Neat, I might try that next time. I was struggling to find a way to do a $0 and no factories or land start. Maybe selling a car model with a body and gubbins from the future will get enough pre-orders to not collapse (after designing the car and going bankrupt the first month) The previous patch reduced the way I was building the company in previous versions, so the save game I just checked had nothing in research, probably so I could lower the engineering time slider and whatever dealerships I can afford with the $0 and 0 factories start at 100x difficulty. I found dealerships to be crucial to not going bankrupt building the first tiny factory on the land plot. Not starting with factories and plots gives a ton of points; tiny or small plot for car factory gives some collateral to use for the loan; the small plot was how I got it to work. You'll need hefty pre-orders to not go in the red so far that the company goes bankrupt. To start with no plots or factories to go against the loan to build the first factory you'd need some magnificient vehicle that collects pre-orders at a rate far higher than what I've tried cobbling together.
Anything you set the starting research to, in order to have things unlocked for the first car? I like automatic transmission at I think 3 or 4 points in that research, the auto transmissions seem to score higher in everything for the same gears. I didn't make it to auto in my last game (was trying to craft a vehicle at 100x score before I found a method) so I don't know if that's true in this version or not, I recall something about manual shift having a plus side now other than being slightly cheaper all around.
I also like 9 in body tech because there is a sweet minicar there, though I think another one was added some years earlier from that which is actually even smaller if I remember correctly.
That's pretty neat because the standard 1000cc 3-cyl design I go for works really well for minicars, and if I start with aluminum pieces on the first engine I can actually build them with contractors for some really lightweight Fun or City hatchbacks. That allows some really light weight cars, though the engines get too expensive at alluminum DOHC-4 to be profitable using contractor engines; I usually do cast iron DOHC-2 now. DAOHC is cheaper but my vans are usually red underpowered with them IIRC; at least until they shed some weight from tech improvements or the engine design improves. Also if you can get your engineering time on the engine set to 7 months that is when the tiny car factory will complete, so with DOHC-2 it can be a small cheap engine that can still power big vehicles not looking at top speed with a few more points in the engy sliders than DOHC-4 with aluminum .
If you start with tiny or no car factory here's a good tip I think: Heavy Delivery market (at least in Archaea or however that is spelled) with level 5 dealerships sells around what 1 tiny factory can produce at $7.5-10k depending on sliders and markets pretty reliably if there isn't a mistake somewhere. That's not so much in volume but the average customer price is around $8.5k per vehicle AND there is very limited competition, so it makes a good choice imo for the first tiny factory in an Archeae start to make the 1946 van. A downside is Dahlua has different fuel than Archeae so you'll need an engine copy with the correct fuel type to sell there. They don't like H. Delivery like Archeae does though so I don't think I'd bother making a van for Dahlua alone, but things like leaded gas engine trims works until the fuels become more evenly spread. Unlike different models, different fuel engine trims can be assigned to the same factory though I'm not sure if they will produce engines equally or if they will weight production towards the trim in higher demand.
If the van isn't utter garbage it's one of the few things that you can over produce on much farther than you would on most cars and continue selling it for few decades until it's too undesirable to sell at a profit or the fuel standards change. It's super easy to make an ultra desirable van compared to other vehicles, because the characteristics sought are cheap and easy. I use the 1946 van that has just massive cargo capacity. I morph it to be as long as possible (I can't remember if this increases capacity), turn all the sliders except the first one that can't be changed later (that I put at +1 or +2) down to -7 or so, all the stuff that gives + cargo capacity; 10 inch tires, skid plate, and manual locker for offroad; a tiny 1000cc 3 cylinder powers this giant van. While top speed varies with sliders and such, the vans usually end up with a top speed of 30 to 50mph.
The vans top speed range from 30-60mph depending on whether I make them DAOHC, DOHC-2 or -4. If I do DOHC-2 or better and it's set more towards high power rather than efficiency settings the van is yellow underpowered rather than red underpowered. Eventually as engine tech improves you can make the engine more and more efficient and still power the van at yellow underpowered.
I forgot leaf springs
Some years later I do a facelift and increase the quality sliders to 0 or +1 or whatever from the first run's -7s, lower the price on the previous model below the replacement at full price. In my last lengthy campaign I was selling 4 model years of the same van at once; the oldest was not being sold for a profit but for more than scrapping while the 3rd oldest sold at production cost and the 2nd somewhere between 3 and 1. That was a few versions ago and I probably was advertising for H. Delivery to some extent. Eventually I made another tiny or upgrade the original to a small car factory, and overproduced the vans for a while before I wrapped up production when the '46 van body just wasn't going to last for another face lift and I retooled one of the factories to make a '60s or early '70s body van. The last stocks for the later models '46s took years to sell but they did eventually; just remember to slash price before the desirability is too low that you won't have time to sell them off.
To show an example, here is my initial production run van in 1947. The thing to note is that the van trim has -10 in all sliders except safety (at -3 safety slider the trim is at 10 safety score because it's still a big van; the 10 safety scoreallows me to continue selling these once safety standards increase from 0 to 10 at some point)
164 desirability at -10 sliders
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Topic: Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game (Read 23629 times)