GearCity Jorlaans Gearcity Guide 2022

Start With The Tutorial

So you've done the tutorial (I hope) and now you're scratching your head a bit wondering what to do next. What do I focus on? What vehicle types do I make? What exactly is the purpose of marques? Hopefully this guide can answer those questions and more.

This guide is mostly written with a 1900 start date in mind. That does not mean this guide is useless outside that date, but starting at the beginning is a good idea for new players and quite frankly I find it the most fun.

R&D And Marque Basics

This is where you design parts/vehicles, upgrade parts/vehicles, assign parts/vehicles to outsourcing, can look at contracts, view all manufactured parts and their stats and can access research teams.

Designing new parts gives experience to the relevant research branch. So if you're actively working on an engine, your engine team will gain in skill. Newer parts are generally better than older parts, even if they have been upgraded.

Upgrading is important to keep costs down and get the most out of everything you design.

Outsourcing is a great way to earn extra cash from the parts you designed.

View allows you to look at a detailed breakdown of every part/vehicle.

Research Teams help increase your passive skill gain, or retain skills you've already gain.

A marque can be thought of as a sub-company. You use marques to specialise in particular classes of vehicle. You completely control it and all profit is yours.

Designing Parts And Vehicles

Designing parts can be very easy or much more involved depending on your preference. When you go down the Design drop down bar and click on one it will give you the option between Advanced and Assisted.

I actually like to start with assisted for almost every part I make, even if I intend to go in to advanced later. This allows me to easily enter some basic parameters before I even start. I can select the vehicle type, the chassis I want it to work with if it's an engine or engine if it's a gearbox, name and marque I wish to design it.

You want to make sure that parts are quality enough for the time period, while not being so expensive that you can't sell vehicles made with them.

Selecting a vehicle type will auto-place the sliders in positions that are approximate for that type. You are fully free to move them around and early on you absolutely should in some places to keep costs down.

The 3 sliders are somewhat the same for all 3 types of part.

The first slider for chassis and engines is size and for gearboxes it is power/fuel efficiency ratio.

The second slider is complexity. Putting this higher makes a part more complex to manufacture which will make it better but also more expensive and slower to build.

The third slider is price. This also makes a part better/worse depending on it's position while also greatly influencing the price.

Chassis are the "foundation" of your vehicle, everything is built on the chassis. The size slider here affects both the wheelbase and the size of the engine box, IE how big an engine you'll get in. Any engine you design will have to fit the chassis you wish to put it in.

Play around with the parts and think about the type of vehicle you're designing. If you're making a pickup or van you'll want high durability; a luxury sedan should be more advanced while a phaeton can have a very basic chassis.

I find that the F4 drive train works quite effectively for most vehicle types. It has an excellent mix of performance, cost and ease of manufacture.

Engines are what actually makes your vehicle move. When you first start designing an engine, use the Select Chassis button right under the sliders and pick the chassis you want the engine to fit. If you don't you might end up accidentally making one that doesn't fit, then you'll have to go back and either make one that does fit, or make a whole new chassis to fit the engine which you can also do. Either of these will slow you down quite a bit so always be careful.

You do not need to make an engine to fill the entire engine block, larger engines are more powerful while being less fuel efficient. Certain types of vehicles will require much more powerful engines, like anything you want to race or large heavy vehicles like vans/trucks.

The type of engine is really up to you. I find many of them to be practically useless while others are quite versatile. Personally I tend to mostly use straight and V type engines early, transitioning to mostly V; although you can technically use almost any type for almost any vehicle if you really want to.

Gearboxes are the final component and they effect overall power, fuel efficiency, performance and handling. Always make sure to select the engine you wish to use the gearbox with to assure compatibility. The top slider effects power/fuel efficiency. Once you have an engine selected there will be a little bit of text just below the sliders that tells you whether or not the gearbox can handle the engines torque. ALWAYS move that top slider as soon as you've selected your engine, it needs to be moved to fully update the tip on whether or not it works with the engine.

Changing the number of gears, increasing the complexity of the design or the price will all make the gearbox handle an engine easier. If you have everything set to max and you still cannot get a gearbox that will work with your engine, then the engine is likely just too powerful for now.

Once you design the parts you'll need to wait until they're complete to make the actual vehicle.

