In Progress Let's Play Automation Car Company Tycoon

[Burning Bridges]

A first batch of cars has been produced and delivered. Although the car is a rough prototype, some people just said they want to have it.

They will now boast with a 3L Turbo that delivers more power than a 4.5L V12, both in peak and power index. With a power index that is now 10% higher than a 4.5 V12 it means that it really left normal aspirated engines behind .. at least in high performance applications. That means the turbos will be faster on the racetrack. Now as to the rest ..

.. drivability, is absolute shit. But do you really care when you have 450 hp in a 900 kg car?

The driving values are absolute phenomenal. Accelaration 0-100 in 3.8s 80-120 in 1.5s topspeed 306 km/h

And a track time of 2:10 is already 2s faster than the best competitor this year, the amazing BRC V12.

People who drive the Turbo should not care about drivability. They are simply rough pieces of shit, you are just supposed to keep pushing the throttle, and the cars will develop amazing power.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The Turbo madness has somewhat delayed the main project to refine the normal aspirated Proll 760. This was the more practical design with a Popamol 3L V6 that delivers 300hp. 1/3 less power than the turbo, but the basics are more solid.

The light, nimble car has very good drivability of 41.4 and still over 50 sportiness. And although it is no match for the Turbos in track time (2:15s), it is still blazingly fast. And may be the more reasonable choice.

They can be ordered for 18,500$ and while this does not make the Professor a rich man, it will cover his expenses and keeps him firmly in business until even greater things come up ahead.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I also updated the side by side table .. order is everything in this game.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Project 3512

Apparently Popamol now wants to take on the highly successful Cosplay engine family. Research at Popamol has been extended by several million DM and they will be keep going for quite some time.

The first (3L) engines that power the Proll were quite a success already. Since then they have been testing new concepts which they think could lead to a further performance jumps.

Peak power does not make a car go fast

One important lesson has been learned at Popamol is that engines are not optimized for peak power.

That is total rubbish because it is just a number, does not make the car fast or more successful.

It's not even about optimizing the power index. While higher power indices generally translate into faster times, there are cars with identical power index that behave completely different.

No, it turns out this should be more about optimizing the CAM value. CAM means the geometry of the valves. (Values go from 0-100, a low CAM is better shaped for low revs, high CAM is better for high revs and max power)

Our studies have shown that CAM is very favorable around 70. This is a major step away from the previous engines which used much higher CAM. For example the 3L V6 Popamol used a CAM value of 84, and in the past we have seen a engines often running on CAM 100.

The image above shows what a powerful torque our V6 can deliver. Compare this to this 4L US V8 we showed earlier ..

There is a price to pay for the lower CAM of course, which is peak performance. But the lower the CAM the more power can be made available in low revs and this is also what makes the car fast on the racetrack.

A low revving engine develops less heat

This has even more ramifications further down the road. Lower CAM means less maximum rpm (revolutions per minute). And a low revving engine develops less heat, so this saves a little bit of drag required for cooling, as well as make the engine more durable (less rpm peak).

We have therefore calculated the cooling requirement per performance index and have seen that it can improve the overall peformance too. This is not going to turn the car seconds faster of course, but it is one factor that comes for free because it is related to the larger engine block.

There is no substitute for engine displacement

At some point this is really important. There is only so much that you can do with the bore and stroke, and at the end of the day real engine power can only come from displacement.

After we have discovered that a V6 has no real drawbacks against the V8, and can be extended to pretty large displacements, we wanted to see how far this could go.

In the end there were two candidates. First, a 88.8 x 88.8 mm 3,300 cc which would have been a very nice popamole figure and performed well. But the performance jump to the next larger engine was too big to ignore.

We therefore established that a bore stroke of 90 x 92 would be pretty ideal for our engine. Further increases only lead to marginal improvement while the lifetime of the engine goes to shit.

