PCTC #1: Packbat's Car Tycoon Challege, 1955 [RESULTS]

[Packbat]

Welcome to 1955, and Packbat's Car Tycoon Challenge #1!

The goal of a CTC is to make a good profit by designing, building, and selling cars. Unlike most competitions, there is very little restriction on what kind of car you can build; the only questions are how much competition you will have for the customers you try to entice, and how good your car is relative to that competition - and the only hints you will have about the cars the other entrants are building is what they choose to share.

Good luck and have fun!

(Thanks to conan and Leonardo9613 for feedback on the draft rules via IRC.)

Edit: Updated Market Calculation Sheet to allow shared engineering costs between trims of a model built in separate factories.

Edit 2: Added strategy tips; made bugfixes to page three of Market Calculation Sheet.

Edit 3: Added .ods version of spreadsheet as Market Calculation Sheet v4.1 Simplified.

Entry Restrictions:

• Up to two entries per company. These may be either two models or two trims on one model. Teams are permitted, but no player may enter as a part of more than one company.
• Bodies and fixtures from the base game and from Pyrlix's "High Quality Essentials" Steam Workshop Collection circa 2015-12-28 are automatically permitted except Felgen's "1940's/1950's Sports coupe" (which was added to the base game with the latest update). All other workshop mods will be permitted or rejected on a case-by-case basis. (Edit: Felgen's mod has since been removed from the Workshop; if you still have it installed, it will be one of the two Porsche Speedster-esque bodies.)
• 1955 or earlier on all tabs.
• Engine reliability > 0.
• Engine Family combined Engineering Time < 90.00 (see below).
• Vehicle reliability > 0.
• Model combined Engineering Time < 180.00 (see below).
• One factory per Model.
• Sticker prices should be set in the Markets tab.

Regarding combined Engineering Time:

• The rule for combined costs is the larger plus one-third of the smaller. (For example: 45.0 and 70.0 combine to make 85.0.)
• Trims on the same Model and Variants on the same Engine Family will be priced as the combined Engineering Time and Engineering Costs.
• Trims on the same Model will use combined Tooling Costs and share maximum daily production. (For example: if the factory can make 180 cars per day of one trim and 150 cars per day of the other, at full blast it can make 180 of the former and 0 of the latter, 150 and 25, 90 and 75, 36 and 120, 0 and 150, or anything in between.)
• Two Variants on one Engine Family built in the same factory (that is, as powerplants for separate Trims of a single Model) use combined Tooling Costs. If one Variant powers both Trims in a factory, the Tooling Cost is only paid once. If the same Engine Family powers two different Models, the full tooling cost is paid for each.

Regarding factory sizes:

• The game does not save the factory size with the model.
• Each time you open a trim in the Sandbox, the game lets you choose a factory size in the Detailed Stats sub-tab.
• Changing the factory size will change the tooling costs (engine and trim), the maximum cars made per day, and the total expense per car. (This can also change the sticker price in the Markets tab.)

If an entry is ineligible for any reason, I will post to that effect in the thread. Corrections I can do trivially on my end (e.g. "redline should be 6200 RPM", "sorry, please ignore the 'Super-Racing' trim", "yes, the sticker price should be $10,500, not $1,500") are free; otherwise, unless I make an explicit exception, I allow exactly one revision of any nature for any reason prior to the deadline. (If you send me an ineligible revision to an eligible entry and I can't fix it on my end as above, I will keep the eligible entry, but it will still count as your one revision.)

Competition Format:

(The following is a summary - a longer description can be found in my planning thread.)

The competition represents sales of the first three years of production of your car, 1955 through 1957 (760 work days). For simplicity, the number of cars built will be exactly equal to the number of cars sold. Scoring in each market demographic will use a similar linear sliding-scale formula to the Hoon Competition - values for each stat are compared to the worst and the best value in that stat. The scored stats are:

• 15% of Total Cost (flat deduction)
• Non-Fuel Running Costs and Mileage-Adjusted Fuel Running Costs in Gasmea (flat deduction)
• Drivability
• Sportiness
• Comfort
• Prestige
• Safety
• Utility
• Practicality
• Offroad
• Reliability

...and each of the nine market demographics - Commuter, City, Family, Sport, Luxury, Offroad, Utility, Muscle/Super, and Track - has its own weights on each of these and its own mileage multiplier, as shown in the image below. Also shown are the number of customers in each market demographic per car entered (numbers in parentheses represent 40 entries) and the sticker prices affordable to 95% and 25% of said customers. Sales will be divided between cars the customers can afford on the basis of their desirability, with most sales going to the most desirable cars. (The Idiosyncracy scores in the spreadsheet represent how willing customers are to consider cars that score worse than the best on offer.)

