Auto production

[ExarSWG]

How does auto production work exactly?
For example, in my game (latest test version), I have 3 factories, LA, NY and Paris.
In Europe I'm selling about 7000 cars, but Paris factory is only producing 1600 (at 50% usage), so 5400 cars are being transported from North America to Europe. These transport costs are murdering my unit costs in Europe. Is there some reason that I'm not seeing for not using 100% Paris factory?


Thank you!

[Eric.B]

The Auto Production system does not take into account where the vehicles are sold. Nor does it factor in transportation costs. If you want Paris to be at 100%, utilize the Auto Production restrictions in the Factory Production window.

A better general practice would be to separate your European operations from your North American operations using a new marque, then using the marque production restrictions for Auto Production. The Ford you buy in Europe is made by a different company (Ford Europe) than the one you buy in the USA (Ford Motor Company).

[ExarSWG]

I see, thanks for the idea for different regional marques, I did not think about that before, and it will probably make auto production economically manageable.

[EvilFinchen]

Originally posted by Eric.B:

The Auto Production system does not take into account where the vehicles are sold. Nor does it factor in transportation costs. If you want Paris to be at 100%, utilize the Auto Production restrictions in the Factory Production window.

A better general practice would be to separate your European operations from your North American operations using a new marque, then using the marque production restrictions for Auto Production. The Ford you buy in Europe is made by a different company (Ford Europe) than the one you buy in the USA (Ford Motor Company).

Wouldn't you have to create cars twice then? I mean a car produced under the XXX American Operations won't appear in the XXX European Operations marque right?

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by EvilFinchen:

Wouldn't you have to create cars twice then? I mean a car produced under the XXX American Operations won't appear in the XXX European Operations marque right?

There would be two vehicles, yes. You would design your base model, then immediately make a trim of the base model. (Be sure to change the marque.) The costs would be fractional if very little is changed.

When it comes to listings in branch, you simply use the filters above the vehicle lists. Select your marque, and the vehicles that are not part of the marque are filtered out.

[Soul Binder]

Wouldn't setting regions and/or shipping ranges be a more efficient way to have the European factory maximizing production and reduce shipping costs than creating a second marque and duplicate versions of cars?

Just asking since I've always micromanaged my production and never used the Auto Production option.

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by Soul Binder:

Wouldn't setting regions and/or shipping ranges be a more efficient way to have the European factory maximizing production and reduce shipping costs than creating a second marque and duplicate versions of cars?

Just asking since I've always micromanaged my production and never used the Auto Production option.

Autoproduction disregards shipping distances. The game is too slow on a single thread to change this. Thus why we have implemented ways to restrict a factory's product while auto production is enabled.

He has two solutions, he can restrict the production to his Paris factory or he can do what companies do in the real world and make a child marque. 'For_Those Europe' or something. In fact, that's how several people micromanage large companies in the game.

[Soul Binder]

Ah ok thanks for answer Eric, and that's probably part of reason I've avoided use of autoproduction in game.

I tend to use acquired/child marques to seperate by market segmants and not as regional dividers. i.e. GM has chevrolete, pontiac, cadalac devisions that may share many parts but target different market segmants. (and yes I know that GM also has seperate eutopean divisions as well.)

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by Soul Binder:

I tend to use acquired/child marques to seperate by market segmants and not as regional dividers. i.e. GM has chevrolete, pontiac, cadalac devisions

Actually all the ones you just mentioned are regional as well as market dividers. Chevy sold in Europe is not the same marque as Chevy in United States. Hell, Chevy of Europe is owned by GM Korea. AKA Daewoo. They just ditched the Daewoo name after the embezzlement scandal. Pontiac brand was never (to my knowledge) used outside of NA. And Cadillac had several failed attempts to establish it self in Europe. It might actually be the only one listed that doesn't have a separate European/Operational marque.

Anyhoo, different strokes for different folks. I don't think the transport costs hurt that much anyway, I just play with one marque. It's a little less margin, but I don't nickle and dime the game. :)

[ExarSWG]

I have a problem with using a marque for US and one for Europe, the problem is racing "prestige". What happens is that racing prestige only goes to the marque that you use for racing.
This means that either you split the racing teams between the two marques, leaving "half" the prestige for each, or you race only with one marque leaving the other with nothing.
If you think about Ford US and Ford Uk, this doesn't make much sense, Ford racing prestige is the same for both.

[Eric.B]

If racing prestige matters that much to you, then you would leave it as one marque and utilize the factory restrictions. Or manage production manually. Or just make a marque specific for racing and only selling sports/supercars with high margins globally.

