You should watch the Wealth Distribution and Buyer Rating Table Tutorial before watching this video.

In this tutorial, we’ll cover each line of the first column of the Buyer Rating Table. Please refer to the manual for more detailed information.

In the Wealth Distribution tutorial, you saw how we sum up the row and add it to the previous row’s buyer rating. We will not be covering this in this video.

The first row is a calculation for your company Image ratings.

Global Image is five times more important than the other image ratings. But it is only a little more important than the sum of the others.

You can get a total value of 800 points from this row.

The next row sums up your vehicle’s cargo ratings.

We multiply the vehicle cargo rating by the vehicle type’s cargo Importance Rating.

You can tell how important a rating is to a vehicle type by the Importance Stars when designing a car in RnD.

The demographics you select in the Advanced Designer also affect the Importance Stars of the vehicle type.

We multiply the product of your cargo rating and the vehicle type's importance rating by 5.

The highest value you can get from this rating is between 500 and 1000, depending on the vehicle type’s importance for this rating.

The next row multiplies your vehicle dependability rating and the vehicle type’s dependability Importance Rating.

We then multiply the value by 5. The maximum value is between 500 and 1000, depending on the vehicle type's importance for this rating.

Going down to the next row is the product of the Vehicle Handling and the vehicle type’s handling Importance Rating. This is then multiplied by 5. Much like the last two ratings, the maximum value is between 500 and 1000.

Proceeding to the next row is the fuel economy rating.

We calculate the fuel economy ratings affect similar to the previous ratings. However, we also multiply in the inverse of the city’s fuel ratings and the global fuel rate. Then we multiply the results by 5.

You can find the city fuel economy rating from the city information window on the World Map or in the Mega Menu. And we show the global fuel rate in the newspaper. World Events often influence this rating.

The maximum value you can get for your fuel rating depends entirely on the global fuel rate. The higher it is, the more important fuel economy is.

We calculate the Luxury ratings on the next row.

It works similar to the other ratings, but like with the fuel rating, there is an additional variable that modifies it.

We multiply your Luxury rating by the vehicle type rating and then multiply that result by 5.

An additional bonus to the luxury rating comes from using Automatic gearboxes. If you have an Automatic GearBox, we multiply the Luxury totals by 3 * 1% per year.

Meaning an Automatic transmission in the year 2000 would have an 8x higher luxury score than a manual transmission. Please note, the game considers some types of assisted manuals automatics for this rating.

The maximum value for this rating is between 500 and 10,000 depending on vehicle type, gearbox type, and the year.

Your competition often neutralizes the additional bonus for having an automatic transmission by providing one themselves.

With vehicle performance on the next row, the game adds your vehicle performance rating to half of your racing image before being multiplied by the vehicle class’s performance Importance Rating. Then it multiplies the value by 5.

By having a high racing image, you can improve your buyer rating by up to 500 points in this category.

The maximum values for this rating are between 500 and 1500, depending on your racing image and the vehicle class Importance Rating.

In the next row is the calculations for Vehicle Power Ratings. The vehicle power rating is multiplied by the Vehicle Type Importance rating. And then that is multiplied by 5.

The maximum values for this rating is 500 to 1000 depending on the Importance Rating.

With vehicle quality in the next row, we simply multiply the vehicle quality by 40. There is no vehicle type Importance Rating for quality, because everyone wants a good quality vehicle.

The maximum value for this rating is 4000.

The next row is for the vehicle's safety rating. Like other ratings, the vehicle's safety is multiplied against the vehicle type's safety Importance Rating, and then multiplied by 5.

The maximum value is between 500 and 1000 depending on the vehicle type's Importance Rating.

The next row deals with your branch at this location.

The Branch Fully Staffed value is an automatic 200 points if you staffed the branch completely. If you did not staff the branch completely, the value will be the percentage of staff times 200. For example, if it is 50% staffed, the value would be 200 * 50% = 100.

We add that value to the Branch Morale rating. You can view your morale in the Human Resources window.

Finally, we add that to 100 * the Branch Resources slider. You set the slider amount when you built the branch.

The maximum value for this row is 400.

Next, we take your vehicle image rating and multiply that by 50. You can increase your vehicle image by keeping the quality high, marketing, and designing good and dependable vehicles.

Your Vehicle Image carries over to new generations and trims. Since the maximum value of this line is 5000, it makes it very wise to use the new generation system when refreshing your designs with high vehicle image ratings.

In the next row, you’ll see an additional automatic transmission bonus to your buyer rating. This bonus increases based on the year.

The maximum value is between 5 and 30, depending on the year.

Next, you’ll find your Dealership network attached to your branch. You do not sell vehicles to consumers. Instead, you sell vehicles to Dealerships who sell them to consumers. Dealerships in the game are all franchises. The number of dealers you have greatly helps your buyer rating.

For the rating, we multiply the number of dealerships assigned to the branch by 15 + a randomly generated number from 0 to 5.