Market Demo Charts v2.png (164.6 KiB) Viewed 7341 times

The attached Market Calculation Sheet has formulae for estimating desirability and affordability of your vehicles and a calculator for determining break-even sales.

(Please note: while the demographics are closely based on the in-game markets, the formula I use often puts more emphasis on running costs than is reflected by the in-game Competitiveness figures.)

Strategy Tips

• Build a car that makes sense for one or two of the demos. The in-game markets will probably be pretty accurate - a high-scoring Premium Budget car in-game, for example, will probably do reasonably well in Luxury here. (It'll probably lose some of the high-end customers to more expensive cars, but it'll make up for some of that by capturing customers that can't afford those cars.)
• Make sure your car and engine are each within the engineering time limit. The limit is pretty forgiving if you go with standard stuff, but fancy components and high quality sliders can eat it up in a hurry.
• Optional: build another car. If you're sharing an engine family between two variants, the 90 ET limit corresponds to two variants with 67 ET, one with 70 and one with 60, one with 75 and one with 45, &c.; if you're sharing a model between two trim levels, the 180 ET limit corresponds to two trims with 135 ET, one with 140 and one with 120, one with 150 and one with 90, &c. (It's probably a good idea to sketch out the simpler one first, because reducing ET can be tricky.) Otherwise, same thoughts as above.
• Estimate based on the sizes of your target markets and your budget levels how many customers you're courting, and estimate how many cars you might sell. (The formulae on page one of the spreadsheet can help, here.) In my pre-competition testing, at a 10% price markup, I could break even by moving a third of the maximum production; page three of the spreadsheet has a break-even sales calculator for you to use.

Entry Format:

Please name your cars and engines in Automation as follows:

• Model name: PCTC1-[username]-[anything]
• Trim name: [anything]
• Family name: PCTC1-[username]-[anything]
• Variant name: [anything]

(You may abbreviate or misspell your username so long as you are unambiguous.)

Models should be made into folderized .zip files, as can be generated by the Export function of the game. In addition to these files, you should include the following data in your PM:

  Code:

Company Name:
Nationality:

Vehicle #1 Name:
Vehicle #1 Price:

Factory #1 City:
Factory #1 Size:

Vehicle #2 Name:
Vehicle #2 Price:

Factory #2 City: (if same, leave blank)
Factory #2 Size: (if same, leave blank)

(Nationality and city are purely for flavor.)

An example of a correctly-formatted entry:

Company Name: Packbat Auto Works (PAW)
Nationality: US

Vehicle #1 Name: Pteropus C
Vehicle #1 Price: $10,500

Factory #1 City: Baltimore, MD
Factory #1 Size: Large 1

Vehicle #2 Name: Jubatus E
Vehicle #2 Price: $15,950

Factory #2 City: Baltimore, MD
Factory #2 Size: Medium 1

(If prices in the PM do not match prices in-game, I will PM you about the discrepancy; unless you tell me otherwise, I will use the in-game price.)

Entries and Results:

Companies Entered (13 vehicles):

• Vanquist Motor Company (conan, 2 vehicles)
• Desert Mountains Automotive (Zabhawkin, 2 vehicles)
• Žnoprešk Avtotehnika (NormanVauxhall, 1 vehicle)
• Storm Automotive (Madrias, 1 vehicle)
• ABR Designs (Puffster, 2 vehicles)*
• Solo Motors Co. (thecarlover, 1 vehicle)
• Grey-Skies Industries (oppositelock, 2 vehicles)
• Kasuar (koolkei, 2 vehicles)*

*: revision used.

The deadline for this competition has been extended to 11:59:59 p.m. EST on Monday, January 25th.

Edit: Contest closed! Thank you all for entering. Results posted here.

[Puffster]

Sweet, I have really been looking forward to this challenge! Look forward to participating, so many decisions to make now!

[Zabhawkin]

I wonder what my targets will be?

[koolkei]

wait. last clarification. if i pick a smaller market, how do i win against those who went with a bigger market?

im assuming market share percetage?

[Packbat]

The main stat I was going to report was return on investment - that is, how much profit you made relative to your engineering and tooling costs. If you're building to serve a smaller market, you'll build smaller factories and be spending less up-front.

