automationgame.com

Hello everyone! I haven't been on Automation for a long time but I guess it's time to come back. Since I'm a messy person, I always spread my ideas around the forum and I want to gather things together to make one big topic for everyone. As usual, I remind I don't beg or force anyone for these ideas and it is not meant to be. Have fun!
NOTE: I haven't been on forums for a long time so I might write things that are already written. Sorry! Just check out the title to select the ones which are new, I guess.
NOTE: This will be a very long thread and I might split topics to posts for easier navigation.

Morale:
Pretty simple and clean. Workers at your company will have a factor called morale which has effects on: Efficiency, Production Units, Happiness, Strikes, Scandals etc.

Morale will be between 0 and 100 and will be affected by 3 main factors and few other factors:
MAIN:Random Values (for realism purposes, for example: a person might have family situtations.), Work Hours and Salary.
MEDIUM: Workplace (They'll work better on quality enviroment, better tools, benefits you get from your company etc.), Recent Strikes or Scandals etc.
MINOR: Experience on their current workplace (He might be just assigned from another factory to your main factory that causes to slight morale drop etc.) etc.

FORMULA: (I'm not good at maths so I can't really make a one but I'll simply write something explaining it)
if Random Values↓, Work Hours↓, Salary↑, Workplace↑, Recent Strikes or Scandals↓, Exp on WP↑ then Morale↑
if Opposite values then Morale↓

if Morale↑: Efficiency↑, Production Units↓, Happiness↑, Strike or Scandals↓.
if Morale↓: Opposite Values.

sounds like you have some great ideas there

I would just like to point out that you should replace riots with strikes.

Riots usually involve destruction of some sort and while the history of the automotive industry has had it's shares of strikes, I don't think there were many riots.

Appart from that it seems like a decent short draft, the only thing though is that you need to make sure to not have too much micromanagement, as this would make the game a bit tedious.

To rework a little you idea, you could have a "worker hapiness" stat assigned to a factory, that would depend on salary and other factors, although IMHO things like environment quality and benefits might be a tad too far into tedious micromanaging.

This stat would then, like you suggest, cause increased efficiency. It could also, if very low, result in strikes and therefore zero efficiency until you give your workers a better salary.

IIRC, there was a movie about Henry Ford, where they showed how the workers was getting close to rioting, or at least fighting with each other.
Because the management tried to get them to make the cars, Model T, as fast as possible, "Now we make a car every 30 seconds!", or something like that.

Thanks for reminding again trackpaduser! I totally forgot about that! I did the same on my old thread and people said the same. I wrote riot because I thought people wouldn't recognize strike if their native language isn't English (like me). Anyways I'll change it and start working on sorting my threads together to complete it!
EDIT: I need some ideas fell free to PM me about it

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT:
I know it is discussed and talked A LOT, but I still want to share my opinion.
Again, I write like it will be like this or that in the game but as usual not, no forcing at all.

BASICS: R&D is one of the main elements of the tycoon part. To advance and go further, your companies will need new technologies and innovation. This is the part where your R&D facility becomes useful! Your workers at the R&D will have a main budget (chosen by you) and they will do new researches and studies to be better, more efficient, faster and stronger in the direction you want them to. If you can play your strategy good enough you can do anything you want! Every company needs a advantage from the others...

HOW IT WORKS?: In my opinion, current tech points is too basic for a thing that can be a HUGE part of the game if it's handled right. Instead of tech points I would prefer two tabs called:
­­­1. TECH TREE
2. UPGRADES

TECH TREE: Tech tree is the main part which you can research new technologies. For example let's say that a company has succesfully researched a new fuel injection technology and set it avaible to everyone. This will be unlocked at the TECH TREE part and you can research it. It will also take time depending on your TT budget. (TT will also have a pre-research tab but I'm too lazy to write it here. I guess you can understand it's concept on one of my older threads: http://www.automationgame.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5680&p=63499#p63499)

UPGRADES: You got the basics! It was easy, but you also need to master it. UPG part is as important as TT part since it is a must to improve your technologies. Nothing should be enough for you company and you should always go one step further! Go to UPG tab, change your budget as you wish and give order to your employees to start improving the technology you selected! For example you gave them a budget of X Currency (big budget) and your employees will start improving it, testing it, breaking it. After Formula/valuables.xtimebudgetblablbalba time, you will have a bonus on that technology between %0 and %5 depending on factors like the ones in happiness (Exp on WP, happiness, morale, WP, recent strikes or scandals, budget...)


