Increasing Difficulty

[freeman2344]

Hi,

as Eric has correctly stated in the "Pensions" thread, the game's difficulty is something that needs adjustment, I guess we can all agree on that.

A simple - and in my opinion very necessary - change would be to more signfiicantly increase design and manufacturing costs depending on how far the slider is moved...an extreme slider movement to the right, which yields the best vehicle ratings, is far too cheap right now. Moving all the way to the right should be prohibitively expensive. For some settings, such as testing and focus, this is almost always a no-brainer for me, as these increase design costs, but not production costs...design costs still remain very low, however, in comparison to the expected income, even though these measures increase the development time (which IMO is not prohibitive at all).

The same obviously applies to engine volumes.

[Arakash]

I think i may have been brainstorming a similar idea in another thread. Edit : i just found the thread here is a link
In that case, i wanted to make putting the sliders to the maximum have an exponential cost very close to the end so you wouldn't always put them to max or min.
Just thought i might share that as i thought it was relevant. Keep in mind im not saying its a better or worse idea than yours, just something i remember discussing.

Putting that aside for a moment...

, the game's difficulty is something that needs adjustment, I guess we can all agree on that.

A large part of the reason i haven't got into a lot of depth of discussions about difficulty myself is that the game is missing some of the largest and most challenging companies. Like Ford for instance.
Edit: Taxes are also disabled in the current version, which has a big impact on difficulty
In the earlier versions i played which had fewer and less aggressive AI, i found the game much much easier than i do now. (as you can see from my AAR)

So i would be at least cautious about trying to finely balance the game without these AI present. It doesn't mean you shouldn't or cant do balancing now, but it will be difficult to judge the results of it until that AI is in. (or how much/if its necessary)

[freeman2344]

In that case, i wanted to make putting the sliders to the maximum have an exponential cost very close to the end so you wouldn't always put them to max or min.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

[Arakash]

Just floating another idea, imo one of the most direct and simple ways to reduce player profit (assuming you need to as i said earlier its difficult to say) is to increase taxes.

Currently they arent active, but when they are (next version i think) they could always be increased to be more of a burden on the player.
At the moment i think they vary from about 15-35%.

Another simple idea would be to increase the amount of money it takes to upkeep factories. (Branches are already fairly expensive, you cant make large ones unless you sell well into the thousands) This would directly impact on profitability of your cars per unit.

Edit: I found the thread where i was talking about design costs and exponential increases in cost here.

[Eric.B]

I've added in exponential costs to RnD sliders. I've also added an hypertax to the sliders of x^4 values as well..