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Fuel ratings for vehicles are directly tied to the fuel economy specs. What MPG (100km/L) does your engine get and your vehicle get?
In real life engines have what is called "Optimal Brake Specific Fuel Economy". This is the least amount of fuel an engine uses, and is generally right in the middle of the power band. In the game, we display this with a MPG (100km/L) rating for the engine.
When you design a car, you can only improve the fuel economy of the engine by 50%. So if your engine gets 20mpg, the best your vehicle can get is 30mpg. Which is a 60 Fuel Rate. Because you are capped at 1.5 times better than the engine's fuel economy, any improvements to gearboxes, weights, or anything else would be moot. The engine can't run better than what it does.
On the other side of the coin, your vehicles will always get half the optimal fuel economy of the engine. In the above example, the least amount of fuel economy your vehicle can get is 10MPG.
In all likelihood you're hitting the limitations of your engine.
As for your other questions, feel free to ask them. My reply times are a bit slow in the day however. But I generally reply to everything within 12 hours.
Thanks for the detailed explanation! This game has a lot of depth that goes over my head as it is, which is great, despite the challenge.
One question that remains for me is application then; how do I figure out when I'm uselessly improving my gearbox' fuel efficiency when I might instead improve its performance or something else?
My other questions are mostly related to general strategies, especially to starting up and the transition after about 10 years of play time. I managed to be pretty successful in the first 10 years, making a million of profit with my first model, but the designs afterwards are tough to sell as my competitors are much more advanced. I'm standing in my own way a bit though because I really want to start in 1900, and not reduce the number of AI, heh. So before I bug anybody else, I want to try a few more things myself, since I haven't yet exhausted all my ideas. Thank you for offering though, I might take you up on it at a later date!
Generally I try to reply asap. But when I saw the post this morning, I wasn't in front of a computer, and it was lengthy enough that I required a computer to type it. (I was also half asleep, and my writing is bad enough as it is.)
Two ways,
1) If you're using the advanced designer, you can use the prototyping system to give you a rough estimation of what a finished vehicle will look like with the components you choose. (Bottom right of the advance designers)
2) Knowledge of the vehicle types. In general, vehicles like the Phaeton are extremely light. So they require less torque to move them. Less torque needed means that more powerful engines can be ran at optimally irregardless of gearbox design. Whereas if you were designing a heavy vehicle, say a Luxury Sedan, you would need more torque, unless you put a bigger engine in the vehicle, it will be difficult for the engine design to run optimally. Thus gearbox designs become more important. IE, super light designs like phaetons and micro cars you're more likely to his the upper cap than you are with heavier vehicle types.
Be sure to do some searches here on the forums. I've covered the topic a few times. :)
I saw that you responded to a few people needing help with their start, heh. It did help eliminating a lot of mistakes, though I never did find success. I /think/ I found my error. I started investing more in my main branch's sales efficiency this time (pushing it to two stars for ~$10,000 monthly), and suddenly my sales skyrocketed.
Before that, I always had the issue that lowering prices left me moving halfway decent volume, but not enough to cover my admin, staff and research costs, whereas raising prices left me with cars that constantly improved in quality, but hardly increased their sales volume over time, with the same end result of running small losses.
It's hard to judge when to invest, especially so early in the game when investing in the branch can leave you with higher running costs. Of course that's offset by the much improved sales volume, but I didn't know that beforehand heh. I was especially hesitant since it seemed to me that the initial branch runs at about $1500 cost per month, whereas the cheapest redesign puts it at four times that, so it's hard to roll back the change in case it flopped. I guess my next dilemma is going to be when to upgrade my factory and whether buying a new one would be better.
Select the "no starting factory" option. Pick where you want your HQ.. I believe the Netherlands have really low income tax so might be a good place to start while you get the hang of it. Do not build a factory there however! Build one in the US.... New York is a good place to start.. I do a max technology 5 line factory.... takes 36ish months to complete. I skip forward 2 years until Ladder frames become available.
I design a 4 litre inline 6.. Bore and stroke both set to 94.69. Length and width to max, weight to min. Power, and reliability to max and everything else to min. Gearbox is 3 speed with speed, reliability and shifting ease set to max, torque set to 10 or 20 above what the engine produces and everything else to minimum. Ladder frame with a wheelbase of 2900mm and a track of 1300mm. Reliabilty and braking set to max with most everything else set to minimum..... engine bay bigger enough to fit the engine obviously. Set them all to be completed in 12 months.
