GearCity Executive Secretary - A Report Utility for GearCity

[JC_Denton]

Forking third party code is definitely best avoided! We have a 20-year-old forked version of a database library at work, which is now thoroughly ingrained in some of our most important systems and will be exceedingly difficult to upgrade. I'm sure someone thought it made sense at the time, and maybe it did in the short term...

Version 2026-04 has been re-released, with a fix to the prevents-saves in 2.6.x issue

It survived a 59-year test while I was out in the Valley this afternoon, and would have gone longer had I not received a notice of upcoming emissions standards (I seem to have forgotten where to configure the game to ignore all messages, even red-important ones).

It may still be beneficial to restart the Secretary every decade or so, as it was trying to reload data when I switched reports an excessive number of times after 59 years. But there is no longer a critical issue.

Along the way, I also added another fix to prevent extremely unreliable cars - with dependability ratings in the single digits - from causing an underflow error and throwing off the World Fleet report, because more than 100% of them were failing to survive a year and the formula couldn't cope with that. Hopefully that is the last similar issue.

Note to users: Never buy the first year of a brand new model. Especially if it's a Stellantis product.

[JC_Denton]

6-7 Update

Another update to Gear City Executive Secretary has arrived!  In keeping with the times, this update arrives on 6-7 and also fixes a 6-7 issue.

Download the 6-7 Update here.

Changes:

Feature: You can now Shift+Click legend entries on graphs to have only that one specific series plotted; for example, on the Sales by Type report, Shift+Click on Sedan to see just Sedan sales by time.  This makes it much less tedious to view the trend of one specific series.
Feature: You can now double-click on rows in the Defunct Companies report to view the company-specific report for a defunct company, just like you can on the Company Profitability report for non-defunct companies.  Middle click any legend entry to reset the chart to its default legend selection, or Shift+Click one row and then single-click a different row to view just two, for example.
Optimization: Remove duplicate event listeners causing the reports to reload once per autosave since the Secretary started.  Especially on long-running sessions, this can result in much better responsiveness.
Fix: Fixed the Cylinder Market Trends report legend having a cylinder order of 6-8-7.  The legend sort order is now properly 6-7 rather than 6-8.

Leave a comment if you find the new features helpful - I'm still playing my current playthrough, so there is a chance that there may be another update this summer.

[JC_Denton]

Preview of a very early build of the R&D screen:



Here we see the (very consolidated) industry titans sorted by skill in designing gasoline engines.  All pretty close together except Diamond T, but there's a bit more variation for diesels.

This still needs a lot of work to fill out, but the basic proof of concept is there.  I see it as potentially helping the player understand why they are or are not competitive, too.

I have found the effect of component specialization fascinating.  It does a fairly good job of locking you in to what you're good at.  I know I should introduce some unibody models, but my company just isn't any darn good at making them!

[JC_Denton]

2026-07 Update

Version 2026-07 is now available!  It can be downloaded here.

It includes two brand-new reports, two new Market Trends reports, and a few smaller updates.

Emissions Compliance Report

The Emissions Compliance report enables you to input a model year of sales, an emissions target, classes of vehicles, and whether you wish to view only vehicles exceeding that target.  Then it shows you your list of vehicles (with their engines), the emissions rating, and their sales, as well as a summary of how many exceed the emissions target - enabling you to quickly identify which ones exceed the target, and to prioritize updating the highest-sales of those models.



In this report, we can see that rather a lot of my company's sales are in excess of the upcoming emissions target, including that microcar with the cool radial engine.

The report does not currently auto-detect emissions limits from the TurnEvents.xml file; they must be entered directly.  But you'll soon have the upcoming numbers memorized - I'm not quite dreaming of the number 26,511, but I know it is the one that will arrive on New Year's Day, 1970.

Engine Research Report

The Engine Research report is the first report focusing on comparing research levels with the new 2nd Gear research-by-component-type system.  It's best illustrated with a screenshot:



Here, I've selected several components to view, and have it sorted by 4-cylinder skill; I am not in nor near the lead of that category.  But we can see that I am the best at 5-cylinder designs, am competitive in diesel and petrol engines, am in the middle of the pack for inline engines, and am by far the leader in superchargers, as well as a leader in the nascent autogas market.

There is potential for this to be expanded to chassis and gearbox components in the future.

Gearbox Features Report

A new Market Trends report had been added in two variants.  These are the Gearbox Features Report, and the Gearbox Features (Combined) Report.



Here, we see that while Overdrive remains the most popular feature, Limited Slip has rapidly gained popularity.

Note that the base Gearbox Features report does not yet function entirely correctly in percentage mode, in that the total of its percents equals 100, while it should exceed 100 (because it's possible that 70% of gearboxes have Overdrive, and 55% have Limited Slip, for example).

The Gearbox Combined Features Report shows the number of gearboxes sold with each combination of features.

Hybrid Type Report

Market Trends also now has a Hybrid Type report, which shows the growth in sales of the various types of hybrids over time.

So far fewer than 1900 hybrids have been sold in my game, so a screenshot is pending.

Other Updates

The following additional updates have been made:

 - More distinctive colors for cylinder/gear counts, as well as chassis types, on those Market Trend reports