This is a pretty large engine anyways, a V6 at least of approximately 3,512 cm³. Hence we named it Project 3512 or the Popamol Large

Performance per kilogram better than a V12

This is perhaps the most surprising. The total hp/kg and performance index/weight ratios of the engine is now slightly better than a BRC 3L V12. This is normally an indication that theory has not been fully understood. A V12 should have too many advantages over a V6, afterall the production cost of a V12 is almost double and they would really not be built if there was no performance benefit.

Here for comparison with similar engines, the Projekt 3512 has the most performance per weight of all normal aspirated engines we have seen so far, even compared to V12s and V8s.

This is reflected in lap time. It comes mighty close to the turbos and V12s. It's not faster (afterall the power over 6000 rpm is lower), but overall almost equal and much more drivable.

Because that's the main strength of the normal aspirated engine and where we will be making up the most ground, i.e. in drivability. With a value of 41 this is about twice of the Turbo.

As could be seen on the last screen, a lap time of 2:13s is only marginally inferior to the 3L Turbo. But it does not have the shit drivability.

It's quite a boulder in the back of the small car. A V6 with slightly over 3.5 litre and "only" 329 hp but as we have shown, it does better than engines with 12 cylinders and up to 4.5 litre!

And that's before we do any shenanigans with a turbo ..

 

[Burning Bridges]

"This is the One I'll be remembered for!"

In lieu of the tests Professor Proll gave a public speech in which he expressed his views on the potential of the brand new Popamol "Large" engine (henceforth dubbed the LSI)

"This time they are close to having the perfect engine."

"In the coming year we will work together even more. First they say they are gonna make the step to 98 octane which will further increase the power."

"Then we will pair this with a turbo, and the cat will be out of the sack once and for all."

"Something's .. going to happen. I don't know exactly yet, but my name shall be Meyer if it will not be the 2:10 mark."

"I also think we can improve drivability."

"It will be wonderful."

 

[Burning Bridges]

The turbocharged LSI was immediately assembled but the plan has taken a blow when it was found that the engine does not fit. That means the big engine with the 2 huge compressors on each side is too wide for the cars engine bay.

We must look for a solution. This is not good. It's possible that we need to give up displacement (that we can never make up), or come up with a completely different turbo setup, or both.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I must see what can be done about this problem. Currently not much. The large V6 showed a huge performance leap in the normal aspirated form, and I think a well adjusted turbo would crack the 2:10. But the problem is the compressors, they make the engine too large. And at the moment I am not so much interested in just coming up with an arbitrary compromise, I made countless of such compromise engines before and most of them are forgotten.

 

[Burning Bridges]

AY CABRÓN!

I just stumbled upon this car body here.

A pretty large (as in: long) late 60s to 70s fastback with good aerodynamics. I don't know what you think but this one looks "right" to me.

Now I am just not sure what could be made from it. A Spanish car maybe? French? A not - Porschel 928? Or another Italian Lamborghini?

If somebody has a good idea, I would really appreciate to hear it!!

P.S. A good engine is already available in the form of a Popamole 4.7L V8, very similar to the Popamole Large, just with 8 cylinders instead of 6.

 

[Irenaeus]

How about a first generation Mazda RX-7?

 

[Burning Bridges]

Would be an interesting car but there is not much I can do about the rotary engines.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Wankel engines would be interesting, but I doubt they will ever put them in.

Right now they don't even have Diesel engines, no air cooled engines, no 5 cylinder inlines, no flat or boxer engines, and no 2 stroke engines.

I would prefer to have air cooled boxers, because that to me is a very

engine.

But its all very unlikely that they ever put in any of those myriad of configurations (like lets say an air cooled, diesel boxer), because they seem totally busy to keep their almost unworkable game engine functioning.

 

[Burning Bridges]

So I just experimented with this still unnamed car, just put some expensive parts on it and see where it goes.

I think it looks rather nice, though the work done on the body was minimal. Engine is a good one too, it's a V8 ordered from Popamole, and it delivers a lot of performance.

The car is neither particularly heavy nor extremely light, more right in between. That still means that it cannot really compete with the Porschels though ...

