It looks like we're settled on Hard Mode. That means we'll have a medium factory and can sell to regular demographics, but we're not so rich as to have a big advantage over our competitors. Our nationality is down to just Fruinia or Archana- with two definite votes for Fruinia and just one for Archana, that seems to make Fruinia the decision!
The Bay 12 Motor Company: Founded in Fruinia, 1946
After the war, the Bay 12 Motor Company has very few assets. As you can see, our "family connections" have sold off our dealerships to competitors, at least the ones that weren't confiscated for use as army motor pools- we have
no dealerships. In terms of the consumer auto industry, we have only
base level tech. Furthermore, we have
no liquid assets to speak of.
That's all going to be okay though! We aren't ruined yet! We have... our factory!
It's a Medium 1 Car Factory with steel presses. That will let us make steel-bodied cars for regular consumers, probably around 2000 per month! We also have a Medium 1 Engine Factory, with iron casting facilities. These are respectively called Car Factory 1 and Engine Factory 1, in accordance with Fruinian military regulations. Those are over now, so
I propose we come up with new names for our factories.If we're penniless, how can we afford to manufacture cars? Well, that's simple. Here's a cut of the Hub screen (most of the information is blank until time starts passing).
See where it says
$1.4B? That's our Company Valuation- the worth of all of our assets, which right now is just our two factories and the property they're built on. That's 1,400,000,000 dollars, which is nothing to sneeze at. We also have a credit rating: A+. I don't know exactly how that's calculated, but it has to do with the ratio of our assets to our liabilities (debt) as well as profit projections, I think. In any case, this basically means that the Fruinian National Bank is willing to let us take out hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, because they can repossess the factories if we fail to pay them. That way we will have enough money to design our car, tool our factory, build dealerships, and pay our workers until we start turning a profit. Hopefully.
Now, we need to design a car.This was something we didn't discuss much yet. We can currently sell to Fruinia and our neighboring country Hetvesia, which gives us a lot of opportunity. There's two important pieces of market research I need to show you. The first is the sizes of each demographic we can sell to, in cars purchased per month:
Remember, we probably want to sell 1000-2000 cars per month, because of the factory size. It will also take us years to make our first car, and the markets will grow in that time. However, we are limited by
Awareness which I'll talk about more in another post. For now you just need to know, we are going to be limited to about 50% of the actual market size because we will have few dealerships. The other important chart is the
Value of each demographic.
This is the total spending of each group per month, basically the price they're willing to pay multiplied by the number of them. We'll talk about prices in another post more. It can be a little deceptive: we'll never 171M per month selling to the Family demographic because we can't make 17,000 cars per month, for example. On the other hand, if our cars are good enough, we could corner almost the entire market in a group like Sport, Family Sport, or Family Sport Premium. Also, the more money there is, the more competition there is, so keep that in mind. It's easy to dominate in Convertibles, but hard to do it Family or Premium.
Once we decide who to target, we just need to build the perfect car for them! Here is a list of all the body types we can build, this will be the biggest factor because obviously each market has preferences for the shape of their car. Two important things. First,
each row is one body type. That means, we can build all of them as variants of the same car model. We can build only
one model per factory, but multiple variants, so we could have a hardtop and a convertible for example. These variants are called Trims. The second thing to keep in mind is that each body is labeled with a Year, and a Length, in meters. The older a body is, the less attractive it is to buyers. Certain markets prefer bigger or smaller cars- as a rule of thumb, Fruinia and Hetvesia both like their cars smaller than average for their markets.
Specify a body like: '40 Hatchback, 2.1m so I know which one you mean.
After we choose a body we have to choose our material (steel is the only real option), chassis type (ladder frame is almost certainly our choice, but we can go for space frame if we want fewer, more expensive sporty cars), engine placement (ladder frames do not allow rear engine!) and suspension. Unless we're making trucks, we can rule out solid axle, so I'd recommend double wishbone front and back for a premium car, or double wishbone front with semi-trailing arm in the back for cheaper cars.
If you don't know what to pick here don't worry, I've got this part. However,
we cannot change these later without designing a new car from scratch.This screen shows a bunch of stuff I'll explain more later, but note how suspension types affect things like "comfort", "sportiness", and Engineering Time.
Don't worry about that, but you DO need to
pick an engine type. I'll explain this but first, pictures!
