Military and Civilian Contracting suggestions!

[Eric.B]

Tell me what you think about it, and what I should do to improve it here!

Thanks!

[freeman2344]

Without having done much testing yet:

1. Add some way to limit the sillyness (as mentioned on the Steam forums)
This also goes for contract types, not just the issuer. For example, no contracts for tank engines should be issued in the very early years (up to 1914) as the MBT had not been invented yet.

2. Preferably export the individual contract types that are not tied to player-built vehicles (like Main Battle Tanks) to the components.xml for tinkering purposes. That would make it easy to add other stuff, like small engines for halftrack vehicles or whatever (I was a bit disappointed that this was not the case, I had collected so many ideas already )
Even better: make it possible to change overall contracting parameters (like what engines types should be associated with which type of project, if not all).

3. Add a mechanic for "repeat customers". Happens all the time with real-world contracting (Ford and US police forces for example).

4. Many early game contracts for engine design are quite impossible. For example, in my first game the RAF just fancied a 400HP Single-Cylinder engine in 1901 (again, pay special attention to the date here )

5. Add a way to see if an AI company was granted a contract for flavor reasons (maybe a report?).

I'm sure I'll find more tomorrow. Cool addition though, in any case.

[Eric.B]

Without having done much testing yet:

1. Add some way to limit the sillyness (as mentioned on the Steam forums)
This also goes for contract types, not just the issuer. For example, no contracts for tank engines should be issued in the very early years (up to 1914) as the MBT had not been invented yet.

2. Preferably export the individual contract types that are not tied to player-built vehicles (like Main Battle Tanks) to the components.xml for tinkering purposes. That would make it easy to add other stuff, like small engines for halftrack vehicles or whatever (I was a bit disappointed that this was not the case, I had collected so many ideas already )
Even better: make it possible to change overall contracting parameters (like what engines types should be associated with which type of project, if not all).


I'm sure I'll find more tomorrow. Cool addition though, in any case.

1) Yea I was thinking this when I made it, forgot to put a year limit on it.

2) I'm hoping these things become player-built vehicles. That's the point of the mil flags in the components.xml files now

[Frankschtaldt]

The wording of the contracts is a little unclear.
In that they state that someone is looking for 120 new vans and that the contracts runs for 24 months but it's not clear if they want 120 vans per month or is they want 120 vans over 24 months.
I would suggest that it should tell the play the number of vehicles per month if it isn't already but it should also be clear that it is asking for a monthly value.

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Is it possible to add an option to have the contract window automatically pop up with two options:
1) Whenever any new contract becomes available
2) Only when a contract becomes available that the player already has a vehicle/component that is suitable.

[shadow]

Just a quick one.
contractor asked for truck with 625 cargo.
impossible in 1904 , believe me I've tried! Lol

[Tridon]

Just a quick one.
contractor asked for truck with 625 cargo.
impossible in 1904 , believe me I've tried! Lol

Did you remember to enlarge the trunk during the graphical design part of the vehicle? I might remember completely bollocks here, but I think I've made batter cargo capacity than that already in 1900. Or is it locked to a very specific body?

[Eric.B]

The comparison should be in liters. 1900 truck at default should be like 7200 liters. So it's do able, check the other stats to see if anything else could be wrong, or upload the save game on here and i'll take a look for you.

[shadow]

Wasn't looking at litres , lol lol.
also is the length And width in feet or metres. ?

[Eric.B]

Wasn't looking at litres , lol lol.
also is the length And width in feet or metres. ?

For engines? Should be inches.

Doing the whole Metric(SAE) will be done in 1.16.4, I should of done it for 1.16.2 but time was running tight.

[shadow]

I do everything in feet and inches.
just these days everything seems to be in metric.
thanks for clearing it up.
Just to mention that the game is getting better and more in depth with every release.
Thank you !

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I know we get to build engines for military vehicles , but wouldn't it be great to be able to build them from scratch? Like vauxhall and leyland used too in the uk?
just a thought , wondering what everyone else thinks ?

[Frankschtaldt]

just these days everything seems to be in metric.

That's because, out of the 196 recognized countries in the world today. 193 of them use the metric system and the three that don't all use their own.
The US is such a huge market that is has to be catered for if possible but the 193 metric countries are even bigger so I makes sense if you can only do one, you do metric.

