03-09-2014, 03:04 AM
Hey All,
I finally played the game I've been waiting until 1.12 to play. The sports car company! I didn't want to do it during 1.11 because of the painfully slow top speeds in that version.
The game was good fun, though I can't really go into a lot of detail about it because I don't have a save before the last turn and the game wont let you look at anything once the end pop-up appears. (Hey Eric, can you make the game NOT auto save on the last turn in 1.13??).
So anyway, I started off in London making a fairly good quality single cylinder engine, chassis and 2 speed gearbox all with speed and performance focus. From these I made a Coupe, a Roadster and a Sports car, all with high sliders in performance, style and quality areas. I nearly went bankrupt in the early years a few times because that was a pretty expensive start-up strategy and their isn't a huge market for performance vehicles early on.
In 1905 I designed a Super Sport (a Sports car with a bigger engine and slightly higher sliders all round basically) which, to my surprise, was a massive success! Despite being significantly more expensive than any other models I made it almost matched the sales of my sports car.
In 1911 (I usually do the next upgrade in 1910 but I waited a year, I can't remember why now) I upgraded the Roadster, Coupe and Sports cars with the Super Sports engine and introduced a Roadster 2+2 and a Coupe 2+2. I also upgraded the Super Sport with a brand new three cylinder engine and chassis.
Up until this point I had completely dominated every racing category getting first place in every season and almost every victory through the season.
During the war I completely shut down all of my branches and pulled out of all racing to save money (did any racing actually happen during the war? I mean in real life, I know it kept on going during the game)
So, after the war, in 1919 I upgraded all of my cars in the same way I did in 1911, giving all the lower priced cars the previous generation Super Sports components whilst upgrading the Super Sport with a brand new chassis and 5 cylinder engine. At this point sales went berserk! Prior to the war a $1M month was great, now a $5M month was terrible! But my racing was suffering! I wasn't even showing up on the list most years.
So, in 1922 I made a GT for racing, which was just another Sports car with better components. I built a Supercharged 9.2L V6 with a brand sew chassis and gear box all with max sliders all over the place. Surprisingly, despite being twice as powerful as the 1919 Super Sport, the GT was actually slower! It could do 0-100 in just over 5 seconds and stop again in under 60m though so the thing could handle!! Sadly, it did nothing for my racing but I put it on the market, starting at about $10k each and managed to sell over 100 a month for the rest of the game so it was worth it =)
In 1924 I decided to make a Shooting Break for the lulz and figured I'd use the components I'd made for the GT. This was more just for some extra cash and to bump up my Luxury "prestige" as it was the only one that wasn't "Fantastic". It sold pretty steadily about 70 cars a month at the same price as the GT for the rest of the game.
1925 saw the release of the whole new line up of my core cars, once again based off the components of the previous generation of Super Sports but with the gear box from the GT. This time I did the super sports differently though. Rather than designing all new components I upgraded the previous generations chassis (benefiting all the other cars as well) and used the GT's box. I did design a new engine but it was as close to the previous 5.2L I5 as possible with a few tweeks in the sliders to boost performance but also with the addition of a super charger. I managed to get about 25% more power with only a 2kg weight gain!
On the release of this final generation of cars I was suddenly performing much better in racing and easily pulling in over $10M a month for the first few years.
Strangely and very suddenly at some point in 1928 my sales of the Coupe dropped from well over 1000 cars a month to under 200 cars a month and they never recovered. This cut my profits for the remainder of the game down to about $6-8M a month which is still not bad and I ended the game with over $800M in cash on hand.
I'm please to say my Super Sport won the standard Test Series and came fourth in the one off enduro (can't remember its name) in 1928. In 1929 I managed to outright win 3 of the 5 different race series =)
Difficulties:
- Firstly this bug made this game quite difficult until I figured a workaround for it. As I went the whole way through the game with only one factory (that's right, I was selling to all over America and Europe from the one factory in London and pulling in $10M a turn! My cheapest car was selling for over $6k and my most expensive over $14k at the end of the game!!) , when the bug screwed my production I had nothing. In the end I was constantly upgrading the factory every 12-18 months with just one or two more lines. I ended up with nearly twice the production capacity I needed but a lot of that was the massive drop in Coupe demand in 1928.
- This was a very difficult start up, components for sports cars are expensive to research and take a long time. The only easier way to do it that I could think of would be to start with something easier and cheaper, like a basic compact or phaeton, then move onto the fast expensive stuff once you're profitable.
Things I noticed:
- Car stats seem to have a surprisingly small effect on race outcomes. During the early 20's when I wasn't even showing up on the list of entrants I was comparing my car to the cars of the companies that were getting the top spots and the car I was entering was significantly better than theirs in almost every single way (usually worse fuel consumption though). It wasn't until I maxed out my race budget that I started winning again (prior to that I was spending 80-90% of the max).
- The only other company that had a "Fantastic" rating in performance was Dayhotso who's best car had a 16 second 0-100 time! More than triple what a lot of my cars were doing it in. I dare say this had something to do with them pouring a craptonne of spondoolies into racing.
- The speed equations are better than they were in 1.11 but they still have some kinks that need ironing out. There's no way a 220kW, 1200kg car with a better gear box (My GT) would be slower than a 100kW, 850kg car (The SS). I'd post piccies in the bug reports section but I can't get past the "YAY! You've finished" popup to get to the vehicle stats.
What I'd do differently:
If I were to do it all again I'd probably only start with the Coupe and the Sports car and leave the roadster till the 1910 update.
Other than that, not a lot. If I hadn't known the game was going to end in 1930 I probably would have bought out someone with a good luxury rep in the mid 20's (or possibly during the WWI downturn but I doubt I would have had the money at the time) and stated churning out limos and other luxury vehicles under their name to try and boost my profits.
