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Automation is very little business management, and those parts of the game are frankly terrible. It's very much optimizing sliders with completely opaque reasoning behind them with no relation to real-world business or any comprehensible/exposed model, which is obnoxious compared to the car & engine designers where the impacts your choices make are much more comprehensible if you understand what you're actually designing, and the reams of instant feedback throughout design that the game gives you which can make up for huge gaps in your knowledge.
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Jun 8, 2021 22:32
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Thanks for the advice and input everyone. I ended up watching a lot of youtube tutorials both on the game and irl cars, and ordering some books. Im enjoying tinkering and playing it even if I have no idea what im doing but I can def see hows it not for everyone
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Jun 8, 2021 23:43
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SkyeAuroline posted:Unfortunate, but good to know. These things sound maybe interesting but I don't have the detail knowledge. Just seemed like potentially a solution to what I'm looking for, but if it's all fiddly car design bits and not much management, there goes that. I'd give Capitalism 2 a go, granted it is 20 years old. You could produce a car, with all of the supply chain needed to support it, without having to pick an engine V or a tyre pressure.
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Jun 9, 2021 00:05
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lagidnam posted:Has someone checked out the Urbek demo on steam? This is pretty rad, thanks for the heads up.
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Jun 9, 2021 04:57
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Beamed posted:This honestly doesn't reflect on the devs or the game but I took a look at the Steam page for Rogue State Revolution and  Unfortunately, we may never know what the full review text was:  Beamed, if you have a copy of the rest of this review, please share with the class for posterity's sake. I am sure the author redeemed himself in the following paragraphs, but we may never know if no one has a copy.
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Jun 9, 2021 08:19
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Lol just got this email from the author: 
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Jun 9, 2021 09:48
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Hahahahahahah
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Jun 9, 2021 10:28
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absolutely incredible lmfao
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Jun 9, 2021 10:54
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lmao, what the
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Jun 9, 2021 10:58
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SkyeAuroline posted:Unfortunate, but good to know. These things sound maybe interesting but I don't have the detail knowledge. Just seemed like potentially a solution to what I'm looking for, but if it's all fiddly car design bits and not much management, there goes that. I'd say it's almost Football Manager-esque where a bit of carfan will definitely help but there's enough RPG stats in the spreadsheets to not completely mess up in the short term if you just generally maximize stats constrained by costs and downstream impacts.
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Jun 9, 2021 11:54
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GetDunked posted:Sure! Dungeon Village 2 is one of the many little sim games that Kairosoft makes. In it, you play as the mayor of a small village, tasked with building it up to provide traveling adventurers with the amenities they need to go fight monsters and hunt treasure outside the village borders. Thanks for the writeup! This seems really cute, I'm a little suspicious of mobile games but there doesn't seem to be any additional in app purchases so I think I'll pick it up
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Jun 9, 2021 12:12
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There's like 5 dozen kairosoft games that fit the description 'management game' and the ones with price tags attached never have any IAP stuff afaik. If you want more there's an inactive thread for 'em where goons recommend a bunch of their favorites: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3902403
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Jun 9, 2021 12:25
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Count Uvula posted:There's like 5 dozen kairosoft games that fit the description 'management game' and the ones with price tags attached never have any IAP stuff afaik. there are some IAP ones now that are F2P garbage, this is why i was so happy they made new ones - kairosoft was lost in the F2P mines for years definitely don't get the F2P ones unless that's your thing, they are insanely grindy and bad compared to their no IAP titles
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Jun 9, 2021 13:45
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There was a series of crafting games on Kongregate that I can't remember the name of in the mould of "hire various crafters, run a shop for adventurers, buy upgrades and more advanced recipes" that I wasted WAY too much time on. The second one had a whole town you had to upgrade with other players, and the third went into mobile tap mode; does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? e: Shop heroes, except I s2g there were earlier editions Ichabod Sexbeast fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 14:10
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Lol just got this email from the author: Well he asked for it so here it is: 
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Jun 9, 2021 15:01
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Lol so the rest of the review he wanted us to read is just as bad 
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Jun 9, 2021 15:05
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How does that guy even find out he's getting made fun of on SA
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Jun 9, 2021 15:09
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I remember some pages back someone was wishing for a train dispatcher/traffic controller game and looks like it was willed into existence: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124180/Rail_Route/ Looks pretty neat, my issue with the demo so far is that the tutorial is pretty useless at teaching you how to actually play the game, I think you're supposed to figure it out as you go in the Endless mode.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:09
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Hub Cat posted:Well he asked for it so here it is: Ahh, this will clear things up....wait...
