Tailor your cars to a wide audience or pioneer niche markets. Solid engine design is a big part of creating a successful car in Automation. The game gives you the opportunity to build your own engines from scratch; from the engine configuration, over the valvetrain design, to the fuel system and detailed turbocharging systems.
Many design changes even affect the engine sound. Compromises and challenges abound, do you need the smallest and cheapest engine possible for a budget mini-car or a no-expense-spared twin-turbo beast for your next supercar?
There are literally quadrillions of possible engines to design. We counted.. Want to challenge your engine building skills? Lots of video tutorials, part descriptions and an extensive manual help engineering novices learn how engines work and how they can apply these skills in-game.
All these features are already available right now in the current release, with lots more engine types coming soon.
The core experience of the game will be the Grand Campaign. In this game mode, spanning from to , you start your enterprise from scratch and try to become one of the most renowned car companies in the world. Many roads can potentially lead to success: catering to the masses with small, affordable cars, being an exclusive supercar manufacturer, or focusing on big luxurious flagship cars for the few. Conquer niches with targeted marketing, or diversify while keeping an eye on brand awareness, brand reputation and prestige to build a loyal following.
Compete in ever-shifting regional and global dynamic markets that come with various regulations, featuring many different market segments and buyer demographics. Set up and manage your factories, expand your production capabilities and improve your cars by investing into research and development to get an edge over your competition.
High quality cars and good quality assurance might cost a fortune, but may pay for themselves in the long term. Year and Body Trim: When the body is supposed to become commonly available to manufacture.
Also defines the specific body type the car actually is. Different demographics prefer different types of car body. Most sports car buyers aren't looking for a van or SUV for example. Older body types also lose value over time. Wheel Base: How far apart the front axle is from the rear axle.
A higher number here generally means a bigger car. This number is always shown on the thumbnail of the car as well in your preferred system of measurement. Acceptable Engine Location: Should be simple.
This determines if the engine is in the front, trunk rear , or in the case of some cars, mounted under the passenger cabin rear mid engine. Where the engine is mounted will have a major influence on how big the engine can be, depending on the model. This can be a major influence on the weight balance of the car, since the engine block is usually the heaviest part of the car.
Drag: This is a number demonstrating on how much drag the unmodified body has. More drag makes the car overall less efficient at accelerating, maximum speed, and good fuel economy.
Track Width: Distance between the wheels going across the car. Bigger means a bigger car. This assumes there's no tire offset going on here either, as you can make the track width slightly longer by doing so. Doors: How many doors the car has, obviously. More doors usually make the car more practical. If the car has three or five doors, the back can most likely completely open, such as a hatchback or a wagon type car. Lift: How much lift the car generates at higher speed, assuming there is no undertray installed.
Lift can be good, or bad depending on the target. Cabin Size: How much room there is in the passenger cabin with an unmodified body. More space usually means more comfort, and can be considered luxurious. Cargo Volume: How much the car can carry of things which aren't people. This can usually be modified by the suspension type. Seat Rows: How many rows of seats the car can support. Generally single row cars are niche Coupes.
Convertible Potentially : Defines the type of top the convertible trim has. Soft tops are marginally worse than hard tops statistically, but also much cheaper and lighter than a hard top. Code ish Name: This is the name of the model of the car in the back end. This is usually irrelevant for players, but if you have a bug with the model of car, it's easier for the devs to find and fix the issue if they know this instead of "the '05 Coupe that might also be a van". Once you've selected your car model, and year, you will then have to setup the basic assembly on how the car is actually put together, such as what is the car actually made of.
This step will also likely have a large influence on how well accepted the car is for the target market, as the panels, suspension, and engine placement are major portions of what makes a car appeal to a certain market. This cannot be changed. All trims are based off of this chassis. You can't, for example, change the suspension type because it would suit the different body trim better. Panel Types. Choosing where the engine is mounted, and the direction it's mounted in will have a major influence on how the car will perform, as mentioned earlier, the engine is usually the heaviest single piece of the car, and where it's mounted can significantly change the characteristics of the rest of the car, such as how the brakes should be balanced, to how the car accelerates.
Front Longitudinal: The engine is placed in the front of the car, and the "front" is pointed towards the front of the car with the driveshaft and gearbox trailing back. This engine placement is required to use four wheel drive, and can use front or rear wheel drive. You can usually get the most out of the engine bay in this configuration, and it doesn't intrude much into the driver's cabin.
