Announcement: CTC - Car Tycoon Challenge

[Der Bayer]

Why do the sports editions have such a high utility by the way? I didn't realise how much fits in the trunk was so important when buying a sports car.

Those sports editions should still be everday cars with 4-5 seats. For 2-seaters there are the other sports categories.

Also, will there be tooling costs for forgeworks and cnc shop? Also engineering costs for brake cooling (since Killrob mentioned in a video)?

No, those buildings are assumed to be built already. Engineering costs for brake cooling are a bit too in-depth in my opinion, first get the main things working. This is only a forum game, we have to leave something to the full game.

Is it possible for you to add the calculation that works out how many cars you have to sell to break even please.

Good idea, I'll add that today.

Just out of interest, have you updated the tooling/engineering costs since making those spreadsheets with the example cars?

Yes, I have, I wanted it to be a bit more realistic.

IAlso I'm wondering how "customers" choose cars, are preference weight on stats you posted only stats taken into account?

Yes, only the stats I ask for in the spreadsheet. It's already very hard to find a good balance and working calculations. Track time is completely useless in this challenge.

Another thing I noticed from earlier test results you posted is that customer groups don't seem to have minimal standards, just cost/benefit calculation. Looking at most successful car I notice 3 really low stats: Sportiness,Prestige, Safety. Comfort is pretty damn low too. Yet, it sold well even in groups that put focus on those stats, sure it's cheap but then I still have to wonder why car with 2.0 Sportiness sold anything at all in Trackcar, GT, Supercar categories? It's not like there weren't any other cars with more sportiness.

Yes, it may seem odd that the cheap carss sell a bit in the expensive categories. Finding the right balance of "price must matter" and "price must not matter too much in the expensive categories but still a little bit" is very, very hard to do without making a new sales model for every customer group (which then is impossible to manage for me). The few sales in those categories don't really matter in the big picture of hundreds of thousands sold cheap cars anyway. And when there are more (sporty) cars on the market, market share for the cheap car will drop automatically. We'll see how it works, I still can adjust some exponents.

Actually I'm not so sure about these aggregate stats, especially when it comes to customer decisions (they still are helpful to give you good idea about your car). They can lead to funny situations. For instance comfort, car can be considered comfortable even if it has super stiff-spine-shattering suspension, how you ask? It has REALLY good audio and air-con.

A car with good audio and air-con and soft suspension will significantly more comfortable. If I would make the market simulation the way you'd like it, I would have to calculate and balance every single detailed stat (the ones the big stats are made of). Sounds like tons of fun and will never come out right.

[Janekk]

Again I don't expect you to make it super detailed, certainly not for a forum challenge. I'm just speaking my mind in general, has more to do with what I would want in tycoon part of game more than anything, also yes it would be pretty hard to balance.

[Reaper392]

thanks for adding the sales to break even, it really makes it easier to judge where i should price the car.

I've just noticed that you might have made a mistake on your buyer markets. for large $$$ is says prestige wanted is 0. Is this supposed to be 8?

[Der Bayer]

Good find! It should be something from 8 to 10, I'll have to try out what works best.

Another thing I will add today is the choice of factory size: It determines factory overhead and production capacity. Tooling costs will scale with factory size, too. Then it will be a bit easier to go for the niches.

[Der Bayer]

I added the factory choices to the spreadsheets.

If you want to help me balancing the challenge, you may send me the .txt file of a car you put into the spreadsheet in a PM. This does not mean that the challenge has started. You may send me more than one car and you are of course allowed to build a new car for the challenge when it is open. I won't publish the results, too, as the calculations are still subject to change and I don't want to show other players what you have built. You would just do me a big favor getting more useful cars for balancing. Thanks in advance to all contributers!

[Reaper392]

In the factory section of the template, what timescale is the production units working to? Is it production units per day, week, month, etc? Also, in the calculator it says maximum production. Again, what timescale is this on? I assume it is either per month or for the duration of the challenge

[Der Bayer]

Both things mean the complete duration of the challenge.

[shawa666]

Question: Are we allowed to play with the quality sliders?

[Jakgoe]

Of course, but don't forget that overuse of the will probably not end well.

[Der Bayer]

Again, I changed tooling multipliers and the core of the buyer model, so if you want to build and send me some cars for balancing, go ahead! The first batch yesterday already helped a lot! Thanks!

[Reaper392]

Again, I changed tooling multipliers and the core of the buyer model, so if you want to build and send me some cars for balancing, go ahead! The first batch yesterday already helped a lot! Thanks!

I forgot to say, but one of the cars I sent you had some silly high quality sliders. It was meant to be an 80s equivalent of the bugatti veyron but i went overboard a bit. Hopefully that hasn't offset your attempts at balancing too much

[Der Bayer]

If it used much quality, it was expensive as hell. It's good to have such a thing in there, too, someone will probably try to do the same in the real challenge.

Btw: I added taxes, 15% of the car's price tag will disappear magically.

[Reaper392]

If it used much quality, it was expensive as hell. It's good to have such a thing in there, too, someone will probably try to do the same in the real challenge.

Btw: I added taxes, 15% of the car's price tag will disappear magically.

How much do we have to pay to move our factory to the cayman islands?

[Der Bayer]

15% of the overall revenue

[Dragawn]

In that case I want a subsidy!