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Jun 9, 2021 15:11
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Enslavement mechanics need some work and the FGM minigame could be more graphic.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:17
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He thought he was clever, hiding his review so you couldn’t see the full extent of it and saying ‘post it all or take it down’. Unfortunately the internet never forgets.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:32
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Hub Cat posted:Well he asked for it so here it is: Well that just about clears it up then, lmao
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Jun 9, 2021 16:08
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zedprime posted:Gearcity is the car empire game for people without an affinity for automotive engine engineering. I think you were last looking for closer to manufacturing sims which it is largely not. Product design is messing with sliders but it's a bit more caRPG where your cars filter down to stats that influence purchasing and manufacturing/supply chain in a way you can watch what happens when you change a drop-down or slider and know pretty well what the final effect is. There's then the supply chain side where you build, upgrade, or destroy factories based on prevailing regional labor expertise, labor costs, and shipping costs and set up car dealer networks based on demand. Besides there's a pretty intense general business management side not unlike the Capitalism series where you're encouraged to manage credit, bonds, and stocks smartly and you can make strategic purchases of auto company stocks to pick up subsidiaries or buy brand marks among a bunch of financial and management stuff legendary in the industry. I appreciate the overview. Sounds interesting for certain, a bit high level but it seems like that's all you're getting today anyway so I'll live. Then again, not even totally sure what I'm looking for, so maybe that's actually it and I just don't know yet.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:14
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Didn't expect to find a Dear
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Jun 9, 2021 16:35
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Capitalism 2 has mods specifically for the auto industry if that's your thing. You'll need to buy Capitalism Lab and probably a DLC to do it though, but I feel like I got my money's worth with it and it's a good game. Although this is the one game that should be a spreadsheet game and often the data is buried in weird menus or just not available at all. I can't optimize my product mix and logistics if I don't have the data you guys 
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Jun 9, 2021 17:11
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Woah someone quoted one of my posts. Excited to see if there’s a new game someone thought I’d be interested i- oh no
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Jun 9, 2021 17:56
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lmfao 13 people found that review helpful
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Jun 9, 2021 18:19
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does he express a yearning for more torture and sex slavery in his other 207 video game reviews?
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Jun 9, 2021 18:27
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Clark Nova posted:does he express a yearning for more torture and sex slavery in his other 207 video game reviews?
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Jun 9, 2021 18:36
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Beamed posted:Woah someone quoted one of my posts. Excited to see if there’s a new game someone thought I’d be interested i- i think you mean "oh yes" because it was an amazing self own More on topic Urbek is really cool, not sure how much they'll add to it as a full game but for a demo its definitely worth the time. I really like city builders that take some of the finer details out of your hands and do "zoning" style building personally - I tend to build somewhat chaotically because it feels more "real" to me to begin with so games that lean into it usually sit well with me. Pornographic Memory fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 18:49
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I don't want to be a butt but maybe let's leave it to laughing at this one and keep this thread about management games instead of cataloguing this guy's steam reviews.  I wasn't going to go after him, I just thought that was an absurdly large number of video game reviews, though I guess he takes his craft extremely seriously
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Jun 9, 2021 18:52
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Pornographic Memory posted:i think you mean "oh yes" because it was an amazing self own Yeah it took me a while to figure out that I wasn't supposed to be making single roads with lines of houses and instead zoning squares like you would sim city.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:55
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Truga posted:absolutely incredible lmfao amazing
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Jun 9, 2021 19:01
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Oh neat, I missed that Industries of Titan got a Steam release date for this month. Anyone have strong feelings one way or another about the game?
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Jun 9, 2021 19:48
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SkyeAuroline posted:With all that in mind, is Automation worth even recommending to someone not huge into cars? I wasn't into cars until after I played Automation, so there's that. It's a really bad tycoon/management game right now. I wouldn't get it unless you want to design cars and drive them around using the built-in Beam.N.G. exporter (you'll also need BeamNG for this, obviously).
