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[lastverb]

I'm surprised this game passed under bay12s radar since we have a nice topic about automation. Game is currently in early access available on steam and despite the fact I have found this little gem only a week ago, it has been around for a while. Yes, it's a single developer game, but let's start from the beginning.

GearCity is a single player, turn-based (months) tycoon game, in which you take control over automobile producing company. Your goal is to not bankrupt yourself over a period of the game with earliest start being 1900 and game finishing in 2010 (there is a plan to extend it to 2050). In the time beeing you can design, manufacture and sell cars in major cities all around a globe. You build, expand and update your factories with newest technology, in strategic locations to supply vehicles to your branches built in those cities.

All this time you try to stay ahead of (up to 100?) AI opponents (based on real companies, obviously with deformed names unless you use a mod) by designing better or cheaper to produce cars of different categories with different target groups, supporting yourself with advertisement. If that doesn't work, buy them out in stock market! Be prepared for the future as the game simulates major wars and events like great depression.

Game have a race system in place, if you want to win a grand prix, but I don't know if there are any benefits (maybe some corporate image increase that is affecting sales). There is also contract system in place that allows you for example to sell your vehicles as police car fleet, create ship engines for the navy or even combat aircraft engine. Unfortunately, as whole vehicles you can only create cars in game, so you will not build tigers for wars mentioned earlier.

Now is the time for my opionons: Once you have found out how things work there is no real challenge (hopefully it will be fixed as one of next 2 patches updates AI), but don't tell that to yourself untill world wars come by. The game has great potential and major systems all in place. Even with things developer is not going to do (those tanks) he seems to start allowing some basic moddability. Tutorial is horribly buggy and I suggest doing exactly what is written there and only that, don't go exploiring untill you finish or disable it. It is one of not so many newer games that gave me "one more turn syndrome".

As to how to compare it to other similiar titiles. It seems to be improvement all across the board from Cars Inc. When it comes to Automation, GearCity actually has tycoon part of the game in place and it works well, although Automation has much more in-depth engine designer and somewhat better graphics (as it's so important in tycoons).

There is a FREE DEMO available on developer page, that has everything available in game with shortened (20%) time period. Beware, it works the same as free drug. The price is IMO quite high and I think it hurts both the possible people playing and developer's revenue, but what do I know.

Here are screenshots:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Developer page: http://www.gearcity.info/
Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/285110/

[Mullet Master]

lastverb, thanks for letting us know about this game.
I've been wanting a decent car company game for a long time , and it seems like Automation has been in development hell forever and it's just not worth holding any hope for anymore.

I downloaded the demo and here's my opinion of how it is today

- Pretty steep learning curve. Lots of menus, super indepth. I'm not saying it's DF-esque learning curve, but the first few cars I designed were wretched. It seems like the automatic designer is still buggy, or works against you in some categories.
- Lots of little GUI bugs that are annoying. For example, in newspaper. comparing cars. Click the cars. then click in reverse order. And it may display correctly. or it may not. or who knows.
- Complete enough to play. At $15, I think the price is okay but I'm not going to pick up for a little bit ( I have a half dozen games I just
 bought.
- Economics simulation is overwhelming. I know the regions works alright, but man. The game really tries to illustrate scale. This is neat but goes along with the steep learning curve.

But - I will say this. So far I think it has great potential. I would like to see a few GUI bugs cleared up, and a little better interface in some things ( especially R&D ) and it could be a really great tycoon game.

[EuchreJack]

Pretty sure we had a topic several years ago when this game was just a car designer.  Glad they've actually got a game now and Steam Early Access.  Probably deserves a new topic with the vast improvement.

[Hawk132]

Pretty sure we had a topic several years ago when this game was just a car designer.

Nah, that was Automation. This is a different game.

[EuchreJack]

Great demo they have:  it took forever to download and install, then it fails to work at all.  PASS

[ndkid]

lastverb, thanks for letting us know about this game.
I've been wanting a decent car company game for a long time , and it seems like Automation has been in development hell forever and it's just not worth holding any hope for anymore.

I usually think of "development hell" as being a place with no visible progress. KillRob releases update videos every couple of weeks showing off new features, new releases happen every 1-3 months, and the engine and car designer were stabilized a few months ago, and the tycoon elements started trickling in a couple of releases ago. If that's development hell, I wish more games could manage that circle of hell. :-)

[JWNoctis]

GearCity's designer reminded me of Game Dev Tycoon's, only with more elements and (obviously) about a different subject.

Automation's made me wish there's an exporter for that to rFactor or something. Those numbers looked delicious.

Wonder how the tycoon aspect would compare.

[Mullet Master]

I usually think of "development hell" as being a place with no visible progress. KillRob releases update videos every couple of weeks showing off new features, new releases happen every 1-3 months, and the engine and car designer were stabilized a few months ago, and the tycoon elements started trickling in a couple of releases ago. If that's development hell, I wish more games could manage that circle of hell. :-)

Automation is almost 6 years old, and it's just now barely getting to becoming a "game" inline with the original goal -the tycoon portion. Also they are changing engine after years of development -just like another famous game stuck in "development hell". I'm glad progress is still being made, but they've spent too much time refining things that should be of very little consequence to the actual final game IMO.

A good 50 games in my steam are pre-alpha/alpha/beta state, so I am more than willing to give money to an alpha. But I knew automation was a long way from being a "game" so I didn't buy it, and I still have no regrets about this. I have checked up on it once or so a year, and so far I've been underwhelmed at best.

[Zangi]

PTW
Actually tried the demo, it has a lot of detail.  The slider stuff is pretty annoying. 
I recommend against using the assisted part builder.  At the least, switch to advanced mode after playing around with the assisted mode for your first set of parts.  You miss out on a bunch of settings.

And personally, I hate having to design the look of the vehicle.  Selling tireless and unpainted vehicles seemed to have worked...

[lastverb]

Never had a problem with selling empty hulls, I don't think this part affect sales at all. Done it only once anyway and IMO it doesn't fit a game.
As for sliders - I see only 2 problems there:
- you don't see numerical values (0-100) for effects of your changes (summary shows values for the slider, but effects are nowhere to be seen), just stars representing ranges of those values
- you can change those values in decimal numbers and decimal parts are taken into calculation of results, however when you press build it works same as apply on summary and flatten all the values (except bore and stroke for engines) before saving them
I strongly suggest playing windowed. Didn't have a single crash with it, while fullscreen crashed mainly on alt-tabbing.

[ndkid]

I strongly suggest playing windowed. Didn't have a single crash with it, while fullscreen crashed mainly on alt-tabbing.

I wish I could say the same... I've gotten crashes multiple times playing windowed. I think it relates to windows being open when I try to go to another room, but I'm not positive.