When it comes to putting it all together, select your desired vehicle type and then start assigning the correct parts. Remembering which parts go with which design is something you'll have to come up with a system for. I like to name my parts like so: Sedan C 1 (sedan chassis 1); LS E 4 (luxury sedan engine 4); Van G 2 (van gearbox 2) but without the parts in (these). This helps keep things simple, Sedan C 1 goes with Sedan E 1 and Sedan G 1.

Once you have selected the appropriate parts you must assign a body. I'm kinda lazy with this part and usually just use a pre-made body that I'll probably just give a different paint job, change the colour of the interior to match/compliment and maybe add an accessory or two if I think it's appropriate. Designing your own body is not overly difficult however and all designs can be named and saved.

Lastly there is also the advanced method of design. As mentioned before I like to start with assisted and then go advanced once I've set my basic parameters. From here you can modify things like the quality of the materials/components and manufacturing; further refine the size of things like chassis and engine; and set priorities like power, fuel efficiency, development pace and for vehicles specifically the target demographic and testing.

Development pace is an important one to keep an eye on. Your part/vehicle might say that it will take 7 months and $600,000 to finish. You can probably nudge the price down a bit while still keeping the time frame the same, therefor spending less money for the same benefit. You can also significantly lower the pace and make the whole process quite inexpensive, but bear in mind you don't want the part to be outdated by the time it's complete, so find the balance you're looking for. The overall cost of the part itself is unchanged by development pace but all the other sliders will effect the price in one way or another, always pay attention to the price.

Demographics are also very important. By default the game will set all vehicles to "upper middle class". I like to make pickups/vans/phaetons low to low middle; coupes, coupe2+2's, sedans middle; luxury sedans and limos high middle. I don't typically make for specifically high class. People will buy outside their demographic if they can afford it and I figure the rich will buy the best vehicles regardless.

Production And Branches

So you've designed a vehicle and now you want to sell it, how very ambitious of you! For this you need factories to make them and branches to sell them.

Unless you started with the option "no factories or branches" (and honestly why would you if you're the kind of person who needs an intro guide) then you'll have a factory and a branch in your home city.

Your starting factory is small and will only make so many vehicles per month so do not design more than 1 vehicle type to begin with. You can upgrade or redesign your factory to make it bigger. Upgrading is at first quite cost effective and is what I initially recommend. The MAX upgrade is quite worthwhile and only takes 6 months. If you get this going 6 months before your first vehicle is ready then you'll be able to make more right away. So long as you started on easy or medium you will have more than enough money for this.

I HIGHLY recommend using auto-produce to make this part of your game SO MUCH EASIER. At first there isn't much to do here but it quickly becomes a chore. Do yourself a favour and automate this. More on automation below.

You upgrade or redesign factories by clicking on the appropriate city on the world map then following the appropriate buttons.

This is also where you'll find information on the branch in that city, how many dealerships it has, employees etc. Also here you can redesign the dealership. This I DO recommend at some point before too long. Your initial dealership starts with quite low dealership and sales resources. Set them where you choose but beware construction and monthly costs. Better dealerships will generally sell more cars.

When you first open a dealership you can set the sliders where you choose. At this time I am unsure if the "clone branch" tool is fully functional or not, but so long as you do not leave the world map, clicking on and opening a branch in a city then clicking on another city to open another branch will keep the sliders in the same position reducing clicks.

Depending on what city you start in, you will not need branches in other cities for a little bit as you probably can't meet demand in your home city just yet. This is assuming you went with a large, wealthy starting city like New York or London, which I do recommend for newer player. I personally like New York the most as it's populated, rich, has easy access for expansion and is safe from war damage, though not war issues entirely. More on that later

Mega Menu And Automation

From the office you have the mega menu, this is an absolute lifesaver and something you'll interact with more than the world map.

If you're automating then you don't need to worry about the factory tab. If you're not then this is where you'll set the production of vehicles in each individual factory, but you did the tutorial so you know that right already.

The branch tab is important whenever a new vehicle is created. You'll need to assign a price and make sure to hit APPLY TO ALL so it applies the price to all branches. it is very important to note that if you open a new branch you need to come in here and apply to all again to get that new branch selling. The game will auto-suggest a price and I usually adjust them to my preference. Don't set prices too high or not many people will be able to afford the vehicle. There is a little arrow symbol next to the price that you can click to get a bit of an estimate as to a customer base at that price.

