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Full Version: Idea to make managing large, multi-marque games easier
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Often when playing a game with multiple marques I'll have a marque or two that focuses on really high priced vehicles, a marque or two that focuses on mid priced vehicles and a marque or two that focuses on really cheap vehicles. Something that I think would make managing this kind of game a lot easier would be the ability to select which marques are available for manufacture and sale at which factories and branches.

So for example, in London, there is a large population with lots of money, so you definitely want your expensive marques to have access to this market, however, you probably don't want your cheap cars undercutting you so you'd rather not have them there.
Conversely, Cairo has a decent population but they don't have much money. It wouldn't really be worth putting really high priced vehicles into this market because you wouldn't sell any anyway so you'd just be paying advertising fees for nothing. Your cheap marques on the other hand would flourish in this kind of market.

Currently, to do the above targeted selling you either have to "sell everywhere" whenever you bring out a new vehicle and then delete it from the branches you don't want to have it or selectively add it only to the branches that should have it. Some method of telling each of your branches which marques they can sell and which they can not would be great. Setting it up would probably be just as tedious as the above but you'd do it once and never have to touch it again (except to maybe modify it here and there as certain cities gain or loose wealth through the game).

This could also be used to determine which marque's the game should be applying marketing too in which cities.

A similar option for factories would be handy for different reasons. If you have 6 marques, each producing a dozen or so vehicles, you have a very long list of vehicles to scroll through when setting up and adjusting production for your factories. However, if you can tell the game that you only want to see certain marques at certain factories you can seriously reduce that list.

This could also be tied into the suggestion that someone else posted about factories loosing efficiency when they change production too much. Perhaps making more than one marque at a factory could impose an efficiency penalty as parts get confused and warehousing gets too complicated? Anyway, that's a secondary thought. Moving right along.

(Some people may be asking "Why would you want to limit which marques are made at your factories?". Well, other than reducing the size of the vehicle list you have to scroll through I can think of three reason. 1) Role playing 2) to match worker wages and skill with marque price and complexity 3) to keep your vehicles produced close to where the demand is.)

My first thought for how to execute this was simple check boxes, adding in a new check box each time you acquired a new marque but I don't think that'll work because there will always be someone that will have more marques than you have check boxes (General Motors anyone???). Honestly, I don't really have a better idea for how to execute this but I really think it'll make managing big games much much easier and can be tied into several other interesting mechanics. I'll keep thinking about it, if I come up with something better I'll share below.
Maybe we stick two drop downs, one for marques the other for vehicle types. This would filter the list for you in production screens.

Only problem I foresee is the mega menu. There isn't much room there.

Marketing is only applied to what is being sold in a city, So I don't see much issue in that.

We will probably work in the other suggestion of giving bonuses or penalty for using the same parts/marques in one factory. Will be a while though.
The two drop downs for the production screen is a simple answer that is close enough. Though I still think making a setting the game remembers so you don't have to keep applying filters would be better.

I'm a bit confused about the other part of your answer though.
Are you saying that you don't like the idea for limiting marques available for sale at certain branches?
What I was getting at was being able to use the "sell everywhere" or "sell in region" option but have a second limit that will stop vehicles from being added into certain branches in the region (or everywhere) you've selected so you don't have to then go back and remove cars from a bunch of branches as I currently keep having to do.

What if there was a single button on the mega menu name "marque access" and that brought up a new window with a "branch" tab and a "factory" tab. Each page would list all of the branches or factories you had (maybe even include current population and per capita info to help decision making) with a check box next to each city for each marque. Whenever you apply an instruction that tells a vehicle to be sold in a city that has it's marque checked it simply doesn't add it to that city but add it to every other eligible city.
Obviously the page would need to be scrollable and expandable in both directions so you could have as many cities and marques as you want.