[shadow]

I agree with that. And here in uk we use both systems now!
I was taught imperial measures in school and since leaving I've learnt metric.
would be good in game option if you could choose which system you wanted ?

[Frankschtaldt]

Totally, however, in most other parts of the game both units are shown side by side. For consistency sake and to save Eric having to add menu options it's probably best to keep doing that.

[shadow]

Fair point.
what do you think about being able to build your own tanks , not just engines for them ?

[Eric.B]

I do everything in feet and inches.
just these days everything seems to be in metric.
thanks for clearing it up.
Just to mention that the game is getting better and more in depth with every release.
Thank you !

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I've met a lot of people who don't even know what metric system is. Let alone how to use it.

I know we get to build engines for military vehicles , but wouldn't it be great to be able to build them from scratch? Like vauxhall and leyland used too in the uk?
just a thought , wondering what everyone else thinks ?

That is the plan, the system is there, however VENT won't be doing it officially unless there is a multiplayer expansion. But everything is there for the modding community to do it. And after I do the entire modding system/tools around 1.22, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these mods pop up.

just these days everything seems to be in metric.

That's because, out of the 196 recognized countries in the world today. 193 of them use the metric system and the three that don't all use their own.
The US is such a huge market that is has to be catered for if possible but the 193 metric countries are even bigger so I makes sense if you can only do one, you do metric.

I only have demographics up until the end of June, but US were about 50% of our sales. While the other 193 nations are bigger population wise and GDP wise in total, you have to take into account the gaming populations.

Outside of the EU (which is about 1:1 GDP wise with the US) what other nations make up the bulk of PC game purchases? Africa? I think we sold a couple dozen in South Africa, 1 in Nigera... Asia? China, Korea, and Japan are big markets, but until we do localization they don't exist. South America? We actually get quite a few sales there, however the per capita is still so widely displaced that we're a big ticket item. Thus not really tapping into the general population.

Of the 193, 45 can easily be written off as unable to buy the game. I come to that conclusion by looking at lowest percapita of nations with PC ownership rates of less than 8% of the population. Strip out the EU member nations, and you're left with 120 nations with 50% of the worlds wealth, but 80% of the population... If we were to strip out japan, korea, china, aussie, new zealand, and a few oil states the per capita plummets, but as a collective they're still a powerful buying force (2/7th's of the world GDP).

So it makes sense to target the non-western world. The other 100 nations or so left on my list. But there are a few problems. 1) Low PC ownership (specially ones that can run the game) 2) Limited purchasing power (thus increase piracy rates) 3) The need for localization.

2 on my list is not really a problem. I find that people will support a game if given the opportunity. And if not, it's not a lost sale.

1 Would be over come with time. But it still limits the buying pool.

3 is the major issue. There are so many languages in the world and most people still don't speak English. Which means the game has to be translated and that is pretty costly as I've found out recently... 100 units per language would have to sell just to break even on translating the game, and that's not including any third parties taking out some of the revenues.

This post has gotten longer than I want! IN summation. From a software business perspective you should only focus on US, EU, and North Asia. If the pie were sliced each would be 33% of GDP. North Asia requires translations (which will come after full release) which means the pie is 50/50 for the time being. Thus metric and SAE have equal importance.

The other nations of the world are a post secondary thought. This does not mean we won't cater to them. In fact I'm always amazed and humbled to see people all over the world play the game. But economically their priorities only grow ~after~ the product has matured and is looking for new markets.

Hopefully that gives you some insight in the thought process of most video games and localizations/units. And sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes.

I agree with that. And here in uk we use both systems now!
I was taught imperial measures in school and since leaving I've learnt metric.
would be good in game option if you could choose which system you wanted ?

It's even worse here in the US, as the general population is barely taught and never use metric system. However the STEM population only uses metric. As such we're stuck with one of the issues in the game. Half the stuff is in metric, half is in SAE, because I have a hard time thinking in just one or the other. :\

Totally, however, in most other parts of the game both units are shown side by side. For consistency sake and to save Eric having to add menu options it's probably best to keep doing that.

We will keep it metric(SAE) up until I get to the point where I'm working on pointless and trivial things. At that point i'll consider making a menu toggle option for units. As it is now, so much of the core needs to be worked on or fixed.