"Overall rating" highlight that when talking about manufacturing ratings for factories.



So you have completed the main tutorial, but you have no idea what to do next.

There are no goals in GearCity other than the ones you set for yourself. But one goal everyone should have is to stay in business.

And to do that, you need to run a profitable company.

While there are other ways to make money, you will spend most of your time in the game designing, producing, and selling vehicles.

The reports should be your go-to location for both managing production and setting prices.

~Production and Sales~

Looking at the default Monthly Summary report, you’ll notice at the bottom, a table of your vehicles and additional information about them.

Let’s look at some common situations.

Here you have missed sales. That means you’re not making enough vehicles.

That means you should increase the production of the vehicle. But what if you ran out of production lines?

Then you have two choices. The more obvious one is to build a new factory. But that takes several months, and you might not have enough money to construct it.

The other option is to raise the price of the vehicle. By increasing the sales price of the vehicle, you’ll lower its demand. But that doesn’t matter because you’re already making as many as you possibly can.

What it does, however, is increase the amount of money you make.

Whenever you get additional production capacity, you can lower the price again to increase the demand.

Let’s look at another situation.

Here you’re producing too many vehicles.

Your first thought might be to decrease production, and sometimes that’s the correct thing to do.

Reducing production has the side effect of increasing costs per unit, thus reducing your profits.

So if there is another way to fix the problem, it might be a better solution.

First, Is the price of your vehicle too high?

Check your price against the competition in the city or district. Also, check against your material costs.

If your prices are in line with the competition, what about opening another branch?

Opening additional branches will expand your dealership network to a new area, thus increasing demand for your vehicles, leading to new sales.

If neither are an option, then reduce production.

For a more in-depth look at these concepts, see the Supply and Demand video tutorial.

For a better idea on pricing, see the Total Unit Costs video.

~Expanding~

While you can manipulate demand with prices, at some point, you must build new factories and branches.

With factories, it is a great idea to operate them at 100% usage. By doing this, you lower your corporate costs per unit and increase margins.

At some point, manipulating the price will not yield positive results. By that point, you’re overdue to build a Factory.

Since factories can take months and years to build, you should try to foresee demand increases ahead of time, such as plans to increase your model lines or expand into a new region.

So what to look for when building a factory?

First off, factories are expensive to build. If you need to borrow money, try to get a long-term bond, and do it before you produce the factory.

Building a factory will not harm your existing revenues, and you only pay a fractional amount of construction cost each month. If you’re running a profitable company, the effect on your cash funds won't be as bad because some of your revenues will go to construction costs.

When designing your factory, remember that factory operations cost money every month, even if you're not using it. Don't build too large of a factory if you do not have the demand for it.

In the Factory Construction window, at the top, is the total number of production lines your new factory has.

To increase this number, adjust the production capacity slider.

Below the production lines value is an estimation of the number of vehicles you can produce at this new factory.

The game bases the number of units you can produce on the vehicle's manufacturing ratings, the overall rating of the factory, and several other factors such as outsourced units. The number given here is an estimation of a single 30 manufacturing rated vehicle.

To increase the number of vehicles produced per line, use the Technology slider. This slider allows you to produce more vehicles per production line, and it increases your factory's overall rating. The downside, it increases the costs and time it will take to finish the factory.

You can find the Construction costs, full production operating costs, and the no production costs in these boxes.

And the finish date is here.

Because of transportation costs, it makes sense to spread smaller factories around your sales area before World War 2.

After the war, larger centralized factories make more sense, and around 1980, focusing on countries with cheap labor and shipping vehicles around the world becomes practical.

Watch the various Shipping tutorials for more details.

With branches, as we mentioned earlier, it is a good time to build new ones when you have excess production or extra production capacity.

Therefore, you'll need to build branches more frequently than factories.

In early game years, you’ll want to target major cities with populations greater than 300,000 and high per capita incomes. Before World War Two, this often means North America or Western Europe.

As you become more experienced with the game, you’ll find that many cities outside these regions are playable even in the early years.

When building a branch, you have two slider options.

The top option adjusts your dealership resources.

Your company does not sell vehicles directly to the end customer. Instead, you sell vehicles to dealerships, who sell them to the end customer. The more dealerships you have, the more potential sales. Dealerships also have a small effect on a vehicle’s buyer ratings.

The more investment you make into dealership resources, the more dealerships you can have at this location, and the quicker you will sign them.

The other slider adjusts Sales Resources.

Sales resources have a major effect on vehicle buyer ratings. See the Wealth and Buyer Ratings Report video tutorial for more information.

Both siders increase the construction and monthly costs of the branch.

Early in the game, it generally isn’t economically feasible to max out all of your branches.

There are two situations to build an expensive branch. The first is when you have heavy competition in a major city, such as London.

The other situation is if you want to grow many dealerships in a location over an extended period of time. This option creates greater sales volume many years down the road because you have more dealerships selling your cars.

On the flip side, if you have a monopoly in a city, or you operate in near monopoly conditions, building a smaller branch makes more economic sense.

The rest of the time, you need to balance improving your long-term and short-term competitiveness with increased costs of better branches.

The window also includes a drop-down, which allows you to clone the sales prices of another branch.

~ Designing ~

You’ve already built one vehicle in the game. When should you build more?

Recall earlier in this tutorial when I mentioned that you want to keep the factory operating at 100% capacity if possible.

After a certain point, building new branches or lowering the price will not increase demand for your existing model enough.

At that point, you should consider creating a new design.

When designing cars early in your company, it’s a wise idea to reuse the same components when possible. To do this, build vehicles of a similar type.

For example, Coupes, Coupes 2+2, Compact Cars, and Subcompact cars are not all that different. You can reuse the same chassis, engine, and gearbox for these designs.

A Pickup Truck will require components focused on other ratings than one designed for a Coupe. But the designs for a Pickup would work well in a Van or a Full-Sized Sedan.

By reusing components, you cut your costs and development time. When your company is more profitable, you can tailor the components more specifically to the design.

In general, you want to replace vehicle models every 5 to 8 years. And component designs every 10 to 15 years. Do not use old components in a design or try to sell old vehicles. The buyer rating penalties will crush vehicle demand.

When you have a lot of competition in an area, consider using Trims. See the Trims video tutorial for more details.

~Complexity~

While GearCity can be an immersive game, it is only as complex as you want it to be.

You can manage micromanagement tasks, such as adjusting production, with the Auto-Production system. You can also assign sales prices automatically with the Auto-Sales system.

The AI can manage many other little things, such as marketing, unions, factory reconditions, wages, hiring, etc.

~ Standard Gameplay Loop ~

The ability to reduce complexity also extends into the core gameplay loop.

In a nutshell, the game boils down to:

* Design a Car.
* Assign the Car for sale
* Set production
* End Turn
* Adjust production and prices based on factory usage and missed sales.
* Build a new branch or design a new car if factories are underutilized for an extended period.
* Build a new factory when you have built too many branches or designed too many cars.
* End Turn and then repeat.
 
Everything else in the game is optimizing your company for maximum profits.
 
So what should you do next? What does the report say about your vehicle sales?

Missing sales? 
-Can you increase production? Yes? Do that. 
-Can't increase production? Increase the price of the vehicle.

Reserves? 
-Decrease price.
-Open new branches
-Decrease production 

Not using all your factory lines?
-Build new branches.
-Nowhere decent to build? Then design more vehicle types.

Are all your factory lines being used?
-Can you afford a new factory? No? Take out a Bond. Still can't? Raise your prices and wait till you can.
-Can't afford a new factory? Raise your prices until there are no missing sales.

Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish