SHIFTING INTO HIGH GEAR ---------------------------------------- If your factory is building cars which are selling, and your company is operating at a profit, you're off to a good start. It's time to think about what your next product is going to be, and to start extending your company's reach. THE CAR OF THE FUTURE: DESIGNING NEW AUTOMOBILES Your prototype, great car though it is, won't stay in style forever. Your company is going to have to come up with something new to offer consumers if you want it to last more than a few years. Here's where your investment in Research pays off. OBTAINING NEW TECHNOLOGY If you have invested in Research, sooner or later your Technicians will come up with some new automobile technology. When they do, at the start of the month a panel will appear informing you that new developments have been made. To find out what your people have come up with, you can go to Research and call up the Systems Details panels. To see what the new part looks like, and to put it into a new car, you need to head over to your Design department. DESIGNING A NEW CAR From the Main Factory Screen, click on the Design building. The first page of the design worksheet will appear with your prototype car design displayed. There are two pages to each car design, the first for designing the body and look of the car, and the second for determining the functional components that will make it run. To get from the first page to the second, click on Part. On the second page, click on Body to return to the first page. To begin an entirely new design, go to the first design page and click on New. The first design page shows you a summary of the components in the design for each car, and has command buttons to let you page through your current designs or load an old design from the Archives (the use of the Archives will be explained later). You can have up to sixteen current designs at a time. A picture of the car currently being worked on appears on the right side of the screen. In the upper right hand corner of this inset display will be either the word "New," indicating that this design is in development, or a number such as "1/16" to indicate which of your sixteen current designs you are presently looking at. Most of the actual design work is done on the second page of the design worksheet. The one exception to this is the body of the car, which you specify on the first page. All other components -- the engine, brakes, suspension, cooling system, and luxury and safety features -- are added from the second page. On the right hand side of the first page are the buttons that allow you to design the body for your new car. First, you need to decide what type of car you're building -- a sports car? A van? A compact? Click on the Type button to cycle through your options. A basic body design for each vehicle type will be presented. After a basic type has been selected, you can then modify any or all of the three body sections (front, middle, and back) until the car is exactly to your liking. Highlight the section of the body you want to design, then click on the plus and minus keys to cycle through your options. Mix and match them to until you have the exact combination you want. Use the Color button to select a color scheme for your new model. When you are happy with the body of your vehicle, click on Part to start designing the rest of it. The second page of the design screen has four boxes, one each for the Engine, Brakes, Suspension, and Cooling System. In each box, click on the plus and minus keys to cycle through the available choices for each part. If you want more information about a particular component, click on Detail to pop up a screen with the design specifications. To add luxury or safety options to the new car, click on either the Luxury or Safety button. A list will pop up, showing which of each of these options has been added to the design. If you are starting from scratch, these lists will be empty. The small inset panel at the bottom allows you to cycle through the available options with the plus and minus keys. Click on Detail to get more information about the feature. To add an option to the car, highlight one of the lettered slots and click Use. The option that appears in the inset window will be added to the design. Likewise, if you highlight an option on the list and click Remove, that option will be taken off the car. You can add up to ten luxury and five safety options to one car. To return to the first page of the design, click on Body. Your design options will be very limited at first, until your Technicians provide you with enough new components to give you a decent selection to choose from. Once you have more than one design on the boards, you can click on Prev and Next on the first page of the design sheet to cycle through your current designs. When you fill up all of the sixteen available slots with car designs, you will have to make room for more, either by saving your some of your current designs to the Archives or by getting rid of some designs. To file a design away in the Archives, click on Put, and the current design will be saved directly to the Archives. If you are unhappy with a design and want to get rid of it completely, click on Del, and after confirmation the current car design will be deleted permanently from your records. Sometimes, you may want to make modifications on an already-existing design. If the design is current, you can simply make whatever changes you like, then save the new design under a