Aircooled Engine DLC

[Drake]

I'd like to discuss the possibility of a DLC later down the road to cover Aircooled engines.. This is one area we will miss out on with the main game, but it shouldn't be too difficult to implement..

In terms of art, they would have to design new cylinder heads for the aircooled engines, but (correct me if I'm wrong) wouldn't they only have to design a 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 cylinder head then slightly modify them for use the V engines? Plus the cylinder heads currently in the game could be used as a base, they basically just need to modify the outside a bit and add cooling fins.. Hell, if they really wanted to make it easy they could reuse the cylinder heads 100% and just add a piece with cooling fins that will cover it. Engline blocks could be resused, although slightly scaled down compared to Watercooled engines..

In terms of calculations it shouldn't be overly difficult either. Engine blocks would be lighter, as well as no radiators (not sure how game calculates their weight ATM) and the cylinder heads slightly heavier I would imagine with all the cooling fins. Also there should be a bonus to cooling when using Aluminium (and magnesium?) blocks and especially heads. In fact there should probably be some bonus to cooling for watercooled engines using aluminium heads..

Compared to say Diesel engines, this should actually be easier to implement. They would have minimal changes to the engine calculations, and the graphical changes would be about the same or much easier depending on how they go about it.

Discuss.

[WizzyThaMan]

Im not sure if they are just 'minimal' changes for extra content. When changing something in the engine designer right now, means literally 1 month of finetuning, recalculating and betatesting !!!at least!!!
Yes, a lot of cars from lets say 50s to 70s (and some longer, correct me if I'm wrong: Trabant and Porsche 911 until the 90s) have used this, and maybe even after than, but comparing how much aircooled has meant to the carindustry, and then looking at diesel engines, I would say diesel engines are a better "return on investment" over air cooled engines.

Maybe it is something for much later, or a modding project for someone to put in the game. If later added by the devs, they could release it together with 2 cylinder engines, so they get the Trabant like cars covered, together with the required aircooling?

[Pleb]

I'm not sure if air cooled engines offer a good development time in : gameplay value out ratio. Diesels are a higher priority addition due to how widely used they are. And as much as air cooled engines were an innovation, it wouldn't make much sense to add them straight away, but as Wizzy said, it would be a good idea for a modder to code them into the game post-release for those who would like to recreate old 911's etc.. It would mainly be an addition for people who want to build a specific kind of engine (somewhat like rotary engines for rx8's etc)

It's not a bad idea, but there are more important things to focus on until release. Though it would be good to eventually have Automation sporting every sort of engine going .

[polargl]

Just to post a support for Pleb and Wizzy posts, I also vote for Diesel to be next made, but definitely would like to see air cooled (and two strokes ) later in game.

[Jakgoe]

I completely agree. You have to understand, it is Value of Feature/Time to Implement. While air-cooled engines would be relatively easy to implement, they would not add as much to gameplay value than other DLCs.

[Daffyflyer]

Yeah, it would be quite a bit easier than diesels, but diesels are so critical to many markets and many sorts of car, so I think they're at the top of the priority list if we are able to make DLC.

[vmo]

The VW (since the first model: the Beetle to the Karmann-Ghia), is aircooled.

[Drake]

Im not sure if they are just 'minimal' changes for extra content. When changing something in the engine designer right now, means literally 1 month of finetuning, recalculating and betatesting !!!at least!!!

Well, basically all that would need to be changed in the calculations are weight and cooling.. Since those calculations are already finished for Watercooled engines, it shouldn't be too hard to extrapolate from there.

Maybe it is something for much later, or a modding project for someone to put in the game. If later added by the devs, they could release it together with 2 cylinder engines, so they get the Trabant like cars covered, together with the required aircooling?

Yeah.. It shouldn't be hard to mod in without any changes to graphics, so possibly something for a modding project. If someone with decent graphics skills joins then maybe even a proper mod with graphics and all.

If the devs were to add this, then I agree that it would be a good time to include some of those smaller engines. (Single Cylinder, V twins, V4, Inline 2, )

Yeah, it would be quite a bit easier than diesels, but diesels are so critical to many markets and many sorts of car, so I think they're at the top of the priority list if we are able to make DLC.

Yeah, pretty much my thoughts.. I agree diesels are a bigger market, and should take priority, but I figured since nobody had really brought up aircooled engines that it was worth discussing.