Design Cycles

Over time, your designs become stale to customers. When this happens, your buyer rating will decline, and fewer people will buy your vehicle if there are other options. For vehicles, this design penalty begins when the design is 5 years old and increases every year after that. For components, the effects are smaller, but they will penalize your buyer rating starting at 15 years old.

We recommend you replace your vehicle models every 5 to 8 years and your components every 8 to 12 years. With vehicles, you can create new generations. A new generation is a vehicle that shares the same name and legacy as an older model but is a redesigned model. The new generation inherits the vehicle image of the older model and can give you development cost discounts if components remain the same. 

To create a New Generation, visit the R&D department, click on Modify, then Vehicles. 

In this window, you’ll find a list of vehicles and the new generation button. You can not create a new generation of new vehicle designs. Select an older vehicle from the list, then click the new generation button. You’ll be able to change your components from this screen. Changing a chassis will remove costs and time discounts, but you can change engine and gearbox designs at a reduced development cost rate.

This checkbox will automatically replace the old generation with this new generation when you complete the new design. It replaces all production lines and branches with the new model and ends the production and scraps inventory of the old design. If you would like to do this, check this box.

From here, you would design your vehicle using the Advanced Designer.

It is wise to not have your new and old generation for sale at the same time. A better approach is to create trims of the new generation. Your trims of the new design will not suffer from age penalties the old design has, thus resulting in more sales.

There are several tools in the Mega Menu to help you quickly replace and end the production of vehicle models. We cover these in more detail in the Mega Menu tutorial.

Redesign and Modify Components

For components, there is no new generation system. The game includes a “Redesign” system, to remake your components. You can find the "Redesign" system by going to RnD, then clicking Modify, and selecting your component type.

 The Redesign system loads the sub-components and slider positions of a selected model, but slider effects on final ratings change every year as technology and regulation progresses. The result is a new design that uses the old slider positions but has different stats based on the era. 

Components have a unique modification system. To use it, visit the RnD, Modify, Component Window. Select the modification amount, and click Modify. The modification system will improve the ratings of the design without creating a new design. The system does not replace existing vehicle model’s components, but the system does have a “Refit Old Designs” checkbox in the bottom to help redesign vehicles with the updated components.

Please note, you can only do a refit once per year. If you want to modify multiple categories of components, you should wait for the last category of components before refitting. For example, modify all your chassis and engines. Then when you modify gearboxes, enable the refit system. If you refit before reaching the last components, such as after you modified the chassis, you won’t be able to refit the models with updated engines or gearboxes using the refit system.

The refit window lists the vehicles using this component on the left, and then a series of refit possibilities on the right.

End Production

When a design is no longer needed, you need to end production of it to remove it from active lists. To do this, go to RnD, click Modify, then select the component type or vehicle. Select the model from the list and click “End Production”.

You can also use this system to stop the development of a new component or vehicle.

For components, you can not end the production of any design used in active vehicle models.

With vehicles, if you have no vehicle inventory, the game will remove the vehicle from sale. If you have inventory, the vehicle will remain for sale at your branches. When you sell out of vehicles, you can remove the vehicle from all branches by setting the price to $0 and using "Apply to All". You may also use the world districting system and the remove button. Either action will remove the vehicle from any remaining lists and reports.

With extra inventories that you can’t sell, you can use the scrap feature in the Factory View Details panel for the location that is storing the extra units. You can also do this worldwide using the world district.

Finally, the Mega Menu includes an End Production and a Stop Selling tool. Both tools have additional options that will allow you to stop selling and scrap inventory with one click. For more details on this, see the Mega Menu tutorial.