10-15-2017, 04:32 PM
Hi there!
First of all, this is a great game already!
I picked it up about two years ago, but only now did I finally give it a serious try. I just managed my first successful playthrough on CFO difficulty and after some 30-odd hours I can say I quite enjoyed it. However after 35 years ingame and a market share of roughly 80% with one model in almost every category and branches in every city, I probably spend around 80% of my time micromanaging my production every turn. Satisfying customer demand based on last month's estimated missed sales figures and adjusting prices for all the districts has become quite the chore, which is why I decided to stop with this playthrough.
Here are a few suggestions that in my oppinion would greatly improve gameplay with large companies:
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The auto-production option in the mega-menu is a great idea and would relieve the player of a lot of the fiddling with production in the later game. The way I played the game, this became a repetitive and tiring task.
There are some problems with the auto-production, which make it completely unusable (for me) at the moment however:
First, it adjusts production so that no sales are missed, which is good, however it builds up HUGE amounts of stock in the process. It seems the stock is not taken into account while calculating needed production. I suspect the new contract system might mess things up as well, due to the heavily fluctuating demand (I usually had 5+ contracts running at any given time).
Secondly, auto-production caps the shipping distance for all branches at maximum (20,000km). If like me, you have branches in every city between 1920-1935, the resulting shipping that occurs kills any chance for a profit, rendering the option pretty much useless. I'd like to have the option to set a flat shipping distance for the auto production option, or even better of course, not have the district shipping option locked, so I can still adjust that myself, and auto-production has to deal with it. Although that option might be a lot harder to get right I presume.
I attached my save game, just enable auto-production and see how it messes up the production.
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This might come from playing the game on CFO difficulty, I understand that with all game options enabled, eventually the employee benefits will be quite the money sink and it will harder to amass ridiculous amounts of cash fairly rapidly. But what made the game "click" for me, basically the moment where I felt like I had beaten the game, was when I discovered parts improments (or modifications). I basically got along by developing one chassis, engine and trans, doing about 5 major modifications on them respectively, and then using them in basically every available car body. That created cars that were way ahead of the competition in every category and made the game a little too easy in my oppinion.
Long story short, I think parts modifications are overpowered, especially since they require no time whatsoever.
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I use the district presets in the mega-menu a lot, they are essential for me managing production and sales.
It would be great to have an option to set sale price differences per district, either percentage based or flat. I usually sell cars for less money in markets like Asia or South America, than I do in Europe and North America. Manually setting this up is a chore. Once the price difference is set up, I can of course adjust sale prices percentage-wise globally, but for the initial setup this would save a lot of time.
Example:
I set the price level in North America and Europe to 100%, in Asia to 70%, in South America to 75%. Then I set a price for a new car in the mega-menu for the Europe district. I hit apply to all and the prices in the other districts are set accordingly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, this is a great game already!
I picked it up about two years ago, but only now did I finally give it a serious try. I just managed my first successful playthrough on CFO difficulty and after some 30-odd hours I can say I quite enjoyed it. However after 35 years ingame and a market share of roughly 80% with one model in almost every category and branches in every city, I probably spend around 80% of my time micromanaging my production every turn. Satisfying customer demand based on last month's estimated missed sales figures and adjusting prices for all the districts has become quite the chore, which is why I decided to stop with this playthrough.
Here are a few suggestions that in my oppinion would greatly improve gameplay with large companies:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The auto-production option in the mega-menu is a great idea and would relieve the player of a lot of the fiddling with production in the later game. The way I played the game, this became a repetitive and tiring task.
There are some problems with the auto-production, which make it completely unusable (for me) at the moment however:
First, it adjusts production so that no sales are missed, which is good, however it builds up HUGE amounts of stock in the process. It seems the stock is not taken into account while calculating needed production. I suspect the new contract system might mess things up as well, due to the heavily fluctuating demand (I usually had 5+ contracts running at any given time).
Secondly, auto-production caps the shipping distance for all branches at maximum (20,000km). If like me, you have branches in every city between 1920-1935, the resulting shipping that occurs kills any chance for a profit, rendering the option pretty much useless. I'd like to have the option to set a flat shipping distance for the auto production option, or even better of course, not have the district shipping option locked, so I can still adjust that myself, and auto-production has to deal with it. Although that option might be a lot harder to get right I presume.
I attached my save game, just enable auto-production and see how it messes up the production.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This might come from playing the game on CFO difficulty, I understand that with all game options enabled, eventually the employee benefits will be quite the money sink and it will harder to amass ridiculous amounts of cash fairly rapidly. But what made the game "click" for me, basically the moment where I felt like I had beaten the game, was when I discovered parts improments (or modifications). I basically got along by developing one chassis, engine and trans, doing about 5 major modifications on them respectively, and then using them in basically every available car body. That created cars that were way ahead of the competition in every category and made the game a little too easy in my oppinion.
Long story short, I think parts modifications are overpowered, especially since they require no time whatsoever.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I use the district presets in the mega-menu a lot, they are essential for me managing production and sales.
It would be great to have an option to set sale price differences per district, either percentage based or flat. I usually sell cars for less money in markets like Asia or South America, than I do in Europe and North America. Manually setting this up is a chore. Once the price difference is set up, I can of course adjust sale prices percentage-wise globally, but for the initial setup this would save a lot of time.
Example:
I set the price level in North America and Europe to 100%, in Asia to 70%, in South America to 75%. Then I set a price for a new car in the mega-menu for the Europe district. I hit apply to all and the prices in the other districts are set accordingly.
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