Contracts (BRAINSTORM SESSION)

[WizzyThaMan]

*** Let me clearly state that this is just a sort of Brainstorm to think about how this could be implemented in the game in such a way that it suits the game and doesnt leave open gaps ***

So, I have been catching up on some news of the Dutch police ordering 13.000 new Volkswagen policecars from VAG. This got me thinking. Something along the lines of this will be implemented in the game, where you get to make taxi cars, police cars or some other contracts that might get offered to your company.

We should look at a couple of questions to get to a decent answer atleast. Right now, I think these questions should be asked:

-When (will the contract be offered?)
-What (does the contract require you to do?)
-How (does the game allow for your input?)

When?
I was thinking that you company would need an average or above rating on things like Comfort and Sportiness. In case you make shitty, small cars with only 900cc engines and no luxury at all for example, you should not be offered a contract. But what if you have just made that 'one-hit-wonder', and seems to be a real good car for its time; Will you be offered a contract after several years when the car proves to be an excellent car? That brings us down to another aspect: Checking for averageness.

The game should calculate what above-average cars have been produced, to make a selection of what companies and what cars make a chance to be in the contract. The computer should check for things like costs, as you dont want fivethousand 1.2 million super (exotic) cars to be driving around in your police squad. So these cars should be outruled right from the start, just like cheap cars (but these simply outrule themselves already, as 99% of the cheap cars don't meet the average standards). On the other hand, those 1.2 million cars don't sell as good as your average 24.000 dollar sedan, so you could also check if the car is sold over a certain amount of times.

Basically, it comes down to these things that need to be considered before the game offers you a contract;
- Check for the average of all cars sold in a country
- Make a selection along the costrange of the cars
- Check if the car has proven to be a good car and met a certain number of sales (more than 500K in the 90s?)


What?
Ok, so now you get offered this contract, what's next? Most important thing you see with policecars, is that they should be more comfortable and maybe even more important, be sportier, quicker, more horsepower. They need to be able to keep up with the average car easily and keep up with cars that are a bit above average, too. So this would require you to upgrade your current design, both car and engine probably. Looking at the car, it should always be a 4-door car. Pretty obvious, but this also narrows down the cars that can be selected from the previous step even more (which is a good thing).

To get your the car to perform better than the one you are currently selling, you could be looking at things like; an increase of 10% Reliability, 25% extra power and a fuel economy increase of 5%.
Of course these should be put down to solid numbers, like if your car makes 100hp, an 25% increase of power means that the contract wants the car to be 125hp. This should all be depending on the year you are building the car and of course should be reasonable, as the game needs to stay playable for everyone, even without knowledge of building efficient and proper engines. (I think the tutorial videos and the community will help out those kind of people a very decent way anyway)

Then there is also the needs per country or region. A country opr region with a lot of off-roads, might require you to build a car that performs well off-road. A country like Japan which is crowded and urbanized, requires you to build a car to keep up with the cars of that 90s era (Skyline, Supra, NSX etc.) so a decent on-road car with power is required here.

So, looking at what needs to be build, narrows things down a bit more and should now show you what the speciifications are that the car should meet;
- 4 door+ car
- Different eras and countries come with different averages and different needs
- According to the averages and needs, the car needs to perform better, thus a certain number of stats should be increased compared to the current car you are selling


How?
Ok, so now the limits of the contract are known. But how does the game calculate in your input? A possibility is to let the player see a calculation of the expected costs and thus their profit. According to a slider you can choose to make more profit or to give a certain amount of discount. When you keep your customer happy, there is an increased chance they will come back to you with more contracts of course. Imagine in several years, a new contract will be out, but your cars haven't really been as good as the past years. You might be #2 on the list, as another company has a better car. But because they made a deal with you earlier, and they were happy with the car and the amount of cash they had to pay for the contract, you can get something like a +5% ontop of your rating as a so called 'trust rating'. Because of that rating, you are now #1 on the list and therefor get offered the contract first. So the input of the player with the contract counts. Would you want to go for pure cash, but get a -5% rating, stay neutral and get 0% or give a discount and get +5% with thinking about your future? When going for pure cash it doesnt mean they wont come back next time, though, but it is understandable that you might need that cash injection into your company because last year you lost a fair amount of cash by opening a new factory.

Then there is another check to be done. Is the player currently on a contract or has the player had a contract in the last year? If so, you should get a decreased chance of getting another contract, so other companies/players have a chance to get these contracts too. This will balance out gameplay and not make you overpowered when you created that 'one-hit-wonder' I named earlier.

