Easy Exploits

[Dolehof]

So I've played the game for a bit, and I actually quite enjoyed. By accident I stumbled on two very exploitable game mechanisms though.

1. Design vehicle with all slider to 0. It will be done next month but will be crap. Design new trim, put the slider where you actually want it and it will be done in 1 or 2 months. Not only does it saves months of development time, if you plan on a high performence or very luxery vehicle, it will saves you tons in development costs as well. If you plan a economical model, the costs of the additional trim development is still much less than you'll make by being able to put it on the market earlier.

2. Buying out companies on the stock market is way to easy cheap and gives exponential growth. Usually you end up with more money than you have before the buyout because the AI loves fat bank accounts. Sometimes you end up with a little less, but if you consider you can sell off their stocks at dump prices and than later sell off the mark, you're guaranteed to have more than your investment back within a month. Add to that you don't have invest in building factories yourself, sometimes even end up with some actually good cars or component in your catalog and you end up without competition and it's a guaranteed win.

[Eric.B]

So I've played the game for a bit, and I actually quite enjoyed. By accident I stumbled on two very exploitable game mechanisms though.

1. Design vehicle with all slider to 0. It will be done next month but will be crap. Design new trim, put the slider where you actually want it and it will be done in 1 or 2 months. Not only does it saves months of development time, if you plan on a high performence or very luxery vehicle, it will saves you tons in development costs as well. If you plan a economical model, the costs of the additional trim development is still much less than you'll make by being able to put it on the market earlier.

This has been brought up to me before. I have a ticket for it. But I have to come up with a reasonable fix without breaking the trim system.

2. Buying out companies on the stock market is way to easy cheap and gives exponential growth. Usually you end up with more money than you have before the buyout because the AI loves fat bank accounts. Sometimes you end up with a little less, but if you consider you can sell off their stocks at dump prices and than later sell off the mark, you're guaranteed to have more than your investment back within a month. Add to that you don't have invest in building factories yourself, sometimes even end up with some actually good cars or component in your catalog and you end up without competition and it's a guaranteed win.

The stock system is going to have a major overhaul for 1.21 (Or 1.20, I forget which version) Once stock evaluations are fixed and some adjustments are made to the takeover system it will be less exploitable. I may even make it possible to lose your company, thus losing the game. But we'll see.

[Dolehof]

I was thinking about that as well when I posted it. For legitimate trims it works fine. But when I wanted to introduce a sporty and comfy version of the same car I was a bit baffled one took a year, the other one 2 months. I try to restrain myself, but when a really lucrative contract comes up and I don't have a vehicle that matches the demands that's though... O:-)

One idea would be that you have to develop a prototype first, which already has some influence on the image of the production trim you'll base off it. You could make an all zero's prototype, but even if you would put all the sliders to 100 your production trims would have a rather poor image compared to their actual value.

Of course you could than build really cool prototype and than make mundane production trims of it that still profit from that image, but that's what real car companies do all the time, so hardly an exploit, just marketing. ;-)