Automobile Outlets

[robinh]

It seems the Automobile Outlets have a really low efficiency.
I've got 5 in each city running at 100% usage and only cover around 25% of the market. With most other products I've tried selling I can get around 75% market coverage with 3-4 shops. My Outlets are selling around 40 cars a month at 100% usage!

[WilliamMGary]

+1

[David]

That is intended as previously we made an effort to fine tune the gameplay balance to prevent automobile industry to make excessive profits. (During beta-testing, we had save games from users who could made money from automobile way easier than other industries.)

[robinh]

Well, I agree the car industry was extremely profitable.

But I think a better way to deal with it would be to decrease the market total profits (overall demand) or what to call it.
So with 4-5 outlets I would have the same profits I have now but it would already make ~75% of the market.
It seems unreasonable that a 4mil city would need 20 automobile outlets to cover the demand of cars when 4 supermarkets can cover all the demand of toothpaste

[David]

Well, I agree the car industry was extremely profitable.

But I think a better way to deal with it would be to decrease the market total profits (overall demand) or what to call it.

But this will create another problem - players will notice that car demands are unrealistically low and may complain about it too.

[Esoteric Rogue]

Well, I agree the car industry was extremely profitable.

But I think a better way to deal with it would be to decrease the market total profits (overall demand) or what to call it.

But this will create another problem - players will notice that car demands are unrealistically low and may complain about it too.

Yes, lowering demand would be worse, akin to the oil crisis everyone in the other thread, that oil is not nearly as almighty in the game as in the real world.

As far as requiring too many dealerships, I don't have a problem with that.

[robinh]

Played a bit more, still think the automobile industry is too nerfed

As I said before, 4 supermarkets cover the need for toothpaste while 6 automobile outlets barely cover a third of the city's demand ??

[efyin]

I tried multiple games with automobile business and it really has very low profitability and not worth if you have competition. You need to research car, motorcycle, engine, car body, wheels, steel, plastic, you need to put up rubber farm, create coal and iron mines, create steel plant, create factories for carbody, engine, wheels, car and motorcycle.. And at the end you get 2 products that can sell ~1million per shop of 3x3. When you have competition, yearly profit of these products reaches ~50 million.

Compare that to any other product in the game and you have much higher profitability there. This is not as you would see in real life, in real life car is second largest investment anyone would make after house, the industry is earning a lot more money then say socks or sandles or even watches.

[Steve]

Not sure if it is a bug, but my factories have enough supply of cars, but no demand.
Yet, in the automobile outlet it shows that there is no supply, but there is lots of demand.
What is going on here?

[greewoch]

it's just because of the automobile outlet's capacity is too low. if you look at that screenshot on below
you see my large sized factory sells 290 cars and yet demand looks loo low
and on my automobile store, even while the continious supply is guaranteed by inventory section, supply looks not enough because "sale" section in auto stores are limited.