"Generic Designs" Checkbox

[JC_Denton]

A question about "Generic Designs", the check box in the mod tools.

According to the documentation, " This checkbox will remove the AI using the behavior weights when selecting a vehicle type. Instead the AI will build many different types of vehicles under their marque. Typically going for what is most popular."

So I thought, if I uncheck it, and I'm using, say, the Truck Company preset, those companies should highly focus on building trucks, if not exclusively then significantly preferentially.

However, the check box doesn't seem to stick when I change it.  I uncheck if, select a different company, and when I go back to the first one it's re-checked.

Thus I haven't been able to figure out if it has the desired effect.

I'm also curious what the XML value is.  It seems to always be -1.0, but I'm guessing that if it were unchecked in the UI, it would have a different value, I'm just not sure what that is.

Definitely a cool intention behind that check box - I really want my truck companies to make trucks - but so far by truck companies are making landaulets and shooting brakes and surprisingly often not many trucks.

(At a higher level I'm also experimenting with the AI tweaking values in general.  Some of them seem to be having the intended effect, the luxury-focused companies seem to be climbing the luxury reputation ladder for example.  Others still need more data to say, or maybe I just need to set them to father-out values)

[Eric.B]

Likely a bug in the mod tools. If you have github, I would be grateful if you report it, else than I should move this to the bugs forum so I don't lose it.

In the XML, set GenericDesigner to 0. After that, you can assign the rest of the Behavior variables. Try to maximize the ratings for trucks like Power, Durability, Cargo, etc. The company will make more trucks, but eventually, it will start making other things too. That breaks the system because all of their other things will use truck attributes. But sadly, I had to make the AI diversify because most of the AI companies in the game are sports car companies. The early games were getting too flooded with sports cars, resulting in monopolies and bankrupted AI.

[JC_Denton]

Added a GitHub report.

Thanks, I'll set it to 0 and see what happens. I'm okay with having some truck-like phaetons. I just want to make sure that pickup companies make some pickups!

[Eric.B]

Let me know how that goes. Tomorrow evening and probably Tuesday, I'll be working on GearCity, so I'll have the code open to check what exactly the game is looking for.

[JC_Denton]

Let's see, my "dependability/power", i.e. truck companies are:

Autocar - 1.0
Clydesdale - 0.85/0.9 (not founded yet)
Studebaker - 0.8/0.35
White - 0.8/1.0
Four Wheel Drive - 0.7/1.0
Ford - 0.7/0.6
Rapid Motor Vehicle - 0.7/0.9
Armleder Motor Trucks - 0.7/1.0

Generic Designer is set to 0.0 for each of them.

For vans, Rapid Motor Vehicle has the 8th and 9th spots in worldwide sales (two trims of the same model). Four Wheel Drive has one entry down around 15th-20th place.

For pickups, only Four Wheel Drive and Armleder have offerings, and both are lower than 10th place. Although Ford has two pickups under its Haynes-Apperson marque, which doesn't have preferences set (all -1.0, other than Generic designer which is 0.0).

But in all-time sales, the top vans are:

1. White
5. Rapid
6. Rapid

For pickups:

2. White

White only has one model for sale right now, but their previous trucks were highly successful; they appear to be in the middle of a refresh.

Ultimately it's a point in time picture for the most part, and early game. And there's always the whims of fate; my top-ranked Peerless luxury brand which sometimes does great already foundered and got bought by Chevrolet. It's a bit hard to tell how much of an impact it is having, the truck companies are selling a lot of non-trucks and non-truck companies are selling a lot of trucks, but assuming they remain going concerns, maybe by 1970 the truck companies will dominate trucks reliably? They have had some success.

Maybe once the game is a bit farther along I'll write some database queries to see if the truck companies sold appreciably more trucks as a percentage of sales than the non-truck companies, and similarly for luxury (I don't have enough sports companies to have enough data there). That would be a better answer, if a luxury company sells 20% luxury cars on average and everyone else sells 8%, that's a noticeable impact.