When you have a vehicle selected you'll see info on the right related to costs. The most important one to factor when deciding the price of a vehicle is IMO the material cost. At the bottom here you'll see "project profits". At first this number is in the red, this is the costs to research and develop the vehicle up to now. Every sale will bring that number towards 0 and finally start making a net profit if you sell enough.

Marketing Info/Districts is very important.

Marketing is something you won't need to do right away as so long as you're in a decent city you won't hit full sales right away even without it. Eventually you'll expand to the point where you are no longer manufacturing to full capacity and then you start to advertise. I like to do all advertising functions from here, it's DAMN tedious to do on a city-by-city basis.

There is a drop down menu that will initially say "All Forms". Using this is NOT recommended at first. It'll set every single form of advertising to the same percentage, but some forms are WILDLY more expensive than others.

Click on that menu and select forms individually. Newspapers is really inexpensive to I like to set it to full. Play around with the others and set them to levels you find appropriate. Make sure to hit APPLY TO ALL on every single form after you have set it's slider but before moving on to the next. If you open new branches you will need to come back here and do it again. Just make sure you have a city selected that already has advertising in place and just go down the slider one form at a time hitting apply to all again.

Make sure to hit the boxes to lock the percentages if you wish to keep advertising at a consistent rate, otherwise with time the amount you put in won't go as far and your percentage will fall. Advertising can get very expensive and becomes more so with time so watch your finances.

Districts are a slightly more advanced concept you won't need to worry about at first. Later on you can use it to make specific production/sales areas. Vehicles will only be manufactured and sold based on their district needs and not ship outside that.

Autocommands is a wonderfully helpful section, full of tools to make your life easier, reduce clicks and tedious activity.

At first auto hire and auto wage will be enabled. Do yourself a favour and at the very least, never click these off. Managing these manually would truly suck.

Auto produce is something I highly recommend using. This will largely make sure you produce the correct amount of cars based on demand each month. This is a massive time saver as the game progresses and even right from the start is probably optimal.

Auto recondition is one I would also click. Over time your factories and dealerships will become worn down, which makes then less efficient. For factories this means lower production and for branches lower sales. Setting this will simply recondition them when needed and you'll never be bugged about it. Much recommend.

Auto sell is not one I use as I prefer to set the price of vehicles manually but maybe you will choose to use it.

Disable platform sharing is for when you have a marque that you've spun off in to a separate company and do not want them using your parts. By the time you might use this you'll know all about marques.

Auto union will simply accept any demands for wage increases from your various employees. You will probably get a lot of these popups as the game progressed and you expand a lot. If you simply want to keep people happy and working, using this is a good idea.

Auto marketing will spend 10% of your cashflow monthly on marketing, making it so you do not need to set sliders. I don't use this as I like to have different forms at different rates for the reasons explained above. This can however be a useful tool to keep advertising in check during hard times, like a depression.

Auto Bid will allow you to get a chance to bid on any company that is going bankrupt. This is not something you'll want to do early but later on could be a great way to expand.

The various buttons on the right will allow you to perform various functions faster, but not always as efficiently. Check them out and decide for yourself.

At the very least if you're not going to select auto produce/recondition, then the right recondition button is where you'll want to do all branches and factories at once. Don't put yourself through the tedium of doing that city by city.

Marques, Stocks And The Bank

When you first start the game you'll have created a company name and chosen a logo. When you make parts and vehicles they are all under that company.

Opening a marque costs money so is not something I recommend right away unless you know what you're doing. The first marque costs over 1 million and every subsequent one costs more. You can choose to sell a marque if you wish, close it, or spin it off in to another company.

When you do create a marque you'll choose a name and logo. Then you can start designing parts under that marques brand. It seems that so long as they're still a part of your company they share your skill levels even if the numbers show different. Those are for when they're spun off I believe.

You should use marques to create more specialised companies. My parent company will always start with Phaetons, they're in high demand early on and cheap to design. I usually will also eventually add sedans, coupes and coupe 2+2's to my parent company. Those tend to be relatively middle quality type vehicles and that's where I specialise.

I will eventually open up a marque that makes pickup trucks and vans; another for full size and luxury sedans and limousines; another for sports, roadsters etc.

Divide up your marques as you see fit. Just remember to try and make the various vehicles made by each marque to be in a similar category: low or high class, performance or budget, you decide.

Stocks are something you can buy or sell and you can also take your own company public, raising capitol but also allowing others to buy a portion of your company. This can be an incredible place to make a lot of money. Only companies that have gone public will have stocks. I'll discuss more in a bit.

The bank can allow you to apply for a line of credit, take out a loan or issue bonds. The amount you can borrow depends on the value of your company, including stock holdings.

Lines of credit and loans can help you expand but you will pay interest on it. I'll discuss these more in strategy.

In regards to bonds I'm just gonna say don't mess them unless you know what you're doing.

Other Stuff On Your Desk: Reports, Memos, The Phone, Magazine And Newspaper.

Just about everything you want to know about not only your company, but your competitors as well can be found on reports. Every month you'll get a popup with the monthly report. If you close this it's front and centre on your desk. From here is where you access all the other, more specific bits info. I am not going to go through every single tab as they are pretty self explanatory I think, but I am going to mention some important ones to watch.

It is worth noting that almost all info presented to you in the game is from LAST MONTH. So the very first month of the game won't have anything to report.

Sales will give breakdowns on sales by city, vehicle and district.

The revenues tab gives several useful pages with specific info. I find if you own many stocks then the stock page here is great. It will also show every companies gains/losses.

Operations has some very useful ones to watch.

Industry will how how many vehicles you made overall last month and how much of your production is being used per factory.

Branches is a nice and easy way to see how the various branches are doing. Are they all selling vehicles, are they all making a profit?

Delivery costs is something to bear in mind if you're shipping over long distances and in particular across oceans. Cross ocean shipping is not usually recommended and is where districts come in to play.

Financials will shows you breakdowns for monthly, quarterly and annually.

Under Industrials the Body/Fuel Type Demands page is VERY important. Here you will see what vehicles are currently in demand in each market. This is where you start to plan what you want to make. Keep en eye on these numbers, if vehicle sales drop considerably and there are no particular economic issues, then that vehicle type is probably less popular that it used to be.

The other categories here are good to check once in a while to see where your company is at skill and image wise, and where you stack up against other companies. There is also a certain satisfaction you'll get when you first see your company at the top of the various charts.

Charts gives you nice little breakdowns of a few other things you'll probably want to know eventually.

Memos are an important thing to check. Here you'll see what new technology is available, a quick stock report of stocks you own, if you won any awards or contracts, if anyone licensed any parts and probably one or two more things...

The phone gives access to Lobbying, Human Resources and Contracts.

Lobbying is VERY important. You essentially bribe politicians to give you a break on construction costs and taxes. The construction subsidies are appreciated, but the tax savings are the real ticket. This will absolutely save you more in the long run than you spend. However you need to be spending enough to make it worthwhile. Keeping the slider low will take a long time to get little benefit. Keeping the slider high will fairly rapidly get the lobbying efficiency up and make it very profitable. Just don't spend too much too early.

Human Resources is mostly important if you're playing with more of the difficult settings enabled, which if you're reading this you probably don't. By the time you need HR you should understand the game enough to use it.

Contracts are a great way to make money. Vans and pickup trucks are especially popular. Check here to see if you have what someone wants. Bear in mind that YOU have to produce the material, be it vehicles or parts. So make sure you have the factory capacity. Vehicle contracts will automatically be taken care of so long as you're producing that vehicle. For parts you need to assign a factory. If you are using auto produce then the game does all this for you.

The Magazine is mostly fluff. It will have reviews of your vehicles that mostly read the same. They can be fun to look at once in a while but I doubt you will much. The awards section can be useful in seeing who won what. You likely won't look at the magazine much.

The Newspaper will give news highlights from around the world and show some limited economic info such as global fuel rate and info on your stocks.

Racing And The Showroom

The door that leads to R&D can also take you to the race track. From here you can choose to participate in races by entering a vehicle, set a budget and set team focus'. Racing can give you a slight bonus to research and help improve your image. It can also cost a lot of money if you wish to actually win while not really making much money. In my experience you might end up spending more than you'll get back. If winning races, getting more prestige and having some extra research sounds good to you then it's worth it if you can afford it.

