automationgame.com

I wanted to share my first week's progress - I am literally glued to this game!

I love Inline 6 engines so I'll start there - tell me what you think!

I have a 2.5 litre engine in 2 versions of tune, a 2.8 and a 3.1

I will post my other engines after some sleep!

Try easing back on the quality sliders.

^ This. Those are some really expensive engines for general use.

what kind of level is acceptable, $1500 mark for MCO?

Revised 2.8...

revised 2.5 stock

The production units of your engines are more then most of my cars, start off not using any sliders at all get the hang of balancing all your stats, then figure out if you want a higher red line to add a few to the bottom end, or if you want better response to add to the fuel system. Based on your power figures these are not super or hyper car engines, in that case the sliders should be used very sparingly.

Most everybody posts engines with crazy production times and costs when they first start. I know I did.

For something to use in general automotive production, less than 100 production units and under $1500 (the lower, the better). For premium automotive production, less than 150 production units and under$3000. For one-off applications, you can go nuts with it, but keep in mind if it is competition, there might be rules to keep it under control.

Think of production units as time=1 man-hour. This means you're paying someone for 1 hour of time for each unit of production. An auto worker (in Automation at least) makes $20 per hour, so you have that cost. As an example, your revised 2.5 stock has 583.1 production units and a cost of $1653.57. If you have 1 person building your engine (hand built), it will take them 583.1 hours to complete one engine.

Lets consider dollar costs:

583.1*$20=$11,662

So your $1653.57 engine just got a cost boost of $11,662.00 (thats per engine!) bringing it to a grand total of $13,315.57. Suddenly, this engine costs more to build than most cars.

Now lets consider time costs:

583.1/24=24.3 days

Of course, this builder will be working 24 hours a day using that figure, but it will take nearly a month to complete. Realisticly, this number is doubled, and probably slightly more for 8 hour shifts. 2 months to complete an engine is crazy production time, even for one-off stuff really. Most production facilities are pumping out hundreds (or more) entire cars per day, yet this engine takes 2 full months to build.

These numbers can be any numbers you want them to be, however, you have to remember this is designed to be a tycoon game and as such, the goal is making money!

I appreciate the sound advice and am redesigning not just my engines but my complete cars using a more cost oriented method.

Watch this space!

this is my first engine - it began as a 4.3 v8 but has had the stroke shortened somewhat, bringing the final capacity to 3.85litres - I have paid close attention to the cost of this but I am still to revise the car.

A much more realistic, completely new 3.0 V8, in a completely new car

Much better. Still on the more expensive side, but far more realistic for high-end production costs.

An all new 5.0 NA V8

persistence is the key - all new 5.0 V8 just got cheaper!