I finally played the game I've been waiting until 1.12 to play. The sports car company! I didn't want to do it during 1.11 because of the painfully slow top speeds in that version.
The game was good fun, though I can't really go into a lot of detail about it because I don't have a save before the last turn and the game wont let you look at anything once the end pop-up appears. (Hey Eric, can you make the game NOT auto save on the last turn in 1.13??).
So anyway, I started off in London making a fairly good quality single cylinder engine, chassis and 2 speed gearbox all with speed and performance focus. From these I made a Coupe, a Roadster and a Sports car, all with high sliders in performance, style and quality areas. I nearly went bankrupt in the early years a few times because that was a pretty expensive start-up strategy and their isn't a huge market for performance vehicles early on.
In 1905 I designed a Super Sport (a Sports car with a bigger engine and slightly higher sliders all round basically) which, to my surprise, was a massive success! Despite being significantly more expensive than any other models I made it almost matched the sales of my sports car.
In 1911 (I usually do the next upgrade in 1910 but I waited a year, I can't remember why now) I upgraded the Roadster, Coupe and Sports cars with the Super Sports engine and introduced a Roadster 2+2 and a Coupe 2+2. I also upgraded the Super Sport with a brand new three cylinder engine and chassis.
Up until this point I had completely dominated every racing category getting first place in every season and almost every victory through the season.
During the war I completely shut down all of my branches and pulled out of all racing to save money (did any racing actually happen during the war? I mean in real life, I know it kept on going during the game)
So, after the war, in 1919 I upgraded all of my cars in the same way I did in 1911, giving all the lower priced cars the previous generation Super Sports components whilst upgrading the Super Sport with a brand new chassis and 5 cylinder engine. At this point sales went berserk! Prior to the war a $1M month was great, now a $5M month was terrible! But my racing was suffering! I wasn't even showing up on the list most years.
So, in 1922 I made a GT for racing, which was just another Sports car with better components. I built a Supercharged 9.2L V6 with a brand sew chassis and gear box all with max sliders all over the place. Surprisingly, despite being twice as powerful as the 1919 Super Sport, the GT was actually slower! It could do 0-100 in just over 5 seconds and stop again in under 60m though so the thing could handle!! Sadly, it did nothing for my racing but I put it on the market, starting at about $10k each and managed to sell over 100 a month for the rest of the game so it was worth it =)
In 1924 I decided to make a Shooting Break for the lulz and figured I'd use the components I'd made for the GT. This was more just for some extra cash and to bump up my Luxury "prestige" as it was the only one that wasn't "Fantastic". It sold pretty steadily about 70 cars a month at the same price as the GT for the rest of the game.
1925 saw the release of the whole new line up of my core cars, once again based off the components of the previous generation of Super Sports but with the gear box from the GT. This time I did the super sports differently though. Rather than designing all new components I upgraded the previous generations chassis (benefiting all the other cars as well) and used the GT's box. I did design a new engine but it was as close to the previous 5.2L I5 as possible with a few tweeks in the sliders to boost performance but also with the addition of a super charger. I managed to get about 25% more power with only a 2kg weight gain!
On the release of this final generation of cars I was suddenly performing much better in racing and easily pulling in over $10M a month for the first few years.
Strangely and very suddenly at some point in 1928 my sales of the Coupe dropped from well over 1000 cars a month to under 200 cars a month and they never recovered. This cut my profits for the remainder of the game down to about $6-8M a month which is still not bad and I ended the game with over $800M in cash on hand.
I'm please to say my Super Sport won the standard Test Series and came fourth in the one off enduro (can't remember its name) in 1928. In 1929 I managed to outright win 3 of the 5 different race series =)
Difficulties:
- Firstly this bug made this game quite difficult until I figured a workaround for it. As I went the whole way through the game with only one factory (that's right, I was selling to all over America and Europe from the one factory in London and pulling in $10M a turn! My cheapest car was selling for over $6k and my most expensive over $14k at the end of the game!!) , when the bug screwed my production I had nothing. In the end I was constantly upgrading the factory every 12-18 months with just one or two more lines. I ended up with nearly twice the production capacity I needed but a lot of that was the massive drop in Coupe demand in 1928.
- This was a very difficult start up, components for sports cars are expensive to research and take a long time. The only easier way to do it that I could think of would be to start with something easier and cheaper, like a basic compact or phaeton, then move onto the fast expensive stuff once you're profitable.
Things I noticed:
- Car stats seem to have a surprisingly small effect on race outcomes. During the early 20's when I wasn't even showing up on the list of entrants I was comparing my car to the cars of the companies that were getting the top spots and the car I was entering was significantly better than theirs in almost every single way (usually worse fuel consumption though). It wasn't until I maxed out my race budget that I started winning again (prior to that I was spending 80-90% of the max).
- The only other company that had a "Fantastic" rating in performance was Dayhotso who's best car had a 16 second 0-100 time! More than triple what a lot of my cars were doing it in. I dare say this had something to do with them pouring a craptonne of spondoolies into racing.
- The speed equations are better than they were in 1.11 but they still have some kinks that need ironing out. There's no way a 220kW, 1200kg car with a better gear box (My GT) would be slower than a 100kW, 850kg car (The SS). I'd post piccies in the bug reports section but I can't get past the "YAY! You've finished" popup to get to the vehicle stats.
What I'd do differently:
If I were to do it all again I'd probably only start with the Coupe and the Sports car and leave the roadster till the 1910 update.
Other than that, not a lot. If I hadn't known the game was going to end in 1930 I probably would have bought out someone with a good luxury rep in the mid 20's (or possibly during the WWI downturn but I doubt I would have had the money at the time) and stated churning out limos and other luxury vehicles under their name to try and boost my profits.