Nice thread, some good suggestions here. Id like to talk about a few of them, ive left out the ones which ive seen discussed and suggested elsewhere. Ill leave those to other forum users or Dev's.
Specifically the part where your saying that minor changes to a vehicle should be much easier/cheaper than major ones.
In a game called Aurora(a turn based 4x game that isn't related to Gearcity), they have a system where you can produce ships from specific lines in shipyards. You can also upgrade any old ship to the new designs in those same lines.
Unless the ship you want to upgrade is similar to the new upgraded model, it actually costs more (much more) than just building a new one. So basically its usually pointless to try and convert a Destroyer into a Battleship, its cheaper to build a new one.
(For people not familiar with warships, a Battleship is probably 10-20x larger than a Destroyer)
What your suggesting sounds like much the same thing, but for designs instead of production. The smaller the difference between the old and new one, the cheaper and easier it is to design. The reverse would also be true, that the bigger the difference, the more expensive and harder it is to design.
I actually like this a lot. It would encourage you to use the trim system for minor changes(which would be cheaper) and save the "New Model" one for major changes.
On the games where ive set auto wages ive never had to deal with that. When i try to do it manually i usually do.
(01-28-2014, 11:23 AM)freeman2344 Wrote: 1. Development time and cost for marginally different trim variants of a vehicle should be significantly lower. I like the option of offering different variants of the same car to different target markets (higher classed, more expensive trim variants for a wealthier segment of the population and so forth). In most cases, these changes would merely affect the interior setting. IMO something like this should not take as long as the design of the original vehicle, if the trim variant is developed after the development of the original car and not be as expensive as said development either (the same should apply to trims that are developed at the same time as the original vehicle). Development time and cost could, for example, be made dependent on the amount of changes made to the vehicle with a chassis change necessitating almost a complete redesign and small changes, like the interior rating, only accounting for a small percentage of the original time and cost (with stuff like different engines maybe coming up to 25-30%).I thought i could add an example to this, a similar mechanic in a different game, to flesh the suggestion out a bit.
Specifically the part where your saying that minor changes to a vehicle should be much easier/cheaper than major ones.
In a game called Aurora(a turn based 4x game that isn't related to Gearcity), they have a system where you can produce ships from specific lines in shipyards. You can also upgrade any old ship to the new designs in those same lines.
Unless the ship you want to upgrade is similar to the new upgraded model, it actually costs more (much more) than just building a new one. So basically its usually pointless to try and convert a Destroyer into a Battleship, its cheaper to build a new one.
(For people not familiar with warships, a Battleship is probably 10-20x larger than a Destroyer)
What your suggesting sounds like much the same thing, but for designs instead of production. The smaller the difference between the old and new one, the cheaper and easier it is to design. The reverse would also be true, that the bigger the difference, the more expensive and harder it is to design.
I actually like this a lot. It would encourage you to use the trim system for minor changes(which would be cheaper) and save the "New Model" one for major changes.
(01-28-2014, 11:23 AM)freeman2344 Wrote: 3. IMO a different measure of acceleration is required for the early game years as 0-60 is obviously not a relevant value. Maybe 0-10/20 or even 0 to top speed (which would probably make the most sense).This is a very good suggestion, i like it. Ive seen the accel before early on ingame and it really doesn't give you or customers any good information in its current form.
(01-28-2014, 11:23 AM)freeman2344 Wrote: 6. An option to automatically adapt wages to the average value would be nice, as the current auto wage is always way too high and adjustment by percentage is not ideal IMO.I think the reason the wages are set automatically high (in my experience) is if you put them any lower you risk getting strikes and having to deal with unions.
On the games where ive set auto wages ive never had to deal with that. When i try to do it manually i usually do.