Then there is also the thing of Declining a contract. If the player declines to do a contract, what will happen? Will you not receive any other contracts for the next year? Or will the computer try and offer you a better contract which gives you a chance of earning more cash? Or will the computer then go to #2 on the list? According to me; WHY NOT ALL???!!! I think there should be a chance of them offering you a new contract that makes you able to earn more, but there is also a chance that they are like "Take it or leave it. You took leave it? Sure, no problem, we will go to your competitor!"

So this part comes down to the next things named below;
- Player input; Do you want to maximize your profit, stay neutral or give a discount and have a higher chance for future contracts?
- How many contracts can one player have? One contract or multiple contracts? Is there any limit on the number of contracts over a certain period of time?
- What happens when a player declines a contract? Will they try to convince you with a better one or go to your competitor?


As you can read, this is heavy stuff, as there is a lot of choices and programming to do to seal it off and make it all go well and be a balanced element inside of the game, without giving Player A too much benefit over Player B and Player C.
Feel free to add stuff to the story in the comments below. I will try to keep up with this thread and if there is some decent things in there, I will change this First Post or add extra stuff to it.

Regards,
WizzyThaMan

[Weasel]

There will be another problem with that Police-Cars.
If I do it right, the policecar purchase in germany depends on the state, where the production is.
In Baden-Würtemberg (Stuttgart) they are driving with Mercedes, in Bavaria (Munich) they are driving BMW and in Niedersachsen (Hannover near Wolfsburg) they are driving Volkswagen.
EDIT: What are you doing with the rental cars? Do they buy the cars or lease them? If they lease them, do you need a showroom for the secondhand cars?

[JussiE]

IMHO if contracts ever get in the game the best car should win period. I don't like to be limited out of the contract just as my company builds mostly other types of cars. The contract competition should be something like the car scenarios are so far but of course against some competition. You have some minimum requirements and the best car that fulfills the requirements gets the contract (of course the price of the car should also be taken account). Would be also nice chance to use it as a marketing campaign for new model. And I wouldn't want to be limited to the models I already have on production. Some of the cars police forces use are "full custom". Of course (maybe) most of them are familiar good models from the current product line of some popular manufacturer.

Another thing I don't like in your suggestion is that you should make the car fex 15% more powerful. It does not make any sense to have that kind of limit since my car could already produce 200 kW and yours 100 kW. I would like to have these contract to be open competition for every manufacturer that want's to participate. If you only produce small cars the tooling and engineering costs will be much higher for you since you have to design everything from scratch. If you already produce some car which is close to the needs of the contract it doesn't cost that much for you. This is in my opinion the most realistic scenario possible to have in game.

But for these kind of contract you might need something like leasing/renting cars. I don't know if that is planned. At least in northern Europe companies typically don't own the cars the use. Maybe police forces and other government stuff is owned by themselves.

This is just few comments to start the conversation. The idea itself is great and I would like to have these kind of contracts in game since they are big part of the sales from time to time in some of the markets.

Off topic. the leasing thing would be interesting aspect in game even without the contract. At least in northern Europe most of the expensive cars are leasing cars for companies. There is some companies on markets that buys the cars and leases them to end customer but most of the biggest car companies offer these services also themselves.

[nialloftara]

I like the contract idea but rather than offered to companies it should be aopen offer to all. In America all 3 major manufacturers developed police cars and it was the different departments that ordered from each depending on needs or whims. So perhaps a company that usually develops small cars might try building a larger sedan or maybe just offering a modfied version of a existing model. I do like the idea of all different contracts coming up military jeeps, police cars, rental vans. Tieing it in to the suggestion of fleet sales could work as well, perhaps a contract for a certain number of cars could be offered? You would have to balance production of that order with your total output, should you accept the deal, can you meet the goal, should you upgrade your factory? Will the sales after justify the expense after the contract runs out?
I remember the older model Ford Taurus from the early 2000's continued production after it's intended end date solely for fleet sales the same with the Crown Victoria that thing was a dinosaur but the continued demand from large contract orders kept it profitable long after the dealer sales should have forced it out.

Most importantly though I don't think there should be pressure to take a contract, no negative penalties for passing them up.

[WizzyThaMan]

Exactly the type of comments I was hoping for! Thanks for that!

Personally, I think leasing, second hand should not be put into the game. Eventhough its real interesting, I must admit, this is waaaayy to much to add and make it work well. Its something like adding Diesels to the game, to give you a good comparison. Also, rentals/leasing is done by individual companies that buy the cars and then let them be leased, mostly not something a car company would do.

