Auto Empire Mod

[JackBristow]

I've been playing Capitalism and Capitalism Lab for years. It's my favorite game, I've enjoyed all of the DLC and tried all the mods. I've wanted to create a mod of my own for a while and I finally did one. This is the first version and I'm still testing it to look for changes, I also have some ideas to expand on it. I'm not usually active on boards, I tend to just read. But I figured I'd put this out there and see if anyone likes it. Let me know what you think.

I've always been a car enthusiast so I expanded on the Auto class, creating 20 different models with more complex manufacturing, lots of overlapping parts, such as a sedan chassis with a V8 and better tires to make a muscle car. All the way from subcompact to carbon fiber hypercars.

https://www.moddb.com/games/capitalism- ... nloadsform

[Zeke_Bohansen]

Hi Jack,

I am greatly enjoying your MOD.

Currently, I am sourcing engines, wheels and chassis from various seaports, and building Sedans, Trucks, Muscle and Compact Cars.
I bought 100 level tech in Sedans & trucks from some AI companies so am already producing half decent products.

I started a subsidiary company to sell my vehicles as my COO was good with Mfg, R&D and Automobiles but not with retail.
Both companies are profitable. I am plan to open an R&D facility soon to improve my current designs.

As I make money I hope to vertically integrate, producing my own components and ultimately mining my own natural resources as
my COO is 50 at mining.

Money permitting, I might start an oil company and build gas stations next to my automobile showrooms.

Great MOD, an enjoyable level of detail but not overwhelming.

One suggestion: It could do with a bit more AI competition.

Zeke.

[JackBristow]

Zeke,

I am so glad you're enjoying it!

I tried to make it somewhat accurate but keep it fun.

I agree with your suggestion, I tried a script where I start in 1985, did 15 cities, maximum number of competitors, and I added automobile expertise to a bunch of them, I think 10 of them maybe. It seemed to help, I had a solid 5 or 6 competitors trying to sell or build automobiles. the only issue I found was they seemed to produce the initial available vehicles but didn't start on the ones that needed to be invented until I did.

My approach was to control the R&D to keep a tech edge on every aspect of the production, all the way down to the steel. I had my parent company doing R&D, and worked on mining the natural resources and creating the semi products. I then created subsidiaries to do final assembly and sales and marketing. I broke them down into types, such as Ford making basic vehicles, mercedes making luxury, porsche making sports cars, and so on. I set it up so that brand was much more important on the high end products, I find it's very difficult to just start building a luxury car and sell it without building up the brand. I typically had to lose money on it initially while building a high quality product and as the brand increased I did better. The more expensive material inputs on the higher end products added to the difficulty too.

I wanted to finish this and get it working, I have a ton of ideas for additions. I want to expand on motorcycles, add some more vehicles like crossovers, RVs, vans, diesel engines . I also want to add an auto accessories category, things like car stereo upgrades, spoilers, lift kits, carbon fiber hoods, turbo kits.

Thank you for the input, I am glad you're enjoying it, if you have any other thoughts please share.

Jack

[Kniz]

How is the demand for the autos?
Also, I'll try playing w it, also, anyway to change the demand for it based on difficulty.

[Zeke_Bohansen]

Jack,

I don't know anything about how flexible the MODing system is in Cap Lap
or if this is possible. BUT....

Local dealerships make a lot of money servicing cars
How about adding servicing and spare part sales ?

Mod 2 new products, one for car servicing and one for spare parts.
Spare parts could be made from steel & plastic. Servicing would need spare parts and a lot of manpower.

Servicing demand would be related to the quality of your cars.
The worse your product the less you will sell, but you will make is
up in replacement parts.

The higher your brand rating and quality the more your customers expect to pay.

Zeke

[JackBristow]

How is the demand for the autos?
Also, I'll try playing w it, also, anyway to change the demand for it based on difficulty.

I used the standard vehicle as the baseline and adjusted the demand for the others based on the type of car. I think the standard auto was 0.014 which I think translates to a person buying an auto roughly once every 7 years. I lowered vehicles like sports cars significantly to try to reflect lower sales numbers. I don't think I can adjust it in the difficulty settings but I can go into the files and adjust it. I am still trying to tweak it a bit. I want it to be challenging, with good competition.

Jack,

I don't know anything about how flexible the MODing system is in Cap Lap
or if this is possible. BUT....

Local dealerships make a lot of money servicing cars
How about adding servicing and spare part sales ?

Mod 2 new products, one for car servicing and one for spare parts.
Spare parts could be made from steel & plastic. Servicing would need spare parts and a lot of manpower.

Servicing demand would be related to the quality of your cars.
The worse your product the less you will sell, but you will make is
up in replacement parts.

The higher your brand rating and quality the more your customers expect to pay.

Zeke

I have been thinking about this. Car dealerships do make most of their money on everything else besides the new cars, they barely make a profit on new sales. I've considered ways to reflect, financing, warranties, servicing. My issue is how to incorporate the labor. I would have to do the parts in a factory and manufacture the service with those. It doesn't seem entirely realistic but it would reflect the idea. Also considering Body and collision repair as well as a possible profit center. I would like the ability to make a dealership that sells vehicles, parts, accessories, repair, body work and custom vehicles. And the possibility to create stand alone business doing any of them.

I'm currently working on a new version that includes auto parts and accessories. I'm trying to create the custom car culture, selling parts to customers as well as the ability to take a standard car and add performance parts to it and sell it as a a custom vehicle. I'm trying to simulate the company AMG before mercedes bought them where they took a car and made it higher performance and sold it. I also want it where a car company could do the same thing to their own vehicles, much like AMG is now a separate company within mercedes. Or Shelby with mustangs

I'm also trying to think of how to integrate the quality difference in parts vs vehicles. Much like Land Rover, whose quality sucks, but they make a ton in repairing them. I know this, unfortunately, from experience

[mdemircan2]

MERHABA...
EN YAKIN ZAMANDA DENEYECEĞİM...

EMEĞİNZE SAĞLIK...

[akhilleus]

Hi Jack,

First of all thanks for this mod. I'm enjoying a lot !

Here are some suggestions :
- Research of new product is too easy (takes me 6 month with 9 research units). Should be at least 5 years.
- Could you extend new products with 2 new generations: 1st generation with Electrical Vehicules (starting in 2015), 2nd generation with Autonomous Electrical Vehicules (starting in 2020), with input tech like AI and tablet (yes I want to recreate Tesla ! )
- Natural resources is quickly a problem, in particular Aluminium. We can set natural resources to unlimited, but there is also the mining rate which should be at least 3 times. I believe it can been done in the Natural_Resources.DBF file
- As you can expect manufacturing is big part of this mod, maybe setting the Factory Capacity Modifier to 200 could be good

Congrats for your work.