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I know engine designer is feature locked but this would be pretty easy change. I'm sure you have boolean string for that somewhere.

As "mini-maxer" otherwise know as person with OCD I always try to maximize what I get out of fuel to the point that I adjust stroke and bore just below the point of knocking. The thing is it's not very fun or interesting as gameplay mechanic and it's yet another complication for new players. Another thing I noticed while I was recreating real life engines is that chances are that after matching performance of real engine you'll be left off with a lot of unused octanes. I bet a lot of people instead of designing their own cars will try to recreate cars of their favourite company and thing is as it is they would be pretty much penalized for doing so, not much problem now outside of forum challenges but we have to remember tycoon part of the game is coming.

So my suggestion is very simple, since reliability is abstract figure anyway why not add some engine reliability for left-over, unused RON? Logic behind it is simple, engine is simply more resistant to fuel that may be advertised as 95 RON but isn't quite there since gas station owner enriched it a bit with garden hose . With tycoon this bonus could be tied to general fuel quality figure of region, in western Europe for instance where gas stations and fuel quality is strictly monitored you probably will want to up that compression and get some extra horses and economy. However if you want to sell your cars somewhere in third world you probably will have to de-tune your engines a bit so it won't blow up the moment someone pours dodgy quality fuel into it.

Not only it would help beginners who probably aren't mini-maxing everything but it would also add some flexibility for more experienced players!

The slight reliability hit for octane ratings close to the hard limit is a good idea I think, that's something I've wondered about too - not all same-octane fuels are equal. It doesn't make sense to add more reliability down to very low octane numbers though. If you choose 95 and you design the engine so it would run on 80, then there cannot be a bonus for that, that's poor decision-making! I would think a floating little penalty of say 0 to 2 points of engine reliability would be applied non-linearly up to 2 octane points below the chosen fuel type would make sense.

Another reliability related suggestion while I still remember. If engine reliability hits 0 thanks to lack of cooling or trying to rev crappy push-rod over 10000 rpm, car reliability should hit 0 too and you should get warning similar to blown tires one, working wind shield wipers aren't much of a consolation if car just plain doesn't run.

Yes, that will be in the next big update

Speaking of reliability.

I think it would be nice if we could have the engine designer use the max available air flow to calculate the reliability.

For example, if I make a car, then decide to make a model with a bigger engine then it will ding the reliability. So I have to go back to aerodynamic just to adjust it.

This is just a small convenience feature. I'd say to show a warning that the aero isn't open all the way, but still calculate using max potential cooling with the braking subtracted if it is set.

The cooling effect will be taken out of the engine designer entirely in the next update. Having car cooling affect an engine sitting naked on a dyno stand doesn't make any sense anyway.
Cheers!

Just a question : wasn't that cooling on engine designer thing made for balance reason on the engine scenarios ? I think I remember reading or hearing that somewhere ; I could be wrong though.

Yes, that is true, but this was mainly a concern tied to the old scoring system where it would be better to have one extremely high stat and all others just crossing the lower limit and not the "as balanced as possible is best" solutions we have now. So basically that was a rule required because of shitty gameplay