automationgame.com

Pricing should be set by the game like in Aerobiz (for the SNES and GEN) where you just adjust how far off the game's recommend price, same with wages and advertising. This removes boring fictional accounting work from gameplay. So many of the 90's business simulators go bogged down with entering numbers, it is just so much better to just move a slider, as it is hard to gauge how much you have to change the number to get the desired results when simply plugging in numbers.

Contracts, while your bread and butter should be general sale it would be nice if you were offered to bid in contracts for example the US Army looking for a staff car and later a 4x4 or a police department looking for a new police cruiser, they will have specific demands of what they are looking for and you'd issue one of your models to be considered, if accepted you have to meet their orders or face late fees and get a bad reputation yet on the plus side guaranteed sales.

Vehicle Reviews, have scores for acceleration, handling, breaking, ect with a final percentage and ranking to competing models of that type. Detroit kind had this when you tested vehicles but the review section was just a few words like good fuel economy, safe, affordable and never gave you a good idea of what you were up against.

Hi Psy, welcome to the forum
All but the first item has been talked about in detail already, so you'll be able to find the current state of how likely the either two will be in better detail but a quick recap, likely not have contracts even though I was really hoping for them as well, but this might be in an expansion later if the game does well . However, there is a good (unless drops due to time constraignts on the devs) chance of reviews of some sort.

Now the pricing, I am in agreement with you on that. While it limits the freedom to some amount it gains a lot in ease of use for the player. I like sliders for many things myself as well. Higher image the car has in the public eye for what they are willing to pay, the higher the price can be set without making people unhappy with you.

Thanks

Well I like how Aerobiz did it in that the game already set a normal price for you, you only adjusted pricing if your flights were too packed (so you raised the price to take advantage of you not being able to meet normal demand) or if they were too low (so you lowered the price to spur demand). In Automation it could be the same way, the game will automatically set a average price and then you can then adjust the price depending on sales the next turn.

I'm not so sure that a price slider is the best way to go unless at least that it have a huge range from next to nothing too more than the most expensive car in the world. What I would prefer is just to give the player enough data so he can make a informed decision, like having the production cost and the similar competitors cars no more than one click away maybe listed in order after how similar the cars is to your car.

I think if you give the player enough information in a ordered fashion, it shouldn't be to hard to find a price that will work.

You have the center of the slider is what the game has as the ideal price for the car type. Thus the slider for a economy compact would have its maximum price much lower then a luxury or sports car. If you want to sell your compact for a high price then you'd make it more like a sports car (make it faster) and tell the game it is a sports car.