It's also safer to mount the engine in the front, since the engine block will protect the passengers in a front end crash. This also tends to shift the balance of the car forward a bit. Front Transverse: The engine is still mounted in the front, but instead is rotated 90 degrees, in such a way that the engine is in line with the front axle of the car.
This engine configuration is not initially available at the start of a campaign. This is used for front wheel drive, exclusively, until all wheel drive becomes a thing later. This engine doesn't intrude into the passenger cabin space at all, but does restrict overall engine length, depending on the model of car.
This setup is also slightly harder to maintain, since the front points towards the side of the car, making the belts harder to access, and in the case of some valve trains namely Push Rods the entire engine needs to be removed to replace the camshaft. In the case of V engines, it makes the cam facing the cabin hard to access.
It is also exceptionally unusual to use a transverse Boxer too. This sets the entire weight of the engine on the front axle. Available in ' Mid Longitudinal: Very few cars can fit a Mid Longitudinal engine. Usually this will only accept a boxer engine in cars where there is a wider mid zone engine bay. This tends to center the balance of the car quite a bit compared to most other engine configurations. It's extremely hard to access the engine however, and this does jack up maintenance cost.
This can only be driven in rear wheel drive, until all wheel comes along. Mid engine placement also tends to allow pushrod suspension once invented on both axles, which is usually very good for sports cars. A large majority of cars simply can't fit this engine orientation however, even with the tiniest of engines.
The screenshot above shows one example of what engine barely fits in a car not specifically designed for a mid engine in this case, a minimum size I3. Mid Transverse: Same mount location as a mid, long, but rotated in the same orientation as the axles. This is usually significantly more viable to fit into most cars, but the engines still need to be relatively small. This type of engine is also extremely hard to get to for maintenance, and jacks up maintenance cost significantly. Only supports rear wheel drive.
This does offer a small benefit in that you can use the cargo area of the trunk, and bonnet, which can make for some decent utility vehicles when you aren't aiming for a sports car, though this use is exceptionally unusual. Rear Longitudinal: In this configuration, the engine is mounted in the back of the car, with the front pointed towards the rear, and the gearbox pointed at the driving compartment. This can only be driven rear wheel drive as well until all wheel becomes available.
This type of engine is relatively easy to access, compared to a mid mounted engine. Some cars also have a relatively large trunk area, and can fit some very large engines.
This tends to shift a lot of the weight of the car to the rear, which can be beneficial, or in some cases, extremely dangerous I've had a balanced car before, it was a deathtrap. Rear engined cars tend to require smaller than usual front tires in order to ensure they don't oversteer, along with generally significantly larger rear tires to hold the weight of the engine. This can inadvertently make rear engine cars rather expensive since tire size almost always must be staggered.
One notable advantage to this is that it is specifically used to give the most possible passenger area, and it offers some very good straight line acceleration ability. All cars have a suspension which attaches the wheels to the rest of the car. The suspension is what separates the entire body of the car from the wheels, and that in turn allows cars to go over bumps in the road without flipping, or twisting the chassis usually. There are a great deal of suspension systems available, and each performs differently.
Different suspension types may also take up engine bay area. Solid Axle Leaf: The cheapest and oldest of suspension designs. The wheels are joined together with a solid axle and usually a differential in between , hence the name and connected to the chassis with layered metal sheets, or leafs.
Generally extremely uncomfortable, as the leaves pretty much only hold the axle to the car, but very useful for the weight carrying capacity it offers. This can actually work pretty well for the rear end of a higher capacity cargo vehicle, like a Truck, or SUV, and some family Wagons. Double Leaf can work well for extremely heavy utility Vans and trucks too. Cars using this suspension type up front ride higher than others as a result of the suspension having a rather high minimum height.
Decent for going in a straight line, pretty bad otherwise for performance. Solid Axle Coil: Similar to a leaf suspension, but slightly improved due to the presence of a coiled spring.
This suspension is slightly more comfortable than a leaf design, and can still carry a large amount of cargo simultaneously. Quite flexible in terms of ride height when used in the rear, but forces a higher ride when used up front, since the engine has to go above the axle.
Many US trucks still use a solid axle coil front combined with a leaf rear when they aren't on wishbones. Not fantastic for performance, but still cheap.
When used up front, this generally raises the minimum height significantly, since the engine needs to not hit the axle in the event of a bump. When used on the rear most axle however, it allows for a relatively low car, along with slightly above average wheelspin resistance for RWD cars.
MacPherson Strut: One of the first independent suspensions invented after Double Wishbones, so you can camber the wheels if you wanted for extra tire grip. Less carrying capacity than most other suspensions. Overall a bit more comfortable than the solid axles, and allows for a lower ride height.
