Designing A Car - Part 1: Chassis

This tutorial will walk you through the vehicle design process and give you tips and tricks on creating a vehicle. It does not replace the main tutorial for the game, but it should give you good advice on creating better vehicle designs using the advanced designer.

The first thing you need to do to make a vehicle is to design the three components. Before you do that, it helps to know what type of vehicle you want to make. You can use the Body/Fuel Type Demand report to choose, or if you already know what type of vehicle you want, skip that step.

Some players like to start with designing the engine first, but the original intention is to develop the components in order of the design list, starting with Chassis first.

Subcomponent selection is very important for the characteristics and ratings of your component design. Selecting a sub-component displays the ratings affects of the part, the pros and cons of the part, and which vehicle types we recommend the sub-component for. The recommendation and the pros/cons are not absolute, so don’t put much weight into them.

The various ratings of the sub-component affect the finalized vehicle differently. You may not know which rating is more important for your targeted vehicle type. Don’t worry, there are ways we can check on the next screen and you can change your sub-components there.

If you know which ratings are important, select the sub-components you want. If you don’t have any idea which ones to select, read through the information and see if any sound logical for the vehicle type you want to design, and if you still can’t decide, just select any, and we’ll show you what to do in the next part.

Click “OK” to continue.

To open up all development windows quickly, click this button.

From the advanced designer, you can check the importance ratings and the effect your chassis has on your vehicle design using the View Prototype Design system. First, you need to select the vehicle type you are designing.

If you have an engine or gearbox already designed, you can select them here. We don’t have these yet. Finally, click this button to generate a Prototype.

The prototype system will select a random predesigned vehicle body for the type and generate generic predesigned components if you did not choose any yourself.

From this screen, you can see the vehicle type’s importance rating. When there are more importance stars in a category, it means that category is more important for the vehicle type. For example, in the roadster I am designing, the handling has four and a half importance stars. That means the vehicle’s handling is MUCH more important than the luxury rating because luxury only has one importance star.

With this open, you can make adjustments to your chassis’ sliders and see the results on the prototype by clicking the “Refresh” button.

At this stage, the prototyping system is very inaccurate because you are using a generic engine and gearbox design. But you can also make changes using the component’s rating as a metric without using the prototyping system.

Once you have completed your design, click the “Build” Button.

When naming your chassis, a good idea is to use names that help you identify what kind of chassis it is quickly. An example of this would be Drivetrain Layout-Size-Revision or whatever naming scheme you’d like.


Designing A Car - Part 2: Engines

The sub-component selection screen for engines is the same as chassis.

The only major thing to note is the popularity of the fuel type you select. Like vehicle types, each fuel type has a popularity value, and it affects the sales of the vehicle.

The first thing you’ll want to do is select your chassis to make sure your engine fits. Click the “Select Chassis” button.

If at any time these do not say "Fits", you must make adjustments to the engine to reduce its size, or you won’t be able to use the engine with the selected chassis.

Another characteristic of your design you need to monitor is the smoothness rating. This rating represents the noise and vibration of the engine. If this rating dips into the single-digit range, you will lose sales, especially with luxury vehicle types.

Let’s look at the Layout category. Here you’ll find bore and stroke. The bore and stroke determine the engine displacement and is important for the calculations of many ratings and specs. In short, the bore increases the cylinder head, which allows for more volume of force inside the engine. The stroke increases the length of travel of the engine. Higher stroke travel will increase torque, but decrease RPM, whereas shorter stroke travel will decrease torque and increase RPM. Balancing these two is fundamental in maximizing the size and performance of the engine.

Let’s use the prototyping system to check how this engine does in a vehicle. Select the vehicle type, select your chassis, then hit the “View Prototype Design” button.

The two most important ratings for a Roadster is Handling and Performance. The current chassis we have handles well, but we lack performance. Let’s improve the design some.

Continue adjusting the design using both the engine’s ratings and specs and the Prototype’s. When you finish the design, click the “Build” button.

Just like designing a chassis, give the engine a good name that easily lets you identify it. I like to use Layout-Horse Power-Displacement-Revision.


Designing A Car - Part 3: Gearboxes

Sub-component selection for Gearboxes works the same as the other two components. The system has an additional window with checkboxes for Gearbox options.

You must make sure the gearbox can handle the torque output of the engine.

You should also set up the prototyping system.

With all the components selected for the prototype, the results you get are very accuriate representation of a final vehicle.

Adjust the sliders and use the prototyping system to view the effect on the vehicle.

The most important aspect of a gearbox is its gearing. In early game years, when vehicles are heavy and engines very weak, you’ll want to gear toward torque to improve fuel economy and top speed. As you get past the 1910s, the gearing matches what the labels say.

In this case, increasing the high-end gears toward top speed does not improve the top speed of the prototype. The engine horsepower and aerodynamic drag are limiting this design’s performance.

When you have finished the design, click Build.

Give the Gearbox a name you can easily identify what it is for. In my case, I use Gearbox Type, Gears, Target type of vehicle, revision.

After completing all three components, you’ll need to simulate turns until the designs are complete. Then you can start working on your vehicle design. Check the side panel for the number of turns, then go to the office and end that many turns.

Designing A Car - Part 4: Vehicles

By now you should have completed the three-component designs and simulated the turns needed for the engineers to finish them. It is now time to design the vehicle!

Select the vehicle type you were designing for, and your three components in order.

You now have a choice of selecting a predesigned vehicle body or creating a custom vehicle body. We’ll use a predesigned body.

If you create a custom vehicle body, keep in mind that the size and shape of the vehicle body affect aerodynamic drag and cargo volume.  Both of these ratings affect many ratings and specs. Smaller front surface area and wedged frontal areas will reduce aerodynamic drag and improve performance and fuel economy. Creating a larger design will increase cargo volume, which improves cargo and luxury ratings.

This system is the "Advanced Designer". Here you can see the importance ratings for the vehicle type, and here you can see any design warnings or notes. In our case, there are none.

If you scroll over, you’ll find the rating and format buttons. The Format button will take you back to the component selection screen. Ratings will display additional specs for the design.

We’ll adjust the sliders, focusing on improving important ratings, and cutting costs where we can with the least importance ratings.

When it comes to demographics, these adjust the importance stars, and also changes the effects of the “Market Demographic Testing”. Each demographic has different wants. By targeting a specific demographic, you’ll increase and decrease the importance of several ratings of the design.

When you finished the design, click “Build”. Give it any name you want.