Auto Dealerships

This post is taken from our Patreon page. Access to the demo is currently only available through Patreon, with access to the public coming to Steam Next Fest sometime this year. Thank you for your patience.

Auto Dealerships

I've just finished added Auto Dealers to the internal build, these will be coming to the 0.3 release over on itch to Patreon subscribers, no date for this yet.

The Auto Dealers allow players to purchase second-hand kei trucks. Players can take on loans to purchase these trucks, and even sell their own truck to reduce the cost.

Players can access the Kei Dealership by selecting it from the world map, and driving towards it. Much like routes, trucks have their rarity influenced by the route generation. Truck stock is refreshed daily.

Each region contains a dealership which specialises in each type of truck currently in the game. Wadashima's kei dealership specialises in selling Batako Type 1 trucks, Mizunuma's kei dealership specialises in selling Batako Type 2 trucks and Yamanashi's kei dealership specialises in selling Daizo type trucks. Each dealership also has a small chance to spawn a truck from outside their speciality.

With this first implementation, players must sell their current truck when purchasing a new truck. Truck storage - the ability to allow owning multiple trucks - is planned at a later date.

With these auto dealerships finally in-game, I can now rethink how truck selection at the start of the game will work. Currently, players select from 6 trucks; Easy, Medium, Hard, Wildcard 1, Wildcard 2, Wildcard 3. Each of these slots generates a truck based on these factors. Easy generates trucks with a grading between 6 and S (almost new), hard generates trucks with a grading between 3- 1 (very poor condition), and wildcards generate at full random.

The new game start selection will probably contain Batako Type 1 only trucks, with generation forced at 3-1 condition (very poor). Forcing players into the rags-to-riches journey with their truck front and centre of this.

Rethinking Debt

I wasn’t happy with the direction I’d taken for the game’s debt system. As an independent game developer, debt is something I spend a fair amount of time juggling, so I’d be remiss not to take this seriously...

Debt in Honcho can be incurred through various means, from large expenses like vehicle purchases to small oversights such as forgetting to pay for fuel. The intention here is to avoid railroading the player into tedious "work for hire" and instead allow them to play the game the way they find most engaging. In a tycoon game, I feel it's important to ensure players make the choice in how they go about earning money.

• Loan is acquired.

  • Has a fixed-term, usually 30 days.

  • Has a set interest rate, e.g. 2.5%. This is applied daily.

Change 1, Compounded interest removed

Debt in the 0.2 Patreon build has compounding interest that continues to apply to the overall total in-perpetuity. This is extremely aggressive and can lead to players drowning in unpayable debt. Interest on debt is therefore no longer compounded, and is instead only taken from the principal loan. Here's how this change now looks.

• Principal: ¥250,000

• Rate: 2.5% per day

• Term: 30 days

Old, compounded:

• Total repayment : ¥524,250

• I nterest paid : ¥274,250

New, principal only:

• Total repayment : ¥437,500

• Interest paid : ¥187,500

Change 2, Final Notice

As stated above, loans having exponential growth could lead to out of control debt. Whilst stressful, players soon realised they would never pay it off, and would just have to deal with the invisible fist of the free market destroying their truck every end-of-notice period. Now, if the player fails to pay their loan in time, instead of the interest rolling on and another repayment period being applied, they are given a letter of final notice.

The invisible fist of the free market - the player's truck being vandalized when missing a payment date - will still occur, but interest will no longer be applied to the loan. Players are then given a 30-day period to get their final notice loan paid off. Failing to pay off a final notice loan will result in a player's company and all assets seized. Or in game design terms, a fail state.

Players can still pay off loans early to reduce the interest applied and avoid these outcomes, but it is always best to only take on loans you feel you can pay off. An important point with the introduction of purchasable trucks revealed above. So make sure to make those deliveries, and stock those vending machines.

Classifieds

Classifieds now contain ad listings for repair parts. A few players were complaining that finding repair parts was too difficult. I'll continue to rework repair part acquisition, so parts can be "target farmed", but some friction is needed here. It should be a task to get a truck into perfect running condition and maintaining that, but not one of hopelessly searching and praying for parts. I'm aware of the issues, and more work is to come on this. For the moment, keep in mind that repair parts can be obtained from abandoned vans and second hand parts dealers.

Thank you to all the supporters. My plan for the next few weeks is to finish up the fail-states with debt and return to working more on vending machines and managing the tycoon elements. With these done, I can then focus on preparing the game for the Steam Next-Fest during the summer of this year, and soon after an Early Access launch.

Cheers,

Greg