How does the game select the winners of contracts? And how do AI companies select which licensed or outsourced design they purchase?

Much like the buyer rating for vehicles, the game sums together weighted values of all variables, and then it adjusts the figures based on the price.

It then sorts the list of designs and selects the design with the highest score.

Let’s look at vehicle contract selection.

If it is a price submission contract, the first thing the AI looks for is the submission price.

The AI will not select your bids if your per-unit price is too high.

The game will not tell you how much the client thinks is too much, but a general rule of thumb is to mark up your vehicles only 50%.

If you do 200%+ markups, you’re likely pricing the design too high for the AI to consider.

Next, the game sets a minimum bid score for the contracts to hit. These minimum bid scores are higher the fewer bids submitted.

The game then takes the vehicle type’s importance rating and multiplies that against the vehicle’s specs.

We give extra points to specs that are more important for the application, such as performance specs for racing vehicles.

We then divide the score by a price value. The value uses the wealth demographic of the vehicle type and the submission price. So higher prices are less important for more expensive vehicle types.

Finally, we multiply the value by your lobbying effectiveness. If your design is too old, you’ll also get hit by an age penalty.

We sort the bid scores, and it declares the highest bid the winner.

The game then compares that bid to the minimum required score. If it is not higher than that score, the contract will go to a non-simulated engineering firm.

Also called an “Outside Contractor” by the memo system.

Why does this happen? Sadly, the AI manufacturers in the game do not create designs specifically for contracts.

This limits the number of bids submitted. And, like in real life, engineering firms fill many contract requests. Unfortunately, we do not simulate these companies in the game.

So the minimum limit is to prevent you from automatically winning every contract because you’re the only one submitting designs.

Component contracts work the same way, except the maximum price values for price submission contracts, increase as spec requirements increase.

And the calculations for the contract scores use a fixed weighting instead of basing off the car type’s importance values.

The most important values for winning contracts is your lobbying effectiveness, followed by price in bidding contracts.

Beyond that, try to offer the best designs you can.

If you can offer at least 3 bids, you’re almost guaranteed that an outside engineering firm will not get the contract.

Finally, with contracts, there is a small amount of randomness for maximum bid price values. Other than that, it’s all lobbying, prices, ratings, and meeting that minimum bid value.

Now how does the AI choose a licensed design?

When the AI licenses a design, it will check all designs available to see if they meet minimum rating requirements.

We base the minimum requirements on the vehicle type's importance stars. The game often multiplies these values by 60.

Additional specs are also checked, such as horsepower and dimensions for engines, torque support for transmissions, etc.

The AI companies will also check against a weighted price, which the game determines by their target vehicle type.

Finally, the overall rating has to be above 25 and the age newer than 5 years.

It sorts designs that meet these requirements in random order, weighted by the overall rating, so it is more likely to select designs with higher overall ratings.

The game selects the top design or vehicle from the list, and then the AI attempts to see if it will work for the design. If so, they'll license or purchase the product.