Ok. It's too early to say but with 2:18 completely rough and untuned the car sits somewhere right in between the Porschels and less nimble cars. I estimate with a good setup it would go around the track in 2:15 or so that means fast enough, but not going to break any records either. With their weight advantage the Porschels are kings of the race track right now, I am afraid.

It is however, a particularly fast car! 324 km/h is almost 20 kmh faster than any other car in this LP!!

That means we finally know what this car is particularly good at. Aerodynamically more favorable that its competitors, with a drag of only 0.57 m², it excels in top speed. The thought crossed my mind to revive my old record test track and build a car that attacks the land speed record over a 10 kilometer track .. hm interesting .. but this would only make sense if we add an absolute crazy engine.

Could be attempted. Could be attempted, with a 1000 hp engine or so ...

Fuck it. We have called our engine partners at Popamol what they think of this ridiculous idea.

They say they can build a V12 that would fit, based on their Popamol Large V6 and it would deliver about 650 hp. This alone would be very impressive indeed, but not win the land speed record yet.
But if we added a turbocharger 1000 hp should be doable shouldn't it .. hm, this could work, and if the compressors are not too wide .. this could be quite fast indeed.

Lots of if's right now, but if all works out, it could be quite successful.

Still no brand / name for the car though, right now we just call it the Barracuda and will sell it to the highest bidder. Any ideas?

 

[Burning Bridges]

There is interest from Japan.

The Arisaka company, formerly known for rifles and solar powered dildos wants to build the queen of cars for the Japanese motorway: the Shinkansen.

A land speed record car could also be made, they have the money and the enthusiasm, and it would be called Shinkansen Express.

We have not said yes, but maybe the pieces could fit together. Our brand new car with a Popamol engine, under Japanese management. Hm

P.S. Maybe I could have made this clearer. We know from earlier experience that speed is basically a function of a large engine bay + low aerodynamic drag. Weight and such are not overly important, and besides this car isn't particularly heavy either. It has a huge engine space, and low drag, so it begs for a huge engine. The only downside is the front engine - rear transmission, a mid engined car would be even more advantageous. But yeah, if we truly believe in our car, we think it could be quite fast indeed.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The high speed project has somewhat taken off as at least the engine has been shipped and tested.

As of usual Popamol have been absolutely punctual in the delivery of a brand new 7L V12. Their methodical approach resulted in 685 hp, ca 2.3 hp/kg and almost 100 hp/L.

It is not an overly complex or expensive engine. That means we basically ordered them to just slap this together by dead reckoning and ship it to us so we have a rough estimate of what we can work with.

We put it in our car. As you can see it is fucking huge and our specialists already fear the worst.

That is to say the car has a huge engine bay but there is a point where a small car with a huge engine becomes absurd, and this looks just fucking ridiculous.

Then, a first test at the Dessau track in East Germany was made. The old 10km layout that the germans used for their silver arrows, and exactly at the spot where Bernd Rosemeyer died

The car reaches 356 km/h which is not so much of a surprise, but the problem is that it is nearly undrivable.

As you can see here, we have already used the widest wheels possible, but wheelspin is still a ridiculous 81 %. A terrible value.

That means we have an engine, and it is so powerful that it basically just burns the rubber off the wheels. We must see if we can get some of the power on the road.

This is because, if we get Popamol to build us a turbo, power may get in the 1000 hp range, and it is already ridiculous enough as it is.

 

[Burning Bridges]

In spite of the shitty outlook concerning drivability, the first unit of the turbocharged V12 has been prepared and it is quite as powerful as we expected.

What we like is that Popamol have been very conservative with cost and weight, which shows that they understand what our common goals are.

The current design is only using the lighter Air intercooler, which means it sacrifices power for weight. It's also could probably run with several 100 hp more if we make the manufacturing more expensive, so far we only use the usual +6 in fuel system but otherwise this is an engine that costs no more than a production model - a couple thousand dollar.

What is not so nice is that this does not fit nor look like a proper car any more. It looks kind of ridiculous with bits sticking out everyhwere where we had to grind away the chassis.

When we presented it to the delegation from Japan, several faces contorted like they were going to commit Seppuku (not only among the Japanese) But when we told them that this car operates beyond the limits of reason and is more a statement about the insanity of man, they like that and began laughing, violently nodding and clapping themselves on the shoulders, saying things like yes, gooda! very gooda! yes duct tape gooda!!

Now if anything has been learned at this point, then that the turbocharged V12 performs even higher than we calculated, with a 1078 hp peak power even in the most conservative variant.

Popamol has been very successful in limiting this to only 6500 rpm. Based on CAM 70 and the superb low end design of the Popamol 3512, this engine has particularly excessive torque (1256Nm) that sets in quite early, at around 4000 rpm.

So even if this never runs on an open road, it shows what a well designed engine the 3512 is.

But as I wrote, once inside the car it looks a little bit over the top

Now to the performance, the car delivers the expected drivability of 0.0, ca 85% wheelspin and shitty acceleration for such a powerful engine.

The engine is totally overpowered for the tyres (we could only get to 295mm for the rear tyres).

But with a top speed of 437 kmh, we can already consider this a worthy record car. Although we still think this is not nearly making the most of the power we get from the engine.

 

[Burning Bridges]

A high end version of the V12 Turbo has been ordered. Only 1 or 2 unit will ever be built, and they will be used to challenge the lands speed record on the Autobahn very soon.

Meanwhile the Japanese have not forgotten that they also need a practical car to make this a meaningful project.

Due to the nature of the car, a long, sleek cruiser that is built for top speed, a 6 cylinder inline had been proposed, which fits perfectly, leaves room on the sides (in case someone wants to turbochargers) and has very small profile.

The 6 cylinder inline also has the advantage of perfect smoothness.

Popamol again use their preferred bore stroke ratio of 90-92, which is already known for very good performance and low cost.

This is just an early prototype as you can see in the RON of 94 which still leaves them the choice between 92 and 98 octane fuel.v

Fortunately this one looks much cleaner and sleeker than the Express, and when the car was presented there was no nervous laughter this time.

The car is relatively light, relatively well handling and extremely fast.

As you can see here, while the acceleration is completely unexciting, a top speed of over 303 km/h makes this one the king of the motorway. Especially considering the relatively small and cultivated engine.

 

[Burning Bridges]

We also received good news from overseas. Popamol have increased the performance of the V12 to over 1300 hp, almost 190 hp per liter. Although the engineering time for this unit is prohibitive, and it could never be produced in large numbers, this one is only fort a short moment of fame on the Autobahn.

Performance wise it could power a fighter airplane and compete with Rolls Royce Merlins or DB 605, with the small difference that it has only a fraction of the displacement.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Shinkansen Express

The land speed record ran into structural problems that could not be solved with this chassis.

While the engine somewhat exceeded the expectations, the tyres are just not sufficient for this amount of power.
With 295mm tyres maximum it mostly resulted in wheel spin, making this an almost useless car.

Anyway, this needed some conclusion, so it was decided that the prototype had to be assembled as it was.

Development of the H-engine was stopped at roughly 1300 hp and 1555 Nm max, because this already far exceeds the point of ridulous wheelspin. More power would just make the wheels spin faster and faster while the driver frantically hopes for a little bit of grip.

The front of the car is also not something we enjoy showing, because the engine and radiator sticks out.

The final test runs showed that the extra power resulted only in a minor increase in top speed.

The final result was

441.5 km/h

and 2:00.45a on the 13km Dessau test track in Dessau, making this the inofficial record for 1976

Meanwhile work has continued on a more practical variant with 3,512 cm³

It was decided that this comes with the 6 cylinder inline that is only a slight variant of Popamols 90x92 cylinder.

As you can see it sits nicely in this car.