This is something you'll likely want to avoid early, but get in to as your company becomes financially capable.

The Showroom is just that. A place you can see both yours and competitors vehicles in a little more glory than the R&D lab. You can compare models of parts or vehicles and see timelines and catalogues. Model comparison can be a useful way to see where your vehicles stack up against the competition.

What To Focus On, Upgrading And Expansion

From the very start you need to be mindful of what you're doing. It's amazing how fast you can run out of money if you try doing to much at once too early. Initially you will only want to design and produce one vehicle as you likely won't meet demand.

This is where the body/fuel type demand page is very useful to help make your choice.

I have mentioned that I like to produce the Phaeton type first. This is because it is inexpensive to both design and produce and can then be turned around for a decent profit, while also being very popular for the first couple decades in particular. This first one will also last longer than any of it's descendants. With global production quite low in the early years, this first model can probably last 7-9 years before needing to be replaced.

As your capacity expands you'll need to design new vehicle types. Use the body/fuel demand page to see where things are and plan accordingly. Adding too many at once is not a great idea as it gets expensive to design a lot at once, but introducing 1-2 new vehicle types at a time is usually fine if you have the capacity.

When it comes to replacing a vehicle there are essentially three main paths.

You can upgrade the existing parts and then redesign the vehicle with them. This can be a very affordable way to improve the vehicle and bring it to a new generation without having to design all new parts. A max upgrade on a part 3-4 years after it was designed will usually yield a decent result. The more advanced the part was to begin with will be a factor. Low quality parts can't be upgraded quite as much and probably aren't worth upgrading more than once.

Eventually parts will become "too old' and their appeal will be very low, even if they have been upgraded very far. So there is a practical limit to upgrading.

When doing the upgrade on a part, if your intention is to replace all 3 main parts of a vehicle, then make sure the Retrofit Older Models selection at the bottom is NOT selected. If it is then it will want to start making a new model with that one new part right away. Wait until you have upgraded all the parts you need, then do the upgrade through the vehicle upgrade tab.

You can design new parts that fit with old ones. Such as a more powerful engine that still fits an old chassis. This is a good way to create "trims", a sub-class of that model of car. It is produced and sold separately and both can be sold at the same time. Creating two versions of a vehicle, a budget and a quality version is popular with many players

Finally you can just design all new parts and create an all new vehicle. It does not need to be a new generation of the last. Building on a previous generation can help with a vehicles sales, but sometimes starting a new line is a good idea, they can get stale.

Upgrading your industrial capacity by building new factories and upgrading existing ones is of course key to growing the company. Your first factory can be upgraded initially at very low cost and you really should do this. Every subsequent upgrade is more expensive and eventually you'll want to simply redesign. If you wait longer than the increased upgrade costs will slowly come down to a certain extent but they'll never be as cheap as the previous upgrade.

Plan ahead with regards to expansion and remember that the shown construction cost for a factory is paid off monthly during construction, it's not an up-front cost. This does mean though that you need the cash flow to keep going, or enough of a reserve.

As your industrial capacity increases you'll need more branches to sell your vehicles. Start with the higher population cities within your region (North America, South America, Europe etc) and work your way down. Bear in mind shipping distances.

It will take time and experience for you to learn how to time expansion and construction properly based on how your company is doing.

Making Money And General Strategy

Making money, being a successful company is of course essential if you wish to keep growing and stay in business. Following the above advise should help you learn how to make a profitable company but there are a number of things to keep in mind. There are numerous ways of making (and losing) money in this game.

Outsource your parts/vehicles. This is a great way to make additional money on the things you design. As soon as they're developed you can outsource them. This will allow other companies to use your parts for their vehicles. The game will auto-calculate a price and I don't really bother changing it. I just hit accept and move on. Not all parts will get licensed but some will and over time you can make many millions a month on outsourcing alone.

Over time the value of parts will decrease as they become outdated. I like to go through my outsourcing list about once every year and a half or so and just hit remove and then immediately hit agree again on my parts. By hitting remove it'll take the part off the outsourcing market, but also calculate a new price depending on its current worth. So this is a fast way of resetting the price and keeping it worthwhile for others to license. Upgrading a part will also require a reset.