So we're now 3 years in and our factory and components are complete!
Now design a sedan, touring and phaeton with these components.. I set the demographic to ultra low and set everything to minimum with just enough quality and reliability to meet the types mimimum. Again we set them all to be finished in 12 months and skip ahead 1 year.
Now we're ready and close to being out of cash. Build a branch in the 3 cities in America with populations over 1 million... I set them to max on size (i can't remember the slider labels off the top of my head so forgive me if I'm wrong) and 1 and a half stars on growth for cities with 1 million or more people in developed countries. (Top is 1 and a half stars and bottom is max) Then I set up auto production and set the cars on sale.... I don't like odd numbers so I just round down to the nearest hundred from the recommended price.
In 5 years time you'll have plenty of cash to build more factories or expand your starting one (or both!) and I usually start over with all new components because my R&D grows so fast at the beginning and do new generations (with better stats)of the original 3 models and add some coupes and other models to my line up.
I might also add a 2nd marque at this point and make the same types of cars with the same components but targeted to a higher demographic to capture more of the market.
This was how I learned the game after 10 or 20 failed attempts to get past WW2 and now I'm trying to refine my strategy for insane difficulty.
As far as when to upgrade your starting factory vs building a new one goes.
You get bonuses for building vehicles built on the same chassis in the same factory so thats always good. You do want factories spread around though especially in the first 6 or so decades when shipping costs are so high. Set auto production on and lock shipping to the same continent. Spread factories around in North America and Europe to save a bit in shipping costs. By the time WW2 hits I have a max technology 20 line factory in every city in the UK and Canada and another 5 or so in the US... Of course once you work up to higher difficulties all of these numbers will be much lower though.
Also it is worth noting that my 4 litre inline 6 is way over powered when it hits the market in 1904 so you could probably make a much cheaper one but it is the one I always started with unless I was roleplaying a sports car company or a japanese company or something like that.
Hah, I just stumbled upon that combination of car types myself, sedans and phaetons are often recommended, and I saw touring cars had above average demand and I could build a passable car for its specs.
Thanks for your input! While I got a company rolling a bit better than in my earlier games now, there's still a lot of optimisation I think I can do, where your post will come in helpful.
I know how that feels.
I'm still resisting lowering the difficulty, but I should probably consider it depending on how the next few years go. Thanks again for your detailed description.
Oh, and I forgot to thank Ziggy yesterday, so belated thanks to him as well.
My easy mode startup plan is not transferable to insane difficulty so I'm now currently trying to figure out a new startup plan for insane difficulty but I am glad I played a few hundred hours on easy difficulty to get the hang of everything.... Even on easy difficulty I had all the same slider settings as on hard.. Just had the buyer sliders set to the easy setting and R&D set to 22.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/285110/discussions/0/1471969431586281623/
In my more recent games on higher difficulties I've been going with a 3L V6 as my starting engine. costs about twice what the one in that post above costs but I use it for limited production Sports cars to sell on civilian market at huge markup and Pickup Trucks built for Military contracts. I'll generally follow it with a smaller and cheaper 4 cylinder engine to use in other vehicles although the V6 can also be used for high end Touring, Luxury Sedans and Performance oriented Coupe so it will see plenty of use.
Cool that you recreate things like that, I don't know anything about cars IRL, so my preferences are much more surface level than yours.
Thank you! That'll be a good reference for optimisation.
Interesting, people were very excited about contracts in all the threads I read, but I found I can't really build engines strong enough early on (I'm in 1906 currently) to fill any of them, much less at a reasonable price.
Then went back and added just a slight touch of Fuel Economy in Engine Design: Performance so I end up with 15mpg fuel economy and added just enough Component Quality so I"m showing 3 1/2 stars for smoothness and reliability. material cost is $525.
If I took more time fine tuning it I could likely get a little more power out of the design and/or lower the material cost slightly but this was just a quick test to show what's possible. If you have higher Skill ratings and can use better valves your HP and fuel economy will most likely improve or you'll be able to trim a bit more off of various settings which will allow you to offset the increased cost of the better valves.
My suggestion is to create a save game but don't actually play it. Instead turn off the autosave feature and then use it to try try out various designs for components until you find something that you feel good with then you know what settings to use for when you decide to start a fresh game.
Getting your initial component designs to a point your happy with them and that are effective can help set you up for success.
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation, I was hesitant to get into pickup trucks since I'm in Europe but I guess it might be worth it if I just do it for a contract. Will give it a try!