Manufacturing skill?

[Eric.B]

Again sorry for the late reply. Pushed back long answers until I got the hot patch #2 stuff taken care of.

Does Manufacturing skill build based on the number of cars made per factory (thus, encouraging Quantity runs), or is it based off of the number of lines being utilized per factory?

Both actually. The amount of lines you use in a factory would negate losses due to running full quantity. Where as quality run negates under use of a factory. Running both quality runs and a full factory would increase your skills the most. But this would be expensive, as the more lines you use the higher your factory costs are.

Thus, the question is, to maintain manufacturing skill, is it better to run 5 lines at max Quantity, and push out 500 cars a month (100 cars/line), or is it equally valid to run 5 lines at 50 cars a month (10 cars/line), and you keep gaining manufacturing skill provided all 5 lines are utilized? Does manufacturing skill scale off of the percentage of the factory utilized, or off of the number of vehicles that come out the door?

For this situation you would be able to raise the skill the most by the second one, 5 lines 50 vehicles. This is because you are using the same number of factory lines but also building quality cars. Both situations will increase skills at the same rate. But the first one has a lower cap.

The factory portion works on the % of lines used in your company as a whole, the quality portion works off the quality/quantity sliders.