different name. If the old design has been saved in the Archives, click on Get. The first page of the Archive records will appear. Click on the design you want, then click on Use, and the design will be put back onto the current list, assuming there is room for it. (Click on Prev/Next on the Archive panel to page through the rest of the Archive records if the one you want isn't on the first page.) To see what a sample car design looks like, look at the design specifications for your prototype. This is a very simple car, of the "Family Sedan" type. By clicking on Part, you can see that the only components the car has are the engine -- a four-cylinder in-line -- and a simple hand brake. It has no suspension or cooling system, and no luxuries or safety devices. There's a lot of room for improvement. TESTING YOUR NEW DESIGN When you have designed a new car to your satisfaction, return to the first page of the design worksheet, and click Make. This directs your Technicians to make and test a prototype of your new automobile. A keyboard input box will pop up to allow you to name your new design, and ask you to confirm your decision to have the test car built. Then your test drivers will start putting the new car through its paces to check its performance. The testing screen allows you to choose which of five performance checks you want to put your new car through, and to watch the car as it is tested. Initially, the viewscreen at the top right shows an interference pattern. Once you start testing the car, this window allows you to watch the testing as it progresses. The five available testing categories are Acceleration, Braking, Handling, Capacity, and Fuel Economy. To order a test, click on the test name. The cost of the test will be added to the computer printout in the lower right quarter of the screen. Each test costs a different amount. To select all of the tests at once, click on Test All. When you have selected the tests you want, click on the button that says Run. The cost for materials and testing will be deducted from your funds, and the viewscreen will show you the car as it is put through its paces. If you don't wish to watch the tests as they take place, left click on the viewscreen as each test begins and the results will be instantly displayed. The testing results are read as follows: Acceleration: shows you how long in seconds it takes the car to go from zero to sixty miles per hour. Braking: tells you the distance required in feet for the car to go from seventy miles per hour to a full stop. Road Handling: gives you the number of gees at which the car stops holding the road. Capacity: "Seating" tells you the number of people the car can carry, and "Cargo" is the holding space the vehicle has in cubic feet. Fuel Economy: shows the miles per gallon of gasoline the car get in the city and on the highway. The Overall rating of the car is a percentage value showing how well that car is predicted to market as that type of vehicle. Different types of cars will require different emphasis in design: a van needs more cargo space than a sports car, while a sports car requires better acceleration than a van. USING THE ARCHIVES You can have up to sixteen current car designs in production at any time. If you exceed that number, but still want to hang onto your older designs, you will have to store them in the Archives. To reach the Archives, go to the Main Factory Screen and click on the Archives building in the upper left part of the screen. The Archives panel will appear. Click on Put, and you will see a list of your sixteen current designs. To move one to the archives, highlight it, then click on Use, and the design will be taken out of the current list and stored. You can also bring an older design back from the archives if you discover a need for it. From the main archive panel, click on Get. A list of the first twenty archived designs will appear. You can archive a total of one hundred designs. To see the rest of the archives list, click on Prev and Next to cycle through the pages of the archives until you find the one you want. When you've located the design to be loaded, highlight it, then click on Use. The current design list will appear. Highlight an empty slot and click on Use in that window. The selected archive design will move to the current list. If you highlight an occupied slot on the current list and click Use, the selected current design and the selected archived design will swap places. If you should happen to use up all the space in your archives, or if you just want to keep your archive lists short and easy to handle, click on Delete from the main archives panel. The archived design list will appear. Highlight the design you want to get rid of and click Use. The game will ask you to confirm your instruction; if you are sure you won't ever want that design again, click Yes. Once a design is deleted from the archive, it's gone forever, so be sure you're finished with it before you confirm. YOUR OWN PERSONAL GROWTH INDUSTRY: EXPANSION AND INNOVATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ OPENING UP NEW TERRITORIES Setting up sales offices and factories in new territories greatly adds to the complexity of your game, and is essential for your company's continued growth. Since a factory can supply sales offices in more than one territory if it is producing enough cars, you probably want to start your expansion by adding sales offices in territories close to your starting territory. The farther away from the factory