The maximum value of this rating is infinite, although only a couple hundred dealerships are possible if you run the full span of the game.

You can get more dealerships by improving your branch construction sliders or by subsidizing the creation of them in the Branch View Details panel on the World Map.

Marketing is in the next row. The game multiplies your marketing efficiency in the city, as a value from 0 to 1, by 2000 plus a random number from 0 to 100.

Marketing efficiency is linear based on the budget you are spending and your marketing skills. But the value grows slowly over time, so it might take a couple of years before it reaches the maximum potential.

Marketing also improves other ratings, such as your global image ratings and your vehicle image. Both of which improve your buyer ratings.

The maximum value for this line is 2100.

Next is your overall vehicle rating multiplied by 25.

The remaining rows show penalties and popularity effects.

In this row is the Engine Smoothness Penalty. The higher the luxury vehicle Importance Rating, the higher the Engine Smoothness rating needs to be. If your Engine Smoothness rating is lower than 35 times the vehicle types’ luxury Importance Rating, you’ll trigger the penalty.

When you trigger this penalty, the game multiplies your buyer rating by the quotient of your engine smoothness rating divided by 35 times the vehicle type luxury rating.

The minimum Engine Smoothness Rating is 1. If used in a high luxury vehicle type, the worst penalty you can receive is a 97% reduction in buyer rating.

The game will warn you in the advanced designer if the engine smoothness is too low. In general, try to avoid single cylinder and two-stroke designs for luxury vehicles.

The next penalty is morale based. If your branch and administrative morale are too low, you will trigger this penalty, and your sales will suffer.

As for the penalty itself, the game multiplies your buyer rating by the quotient of the average of your morale divided by 100.

Normally, you’ll have striking problems by the time this penalty has a major effect.

Consumers expect their vehicles to move at least a certain speed. How fast depends on the type of vehicle and the game year.

The advanced designer will warn you if the vehicle is too slow, but in short, so long as you’re not trying to use the cheapest engine designs in a vehicle, it will be fast enough.

The penalty is the speed of your vehicle, divided by the expected speed, then that value multiplied against your buyer rating. For example, if your vehicle goes 9MPH and consumers expect 10MPH, you will lose 10% of your buyer’s rating. If your vehicle goes 0MPH, you will lose all your buyer ratings.

Next is the fuel type popularity. We multiply your buyer rating by the popularity of the fuel type the engine uses. You can find these values in the Fuel Popularity table of the Body Demand and Fuel Popularity report.
  
The Low Slider penalty occurs if you have too many of your component or vehicle sliders at minimum costs values. In other words, too many sliders to the left.

This penalty is to prevent the player from making the absolute cheapest vehicles possible, to exploit the game. In-game, consumers expect a minimal amount of quality from your designs, and this penalty enforces that.

Next are the Old Car and Components age penalty. Vehicle designs that are older than five years and component designs that are older than 15 receive a buyer rating penalty. Designs newer than these ages get a small bonus to the buyer rating. This bonus disappears as you get closer to the penalty age.

The penalty takes the collective overage of the components and vehicle and raises them to the power of 1.2.

The base collective age of a vehicle is 0.8. For anything too old, the collective age increases linearly every year over at a rate of 0.25 per component and at a rate of 1 for vehicles.

Meaning if you had three components that were 16 years old each, and a vehicle that was five years old, your collective age penalty would be 0.75.

We would add the 0.75 to 0.8 and then raised to the power of 1.2, which would be 1.69. We then divide this value into your buyer rating.

If your vehicle design is new with new components, then we raise the base value of 0.8 by the power of 1.2, giving you 0.765. Next, we divide your buyer rating by that amount, which will increase your buyer rating.

The next row applies vehicle pricing’s effect on the buyer rating. If the game considers your vehicle too highly-priced, you’ll get penalized. If you priced the vehicle fairly, you’ll get a small bonus.

The game adds or subtracts this effect from the buyer rating.

Neuron Processing Penalty is a 5% penalty against your buyer rating for playing on Hard or Nightmare mode. Sadly, the developer had to implement this because he didn’t multi-thread the engine back in 2009, which limits the AI’s processing abilities. What a moron that guy is.

Finally, the Vehicle’s Estimated First Round Buyer Pool is the total estimated people interested in buying this type of vehicle as their first choice.

We narrow this number down to the people who can afford your vehicle (Green bars in the Wealth Distribution Chart), and then we compare your buyer rating against other buyer ratings in that demographic. The game does additional calculations for various demographic ratings to simulate buyers looking for specific ratings in this class of vehicle. Then consumers choose their vehicles based on the buyer rating and price.

The game repools any consumers who do not purchase a vehicle. These consumers then buy used vehicles, or we process them again with their second vehicle choice. If they still can’t find a vehicle after the second pass, they don’t buy any.

You won’t have the entire Vehicle’s Estimated First Round Buyer Pool buying this type of vehicle this turn. But the larger this number is, the more potential sales there are.