The Engine is the heart of our car! The noise, the power, the spirit! In 1946, we don't have every type available to us. Also, like cars, engines have a
Family and Variants, so we can make different versions of the same engine in one factory- usually, one for sportiness and one for more mild use.
Remember, the more cylinders, the more expensive it is and the more time it takes to design it. I'll explain our options:
Inline Engines are the most basic type, they have pistons arranged in a line.
An
I3, or 3-cylinder inline engine, is the smallest and cheapest engine we can make. They're great for fuel economy and demographics like City, but it's hard to make a lot of power and they vibrate horribly, so they aren't luxurious. If we build these, we will also gain
Familiarity with V6 engines when we unlock them later, making them faster to design. Found on tiny economy cars, almost exclusively.
An
I4 is much more balanced than an I3, it can be made to be powerful or fuel efficient, so it's very versatile, and still pretty cheap. A great choice for Family or Light Sport- or both at once. It's a good choice for front wheel drive cars, when we unlock them later. They will also make it easier to design V8's later.
An
I6 is a great choice for luxury or sports cars. They're vastly smoother, which wealthy demographics like. Six cylinders allows a good amount of power, but they're still cheap to design and not too complex. The only downside is they are long, so they're almost always used in rear wheel drive cars. They will make it easier to design V12's later.
V Engines have two banks of cylinders at a V angle. Most very powerful cars use V engines. They will take a lot more time for use to design, so we might want familiarity from simpler engines first.
V8's are common on sports cars, big trucks, and muscle cars. They're the most common "big" engine. They're acceptably smooth. Most of all, they're as short as an I4, so it's easy to fit a V8 with huge displacement in a car.
V12's are the most expensive engine we can design, with the most cylinders. They're the absolute smoothest engine as well. They can have small cylinders for great performance relative to their displacement on luxury cars or premium sports cars. Alternatively, they can be the largest possible engines, for the fastest supercars. Like the I6, fitting them in a car can be difficult. Engine of choice for brands like Ferrari and Lamborghini.
Boxer Engines have cylinders sideways, directly opposite each other. They're smooth and very compact relative to their displacement, but wide instead of long. Engine of choice for rear engine cars with small rear space. Used in Volkswagen Beetles, Porsches, and Subarus. They come in
4 and
6 cylinder variants.
Hopefully that wasn't too much to take in! I can choose myself if you want, but you might also consider
Valve Types. Like suspension, they can't be changed without making a new engine from scratch.
Pushrod: Simple and cheap. In 1946, used on most cars, in 2020, still found on some large American engines. Compact, but limits the top speed of the engine, so if you're going for performance, it has to be a BIG engine. Gives familiarity with SOHC.
Direct-Acting Overhead Cam: Good choice for performance cars in 1946. Smooth and not too expensive, but limited to 2 valves. Good for high revving engines. Gives familiary with DOHC.
SOHC: Common on modern economy and family cars, but advanced and expensive for 1946. Still OK if we want our engine type to be produced for many years, even forever. Best choice for ecnonomical cars but good for performance too.
DOHC: Two camshafts! Best performance all around, but very expensive and a little large too. In 1946, only a good choice for really top-end engines because of the expense, but it will let us reach crazy high RPM.
Choosing an engine type is a big choice for our company, because it will make newer engines of the same or related types (for example: I4 and V8 are cousins, as are I6 and V12) much cheaper and faster. So, we might want to pick one that does everything we want to do. Or, we can pick an inline whose V-engine cousin will serve us well later.
We also need to decide
how big is our engine? We can make smaller variants, but not bigger ones, or we can design the engine large and make our first variant smaller if we really want- this will give us room to make a bigger one very easily later. For reference: ~1 Liter or less is smallish, but a good choice for 1946. 2-3 liters is good for more expensive cars and 4-6 is for seriously high-power cars. Lastly, is our engine
undersquare (high torque, low revs),
square (good balance of both) or
oversquare (very high-revving performance or smooth luxury car).
Time to decide...I know it's a lot to take in, but we need to start on the design because time is money! Answer these basic things, and you can give me more details to follow if you wish. I need at least these three details before I can fill in the rest:
What is our target market?
Which car body should we design?
Which engine type should we design?
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Topic: Bay12 Motor Company: Let's Play Automation [Castle Motors: COMPLETE!] (Read 64055 times)