11-15-2025, 02:50 AM
This bounty is complete.
I added two different turn event variables to the turn events system. There is now a purchasing power variable which adjusts the amount a household is willing to spend on a vehicle based on their yearly income. In the past, this used to be a fixed rate except for the first 10 years of the game. The starting 10 year bonus is still there.
The other new turn event variable adjusts the amount of people within an economic class that are purchasing a new vehicle. The sales processing function will break vehicle into four economic classes based on sales price and city per capita. The system then apply those modifiers to the population pool. This allows a finer grain control of the population pools. In general, higher and top economic classes will now purchase fewer vehicles in later game years. Which was the point of this bounty. This system also allows me to do some tweaks in the opposite end, pushing more lower income folks into the used market too.
These new variables are applied on the city level, but I have implemented a few extra entries in the turn events system to allow the changes to be applied regionally or globally. Currently, all these changes are applied globally, but we might get some bounties in the future that will make me fine tune things at a lower level. Or modders can do it.
While this helped out, there was still a few things I wanted to address. For example, let's say you have a 200 rated vehicle, and you set it to sell for $200,000. Your competition have 180-220 rated vehicle for sale from $30,000-$50,000. In past GearCity, you'd still get a decent amount of sales just by the nature of how things work. So, to address this, I now take an average of the buyer ratings for the vehicles in the class within a city. I also take an average of the sales price. I then compare your vehicle against those averages. If your rating to price ratio is extremely out of range of the average, it will reduce your sales. The formula rapidly declines if your ratio is 50% or worse than the average. You can also get a slight bonus if your ratio is better than average. There isn't much effect if your ratio is only slightly worse than average, and the effects are reduced if there are fewer than 5 vehicles for sale.
There was also a couple other tweaks, but the combination of these three things have improved the "too many rich people" exploit in the short amount of play testing I have done.
These changes are also reflected in the buyer rating report. In working with that report, I found a bug that could cause AI vehicles sales figures to be incorrect when your vehicle meets specific conditions. I have fixed that and applied the changes to base GearCity as well.
Finally, working on this bounty has uncovered a few other things I need to fix because of changes in the other bounties. For example, default slider 4 cylinder engines in the year 2000 are now 500cc and 400hp... thanks to the changes of removing the slider limits... I have some work to do there on the extreme ends. Anyway, I have it logged and it'll be done before release. Just letting everyone know I have more work to do.
I added two different turn event variables to the turn events system. There is now a purchasing power variable which adjusts the amount a household is willing to spend on a vehicle based on their yearly income. In the past, this used to be a fixed rate except for the first 10 years of the game. The starting 10 year bonus is still there.
The other new turn event variable adjusts the amount of people within an economic class that are purchasing a new vehicle. The sales processing function will break vehicle into four economic classes based on sales price and city per capita. The system then apply those modifiers to the population pool. This allows a finer grain control of the population pools. In general, higher and top economic classes will now purchase fewer vehicles in later game years. Which was the point of this bounty. This system also allows me to do some tweaks in the opposite end, pushing more lower income folks into the used market too.
These new variables are applied on the city level, but I have implemented a few extra entries in the turn events system to allow the changes to be applied regionally or globally. Currently, all these changes are applied globally, but we might get some bounties in the future that will make me fine tune things at a lower level. Or modders can do it.
While this helped out, there was still a few things I wanted to address. For example, let's say you have a 200 rated vehicle, and you set it to sell for $200,000. Your competition have 180-220 rated vehicle for sale from $30,000-$50,000. In past GearCity, you'd still get a decent amount of sales just by the nature of how things work. So, to address this, I now take an average of the buyer ratings for the vehicles in the class within a city. I also take an average of the sales price. I then compare your vehicle against those averages. If your rating to price ratio is extremely out of range of the average, it will reduce your sales. The formula rapidly declines if your ratio is 50% or worse than the average. You can also get a slight bonus if your ratio is better than average. There isn't much effect if your ratio is only slightly worse than average, and the effects are reduced if there are fewer than 5 vehicles for sale.
There was also a couple other tweaks, but the combination of these three things have improved the "too many rich people" exploit in the short amount of play testing I have done.
These changes are also reflected in the buyer rating report. In working with that report, I found a bug that could cause AI vehicles sales figures to be incorrect when your vehicle meets specific conditions. I have fixed that and applied the changes to base GearCity as well.
Finally, working on this bounty has uncovered a few other things I need to fix because of changes in the other bounties. For example, default slider 4 cylinder engines in the year 2000 are now 500cc and 400hp... thanks to the changes of removing the slider limits... I have some work to do there on the extreme ends. Anyway, I have it logged and it'll be done before release. Just letting everyone know I have more work to do.
"great writers are indecent people, they live unfairly, saving the best part for paper.
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski
good human beings save the world, so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal.
if you read this after I am dead it means I made it." ― Charles Bukowski