(05-11-2016, 11:43 AM)Eric.B Wrote: Yes, this is by design. You start to lose rating points the moment R&D is finished. I miss read you and though you were losing rating points while in R&D.
That being said, stat wise a 50 rated engine in this game is average. However realistically 20-30 rated is average when it comes to actually pricing a product people can buy. You can't design a top of the line product and expect it to be the best for decades. Technology doesn't work like that.
The rate of decline you state is wrong. To test numbers, I built a car with 75 rated smoothness. Simulated 36 months and the rating dropped to 59. That's a 22% decline, or 11% every 18 months. Far slower pace than Moore's law. In 6 years this rating is down to 46. And in 9 years you're at 36. Which is average compared to your peers (Check what they're offering to sell in the Licensing system.)
In that 9 year period overall rating went from 52 to 25. With a 9 year period game, a 25 rated engine is 147th out of 412 engines. 253 of which are newer designs.
At about 9 years is roughly the same time Toyota does an engine redesign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_engines#V8
Oh, I see what's going on here. I was being paranoid, wanting the highest rating possible. But if a lower rating like 20-40 is, by design of the game, "good", then that kind of soothes my worries a bit. Every part I build is usually in the 70s or so, and I freak out at how quickly it degrades to the 30s. But, now that I know that's normal, I guess I can deal with it.
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Yes, this is what it is for. However it's designed to be used once every couple of years to keep a component "fresh." This is why it has diminishing returns. If you're using it 5 times in one month, it's no wonder you can't keep a component average for a longer period of time.
Again I point to my timeline I gave you of the 5.0L Ford 302 Windsor engine. They made adjustments to the engine every few years.
You actually responded to yourself there, I messed up the quote
Quote:It may be easier to think of it this way, Modifications = tweaking. Adjusting timing rates, putting hotter plugs in, that sort of stuff. Putting a redesigned fuel filter in to improve fuel flow. Etc. It's stuff to do to prolong the life of your engine a couple of years. If you're looking to increase reliability, use redesign. It will be the same family of engine, same sliders, but with more modern/drastic changes done to it. Will it take few months? Yes, but you have to plan ahead.
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Sounds like it is working as is designed. Although you can let your ratings go a little lower. With the above mentioned 75 rated smoothness engine, I would do a modification at about 9 years (36 smoothness rating.) In about 3 more years I'd do it again, by 15th year it's time to retire the engine.
And yes, it takes engineers 10 months to do a redesign of an engine. Hell a little video game like this takes 6 years to get to this point.
I see how it works now. I was trying to keep my engine at 70-80 rating, and when modifying wasn't getting me to that point, I was redesigning a brand new one after just a few years. I'll try using your strategy, I guess that would make the parts even cheaper to produce as well, then.