Production Efficiency

[Punkal]

Will there be production efficiency built in?
Say i make 3 different engines a inline 3, 4 and 6 with engin size of 1.5l 2l and 3l all these engins will have the same displacement per cylinder meaning quite a few engin components would be the same/interchangeable. Say i produce 5000 of each engin will the cost to produce 65000 pistons of the same design be cheaper than producing 15k for the inline 3, 20k for the inline 4 and 30k for the inline 6?
Sorry if i did not get my point across i am on my phone ill try to make it read better when i get home if there is issues.

[JeffreyCor]

I would imagine you'd be producing engines a lot more than producing pistons or other subcomponents. If modeling was done down to every subcomponant and tracked at that level you'd need a supercomputer to run the game.
Over time production would become more effecient by having more advanced production technology though manufactuering techneaques and better factories to be able to produce more for less.

[Daffyflyer]

^What he said

[zeussy]

We did originally plan for something like that. We even built a rough prototype, but it vastly over complicated everything in the long run.

[Punkal]

I am glad you have at least considered it and maybe you will put it in later

[iknowtech]

Would a Intel Pentium P6100 @ 2.00GHz with Intel HD Graphics be enough...

or

a Intel Core i3-2100 @3.10GHz with Intel HD Graphics, also.

[Killrob]

It's definitely not the processors which will have trouble with the game, that's pretty certain. On-board graphics chips on the other hand might be forcing you to choose the super low resolution viewport, which means stuff will look very grainy. But let's wait what zeussy has to say about that, I have a hard time estimating on-board graphics performance figures.

[zeussy]

I don't have anything with onboard graphics, such as the latest Intel HD stuff to actually try it. The HD Graphics chips support the required pixel shader, so it might technically work, no idea on the framerates.

[CookieTheDog'sOwner]

You could work the concept in on the cheap, sort of.

Have you ever ordered printed material in bulk. (I used to run the school newspaper, and my father was in politics and used to buy bumper stickers and signs and flyers in bulk, so that's where I'm coming from.) The printer charges you a flat "set up fee" for each job, and then a certain amount per unit, which possibly gets discounted once the run gets above a certain size. Let's say the set up fee for bumper stickers is $50, and the per unit printing cost is $0.05. 100 bumper stickers is $55, or $0.55 each. 200 is $60, or $0.30 each. 1,000 is $100, or $0.10 each. See what's happening? The bigger the press run, the cheaper the per unit cost gets because the set up fee gets spread out over more units.

You could do something similar with production costs. Let's say we have a plant capable of 100,000 engines per year. There would be a base charge imposed for each engine type the plant produces, plus a per unit charge for each engine. You could allocate that production capacity however you want, but if you build many different types, or build small lots, the per unit cost is higher than if you standardize on one design and build it in quantity. You could make it a little more sophisticated in that the base charge for a new engine design that's a modification of one you've produced before would be less than for a completely new design. I'm no programmer, but it seems to me that this concept wouldn't be too hard to work into the software.

Is this making sense?

[T16]

The set up fee would be the tooling cost and that have been a part of the Automation plan as long as I have been here. (unless they have quietly binned that plan)

[Killrob]

Yes, this does make sense, and as far as I know will be implemented. Having the factory to yourself the per-unit cost would not depend as much on the number you produce though but: factory efficiency, material costs, worker costs, storage costs. The decreasing price per unit you mention is thus an "emergent behavior" of the item cost in this setting.