automationgame.com

I would love to hear a dev talk about every step planned for car design in this game, starting with the blank piece of paper in the factory design department, to having the first sale on the showroom floor.

What steps do you want to see in that chain of events, in an ideal world at least? (I understand that everything is subject to change)

Hey! We're not Peter Molyneux We like to take it one step at a time.
So that would be rather difficult to do, as the steps not in the game yet are rather vague at the moment even to us. The player currently takes steps 2-5 I would say. A very rough overview could be (nothing set in stone about the tycoon part)

Step 1: Take a good look at the market
Step 2: Design a platform
Step 3: Design one or several engines
Step 4: Design one or several models
Step 5: Test the model(s)
Step 6: Give the designs to your engineers
Setp 7: Plan your production
Step 8: (Re-)Tool your factory(-ies)
Step 9: Set up the logistics / sales
Step 10: Set up a marketing campaign
Step 11: Start production and sales

Cheers!

That's about what i expected.. And about the level of detail that is reasonable. The only thing i feel is missing from that list is independant testing.. Euro NCAP, Fuel efficiancy verification and so on.. From a gameplay standpoint i assume stuff like that would mostly be academic, but having it in there, if only as a period of "wasted" devlopment time would add to the realism.. .. At any rate some sort of mandatory bureaucratic BS is pretty much expected in some capacity.

Funny you said Bureaucracy. In most contexts, bureaucracy is reffered to as something negative, annoying, irritating. Too long processes for a simple thing to get arranged with annoying paperwork to be filled in. Would you, as a player, want to do this? There are some exceptions; people that tend to want the most realistic type of gameplay. But the majority won't. It only slows down your gameplay, something which the developers definetly do not want. Any addition to the game should enrich the gameplay. Testing your cars by third parties is one of those things that seem to be cute and amazing to have in the game, but what does it actually add? Not much, IMO. Just another parameter for the developers to take into account along with all those other, more contributing, important stuff.

It adds a touch of realism and i imagine it wouldn't be that hard to add a step at some point in the later stages of development that sent a car into the hands a of third party for X amount of time..

It adds realism but interrupts the flow of the game. Also, it doenst add much to gameplay.
Besides, it may look like a little step, but it is quite some work. You shouldn't underestimate it. It requires coding, testing and balancing, for something that doesn't benefit the game well in my opinion.

Well EuroNCAP is a good idea to have, as it would force player to either design a new car, or search for markets that don't have such strict regulations.
It would be a good addition, but maybe only on higher difficulty setting.

There will for sure be regulations for levels of safety required to sell cars in different markets etc. But you'll know as you're designing the car if you've passed them or not, you won't need to wait to find out


There will be an engineering period after designing a car before you can put it into production too

Guys, why would you need euro ncap when the game already tells you your safety and will factor it into sales? The only thing that would add is a factor of uncertainty because of the chance of even a safe car getting a bad rating if things go wrong, and that is just counterintuitive to one of the goals of the game, which is user friendliness. You could make a car with a safety of 100 and get a 3 star crash safety test, ruining any sales bonus you could have gotten. The same goes with the EPA and any fuel economy testing organization. It doesn't add to gameplay. The only way you could do this would be to change where the game says safety: to EURONCAP rating:. And for the same reason, I don't think that is necessary.