Tests were also conducted with a low end version that has only 12 L/100 km fuel consumption but this did nothing for the market desirability, and performance fell to 280 hp.

So it was decided to go with the fuel guzzling 327hp version.

The engine also has all the nice traits of the V6, i.e. lots of low end torque and a surprisingly low redline.

Track results are not too bad. While the track time and acceleration are no big deal, the Shinkansen has the highest top speed of any car in this LP, with just a comparatively small engine.

 

[Burning Bridges]

The Shinkansen project has also covered new ground, by making my first inline 6 Turbo.

Surprisingly, it develops more power than the V6. Maybe I just got better with turbos, I just dont know.

This absurdly impractical engine - which is an absolute dog to drive - makes the Shinkansen Turbo the fastest car by far.

With a top speed of 341 km/h it is over 30 km/h faster than the fastest competitors.

To wrap up the Shinkansen project, a lot of experimentation has been going on and the car did not exceed the performance of the Prolls, BRCs or Folgores in most areas. But experimentation has resulted in some fresh designs, and a car that is the undisputed king of the motorway, with an unprecendented top speed of over 340 km/h.

 

[agris]

 

[Burning Bridges]

At the moment my motorsport needs are much better served with this here http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/motorsport-manager-pc.113607/page-2

 

[thesheeep]

Can you explain why you are playing this?

I am not trying to mock you or anything. I am genuinely curious about why anyone would be so much into playing hardcore spreadsheets.
It is something I was never able to "get". All those train/car/etc. simulations.

Why?
You seem to be someone who could explain.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Is this a serious question?

Unlike so called "games" where you are just a provider of button pushes when another scripted sequence starts, in games based on complex formulas you can actually incluence the outcome in endless ways.

Moreover you can also develop new formulas and build actual knowledge how to get there. I dont know about you but when Usain Bolt broke the 100m record it was exciting to me by how much. Now when you can make 100% from one approach
I could maybe fiddle around for a long time to get 100.1% or 100.2% but thats pretty pointless. What's really exciting is to strive to get 103% or another one could make 105%.

It could be argued that stat based RPGs are nothing but that. You just dont get that they are not only confined to fantasy.

Lastly you learn a lot of useful stuff. For example in spring I now often talk to people who have opened the bonnet of their car, have a look at the engine and know lots of stuff that you probably wouldn't.

 

[agris]

Some people really like the logical puzzle that is optimization problems, whether that's math-based or complex character building ala Hackmaster 4e. Some people don't, that's life.

 

[Burning Bridges]

A little bit of modern shit (2017)

So far Italian sport cars were financially very successful, offering small numbers of exclusive, hand-made luxury items at insane profits.

But lately they have under pressure by much cheaper cars that make them look bad on the racetrack.

Therefore the Folgore company asked their designers to develop a modern car for the year 2017, and ot was supposed to be of extremely high requirements.

This wonderful front engined roadster was already available, so they mostly needed a new engine.

The car was supposed to be fast on the racetrack and relatively lightweight. That means no monster engine. Instead of the usual V12, they came up with a very innovative V8.

with 82.5 x 85 mm it's using cylinders that are neither excessively large like the Popamol, nor small like the high revving 3L V12s. The new engine (1737 FV8) is actually right in between.

With material improvements by 2017, max rpm is already a nominal 8,500. But it can go much higher, and versions with 10,000 rpm were tested which make an infernal noise (I hope I can make a video).

The engine can also use a modern injection system. All in all this 3.7L V8 has the best performance to weight ratio I have ever seen, even at relatively modest specs.

It weights under 150 kg, and with 490hp/338 power index it has a hp/kg ratio of 3.3:1 and a perf/kg ratio of 2.4

A prototype was tested and already beat the time on the Automation track down to low 2:04s. That means it was already 6 seconds faster than the Popamol Turbo (1976 model), even before any kind of tuning on the car had begun.

Keep in mind that as usual the first protype does not use any quality improvements, so a custom race version could probably attack the 2:00 minute mark.