02-18-2015, 04:16 PM
Yesterday and this morning was spent mostly working on Consumer AI tweaks and improvements.
Vehicle Image rating was moved from a real time generated value to a saved value in the DB. This will make it easier for me to improve the trim/year code. I've also boosted vehicle's image in the consumer AI. Vehicle image slowly grows until it hits a pivot point (depending on how old, poorly made, and poorly designed it is) at which time it will decrease. Improving your over all image and winning awards will increase the rate at which you gain vehicle image. Recalls damage vehicle image greatly. When I redesign the trim/model year code, you'll be able to inherit this image rating better than how it is now. There is currently no way to view this rating in game.
Markup and Age penalties have been reduced.
Improvements to the Factory Quality/Quantity code were made. Vehicle's Quality ratings now only increase or decrease based on the manufacturing quality/quantity slider. Quality rating has been given a large boost in the consumer AI code.
Dealership boost on population numbers have been increased. I may experiment with this feature in the future, instead of giving you access to the city population + dealership population, I may give players only access to X number of the city population based on how many dealerships they have. However this will be pooled with the competition's dealerships meaning less direct competition, increased lower sales numbers, decreased higher sales numbers. We'll see.
Hypercars (anything over 5 time per capita) have received a bunch of changes. Vehicle types of wealth index 6 and higher now receive a boost in sales in this range. Luxury and Performance ratings now play a more important role for vehicles over 5x per capita, these values are multiplied by the wealth index and car type rating. (So Super cars benefit more from performance than luxury, Limos benefit more from luxury than Luxury cars.)
With these changes, I was able to run a profitable Supercar company selling 20 vehicles a turn at $250,000 in 6 locations. Some more tweaks to this system will come later on.
AI sales has been nerfed slightly due to fixing some branch slider code that was different from player code.
Buyer Rating formula (what the consumer AI uses to compare vehicles) has been reformatted and rewritten slightly. Vehicle Ratings are now a bit more important. This should improve the "Car Type Rating" sales results, although remember, there is a lot more that plays into sales than vehicle ratings and price. A few other things were removed and some things were reorganized. I plan on improving more of this code at a later date in 1.18.
Anyhoo, I just started working on the new GUI for the advanced component selection stuff. I'll try to make it as cellphone-generation trendy as I can without stupefying the game play.
(Also started working on the Mac port as well.)
-Vehicle Image rewrite
-Markup and Age penalties reduced
-Factory Quality/Quantity slider improves or reduces Vehicle Quality Rating.
-Remove Vehicle Quality ratings from ratings degrader.
-Increased Dealerships effects on buyer populations.
-Improved hyper-expensive vehicle sales code
-Increased luxury and performance effect on sales of hyper-expensive vehicles
-Fixed Branch effect on AI sales numbers
-Increased Ratings effect on Consumer Buyer Rating
-Increased Quality Rating's effect on Consumer Buyer Rating
Vehicle Image rating was moved from a real time generated value to a saved value in the DB. This will make it easier for me to improve the trim/year code. I've also boosted vehicle's image in the consumer AI. Vehicle image slowly grows until it hits a pivot point (depending on how old, poorly made, and poorly designed it is) at which time it will decrease. Improving your over all image and winning awards will increase the rate at which you gain vehicle image. Recalls damage vehicle image greatly. When I redesign the trim/model year code, you'll be able to inherit this image rating better than how it is now. There is currently no way to view this rating in game.
Markup and Age penalties have been reduced.
Improvements to the Factory Quality/Quantity code were made. Vehicle's Quality ratings now only increase or decrease based on the manufacturing quality/quantity slider. Quality rating has been given a large boost in the consumer AI code.
Dealership boost on population numbers have been increased. I may experiment with this feature in the future, instead of giving you access to the city population + dealership population, I may give players only access to X number of the city population based on how many dealerships they have. However this will be pooled with the competition's dealerships meaning less direct competition, increased lower sales numbers, decreased higher sales numbers. We'll see.
Hypercars (anything over 5 time per capita) have received a bunch of changes. Vehicle types of wealth index 6 and higher now receive a boost in sales in this range. Luxury and Performance ratings now play a more important role for vehicles over 5x per capita, these values are multiplied by the wealth index and car type rating. (So Super cars benefit more from performance than luxury, Limos benefit more from luxury than Luxury cars.)
With these changes, I was able to run a profitable Supercar company selling 20 vehicles a turn at $250,000 in 6 locations. Some more tweaks to this system will come later on.
AI sales has been nerfed slightly due to fixing some branch slider code that was different from player code.
Buyer Rating formula (what the consumer AI uses to compare vehicles) has been reformatted and rewritten slightly. Vehicle Ratings are now a bit more important. This should improve the "Car Type Rating" sales results, although remember, there is a lot more that plays into sales than vehicle ratings and price. A few other things were removed and some things were reorganized. I plan on improving more of this code at a later date in 1.18.
Anyhoo, I just started working on the new GUI for the advanced component selection stuff. I'll try to make it as cellphone-generation trendy as I can without stupefying the game play.
(Also started working on the Mac port as well.)
-Vehicle Image rewrite
-Markup and Age penalties reduced
-Factory Quality/Quantity slider improves or reduces Vehicle Quality Rating.
-Remove Vehicle Quality ratings from ratings degrader.
-Increased Dealerships effects on buyer populations.
-Improved hyper-expensive vehicle sales code
-Increased luxury and performance effect on sales of hyper-expensive vehicles
-Fixed Branch effect on AI sales numbers
-Increased Ratings effect on Consumer Buyer Rating
-Increased Quality Rating's effect on Consumer Buyer Rating
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski