Thanks to Goran for putting together the expanded engine file. I'm off to try it now!
As I've been getting into the game the past few days, I've collected some questions that I didn't see addressed here or in the translated manual made available on HotU. Perhaps someone here knows?
1) What would be the purpose of building more/bigger Research buildings?
2) What would be the purpose of building more/bigger Administration buildings?
Edit: The manual file available on HotU notes, cryptically: "Bigger Administration resp. Research Department: Small image growth." ???
3) It seems to me that the only difference between the "Production" and the "Production+Storage" classes of buildings is that the latter can be switched from production to warehouse and back. With the prices not that much different for similar sizes, is there any advantage I'm not seeing to choosing the plain "Production" ones?
4) Is there any limit to how many of each item a warehouse can hold, or only a limit to how many different items it can hold?
5) Does one need to leave lots of pathways between the buildings? And how can one tell if supplies are going to have trouble getting from one building to another?
6) When you get offers on, or start researching, chassis or engines, does it matter whether you select small, mid-size, or luxury car? Or is the body the only part where this makes a difference?
7) Any insight on the best way to split the advertising budget? (Me, I just took a wild guess and set every branch to 30%/50%/20%.)
8) With parts, what numbers are better or worse? I have presumed that: for body, less weight is better; for chassis, more carrying capacity is better; for engine, less weight is better, more HP is of course better, and cylinders and RPM and cubic capacity are not really important. Is this right?
9) Any reason to not give a prototype the maximum number of gears possible?
10) Is there any point to test driving a new model? I find it awfully tedious, and I don't learn anything about the prototype from it.
That's all I can think of for the moment. Or at least I'll make myself stop thinking of new questions now.
P.S. Someone upthread asked if there are any new games in this genre in the pipeline. I know of one independent developer--well, a one-man freeware outfit actually--who is working on one. The author of GameBiz and GameBiz 2--bare-bones games yet strangely addictive--is in beta on "CarBiz:Megacorp". His
website has a link to the game's forum and other information.