your sales offices are, the higher the hidden incidental costs such as transportation fees will be for getting the cars to the showrooms. Because of this, it might not be a good idea to try to supply all your worldwide sales offices from a single factory. To open a new sales office, go to the Main Factory Screen and click on the Sales/Factories building. The Territory Map will appear. Click on the Territory you want to expand into. The Sales and Factory panels for that territory will appear. In the Sales Offices section, click on Open. The cost of opening the new office will be immediately deducted from your company's funds. If you want to shut down a sales office, click on Close. Closing a sales office is not free -- it costs one-half of what it cost to establish the office in the first place, and as with Open, the money is deducted immediately. Therefore, the game will ask you to confirm any office openings or closings. Since the deduction from your company funds takes place right away and can't be undone, decisions to open and close offices should be made with some care. You can open up to ten sales offices in any one territory. New icons will appear on the territory map each time you establish a sales office or factory in a new territory. Opening a new factory is very similar to opening up a new sales office. Click on Raise to establish a Level One factory in that territory. Clicking on Raise again will improve the level of your factory by one. A higher-level factory is more efficient, but expansion gets progressively more expensive as the factory level increases. Clicking on Lower will downsize your factory, at a cost of one-third the price of expansion. As with sales offices, costs for improving or downsizing your factories are immediately deducted from your company funds. PRICING AND SUPPLY ON A GLOBAL SCALE Once you have more than one model of car to sell, more than one factory producing your cars, and more than one territory to sell them in, pricing and supply become more complicated. The possible strategies for arranging your supply lines and setting your price strategies multiply enormously. To set up new supply lines for a territory, or change existing ones, go to the Main Factory Screen and click on the Sales/Factories building. The Territory Map will appear. Click on the territory where you want to adjust your supply lines or prices. The Sales Office/Factory panel will appear. Each territory has its own panel, so make sure you're in the right territory before you start making changes. If you wind up in the wrong territory, clicking on Prev and Next will allow you to cycle through territories until you find the right one. Clicking on List from any territory panel will give you a summary of the number of sales offices and the level of the factory, if any, in each territory. In the Sales Offices section of the panel, click on Detail, then on Supply Line to get the three-slot lettered list of supply lines for that office. If there is no factory in your new sales area, you will have to arrange to have the cars shipped in from elsewhere. Click on one of the three lines to highlight it, then click on the plus and minus buttons to cycle through the available territories until you find the one you want. Naturally, you have to have a factory established in a territory before you can use it as a supply line. To stop shipping cars, cycle through the territories until you find the "None" option. You may remove the automatic in-territory supply line from a factory in the same area, if you wish. When your supply lines are set, click on Price. You will have to set the initial price for each separate model of car you want to sell from that office using Single mode as described early. The other three buttons can be used to make more sweeping changes in the prices of your cars. Clicking on Model allows you to raise or lower the cost of a particular model of car in every territory. It doesn't matter which territory panel you are currently using -- the change will be applied everywhere that model is being sold. Use the plus and minus keys or direct keyboard input to change the price on that model by percentage of the current cost, not by dollar amount. To lower the price, click on the minus key until you get negative numbers. Clicking on Territory changes the price for every model of car being sold in the current territory. Again, the change is in percentage of the current prices, not dollar amount. Similarly, clicking on Global allows you to adjust the prices on every model in every territory. Note that if you are selling a particular model of car in a certain territory, there must be a supply line going to that territory from a factory which is making that particular model of car. It's pointless to tell your salespeople to sell "Megabux Electras" if none of the factories that are supplying them with cars are producing Electras. Once you've supplied your new sales area with cars, and set the pricing strategy, be sure to remember to head over to marketing and spend some advertising money in that new territory, if you want your cars to sell. USING THE BANK The bank is the place to go if you are expecting a cash crunch, are looking to finance a costly new expansion, or want to put some of your money away to accrue interest for a while. To get to the bank, go to the Main Factory Screen and click on Administration. When the Administration Office appears, click on the phone. The banking panel will pop up. The top section of the panel shows your current funds (in Checking), your funds in savings, and the current yearly interest rate accrued on your savings. (Your checking account does not earn interest.) To transfer money from checking to savings, click on Check. A keyboard input box will appear for you to enter the amount of money you want to transfer. Likewise, to shift money from savings to checking, click on Save and enter the amount. The bottom section of the panel shows your current loans, and the yearly interest rate the bank will charge you for the use of its money. To take out a loan, click on Loan and enter the amount in the keyboard input box. If the bank agrees to the loan, the money will be added to your checking account. If the loan is denied, the box will clear when you press enter, and you'll have to try again. Click on Term to set the length of time you want the loan to cover. This will determine the size of your monthly payments. The minimum payment on your loan will be deducted from your checking account automatically at the end of each month. If you want to pay more than the minimum in a given month, click on Repay and enter in the amount. It will be deducted from your checking account and the amount remaining on your loan will be reduced. CHARTING YOUR PROGRESS ----------------------------------------- So by now you've hired people, put them to work in the factories and in your research department, advertised your product, set the price tag, and got the cars shipped to the showroom. Maybe you've even expanded your operations already. Your cars are selling, but you need to plan for the future. Or perhaps your cars aren't selling, and you need to figure out where the problem lies. Your trusty staff of researchers and accountants stands ready to assist your business decisions with a wide variety of reports and graphs to show you just how well your company is -- or isn't -- doing. (Note: Some additional reports and graphs may have been added to DETROIT since this document went to press. Please see the Technical Supplement and Tutorial booklet for details.) FEEDBACK: GAUGING YOUR PROGRESS WITH REPORTS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reports give you a picture of how well your company is doing in the short term. Each report shows the figures for the month just past, and only for that one month. To get reports, enter the Administration Office screen and click on the pile of papers in the center of your desk. (If you do this in the first month, you will see that there are no reports available, since you have not started production yet.) A menu of available reports and graphs will appear, reports in the first two columns and graphs in the third one. Click on one of the report buttons to bring up that report. All reports are free with the exception of the Demand report, which must be commissioned from an outside research agency and paid for when ordered. Click on the stack of papers under the red arrow pictured at the right end of the info bar to close a particular report or graph. Many of the reports and graphs have word-toggles you can click on to obtain more information or change the way the information is presented for viewing. All text that appears in red is associated with a toggle and may be clicked on to change the display. When you are finished reading reports, click on Done to return to the Administration Office. PROFIT/LOSS The Profit/Loss Report is the most basic indicator of your company's health. In addition to being available through the Report menu, these figures are automatically presented to you at the start of each new month. The first column shows you your company's itemized expenses, while the second shows your income by territory. Click on Income to toggle your view of your profits between model and territory. TERRITORY This report gives you detailed information on how well you are doing in each territory in which you have an installation. Click on the territory name to cycle through your territories (only those areas in which you have sales offices or factories will appear.) There are five columns of information on this screen, each of which can be toggled between two different sets of information. To toggle the column, click on the column header. Toggles: First column: model name/model type. Second column: the number of assembly lines making each car/the price of the car in that territory. Third column: the number of cars built in that territory in the previous month/the labor costs for making each car. Fourth column: the number of cars sold in that territory in the previous month/the materials costs for making each car. Fifth column: the number of cars in stock in that territory/the profit made on each car at the current price. MODEL This report tells you how well each of your models is doing in each territory. Click on the model name to cycle through your current models. There are four columns of information on this sheet, each of which can be toggled between two sets of information. To toggle the column, click on the column header. (The column titled "Territory" does not toggle.) Toggles: Second column: the number of assembly lines making each car/the price of the car in that territory. Third column: the number of cars built in that territory in the previous month/the labor costs for making each car. Fourth column: the number of cars sold in that territory in the previous month/the materials costs for making each car. Fifth column: the number of cars in stock in that territory/the profit made on each car at the current price. COMPARE This report is your main source of information on how well your competition is doing. From this report you can see the expenses, income, and profit or loss margin for each of your three competitors. (There are no toggles on this screen.) MARKET T This report shows your marketing expenses arranged by territory. Click on the territory name to cycle through the territories. Click on the word "Territory" to toggle the display between the sums for each territory to the total sums for all territories. MARKET M This report is very similar to Market T, except that your marketing expenses are arranged by media type. Click on the media type to cycle through the available media. Click on the word "Media" to toggle the display between the sums for each media type to the total sums for all media. DEMAND This report is the only report that costs you money to acquire. To obtain a demand report, select a car model to get a report on by clicking on it, then click Use. You may get a demand report on only one model per month. Select the territories you wish a report on by clicking on them. You may select as many territories as you like, at a cost of $100 per territory. Click on Use to order the report. The game will ask you to confirm the order. When you do so, the cost will be immediately deducted from your company's funds and the demand report will appear on the screen showing you how many cars could have been sold in that territory in the past month. The demand in a particular territory may change from one month to the next based on your competitor's actions, your own advertising, or other factors. Once ordered, the demand report cannot be changed until the next month -- you may not change the model type or add to or subtract from the territories list. The second and subsequent times you order a demand report, you will first be given the option of ordering a New report or viewing the last demand report you purchased (click on Old). Only the last report is available. DISTRIBUTION This report shows you the supply lines for each of your sales offices. Click on the territory name to cycle through the territories. By clicking on any column heading you can change the display to show you the transportation costs involved in maintaining each supply line. ANALYSIS: FINDING TRENDS OVER TIME WITH GRAPHS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Graphs allow you to gauge your company's progress over an extended period. The information available in the graphs is more concise and therefore less detailed than the information you can get from reports. Graphs can be accessed from the same place reports are accessed. Click on one of the buttons in the third column of the Reports/Graphs menu to bring up a graph. Click on the stack of papers icon at the right side of the info bar to return to the Reports/Graphs menu, and click Done to return to the Administration Office. PROFIT The vertical axis on this graph shows you your profits for each month, compared to those of your competitors. By clicking on the scale indicator for the vertical axis, you can toggle the scale for a range of settings from tens of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars. Only those scales which are appropriate for the profit levels shown will be available, however, so if the most any company made in any month shown was $2000, you will not be able to change the scale to anything greater than thousands of dollars. The horizontal axis displays seven months of profit records. A year's worth of records are kept stored at a time. To access months not currently visible on the screen, click on the first or last month displayed. PRODUCTION The vertical axis on this graph shows you how many cars you and your competitors built each month. The vertical axis scale can be changed to range from tens to hundreds of millions of cars produced per month. Only those scales which are appropriate for the production levels shown will be available, however, so if no company produced more than sixty cars in any month shown, the scale will not go above tens of cars. As with profits, the horizontal axis displays seven months' worth of production records, and up to a year can be viewed by clicking on the first or last month displayed to scroll the printout. SALES The vertical axis on this graph shows you what your income from car sales is for each month, compared to those of your competitors. The numbers shown are for total income over all models of cars being produced. The vertical axis scale can be changed to range from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales per month. Only those scales which are appropriate for the sales levels shown will be available. As with profits, the horizontal axis displays seven months' worth of sales records, and up to a year can be viewed by clicking on the first or last month displayed to scroll the printout. SUBSYS LEVEL This graph shows you what level of advancement your automobile subsystems have achieved, relative to those of your competitors. The vertical axis shows the percentage of the level possible in the game that you have reached for each of the seven systems. There is a built-in limit to the rate at which you can acquire new technology through research, so you should not expect to reach 100% quickly, even if you put maximum investment into your research department. The horizontal bar shows each of the seven systems, abbreviated as follows: ENG=Engines, BRA=Brakes, SUS=Suspension, COO=Cooling, BOD=Bodies, SAF=Safety, and LUX=Luxury.