CTC - Car Tycoon Challenge #3 [RESULTS]

[xwing]

Strop, I think a better way than rising factory cost would be rising the tooling costs multiplier for larger factories, so it would be much harder to mass produce complicated over-engineered cars, but still pretty easy to make millions of simple cars cheaply.

Also, PU costs should probably scale with quality, so you can produce -15 quality cars with cheap workforce, but if you want to make top quality cars you have to hire the best (and pretty expensive) workers. These two things would allow both making even cheaper simple cars and also making those top quality cars in less numbers (because of tooling costs). Right now, even with half a milion price tag and almost the most expensive options tooling cost wise it makes little sense for me to select a smaller factory, but realistically it makes little sense to make Veyrons in medium-large factories... maybe make some options more expensive tooling cost wise, especially carbon fibre? Right now you cant make carbon fibre cars in small factories because they are PU intensive, and the tooling costs are the same as steel so there is little penalty for making it a bit larger than necessary...

[GenJeFT]

Strop, I think a better way than rising factory cost would be rising the tooling costs multiplier for larger factories, so it would be much harder to mass produce complicated over-engineered cars, but still pretty easy to make millions of simple cars cheaply.

I think it works rather well now. I have scrapped several cars because they were over-engineered and could not be produced in numbers I thought were good for a large factory. Those man hours hit REAL hard the more you engineer the car. I am using a larger factory then I was last time and I am making about 200k fewer cars then last time. I'm not going to be saturating the market this time, I don't even expect to do that well really.

My car is good but the competition is a lot better this time around.

[VicVictory]

GenJeFT, just curious... what market were you targeting this time around?

[GenJeFT]

GenJeFT, just curious... what market were you targeting this time around?

Mid $, Mid $$, and family. I should have stayed in the Compact $ and Compact $$ markets but we will see how it works out.

I am kind of confused how smaller cars get higher utility ratings then my station wagon. Some of those cars with high utility ratings can FIT in the back of the wagon I made but whatever... I guess I have a different definition of utility. Could I fit 5 haybales in trollercoasters car, probably not, mine, yes. Why is this a question? It happend to me once when I was asked to get some haybales to send to my sisters horse. I got 5 loaded into/onto my Subaru wagon, 3 on the inside and two on the roof. Cant do that with some of the smartcar like things that have higher utility ratings then my wagon.

*edit*

Side note, I think the V8 engine I have in my car for this contest is absolute crap, but according to the test document we had it sold more (a LOT more, 40k cars more) so I put it in. The I6 actually performed better in terms of mile times and the I4 was only slightly slower and by slight I mean only about 1 to 1.5 seconds slower and was a lot more efficient.

But it is a manual transmission which makes it the first car I have entered into the contest that I would actually buy.

[frisco557]

My Rolls-Royce/Bentley style car is the heaviest and has the largest engine and worst grip. Hopefully it actually makes a profit(but I doubt it).

[Der Bayer]

Side note, I think the V8 engine I have in my car for this contest is absolute crap, but according to the test document we had it sold more (a LOT more, 40k cars more) so I put it in. The I6 actually performed better in terms of mile times and the I4 was only slightly slower and by slight I mean only about 1 to 1.5 seconds slower and was a lot more efficient.

The testing spreadsheet showed scores, not sales. It's impossible to predict sales without knowing the competition.

If you're going to run CTC again I would suggest 2 changes. Make bigger factory sizes scale up in price bit more. Make it a requirement for entries to set price at such level that your maximum production is some arbitrary % higher than break even sales value.

There won't be different factories next time. You will set the number of cars you want to produce and the costs will scale automatically. I will look into how difficult it is to implement some kind of minimum factory size depending on pricing and costs.

Would it be too much to propose penalties in subsequent rounds for poor outcomes or fiscal irresponsibility?

No carry over penalties, no.

If you are record braking in one interesting area, it should generate more sales than what that number would normally suggest because you get free PR/marketing in the media. How hard would it be to implement it in this challenge? Maybe even give us the option to invest in marketing (more fixed costs vs uncertain sales)?

I don't want to encourage building extremes. We already had too many extreme cars this round.

For some reason I thought the price preference for trackday cars was a lot harsher than it actually was in the OP, which makes the tactic of a good amount of sports for the money possibly not the greatest for the trackday car I entered.

[/quote]
That's actually a big problem this time. Because there have not been proper supercars in the last rounds, I didn't notice the big wallet they have. Right now, many expensive supercars go into that category, that's not something I intended because they take away customers from the cheaper ones, leaving them no room to breathe.

[maffc]

Yay - I got a Top of the Trumps
Highest comfort at 74.2,
now lets see if that helps sales in the large £££ market I aimed at.