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Jun 9, 2021 20:00
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Anno posted:Oh neat, I missed that Industries of Titan got a Steam release date for this month. Anyone have strong feelings one way or another about the game? I haven't played the game but it irks me that it's coming out on steam still in early access. I got excited because I thought that meant it's almost done but nope, new platform new year long EA period 
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Jun 9, 2021 20:04
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Anyone have any experience with Golftopia? It's currently on sale on GOG.
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Jun 9, 2021 20:34
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Lucinice posted:Anyone have any experience with Golftopia? It's currently on sale on GOG. Yes! I played a lot of it in EA before it came out and actually not much since release because of other things, but it's a lot of fun and I do recommend it if you're interested and it's on sale. You design the courses and set up wacky traps/assists as necessary to improve fun or change the difficulty of a hole. When designing a hole you can hit a button to see something like 50 AI attempts charted out to show you in general where people of all skill ranges will hit the ball so you can set up a trap or figure out what par you want a hole to be. The main complaint I saw about it was people who wanted a more grounded Sim Golf type game instead of a space golf course with jump pads and flaming hoops but those people can suck an egg, I had a very good time with it.
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Jun 9, 2021 20:39
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I tried it and asked for a refund. Mostly becauseexplosivo posted:people who wanted a more grounded Sim Golf type game instead of a space golf course with jump pads and flaming hoops but those people can suck an egg I found the aesthetic off-putting(pun not intended), found the UI and art direction to feel a bit B-list, and while playing it I kept thinking "man I wished there was this game except more like simgolf". So I ended up playing simgolf again.
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Jun 9, 2021 20:42
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I do want to pontificate a little on what Automation’s trying to do with it’s campaign and I really miss this in a lot of management games: the Triple Constraint. Anyone who works in or around project management is probably familiar with “time, cost, and scope” being your three constraints - in the real world, you can’t ever satisfy all 3, as they necessarily oppose each other. A lot of management games really don’t touch in this too much. Most games heavily constrain everything by cost - every business/management process you do is just an input/output and scope is sometimes managed by progression mechanics like a research tree if not just outright the money (cost, again) required to expand your scope. But still, plenty of games do have alternative scopes or paths to pursue. Time is the constraint I think a lot of these games miss. If I don’t care what it says the year is in Workers and Resources, I’m not constrained by time in any meaningful way. Same with Tropico, though they at least have a few time sensitivities with eras. Most of these style of games are very self paced. And that’s to their credit, as obviously adding a time constraint isn’t popular and I wouldn’t like it how most games would implement it either, certainly. The only time constraint in most games is your own patience. What I like about what automation is trying to do is allow you to really play with the full triple constraint in an interesting way. You’re made aware of the potential markets for cars and the differences in margin - you have the ability to build out a platform of cars or engines to exploit adjacent markets. All of this though is still based on a project lifecycle, so you can’t just start churning out the exact thing you want to build and have to be conscious of how long it’s going to take. Now all of a sudden all that engineering time on a new suspension doesn’t make sense, and boy that’s going to limit this segment. That might force other decisions - do we drop that segment? Etc. It’s Not There Yet in terms of development and may never be, but it feels like one of the few games that has some real deep forward planning potential. Management game don’t often have deep planning beyond purely spatial planning for buildings and things, and because it’s reactive, they can’t make “time” an interesting constraint beyond just being a literal timer. I’m sure a large part of this is because it’s a game, no one wants to pause and carefully have a planning meeting with their own brain about what to do, they want to play the game when they boot it up. I think too, there’s a real difficulty in making the triple constraint interesting because it probably heavily limits the viability and ease of some starts, limiting player creativity or things like that. Not to mention that once you have all three, you really do start to introduce hard failures that a lot of management games don’t have that are going to be punishing as hell. If you make a 2 year business plan that goes wrong and that leads to bankruptcy, oops. It’s pretty tough to get most management games into a *hard* loss state barring cheesy ones like losing an election in Tropico - but then again, that may be confirmation bias of the games I enjoy not having hard locks and being experienced with them. It’s why, though, I like to have personal timed goals within W&R - it adds the third constraint to really make me have to think about what I’m doing instead of just “eh sure eventually everything gets to where it’s going.” I play it more like a project manager, less like a Soviet city painter and that rules. TLDR: What I’m saying is that I played a business simulation with in-depth planning in a graduate marketing class that was one of my most favorite games ever despite being homework and I want them to make that game but not as an academic exercise, and I’m a huge nerd.
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Jun 9, 2021 20:46
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