Feedback after some hours

Production Line
1

Hello Cliff,

Normally I don’t sign up on forums or give feedback, but I like your work and really enjoyed hours with Production Line. So I decided to give you some response for your work. Hope you find it useful. I use PL 1.52.
Not all of my points are top priority. The more important things for me are roughly listed first. I thought of many things, that could improve usability (from my point of view/playing):

  • I have two UHD displays, PL started first with Resolution 2560x1440 full screen on one of them. When I try to switch to 3840x2160 (it is shown in the game options), it restarts in a window that is much bigger than the screen. And yes, MS Windows shows and uses 3840x2160 (I also checked the “sharpness” behind the PL window -> UHD is actived in Windows)

  • Maybe I only don’t know how to do it, but the most annoying thing for me in the game is the deletion of the part supply lines (Produktionsmittel Foerderband). You can delete a conveyor or machinery and after that the supply line on that spot - but it would be great, if I could just delete the line and not the machinery on the same place! Removing the machinery is costly and the settings/updates are lost.

  • I would love the idea of having these part supply lines on diffrent heights and so not to always connect them at crossings. Idea: two heigths - one for left/right and one for top/Bottom. At crossings per default they do not connect due to diffrent heights. But with another click (could cost another 1.800$) you create a crossing

  • Some German translations are missing or misleading. I can help with that, if you want me to.

  • Ideas on supply: If have problems getting enough parts at the right time to the stations. I already researched everthing that could help with that (as far as I could see), but it is still a problem. Now I build supply stockpiles near the stations. It is better, but not perfect - and I am far from having every feature researched - so I expect this to get even worse. What if (late in tech-tree) there is a - one or two fields in size - stockpile, that is seamlessy added to the station’s pile? This needs to be directly adjacented to the stockpile of the station and highers the amount of parts stored directly on the station.

  • Some more details on the tech tree would be nice for an easier start. For example I do not have researched energy production at the moment. I know where I find it on the tech tree, but the tool-tip does not say much about what I can do with it.

  • The pop-ups from the part supply importers are somehow annoying for me. Is it possible to have a flag on this machine to disable the pop-up everytime some parts are imported?

  • Most of the time I play very wide zoomed out, because I want to see the warning-marks (defects on cars, machinery not working…). What is sad, because of the great graphics when you zoom in and see the workers doing their job.
    Would be great, if there was some sort of “news-ticker” that shows these kind of things. I know this is already implemented for new financing options, research of a new feature by competitor etc. Maybe this could be enhanced, with an option to turn these additional infos on (or off) and (important for all these news): History-button to see what was missed!

  • On the designer screen it would be nice, if we could not only sort, but also filter (body type and/or price segment)

  • Car sizes: In the beginning I found it very strange, that the only diffrence between the car classes (compact, middle, expensive, premium) are the added features - particularly when you only have one or two researched. It is alway the same body - compact and premium. Later on I understood it somehow better. But what if you add an option for the size / length of a car? A premium suv is normally longer than a cheap one. I could imagine three sizes (S, M, L). This could be a (simple) research or available from the start. You could then sell the S one with no features as cheap and a M one with your first two features (no one else on the market has them!) as middle-class. S/M/L can be configured on the car-body-designer (simple car S, simple car M …). The M body is more expensive than the S one and so on.
    That said: on this right column on the design screen it always shows “simple car” - no matter if this is an suv or sportscar. “SUV body size M” would be great (this would also explain the diffrent pricings depending on the body).

  • I never tried, but - if your design team reearches a new body type, there is one blueprint added to the designer. What if you accidentally delete this? Is it possible to build this car ever again? (if not, could be solved with the point before -> build a small switch on the “simple car” feature where one can choose the body type).

  • Tech tree - just as idea: Some cool features in late-game could require that you build that part by your own (not possible to import, because no-one on the supplier side has this technology).

  • Everytime I do a design update I need to adjust the production schedule. What if we could declare a design as a successor of another design (on the designer screen) and it is automatically replaced in the schedules?

  • Show-room: It is cool to check the reasons, why a car wasn’t bought. Is there an option to see that “overall” per design, not car-wise?

