Car Body 'Refresh Design'

[Oreology]

It seems like the game prefers cars that are pre-2000s - although I can definitely see mid-engine coupe bodies that resemble the 458 or the MP4-12C, these bodies receive a desirability hit when selling at 2015.

Could anyone explain more to me about this year model and car body models?
I think the car bodies that definitely look retro (less curvaceous / smooth, more stocky / chrome fixtures / round) - you know what I'm talking about - do make sense when selling at those eras (50s, 70s), but please make it so that, in the future releases of the game, there is an option to 'Refresh Design' of a car body that would allow it to be sold at a later era without desirability hits.

(Although those obvious classic cars shouldn't have this option, more modern-looking cars should)

That 458-style car body or that front-engined long-bonnet coupe is sexy but 1990-2000s? Come on. I want to put all the latest tech into it in 2015-ish.

[Boosted7M]

So the way it works right now is that each body has a time span from which it can be introduced to when it becomes outdated. Once you are outside that range you lose desirability for each subsequent model year. I feel that this idea worked fine in theory, but in practice is causes some problems. There aren't enough car bodies to have a continuous model of car with new bodies every 5-10yrs or so. I feels that an introduction date would be fine, but penalties should be assessed only if the finished car has been in production for (insert reasonable amount of time here). I personally love hot hatches, but there aren't enough bodies in game, so when I get to the 90's and want to build a hot hatch, the only body the looks like it would fit in the 90's is from the 80s in game and I lose a whole bunch of desirability.

[Packbat]

Hm - at this point, I'm wondering if the "old-body" penalty should be dropped altogether, or folded into the penalty for old models on new trims thereof.

[Boosted7M]

That is what I am suggesting. Before I kind of made sense because we didn't have trims and a true sense of time wasn't there. You can design a car to look like anything and still have safety features built into the design. So for that aspect the safety penalty for old bodies doesn't make sense. We should be able to pick any body after the style has been "unlocked" so to speak and be able to start fresh with no penalties no matter what year after. But as soon as as the vehicle has been in production for several years, to start issuing penalties for things being out date and undesirable

[Killrob]

This whole discussion comes up often and at least to me is really strange. Yes, it is an issue. No, this aspect is not "finished" and yes, there will be tweaks. No, from what you see you can't draw proper conclusions for how well the system will work once done - at least with the limited knowledge that comes with "not being a dev or the person who designed it".

Let met give you a metaphor: You're building a robot supposed to run (as in: on two legs). "Hey, robot developer, this robot of yours doesn't work!" "It's not quite done yet, so yeah, what's the matter?" "It can't run." "Well, yes, that is because it doesn't have legs yet." "But you see, his hips rotate far too quickly and that doesn't seem to work." "True that, it is just a function test after all, it will be adjusted once it has legs and we see how those move."

In this case the legs are: "many car bodies to choose from" and "full car development & production cycle", the hip rotation speed is "depreciation of car bodies over time", which currently seems too fast and it very well may turn out to be too fast. That is not something worth spending time on to fine tune though because we don't have the bigger picture yet.

With the upcoming subproject we will have one of the legs, the engineering / production side mostly done. Car bodies will take much longer.
There are two pretty easy to tune factors in the depreciation: the starting age of depreciation (should be dependent on the average development and production time of new cars) and the slope of depreciation (should be depending on how many car bodies are available and how prestigious the demographic the car is made for is). Considering a facelift occurs every 3-6 years, I don't think the "hip rotation speed" is too far off from its mark right now. Depreciation occurs fast for trims, and slowly but then stronger and stronger for models.

[Packbat]

Ah, right - early access. Fair enough! Thanks for the detailed reply, Killrob!

[Boosted7M]

Okie dokie

[yacskn]

Can we at least have a small tickbox to hide/unhide the older bodies? So that we don't inadvertently choose an old one? Or write the dates on the chassis?

[TrackpadUser]

In the car body selection menu, there are buttons so it only shows cars made in the last 10 or 20 years.

Some of the older cars made in the last 10 years might get a penalty, but it's going to be very minor.