Eventually a part will hit a price floor and you won't need to deal with it anymore. These lists can start to get very long with time though and eventually you'll probably want to stop production on individual parts to remove them from the list. Stopping production on a vehicle does NOT stop production of the underlying parts for outsourcing.

Pricing your vehicles properly is important. When pricing always make sure to check what competitors are asking and what the quality of your vehicle is compared to theirs. If you make a sedan that has a quality rating of 40 that you sell for 1800 and the closest competitors is 35, yet costs 2000, then you can edge them right out of the local market. Just make sure you're making a profit. My first vehicle I can usually set a higher than normal price for and still just never meet demand, that really helps get the ball rolling economically.

STOCKS GO UP!! At the beginning of the game it is a seriously smart idea to invest as much as you can spare in the market. When the game starts there are 0 public companies unless you're playing with Established AI, and you're probably not. There won't likely be anyone going public in year 1, but by year 2 you'll see some start popping up. When they first go public there is a tendency for the stock price to drop a little at first before going up. Don't get afraid of a bumpy road at first here, if you are then don't invest. This WILL pay off though as these first companies end up being some of "the big boys" down the line. If you hold you can expect high returns, stock splits leading to even greater returns and you'll have a net worth many, MANY times your companies value.

With your net worth being so high, you can take a loan and start building factories. This way you can keep your stocks AND grow. As always be wary of taking on too much at a time though, all those costs add up. Do not let repayment and construction costs overwhelm you. This is another thing where time and experience will help you learn when to do things and how much.

Eventually things like war and depressions will come along, destroying the value of your stocks. Make sure to sell right away at times like these as some of these companies might not make it and you could lose the investment entirely. After WW1 and before the Great Depression is another amazing time to buy and make a great deal in returns. The economy won't really recover fully until after WW2 when it will absolutely explode and you'll be able to sell more vehicles than ever before. Be ready.

As mentioned earlier, contracts are an important way of making money. Early on you won't be able to take on much as you won't have much designed or factory space to manufacture it. Contracts are the only times where your factories can actually manufacture specific parts, not whole vehicles. Engines are the most common type of part you'll contract out. These are used in a wide variety of things from outboard motors to naval ships to planes, both civilian and military. Some contracts will simply want you to put up a specific vehicle or part that meets the parameters and it will pay a flat fee per item, this is usually a great fee and normally the most lucrative type of contract. Other contracts want you to put in a bid price for the part/vehicle you're putting up and that is what you'll be paid per item. Remember that you likely won't win every contract that you apply for. If you find you're getting turned down a lot, ask for less in your bids when applicable.

Pickup trucks and vans are very popular and are easily my most profitable contracted things. My first marque tends to be a company that makes these.

Remember that if you have an active contract for say pickup trucks and you create a new generation that ends and scraps the one being contracted, you'll no longer be able to produce them and be in breach of contract and you will be fined. So just make sure to resolve existing contracts and wait before bidding on any new ones.

Upgrading existing parts and using them to create a new generation of a vehicle is a good way to keep costs down.

Lobbying is super important once you get going, it will save you more than you spend if you keep at it. Honestly once you can afford it just jam that slider to full, click the box to keep it there and forget about it.

Don't neglect advertising once you start expanding. This will pay off so long as you don't overspend.

If you start in the USA then you can largely just stay there until after WW2, when you'll be able to truly profit from global expansion. This is where you'll learn to district and set up self sufficient regions. By this point you should be pretty decent at the game. If playing in Europe then expect much more violent war disruptions depending on the nation. More wars than just the world wars are in the game. The USA is easily the best place to learn and grow early game.

That's All Folks

Well that brings around the end of these here guide. I tried to make it reasonably comprehensive but hopefully not needlessly wordy. I put in everything I can think of that a newer player might want to know. If I think of anything down the road I'll add it.

Remember this is a game and to have fun. Start a car company that only makes electric cars, or go absolutely nuts and try steam if that tickles your fancy. Never stop experimenting, never stop trying new things. It'll succeed or fail. It's just a game.

I hope you found this helpful. Good luck!

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2742783080

Jorlaans Gearcity Guide 2022