About the Open aspect of the contracts, thats a very good thing to do! This way the best car wins. But that means you might have to design a car that might still have its flaws, while clearly most police forces I know of, use cars that have been in production already for soem years. UK has Vauxhalls, Fords and Subaru's for example. As for the extra power required, I think it is a good thing to do, as this is usual for police forces to have more powerful cars.

As for not doing contracts, there dont have to be negative things, I agree on that. But when you do I think you still should have the option to negotiate about it. Are you willing to make more cash, or hoping for more contracts? I think this is a good way to have the player plan ahead of the game he or she is playing. and either way still keep on trying to make the best cars possible with the current R&D available.

As for the cars to be considered to be put as Police cars, I think a formula like explained above which checks for those 5 main values like Comfort, Sportiness, etc. should really be implemented. This way you can get it all narrowed down. This is, if the game will not use the open-minded contract thing where car companies can sign up with a car they designed (which I still think of that they first should prove themselves, before being accepted as a police car)

[Slim Jim]

Here's my idea of how contracts could work:

First, they are setup similar to the car designer scenarios. This makes implementation easier. Secondly, I would break down "fleet" contracts into 4 distinct categories each with their own requirements/characteristics. These would be rental, taxicab, police, and military.

For the rental contracts: basically, anything goes. Lower priced cars will win bigger volume contracts, while higher priced cars (and yes, even exotics) could win smaller contracts, but there should not be any restrictions for this category. However, while entering into a rental contract is a great way to increase sales, the company itself will take a prestige penalty. So yes, if Ferrari decided to create a special Hertz rent-a-racer "458 HZ Speciale", they could sell more cars, but at the expense of sullying the brand.

For taxicab contracts: here some restrictions are added. There should be minimum comfort requirements to minimize driver fatigue and maximize passenger comfort. There should be minimum utility requirements to maximize usability and passenger cargo. Finally, there should be minimum reliability requirements since taxis tend to be used for a much longer period of time (rental cars are usually retired after a certain period, so reliability is not AS important - at least for balancing purposes). Like the rental contracts, taking a taxicab contract is a great way to increase sales, but be mindful of the prestige penalty again. Yes, it would be nice to have a Maserati Quattroporte or Aston Martin Rapide take you from A-to-B, but too many of them on the road, and it's no longer as special.

For police contracts: the restrictions are slightly different. Instead of comfort, now safety becomes a minimum requirement. Police cars are often involved in collisions and high-speed pursuits so improving this main car stat will make it more attractive. Like the taxicab though, reliability is important. You can't chase a suspect if you're broken down on the side of the road. Unlike rental and taxi contracts, police contracts should have a maximum price restriction. Dubai notwithstanding , most police forces are cash-strapped so it's not likely they're going to be spending 6-figures on a police car. Also, in the interest of balancing since there are maximum price restrictions (and therefore tighter profit margins), there won't be any impact in prestige by selling police cars (neither positive nor negative).

For military contracts: these are essentially the same as the police contracts (ie. min safety, min reliability, max price), however, like the taxicabs there will also be a minimum utility requirement. This will make the military contract the most difficult of them all to obtain, but unlike all the other fleet contracts, this one comes with a prestige bonus for the manufacturer! Hummer anyone?

So to sum this all up:

Rental = anything goes!, no price restrictions, lower brand prestige
Taxicab = minimum comfort, minimum utility, minimum reliability, no price restrictions, lower brand prestige
Police = minimum safety, minimum reliability, max price restriction, no effect on brand prestige
Military = minimum safety, minimum reliability, minimum utility, max price restriction, brand prestige bonus


edit: @Weasel bring up a good point about different cars being used by police depending on the region. What we could do in game, is have the police/military contract's price restrictions vary depending on the region that is looking to add to their fleet. The higher the per-capita income of the region, the higher price offered for the car.

[VosNox]

I think you'd definitely need contracts for competitor companies, be they bodies or engines.

Racing companies too.

You should be able to create something of a shop for your company to sell crate engines directly to customers.

Contracts for shipping companies. Big turbo diesels for 18-wheeler's and smaller sea-going vessels.

Engines for all kinds of construction companies to use in their vehicles.

I think one-offs would work to a lesser extent. Like an automotive or technical school requesting an engine for their class room.

Engines for civilian ships. Like yachts or Speed boats.

And maybe generators.

[VicVictory]

Lot of stuff for me to catch up on here and give feedback on.

VoxNos has an idea with generators... Subaru and Honda are among the car manufacturers that have generator lines that they sell. Though not sure how much this will detract from the automotive theme of the game.

"Shipping companies".... maybe not building engines for them, but actual vehicles. Think along the lines of the Ford Transit Connect or Sprinter vans. Courier services use these often... so do small businesses.