[strop]

Right now you cant make carbon fibre cars in small factories because they are PU intensive

If I don't go broke, especially given this field, then I'll be a happy counterexample to this assertion

[Janekk]

I think a better way than rising factory cost would be rising the tooling costs multiplier for larger factories, so it would be much harder to mass produce complicated over-engineered cars, but still pretty easy to make millions of simple cars cheaply.

I like this idea, maybe you could scale tooling cost with how high engineering cost is? Cars with over 120 production units shouldn't be mass produced in huge factories. I guess my entry is good example.

@GenJeFT
I agree utility is really weird value and I'm not too sure if it should be used in CTC at all. I think it scales with how large your car is and that's why it tends to be so high on that body everyone including me picked. Maybe passenger space + cargo space * (seat number / 2) or something like that would work better (EDIT: upon closer inspection that small "city car" body has more passenger space than even large modern sedan )? Compact segment wouldn't care much about it but once we go into higher segments it becomes issue? Thing is small bodies that tend to get higher utility also are lighter and cheaper to produce, bit too good if you ask me. Another issue is that the more power you have the more utility you get, sure I see logic in that however between 150-200 hp car and 500 hp sports car there shouldn't be much difference, how much do you want to tow anyway and it's not like that power doesn't score you points in other places already.

[xwing]

If I remember correctly a dev said Utility should mean cargo space/footprint, so compact car with average boot/passenger space should have higher utility than a larger car with the same boot/passenger space. I tried comparing different bodies, and the formula is probably something like (a*(passenger space + cargo space) + b*(engine power/weight))/c*wheel base.

[Killrob]

That is pretty accurate xwing. Small, high, van-like cars with enough power and load capacity to transport stuff get the highest utility rating.

[PMP1337]

Looking at Reaper's car I remember making a large front grille which gave me exactly 0 effective cooling which felt reasonable (the engine is in the back) so I have no grilles/vents at the front... trying it now gives me quite a lot of cooling so I dont know what went wrong.
Looking at the fuel economy I though mine would be worst, I didn't imagine something over 40l/100km was even possible with and engine that produces less than 1000hp

And I'm surprised nobody else went over 100 sportiness, each point over 100 generated more and more ridiculous score in that score calculator, to the point that I could afford a $500 000 price tag and remain the better track day car over anything with less than 100 sportiness regardless of price. But much more than 500 000 and the score plumeted. In the supercar segment the score didn't change much even when I doubled the price, but the track day segment is much bigger so I gambled a bit with the lower price and bigger factory

the supercar i was going to submit: (paste on scorecalc)

HC 1.0

0,00
120,20
0,00
77,60
62,90
31,30
10,08

64,50

29,66
6 673,50
32 258,72
48 125,16

45 354,34
1 070,63
72 120,09

850 000,00
3 855
9 340

Eng. EC Tool. TC
VH 100,00 H 50,00
H 20,00 0,00 0,00
H 20,00 0,00 0,00
A 25,00 0,00 0,00
0,00 0,00 H 50,00

H 100,00 H 30,00
VH 50,00 0,00 0,00
A 25,00 0,00 0,00
H 25 0 0
1,50

VH 60,00 0,00 0,00
VH 50,00 0,00 0,00
H 35,00 0,00 0,00
VH 50,00 0,00 0,00
A 40,00 0,00 0,00
0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00
0 0,00 0 0
0 0,00 0 0
0 0,00 0 0
0 0,00 0 0
0 0,00 0 0
VH 100 0 0,00

10,00
5,00
0,00

10,00
10,00
5,00
5,00
5,00

5,00
5,00
10,00
0,00
-10,00
0,00
5,00
10,00

10 000 000 0,9 100 000 000,00

2 164 842 263,62
117 000 000,00
100 000 000,00



0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
57 353
59 135
1 819 622
0
0
0
0

[Janekk]

That is pretty accurate xwing. Small, high, van-like cars with enough power and load capacity to transport stuff get the highest utility rating.

That's what I don't really get, why does it scale with footprint? Someone either looks for a large car or a small car, I'm not sure how "how much it fits for it's size" metric is useful. Narrow roads, easy parking or something like this? But then what really matters is footprint alone.

[Reaper392]

I think the idea is to avoid people designing a very big car that happens to have a decent sized boot and claiming it is very practical, such as the early american muscle car with fins. While that is good in theory perhaps the calculations need some balancing in game.

After checking my trackday car in the score calculator it turns out that the car could have been priced 3-4x more expensive and it would only have made a ~10% difference to the score for the trackday market. Ah well, hopefully it will be changed for next time

[Der Bayer]

As I said, the trackday group didn't work as it should this time. I don't know when I messed it up. But at least I'm a victim myself... There will be a major revamp of the cost calculations anyway, so next round will hopefully be better again.