Profitability tips?

[RiftHunter4]

Anyone got advise for making a profitable. Company in the Light Campaign? I've come pretty close a couple of times, but end up losing money anyway.

[Dubba]

I've found that if I try to be a good car company, I fail. So I started making low powered pieces of crap and the family utility and family markets eat it up. Just sell your car under the ~$8000 mark when you sign off on it. Those tend to make more money than if I made a really good car with no 'flags' that end up eing $12-15K. I go bankrupt every time I make a decent car, especially a nice muscle car.

At least, that seems to work for me.

[Nivlache]

Marketing and advertisement seems important, it somehow boosted my sales profit from an estimated -4.7M to +41M so I assume it's vital part.
also in factory setting the automation slider raising it to atleast 50%/half is a good idea, in most cases it nearly halves the cost/production units, safety while not required at the start of the game the "basic 40s" safety seems to boost competitivity by 30 points usually.. also generally stay below 10000$ cost except if you plan to sell for GT/Luxury category.

[RiftHunter4]

Originally posted by Prof. Kipper:

I've found that if I try to be a good car company, I fail. So I started making low powered pieces of crap and the family utility and family markets eat it up. Just sell your car under the ~$8000 mark when you sign off on it. Those tend to make more money than if I made a really good car with no 'flags' that end up eing $12-15K. I go bankrupt every time I make a decent car, especially a nice muscle car.

At least, that seems to work for me.

Thanks. I tried to run a sports car company and it did ok for 5 years and then immediately tanked lol.

[Dubba]

Originally posted by RiftHunter4:

Originally posted by Prof. Kipper:

I've found that if I try to be a good car company, I fail. So I started making low powered pieces of crap and the family utility and family markets eat it up. Just sell your car under the ~$8000 mark when you sign off on it. Those tend to make more money than if I made a really good car with no 'flags' that end up eing $12-15K. I go bankrupt every time I make a decent car, especially a nice muscle car.

At least, that seems to work for me.

Thanks. I tried to run a sports car company and it did ok for 5 years and then immediately tanked lol.

No problem. Fun fact, I just made my first super powered 'muscle car' that's profitable. I just had to sell family utility cars for two decades. It alsoo seems to be tied to your dealership level and whatnot too. So it is possible to turn a profit on expensive muscle cars/track cars, but it maybe not right off the bat.

[RiftHunter4]

So I tried making low budget cars and that didn't work either.

[RiftHunter4]

Also, my cumulative cost/profit forecast is always deeply negative. I haven't started marketing though.

[LoSboccacc]

Originally posted by RiftHunter4:

Also, my cumulative cost/profit forecast is always deeply negative. I haven't started marketing though.

cumulative cost is influenced by factory addons (i.e. presses), automation and tooling costs and engineering cost, so for the first factory especially if you play gasmea you want to have something more manual with little automation and engineering out of the line.

I'm running a gasmea campaign at 100% difficulty and 100m start and the first car is *very* hard to get some money on. make it small and make it cheap, and don't follow too closely the scores, it's better to have sensible choices and get points using suspension/gear tuning than minmax interiors.

[RiftHunter4]

Originally posted by LoSboccacc:

Originally posted by RiftHunter4:

Also, my cumulative cost/profit forecast is always deeply negative. I haven't started marketing though.

cumulative cost is influenced by factory addons (i.e. presses), automation and tooling costs and engineering cost, so for the first factory especially if you play gasmea you want to have something more manual with little automation and engineering out of the line.

I'm running a gasmea campaign at 100% difficulty and 100m start and the first car is *very* hard to get some money on. make it small and make it cheap, and don't follow too closely the scores, it's better to have sensible choices and get points using suspension/gear tuning than minmax interiors.

It seems almost impossible to turn a profit even on extremely low difficulty. I made a van that performed well, clearly best in its class, and it barely broke even.

[Killrob]

Originally posted by RiftHunter4:

It seems almost impossible to turn a profit even on extremely low difficulty. I made a van that performed well, clearly best in its class, and it barely broke even.

You might want to check out what I did here, the game is pretty easy right now even at extremely high difficulty settings (~500%) if you know what you're doing. So I assume you may have missed something important? The game in its current state sure is hard on non-experts :P
https://youtu.be/YWbJgvq9gm4

[RiftHunter4]

I'll have to watch your let's play.

I started in 2000 and managed to make loads of money, so I must be on the right track.