Edit: I will be reporting market share as well, of course.

[Puffster]

I'm pretty sure this is really obvious, but just want to be 100% certain as I rather ask to much beforehand and look stupid now than after submitting: We select our own sales price percentage-wise right? It's not fixed within each category?
So the potential profit must be balanced with selling out your line in competition with other participants and their lineups.

Which leads on to my next question: Will we have any way of announcing which categories everyone will be participating in? Cause number of competitors should be crucial to factory sizing and pricing. Larger factories and slimmer margins would potentially be even more profitable with a good car for the class, but devastating if not good enough. On the other hand not knowing leads to making assumptions based (mostly) on blind luck and whatever knowledge you have of the competitors. Will probably lead to more conservative estimates and more sold out product lines.

Exciting either way of course, just enjoying the mind games and airing my ideas, please let me know if that should be kept to the other thread.

Third question (mainly because english is not my primary language): Combined engineering time is also for 2 separate cars? Once again just to be absolutely clear, really excited about the challenge!

[Packbat]

First question: yes, absolutely. I wouldn't be able to restrict by category anyway, because the customers aren't restricted thus - there's nothing stopping you from trying to buold a car to win both Luxury and Offroad, for example (except that it would probably be too expensive), and if your Sport car turns out to be dominant in Track, Track customers will buy it.

Second question:You can announce in-thread. People often do. It seems like a good idea to me, but I haven't thought it out - but my opinion doesn't matter. I'd ask that people not post their cars or any of the scored stats of their cars, but "I'm gonna make the swankiest barge ever!" is totally fine.

Third question (and no worries - let me know when I'm not clear!): if you have two trims on one model, they have combined engineering times, but if you have two different models, they do not. Hopefully that explains it for you.

[koolkei]

so i could submit 2 cars, but with different trims and still only have the total of 1 car's engineering time?

[Packbat]

If you submit two cars on the same trim, Trim A (which has more engineering time) and Trim B (which has less), then the total is Trim A's engineering time plus one third of Trim B's engineering time. So you could have two trims with 135 ET, one with 145 ET and one with 105 ET, or one with 155 ET and one with 75 ET, or anything along those lines. Does that make it clearer?

[koolkei]

okay. got it. thx. even if i use a different engine family right?

[Packbat]

Correct. If you use different engine families, you'll be paying the full engineering cost for each engine, but you still get to share engineering costs for the trims.

[ArnRno]

I think I'm going to sit this one out.
No matter how many times I read through the guidelines, I just can't understand what I'm expected to create.
Good luck to the rest of you, though.

[Leonardo9613]

Seems pretty simple to me. There are 9 demographic groups, make a car that appeal to one or more of them. Send it to packbat, and that's about it.

[koolkei]

why not get in just for the giggles?

my version of the TL;DR

make a car realistically.
what i mean by that is, like the TCC, but this time, you need to take into account
- the cost of producing the car
- the sales price you're targeting at and,
- your profit margin

[Packbat]

No problem, ArnRno! I agree with Leo and koolkei about how hard it is in practice (with a caveat, below), but I realize I made the rules post pretty complicated this time - I made the planning thread to help me simplify it, but I could have gone farther.

I guess if I were giving a strategy guide, I would say:

• Build a car that makes sense for one or two of the demos. The in-game markets will probably be pretty accurate - a high-scoring Premium Budget car in-game, for example, will probably do reasonably well in Luxury here. (It'll probably lose some of the high-end customers to more expensive cars, but it'll make up for some of that by capturing customers that can't afford those cars.)
• Make sure your car and engine are within the engineering time limit. It's pretty forgiving if you go with standard stuff, but fancy components and high quality sliders can eat up that limit in a hurry.
• Optional: build another car. If you're sharing an engine family between two variants, the 90 ET limit corresponds to two variants with 67 ET, one with 70 and one with 60, one with 75 and one with 45, &c.; if you're sharing a model between two trim levels, the 180 ET limit corresponds to two trims with 135 ET, one with 140 and one with 120, one with 150 and one with 90, &c. (It's probably a good idea to sketch out the simpler one first, because reducing ET can be tricky.) Otherwise, same thoughts as above.
• Estimate based on the sizes of your target markets and your budget levels how many customers you're courting, and estimate how many cars you might sell. (The formulae on page one of the spreadsheet can help, here.) In my pre-competition testing, at a 10% price markup, I could break even by moving a third of the maximum production; page three of the spreadsheet has a break-even sales calculator for you to use.