Factory manager

[Frankschtaldt]

Nicely said.

Thanks

I can say that personally, i would really love to see Factory managers, as at the moment, i spend perhaps 30-50% of my time adjusting factory production numbers. (mostly from adjusting the production of several models over several factories every turn)
I wouldn't mind if i was taking important decisions every turn, such as attempting to stockpile cars for future production or something like that. Unfortunately, most of the time there is just a mild or extreme shift in sales numbers, which i am forced to manually compensate for or either lose out on sales or go bankrupt by producing too many.

As i did in that other thread, i should declare my bias towards these kinds of systems straight away The idea of giving the AI control of things is rarely popular, but i love two games that really do it and do it well, which are Distant Worlds(a space 4x game) and the Command ops(a heavy duty detailed wargame) series. Both of these games are highly detailed, but give you the option to automate large parts of the game and let you focus on the most important decisions.

If the automated system is implemented well there's no reason for people to have a problem with it. If it's implemented in such a way that makes it something you have to use to be competitive then it's a real problem.
Thinking about this more today I was thinking I wouldn't mind seeing a couple more automated systems for optional use. For example, a marketing manager that you give some guidelines too (such as amount to spend per vehicle sold and some guidelines for what marketing styles to focus on) and let them adjust all your marketing spendings for you on the fly. That might be wanting a bit much though
However, the important thing for any automation like this to make it less efficient in some way than the player so using them remains totally optional. That's the main reason the system needs to make its decision based off the results of the previous turn because the player can't do any better!
Also, it needs to be possible to override the system (at least for a turn) without turning it off to let the players that use it still feel like they have an element of control of what's going on. This is why I suggested my example system adjust production levels as the last action for the turn rather than the first action.
There's obvious exceptions to these statements, such as the current system for hiring and setting wages which is just fine the way it is.

Of the ideas you proposed, i especially like the mechanic that would dynamically adjust the number of vehicles produced across a small/medium sized area (Europe) based on where the vehicles are actually being sold.
I would still be happy with something less complex, that takes into account your average monthly sales numbers and tries to produce to keep a 1 month extra stockpile of vehicles (one month sales average over a year. Youve gone into some quality detail on this in this post as well as the other post in the other thread.
One thought i had was that we may not need to propose any new mechanics or type of mechanics at all, if the production AI from the AI companies can be brought into this.

I think a tickbox on each factory like you said sounds fine.
Clicking the tickbox would add that factory to the Factory Manager system, which would take decisions based on local and regional sales.
Of course you can always override it, if you dont agree with the way the AI has set it.

I dont think you necessarily have to punish the player for using it, as i think having a production manager fits well within the idea of Roleplaying a CEO and its also not going to be a huge ingame balance advantage.(The player is always going to be better than the ai at managing it anyway)

That version is my favorite as well. It feels more accurate and realistic. My experience with factories is they tend to make their decisions in a bubble unless someone very high up (the player) steps in and tells them to do something different.
Just making whatever system the npcs use available to the players is an option but I fear it'll fall into the trap of becoming something the players have to use (or feel like they have too) in order to remain effective.
As for paying a factory manager. It's less about punishing the player for using it and more about keeping the system optional. The thing about the system I suggested is that it could potentially save the player a shed load of money but focusing production in the factories closest to where the sales are. There needs to be a cost to offset some of that to keep the system optional.