Taxi contracts - won't exist in the USA until oh, 2000+. At least if you're playing by the actual market. well, maybe for a small period early on. The VAST bulk of taxi's in the US are retired cop cars or off-lease minivans. Now, newer taxis that's a little different... because some companies buy a FEW brand new hybrids (at least in the big cities). Also, car services would buy their vehicles new, but they would require extreme tameness and comfort (Towncars).

Police vehicles - It's not exactly just the "Big 3" as Nialloftara indicated. In the early 70's, AMC got in on the action, and a good number of Matador police cars were produced. Then we'll go into the 90's, where MOST cop cars were Ford Crown Vics... but almost all Crown Vics produced in those years were FOR police departments, not retail sales (115k in the highest year during that decade), so minimum sales of an existing model may be less of a factor here. At least in the US. Also, there would need to be smaller secondary contracts to fulfill demands for other vehicles (SUV's started being used with increasing frequency in the mid 2000's, and regular run of the mill passenger sedans like the Chevy Malibu were used as highway code enforcement vehicles a little earlier than that)

Rental fleets - I'd think that the effect to the company reputation might be more of a "moderating" effect, rather than a straight hit. If your rep is low, having the exposure of a large rental company using your cars might give it a slight boost, while it would possibly cause a luxury brand to take a hit. Just food for thought.

As far as "best car wins"... maybe something more proportional to total needed sales, particularly with rental fleets, similar to DerBayer's CTC challenges. Look at any rental car company out there. They don't buy just ONE model for any given size. Need a subcompact? You're going to get a Sonic, Rio, Accent, Fiesta, or Versa. Mid-size? Enjoy your Avenger, Sonata, Camry, Accord, or Fusion.

[Slim Jim]

Taxi contracts - won't exist in the USA until oh, 2000+. At least if you're playing by the actual market.

This is true, but I decided to take a few liberties with the concept.

well, maybe for a small period early on. The VAST bulk of taxi's in the US are retired cop cars or off-lease minivans. Now, newer taxis that's a little different... because some companies buy a FEW brand new hybrids (at least in the big cities). Also, car services would buy their vehicles new, but they would require extreme tameness and comfort (Towncars).

I thought about adding tameness... the main reason I didn't add it as a requirement on the taxi is because all my Town Car/Crown Vic replicas in game have so-so tameness values (mid 40s-ish). I didn't want to push them out of the market completely, so I kept it open. However, if a tameness requirement were to be added, it should be "low enough" to allow them to compete.

Also, there would need to be smaller secondary contracts to fulfill demands for other vehicles (SUV's started being used with increasing frequency in the mid 2000's, and regular run of the mill passenger sedans like the Chevy Malibu were used as highway code enforcement vehicles a little earlier than that)

Agreed!

Rental fleets - I'd think that the effect to the company reputation might be more of a "moderating" effect, rather than a straight hit. If your rep is low, having the exposure of a large rental company using your cars might give it a slight boost, while it would possibly cause a luxury brand to take a hit. Just food for thought.

I love that idea actually!

As far as "best car wins"... maybe something more proportional to total needed sales, particularly with rental fleets, similar to DerBayer's CTC challenges. Look at any rental car company out there. They don't buy just ONE model for any given size. Need a subcompact? You're going to get a Sonic, Rio, Accent, Fiesta, or Versa. Mid-size? Enjoy your Avenger, Sonata, Camry, Accord, or Fusion.

I was thinking the same thing, but I didn't really articulate it. It would play better if it functioned more like a market, and less like a lottery.

[xABSOLUTIONx]

don't really have to read all of the topic now, but my first idea for contracts -

you'll need to make an example/prototype for the contract, if you make the best one - you get it
other case is stated somewhere above, maybe you already have a car that the costumer wants, in that case, you'll just have to produce more

for categories - fleet/rental cars, racing body/engine kits or ready-to-race (all FIA circuit categories), military, police, emergency services (ambulance, firefighters (in case LCVs get into the game))

[Daffyflyer]

Some awesome thoughts in this thread. We shall refer back to it when we start working on Tycoon things again.

[chema1994]

In my opinion every contract should be different.
For example a delivery van for the military isn't the same as a offroad utility truck.
The same for police cars, there should be an option for regular patrol cars but also smaller orders for chase cars or even hypercars just for show.
The contract should be won by the best model but the "local factor" should also be considered.
For example if you wanna win government contracts in the US you will need to open factories there or even creating an american market subbrand.

Standalone engines are also a great idea. AFV engines are usually ordered to car companies. However the lack of diesels and small engines (1-2 cylinders, 2-strokes, air-cooled) would limit the options.