[ExarSWG]

Well, factory restriction is probably the best we can do right now.

I have noticed that it is a lot of micromanagement to have two marques with the same cars. Every new model or every time you want to adjust price you have to go in to world map, select the district, select branches, and then select distribution. This is really a lot work compared to doing it directly from the office.

It seems to me that the simplest way to solve all these problems would be to enable auto production with a simplified shipping distance option. For example, you could limit distance to same district. This is quite simple, and it is not more CPU intensive than having two marques with factories.

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by for_those:

I have noticed that it is a lot of micromanagement to have two marques with the same cars. Every new model or every time you want to adjust price you have to go in to world map, select the district, select branches, and then select distribution. This is really a lot work compared to doing it directly from the office.

You can do all of that from the office. District tools are in the drop downs in the top left of the mega menu (computer).

For example, you could limit distance to same district. This is quite simple, and it is not more CPU intensive than having two marques with factories.

I believe I know the code better than you. Without threading to make the calculations work in parallel, shipping distances cause exponential amount of work based on the number of factories you have. I know, I've already tried it about 6 years ago. A marque is no extra work because the game views a marque as the same part of your company. It's done in the same batch.

The AI uses the same autoproduction code. So increase the amount of calculations by 100x because the AI uses it too.


Alternatively, you can just bump up your European prices by the $50? $100? dollars it costs per unit to ship from NA to Europe. Or play on a smaller map like the territory based ones, where it's less work manually managing production.

[ExarSWG]

Not going to argue on the specifics of the code, because as you well pointed, I don't have it. It just seems to me that theoretically the increase of conditional complexity is not huge and very fast, if you only have the option for same district shipment or not, i'm not talking about variable shipping distances choice, this of course would be considerably problematic even using best approximation methods. It's just an idea, maybe in the future if you have to revise the production code for any other reason. This would also allow AI to compete better with us humans.

Regarding the transport costs, I made a testing game, on factory in NY, one banch in NY and one in Paris. It costs me, in 1962, 735 USD to transport the cargo from NY to Paris. Impossible to support this amount being profitable.

Anyway, I love this game, some criticism/suggestions does not in anyway change the fact that Gearcity is, for me, hands down, the best game I have played this entire year.

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by for_those:

if you only have the option for same district shipment or not,

IF the only option was same district production or not. Then it would not be a problem. However you would run into the issue of, "What district". As districts overlap in the game. Do you use Regional Districts? National Districts? Custom Districts?

i'm not talking about variable shipping distances choice, this of course would be considerably problematic

I am, as that's the proper way to do it. The code gets very sluggish when there is overlap in such cases.

If the first one is viable solution to your issue, (Using regional) I might be able to work it into v1.24 as another restriction option. Actual shipping distances and autoproduction will not work with this engine however. It's just too much data.

This would also allow AI to compete better with us humans.

The AI doesnt' compete well because I have had to take shortcuts in vehicle creation due to processing speed. The goal is for the game to work reasonably well (30 second turn times) on my 8 year old development machine. Sadly, single thread processing speeds in the real world have stagnated, so it becomes even more important. Likewise, I try to avoid them playing at optimal calculations, otherwise they become homogeneous. All the cars end up exactly the same, etc. There is also not enough AI in the game world. Which leads to the player being able to quickly expand, where as the AI expands less rapidly. There are a few other reasons as well. Anyhoo I have done some additional work to the AI due to a strongly worded complaint in another thread. So hopefully it competes a bit more.

It costs me, in 1962, 735 USD to transport the cargo from NY to Paris.

Interesting to see the new cost structures in later games. Was this per vehicle or for all vehicles? In the past versions of the game you would get a steep discount for shipping large amounts of vehicles. But the single car price was much higher. I changed that to a flat rate due to complaints and lack of UI space for more information. I probably jacked up the flat rates too high in later game years.

Anyway, I love this game, some criticism/suggestions does not in anyway change the fact that Gearcity is, for me, hands down, the best game I have played this entire year.

Glad you're enjoying the game.

[ExarSWG]

I believe I'm using regional districts (NA, Europe, Asia, etc.)

Regarding AI, I'm playing on hard and I'm not having an easy time, they are able to design some pretty effective (if weird) cars, normally cheaper than mine for the same car rating. I admit i'm not the best player, and I like to design "reasonably real" engines/chassis/gearboxes, but the AI manages to sell much, much cheaper than me (mainly Sedans).

The transport value is per car. Seems a little high. We are talking about cars that cost not much more in materials.

Bought the game in 06/2014, but only this year I really started playing it.