  • I love your quality implementation! Idea for cars with defects in the show-room: They not only lower the “feeled quality”, but also charge you some amount of money after selling (customer will fix it in a garage, we need to pay due to warranty). This could be higher the more serious the defect is (like fixing time in the rework station). Further there should be an option to scrap the car on the show room or the conveyor in plant (loosing the whole money, but no reputation) - if the defect was found on a visual inspection before.

  • Pricing of designs: It is always 5% steps up/down. But when it comes to 5%, next step is 1% and after that 6%, 11% and so on. That’s not important but we Germans are pedantic :slight_smile:

  • Would be cool to “un-archive” a car design, in case you accidentally removed it. From the finance screen, where all the archived are shown?

  • I LOVE the draft function to plan my plant. That’s really gorgeous!

  • When you buy a conveyor where you placed a draft, it disappears. From my point of view I like to plan - even with machinery I have not researched yet - and build a short-term solution with current tech on that. Would be great, if the draft would not be removed from the floor plan.

  • How about not “auto-updating” the cars and parts conveyours after research, but to make it the player buy/build them (on the most-needed) routes?

  • No crashes, game is very stable!! Thank you for your great work!

Please don’t get me wrong. This game is great and I really enjoy it! The idea of making it a much bigger success and even more enjoayable drove me to write this.

1 Like
2

Inspired of a another post below I want to add something:

Customer demand should be more realistic. At the moment I need to sell the cheapest models with “keyless entry”, but even the premiums don’t need air conditioning. I think there should be a set of features customers prefer over others. How common a feature is could add to this baseline, so that both of the variables are important for final customer decision. Baseline set could - in a realistic manner - change from game to game.

That said, I have the idea of choosing a start country. Customers need air-con in Mexico, but may be not in Iceland. Some countries priorize the lowering of pollution more than others (e.g. sell more smaller cars and hybrids and so on).

This would open a whole bunch of new possibilities - or even half of a dlc :slight_smile: :

  • Labour cost could be higher in Europe, but you might have more quality issues in China. (could lead to diffrent Research priorities)
  • You could even sell in your home country at the beginning and research international sales later in the game. You need to open a sales office there (costly) and - as said - selling in Mexica could lead to diffrent customer demands.
  • World events could influence customer demands (very hot period in France, people only buy cars with ac; new Government in Japan wants to fight pollution -> better exhausts needed)
  • Diffrent export shafts could lead to export to diffrent countries -> take care of the right routing of your models…
  • Other countries could mean diffrent competitors - with diffrent researched features.

Maybe you should limit this to a handful of countries to keep it playable.

1 Like
3

A few points (I’ll edit this reply).
First thanks for the detailed feedback! Its very, very helpful.

We already have an option to delete only the conveyor. I think its shift, or maybe alt/ctrl… anyway it highlights them when you hold it down and before you right click them.

There is an option to turn off the GUI for the importers if it bugs you, on the options screen.

The game will prevent you deleting the last design of a body type :smiley:

It can be difficult currently to get enough components into the factory to maintain high production. The suggestion is that the player shifts to in-house component production where possible and only imports raw materials. I keep re-balancing and tweaking the game to make this strategy more obvious and more economic.

Theres a lot of other interesting ideas and suggestions in your posts. World events are definitely something I want to include. For example right now we do not even have catalytic converters in the game, and no mention of fuel economy either. It would be cool to represent this somehow and to have world events where the player has to reach certain fuel economies with their whole fleet etc.

4

I tried and… oh god, if I have known before :-). The “delete only the conveyor” should make it in the faq.
Gui option regarding imports is also working great - thank you!

In the meantime I as able to solve the shortages with in-house production. So I think the stock added to the station is not needed hardly.

Had another idea: What about engines - diffrent types (diesel, regular), tech-tree improvement for more power and/or more fuel economic. The game could even calculate horsepower and mpg values -> bigger cars need more fuel (Combineable with the suv body size L…), alu body will decrease, air-con will increase fuel usage. Finally hybrid, electro or even fuel cell technology come around the tech-tree. Before there are upgrades like V8, supercharger, adaptive cylinder cut-off etc.
Customer demand could prefer more power or less fuel consumption. Sports cars need more horse power to sell, little city runners don’t sell good with 15l/100km.
I like your idea of the world event with fuel economies!

Didn’t try but: It seemed like the visual inspection is the only station able to find defects? Could occur also on the functional testing (other types of errors).

1 Like
5

The whole area of engine types and performance is definitely one I need to find time to address properly.