it showing that one had speed in the 30s another in th low 40s, 6 mpgs vs 8 mpgs in the prediction tab. When I actually designed the car the differences in the three gearboxes were non existant. As they all had very similar top speed @ 35 or so... and all had 6 mpgs vs. the 8 mpgs that was promised by the ultra eco.

Most likely because you were hitting terminal velocity with your body design. Because your vehicle body had such high drag and surface area it can not reach much higher than 35 with your different gearing. Likewise, you might be pushing the engines to their max due to terminal velocity, such that you get the minimum amount of fuel mileage (which is a percentage of your brake specific engine fuel consumption.)

2: Sometimes what it shows "star rating wise" in the design panel doesn't reflect in the finished design. For example, a 2 1/2 star strength chassis will turn out to be a 2 star chassis.

This is working as designed. The stars in the design panels are "Estimates"
The lower your design skills are, the greater these estimates will be from the truth. Likewise the higher your design skills are the closer to accurate (and higher) the ratings will be.

Which if you think about it is fairly true in real life. If everyone knew exactly how good something is before they started doing it, there wouldn't be a need for engineering analyst in the world.

3: A way to delete superfluous designs that just clutter up my "view" panel when I shot through old designs that I "end". While there are some I may want to keep, I may not want to keep EVERYONE. Particularly when all I changed was the design pace.

End Production of these designs (RnD->Modify->Component->End Production.

Then when in the "view" windows, check the Active box to remove old designs.

4: A way to change the design pace without having to "redesign" something.

Sadly due to how the development is designed this probably won't happen. As we'd have to rewrite quite a bit of code to make it work.

That's all I have for now. Thanks for reading.

Quite welcome! Thanks for the feedback!