CTC - Car Tycoon Challenge #3 [RESULTS]

[salen00b]

I FINALLY MADE A PROFITABLE CAR!

And my car sold well in every buyer groups I was aiming for.

Congrats to the winners!

[frisco557]

I ended up on the wrong end of the chart. I guess the handcrafted luxury car doesn't quite work as well as intended.

[07CobaltGirl]

I think I should stop building cars....

I don't think I understand the competition at all! Another loss.

[HighOctaneLove]

Great competition and I've learnt a lot about the differences between my perception of what a market wants and the cold, cruel reality of actual production...

I found a couple of issues with the parts template which I didn't have enough time to mention before the comp was over.

1: My car builder doesn't have the option for rear struts. Is this available in the private Beta but not the public builds? (I'm on 1417 btw)

2: I found the throttlebody section confusing. It reads like single barrel, double barrel, triple carb, 4 barrel then throttle body per cylinder with no allowance for SPFI, MPFI or DI (single throttle). I interpreted it as no of throttle bodies or carb barrels, so a MI, SPFI, MPFI, DI or single barrel carb were single; twin throttles or 2 barrels was two, three barrels was three and 4 barrels was 4. the throttle per cyl would cover 3*2 barrels, 2*4 Barrel and the multiple throttle body types of mechanical, MPFI or DI. I hope I was right

Otherwise I found this a great exercise and I'm looking forward to the next challenge!

[Slim Jim]

I don't think I understand the competition at all! Another loss.

You and me both sister! I thought by modeling my car after one of the most profitable, and most popular cars (in the US) I would've made at least a small profit. Right up until the moment I realized that the V6/6-speed version of the Accord probably represents like 5% of total Accord sales. I keep building cars that I would like to drive, rather than building cars that will *actually* sell.

I have to say though, the sales numbers feel about right for the car I modeled, so no complaints there. Also, the majority of the sales ended up in the market I was targeting. [/silver lining] I just gotta, ummm... keep trying.


edit:

2: I found the throttlebody section confusing. It reads like single barrel, double barrel, triple carb, 4 barrel then throttle body per cylinder with no allowance for SPFI, MPFI or DI (single throttle). I interpreted it as no of throttle bodies or carb barrels, so a MI, SPFI, MPFI, DI or single barrel carb were single; twin throttles or 2 barrels was two, three barrels was three and 4 barrels was 4. the throttle per cyl would cover 3*2 barrels, 2*4 Barrel and the multiple throttle body types of mechanical, MPFI or DI. I hope I was right

That's not how I interpreted it.

I interpreted it as:
MI, SPFI, MPFI, DI, single barrel carb = single
MPFI twin, DI twin, 2x1-bbl, 2x2-bbl, 2x4-bbl, DCOE twin = twin
3x1-bbl, 3x2-bbl, DCOE triple = triple
DCOE quad = quad
MI ITBs, MPFI ITBs, DI ITBs = throttle per cylinder

Hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong...

[VicVictory]

I think I should stop building cars....

I don't think I understand the competition at all! Another loss.

Last time around a whole bunch of people sold absolutely every car they could, and a lot of buyers just ended up buying "whatever was available", so to speak. So this time around almost everyone upped the size of their factory, creating a production glut. But there weren't more consumers to make up for this. I didn't see nearly as many people pegging out their production this time, which resulted in wasted factory and tooling costs.

It bit me this time around.

But from what Der Bayer was saying, next time around factory scaling is going to work much differently. So hang on and let's see what's going to happen.

[8bs]

I'm loving every single challenge, and has it was said, the purpose is to improve and test the tycoon part of the game. So i think that in future challenges things probably are more balanced.

If i may suggest, i think that the buyer group scores in the calculator spreadsheet should be more accurate/perceptible, for instance, my car scored in the compact $ segment, and in my calculator sheet, the highest score was in the transport group. Theoretically in the competition the biggest slice of my market should be transport and not compact $. Is this caused by the competitors having better cars?

[Janekk]

Yes, my car scored in transport pretty high, in any case higher than in segments where it came in top three and still I was like 7th best selling car there. It's just that other people who focused on this group more scored higher. Essentially these buyer scores are meaningless unless there is something to compare them to, car with very low score could be best seller just because everyone else scored even lower. For instance hot-hatch was actually one of my worst scoring segments and yet it sold very well in there because there weren't many viable alternatives on the market, most sports cars were aimed at higher segment.

