Vehicle cost per unit

[Giacomo]

OK,

I've been reading some threads in this forum about vehicle costs and rising and falling inflation.

I'm playing a game now and I'm currently in the year 1912 or so. I have a car that's been in production for some time. I developed a new more powerful engine. My original car had a straight 4, this new engine is a V4. The engine cost per unit is cheaper than my older straight 4! Taking this further, I then modified my car design and replaced the straight 4 with the V4 with no other changes. The car now costs cheaper than its older inferior version. OK. So maybe this is deflation. Prices of materials may have dropped, tech has improved and made newer components cheaper to make than the older ones were. If this is the case, why hasn't the cost per unit of my older components dropped also?

Finally, bringing this example to it's extreme conclusion. I take my original car design and I "modify" it, but with my modification I make absolutely no changes. I keep the same old straight 4 engine. I put this into production and despite absolutely no difference between this car and it's older sibling, the cost per unit has dropped.

hmmmm.... am I missing something?

[Eric.B]

The vehicles do decrease in cost, however, it is a static amount. So yes, what you're seeing is a mistake. I need to take in consideration the new cost of the engines/chassis/gearboxes when decreasing the vehicle cost.

I don't take into account of the year in cost decreasing due to the fact that the design remains the same. So modifying your vehicle makes it a new design, thus when they're building the vehicle they take into account new tools/methods. Vehicles also decrease in cost based on how many you have built. I don't remember the exact amount it decreases but it's something like 1000 cars * 1.02^(year-1899)... it's half a percent per turn if you build this many in a turn....