BALANCING IT: I can't handle this much. This is the hardest part and I appreciate devs work on balancing the game anyways.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT IT TO GAME: I can't write much here either since I'm not a dev and I only know as much as you guys know.

NOTES:
I'm still not sure but I think UPG's researches should be directly implemented to your currently assembly/production line or you would need a new line for that part.
UPG's researches can only be done on the technologies that you researched or you're owning.
This one won't be done detailed since I'm just writing my ideas and no serious actualy work on the game. But I might if there'll be demand for it.
R&D is one of my favourite aspects at the games and I'll continue writing it and completing it. But not now....

EDIT: I'll rewrite the Nation Characteristics because it is too mixed up with bias stats.


I'm finally back after a very long vacation for no reason to write nothing and I got the flashing light-bulbs back in my head!

As usual, no offence at anthing, it might a repost and no forcing to anything.

CAUTION: I realized I get too off-topic so prepare yourself to get confused.

BIAS STATS/GHOST STATS:
WIPWIPWIPWIPWIPWIP

NATION CHARACTERISTICS(%99 typo):

I prefer to talk about this first than talking about the regulations because it'll clear more stuff out when it's readen first.

Self-explanatory title. Every nation has its own regulations, economy, life-style, infrastructure etc. of their own leading to a general characteristic of their very own country.
I believe this is already planned to be in-game (not totally, but still) by class preferences on different markets but I think it is not enough as usual.
This doesn't have to be on every single country but maybe on a larger scale (Regions, Continents maybe?)

Apart from classes (you know the thingies that killrob talked about in the dev updates. unfortunately my attention span was depleted already and I was looking at the comments so whatever (Premium, offroad, compact city etc.)) , you would have an image of your brand in X country and it will have a "Bias Stat" or "Ghost Stat" (Something I wanna talk about later, probably few months after I have enough time to write again.) which is created by older products of yours in that country long time ago e.g: Your sub-brand was famous for selling extremely reliable cars at India. After time you needed some monies so you sold it to another country or the reverse you got the sub-brand. Let's say that you bought it. Even if you make the crappiest and unreliable cars due to old and settled biases adds Bias Stats to your stats so you end up with some short-term hype/bonus for your cars but since they became crappy it will vanish pretty quickly.

Wait, I wasn't talking about those o_0 anyways, you get the idea. This is a important part since it is an important part of marketing strategy for many countries.

for example (yes, again.) Here in Turkey since we have the most absurd taxes and tax system and we have our own biases, average customer sees the crappy 1.6L 316i with 20L/100km average and says "dis is fuking awesome man look I can buy that bmw" and buys it. See how strong the bias is? Mercedes and BMW just makes car only for this market. (316ie is a Turkey-only vehicle if I know right. That bastard is a brilliant marketing masterpiece.)



REGULATIONS:
This VW Scandal got me thinking about regulations and other stuff. Then I thought about the possiblities with regulation system in-game at Campaign.
They would be very simple but can help a lot. You can easily attract enviormental-caring customers and you can even get tax bonuses at certain countries.
Since the game doesn't have a real-life measurement for CO2 NOX and other stuff it would be nice if game had its own regulations at certain countries:

e.g :
Year 1886: EU announced that they will take taxes off the vehicles by the amount of pollution it creates and announced the new E1 Regulations. (Anything above E1 cannot be sold in EU anymore.)
Year 1890: EU announced the new E2 regulation which is way more strict than the E1, but this time it is not a must to be able to sell a car but taxes will be increased if it doesn't pass the regulation. (New taxes, E2 means cheaper prices and a nice oppurtunity to focus for your marketing campaigns.).......