My latest factory, no matter how much I discount the cars they just will not sell. Buyers say they’re too expensive…what am I doing wrong? Should I strip them of all options that are labeled “very rare”? not sure what else to do, have over 600 cars waiting to sell but can’t figure out.
Also, why do I have a car say priced for Luxury, but in my inventory it shows it as “expensive”?
I’ll try to answer this using some assumptions since you didn’t post a screenshot or anything. I’m assuming you are hovering over the car in the cars in the showroom and it says “X% Price Range too high”. What that means is that they want a car in a lower price category. So if your cars that aren’t selling are mid-range it means they wanted a car in the budget category. Are you producing cars in multiple price categories or are all the cars the same category? If you are only producing one price category and you have flooded the market you will probably need to start producing cars in a different category for a while or produce a different body style. With the recent changes in the economics of the game you need to diversify the body styles and price categories that you offer in order to consistently sell cars. Now if my assumptions are wrong then ignore everything I typed because that probably isn’t your issue.
Ok, got it. That makes sense. I am producing cars in multiple categories though, maybe just not enough (maybe I should produce more cars that are less expensive). I was at the moment building 2 of each chassis (1 budget sedan, 1 expensive sedan, 1 budget SUV, 1 expensive SUV). When you say categories, can it further be broken down into what each model line has as an option? Say I build my budget cars with every option, does that hurt them if the options I installed aren’t universal?
As of right now I’m not exactly sure how the economics work and we know that they are going to changing in the (near?) future. If those are the only types you are producing then you need to produce a mid-range of each of those as well. Well, you don’t need NEED to but it would satisfy a market segment you aren’t satisfying right now. As for making more types of budget cars, that won’t hurt. In my new test factory I kept a budget car as bare bones as possible and only started adding features when they became common or universal. You can try to create a bare bones model and one that has as many features as it can that still keeps it in the budget category. I’m not sure if people come in with a set amount right now (say a budget of 21k) or just with a category that they will buy (so they would buy any price budget car for instance). And in terms of options on a budget car, you shouldn’t really add too many features to them. I don’t know if the game models it but if you have a 20k car that has almost as many options as your 50k car then you basically make your 50k car a terrible value for money.
I have 4 varieties of each body style (x4 sedan, x4 SUV & x4 compact) that I build in equal quantities.
E.g. one of my chassis’ running order is:
Sedan 1 - All universal features included only (+10% sale commission)
Sedan 2 - All universal and common features included only (+20% sale commission)
Sedan 3 - All universal, common and rare features included only (+30% sale commission)
Sedan 4 - All universal, common, rare and very rare features included (+40% sale commission)
The above is the same for the SUV and Compact styles equally shared on 6 chassis/body lines
With 4 exports running at full tilt (I can’t get the exact output figure right now, I’m at work) my showroom figure usually averages around the 14-20 cars at any one time. 600 is mighty impressive! Get them sold, and a Brucey bonus of around £12M± is coming your way!
Be sure to follow up on rival competition notifications and update your models features accordingly.
At the minute it’s a stab in the dark on what the market wants but the above appears to work okay.
[EDIT] The latest release (1.25) should help with the requirements of the market and market share, see Cliff’s update/developer blogs.