GearCity 1.17 Progress

[Eric.B]

I'm assuming there'll only be vehicle contracting (for now?) and not component (engine) contracting?

Great progress anyway!

Nope, there is both vehicles (Defined by flags in components.xml) and engines.

Right now I'm supporting aero engines, tanks engines, and naval engines. All of which have different design characteristics. Airplane engines for example tend to be very large, but also very light for their size. This reduces HP output as well...

Yeah, I believe Eric mentioned that at some point. Just curious if it would be implemented now or maybe come in at a later time. I'm not sure how that would work with the way production is currently handled as there is no way to produce engines by themselves (only developing them and "selecting" them like with certain racing series would be a bit boring IMO and not represent wartime production conditions properly). There would have to be a new mechanic for that. Not sure if that's on Eric's agenda.

You won't actually be producing the engines, so nothing changes in that respect. It's mainly focused on developing for the contract then submitting a bid. Hopefully I can generate enough requests to keep the user engaged.

If I were to add engine production to the game, I would have to add it to all the game. As well as chassis and gearboxes. In the early days (around 0.33) I experimented with this, and found it very cumbersome with our limited GUI lib. Maybe with the expansion (or very very much later) I can add it in as a advance toggle. Although I can see it being a pain in the ass to design and manage.

That being said, when I implement the action memos, if you do not have a vehicle contract, you will probably be given a design to produce. Much like Willys and Ford producing the Willys MB. And REO, Kaiser, AM General, Kia, and Bombardier building M35's...

Since we can now exclusively add military equipment in the components file, I think we can open the door to even complete single engine airplanes (Although airplanes will never be "official" because GUI would have to be redone), tank destroyers, tanks, deuce and a half, apcs, rocket trucks, etc! (Although things like armament would be disregarded.) Of course this is something we're not planning on doing unless we make an expansion. But the format is open for the modding community. Hopefully it'll be done before I get to it when I make the easy modding tools, mod loading, and mod sharing stuff!

This sounds bloody cool

Hopefully the end results meet that standard!