[Der Bayer]

Exactly. The point of the spreadsheet is to help you get your pricing right. You can see at which pricetag scores begin to drop significantly and thus what is too expensive for your target group. The overall values don't say anything without competition. You can use them to compare different cars you built.

[strop]

The over-production issue in this challenge to me is more a product of market forces than systematic balancing issues: people aimed to capitalise on ability to produce, enticed by profits, but compared to previous iterations, the margins ended up being a lot slimmer. Keep in mind that making a "profit" wouldn't be enough in reality, you'd have no more money to invest in new technology or to expand if you so wished, and in future years you'd have to rely on an ageing platform, placing you at a potential disadvantage. Hence the goal of making at least as much as your engineering costs to ensure viability.

Even urging caution though, I doubt that this will stop some from shooting for the stars and causing general mayhem

[07CobaltGirl]

My optimal price was $345k (are you kidding me???), but even then I would have only sold 1/7th of the cars I actually did sell at $75k. At any price I would have never made a profit, regardless. My target group, like in the previous CTC's, was the GT and MidSport groups, with some fallout into the L$$$ segment and possible a bit in the SC segment. So the focus was Sportiness, Comfort, Prestige, and Safety, with a small emphasis on tameness. Tameness and sportiness are tough to balance, but I think I did a good job of it. Comfort, Safety, and Prestige increase costs exponentially, but I managed to score decently in those three as well. I actually hit all of the target groups and also the L$$ and TD groups, which I did not expect, albeit at >5% in all categories achieved. I did manage to sell 38k of 190k produced. My break even was 43k, so I almost made it....

I think my problem is fear of not having enough to sell for profit, so I am overproducing. I will try a small factory in the next round and submit a similar car again. I make what I like. Otherwise, what is the point of making cars??? The automobile is a passion. A disease. An artform. Making a business out of it is tough! haha

I don't think I actually understood how to use the calculator at all. I know it is impossible to tell in a stand-alone environment how it would perform in a group setting. Improper understanding/usage of this tool probably hindered me quite a bit. The other thing is, it is hard to comprehend pricing in a given year using comparative values from another year. A $345k car in 2003 was practically unthinkable and it is difficult to stop thinking in terms of year currency...at least for me.

Thanks again for the challenge, Der Bayer! It was fun, even if I don't understand it yet.

[Der Bayer]

I played around with the new scoring and I think I reached a better state than last time. This is what the results would have been with the new algorithms and the fixed trackday group:


(The labels on the bar chart are wrong, I know)

Price in general is a bit more important now as stats go into the calculations more linearily and extremes don't work that well anymore. Thus, some players' pricing is now a bit off of course (including mine), but I think the overall tendency is better. What do you think? Are the results promising enough for a use in the next round?

[VicVictory]

Interesting how that moves people around the charts (and creates a couple humongous negative extremes).

Those alterations also made a +$400M difference for me, and shot someone else notable from big loss to big profit.

I'm wondering if reality isn't somewhere in between those two points. But definitely looking forward to the next challenge.

07CobaltGirl - the $$ always kill my brain, because the game is in 2010 dollars, not 2003 or 1966 or whenever. Your $76500 in 2003 dollars would be about 90500 in 2010 dollars. Still not $345k like your "optimal price", but I'm also thinking that's an aspect of the game that needs tweaking as far as ultra-high end cars.

[Reaper392]

Somehow that puts my car massively in the negative, presumably with dragawns car taking most of the sales that I had before. Presumably if my car was priced ~10k cheaper it would solve that because you get similar sportiness for the money with both cars as they are currently priced, but his car is much better on the lesser stats which will swing the customers over.

Do you have that optimum price graph for my car at all to see if my theory is right?

[Dragawn]

Looks good Der Bayer, less sales in hot hatch segment for me, which makes sense, and I didn't even expect to sell much in Hot Hatch to begin with, let alone being market leader in it (as it should, considering I threw in high-end interior and entertainment, just because it helped my scores, making my car more of a S4/RS4 rather than an Impreza). Only got me half the sales, but still 6th in profits, but this model does seem more challenging, or maybe just the pricing is off.
Anyhow, seems better overall.

And yeah Reaper, the customers seemed to like sacrificing some fun for some luxury, kudos to you managing to make such an extreme beast for a relatively low price though!
EDIT: You should have gotten more sales in Trackday though, seems like the calculations still might not be perfect, although you had especially low tameness.