It is more expensive to produce than solid axles however. A decent choice for city cars. It can also work on cars where you need extra engine bay width. Compared to Double Wishbone suspension, struts don't intrude into the bay at all.
Reasonable for performance. Sometimes has issues with camber changes under acceleration, so while independent, it's not perfect for hard driving. Double Wishbone: One of the most comfortable to use suspensions.
This can be mounted in either location of the car, usually without restriction. Double wishbones, being independent suspension allows for stupid amounts of camber to be applied to the wheels, going all the way up to 30 degree camber. A good choice for most non-utility oriented cars, but can even be viable in certain cases on heavier duty vehicles, like Wagons. Double wishbones do intrude into the engine bay slightly, and as a result, they require more space on the sides which can't have engine.
That can be particularly important with larger transverse mounts. High quality, and very good for sportier cars due to it's very flexible design. In general a good suspension choice for any market. Push Rod: A primarily sports car intended suspension available at the start of the '90s as a variant of the Double Wishbone.
This cannot be mounted where the engine is, so double pushrod suspensions are only possible on mid engine cars. This suspension cannot carry a car very high off the ground, and it's relatively difficult to make.
This suspension has a major advantage of shifting the weight off of the wheels and sides of the car, centering mass, making the car overall better at cornering. Rear only suspensions below. Semi Trailing Arm: This is an independent suspension. Each arm can pivot accordingly to match the ground driven over, and unlike a live solid axle, one tire moving won't affect the other.
This is a relatively cheap and well balanced suspension design. It is a decent option for most budget cars. Torsion Beam: The torsion beam is a semi-independent suspension type that can only be used on front wheel drive cars. It cannot be used with any other type of drivetrain. It's overall a fairly good all round suspension when compared to a solid axle, but pails in comparison to double wishbone, or even a semi trailing arm. This type of suspension actually relies on the suspension itself twisting the central arm when going over a bump.
This keeps the rear tires on the ground, and only works when not powered. A decent choice for a budget car which needs tire camber as well as cargo capacity. Multilink: An advanced suspension type, available only at the start of the '90s. Better all around than a double wishbone for passenger comfort and racing sportiness at the cost of a more difficult to engineer and assemble system, since there are so many more parts to go with it.
The suspension in game is just one of many hundreds of possible configurations that this suspension can be designed as. As with the car itself, the engine also has different stats that heavily influence the car itself. Performance Index: This is a stat that shows how much usable power you have.
Going too far beyond the peak power of the engine will reduce this, as the power at that point can't really be used. This stat has actually very little bearing on what makes an engine appeal to certain markets. Weight: This shows how heavy the engine is. A heavier engine needs to push itself, along with the rest of the car, so while a heavy engine generally delivers more power, this is usually slightly offset by the mass of the engine itself.
Reliability: This is how reliable your engine is. A good reliability score changes over the years, trending towards more reliable over time for the same tech being used. Throttle Response: This is how quickly your engine reacts to changes in the throttle the accelerator pedal. A higher value is generally better, with some exceptions. A higher value means your car will be more comfortable. A smoother engine will also be more reliable as it's not physically rattling itself apart.
Loudness: This is how loud your engine is. A louder engine will be sportier, but less comfortable, up to a certain point, where the loudness actually hampers sportiness slightly. This is important, an engine which needs more airflow will cause more aerodynamic drag.
Service Costs: This is how expensive your engine is to maintain. Higher costs will make budget buyers less likely to buy your car, as they cannot afford to maintain it.
This is measuring the average thermal efficiency of the fuel in the range. While it's a good ruler to see how efficient the engine is. This will have little bearing depending on what the engine is installed in, in regards to final fuel economy of the completed car.
Octane is a measure of how effectively you are using the fuel, as well as how resistant the fuel is to knocking. If you exceed the octane rating, the fuel will ignite prematurely, causing a "knock". Knocking is bad. Emissions: This is how harming to the environment your engine is. This will always be through the roof with leaded gas. Currently there is no penalty for spewing smog. Material Costs: This is how much it costs in total to get the materials to build your engine before markup for sale.
Production Units PU : This is how many man hours it takes to produce your engine. Lower numbers here mean faster production times, and as a result, lower prices, as worker wage is a concern in how much you need to mark up the engine to break even.
Engineering Time ET : This is how many months it will take to engineer your engine. This will be important in the light campaign. A lower engineering time will mean your car will be engineered quicker and can be sold sooner. Engineering time can be brought down with familiarity of what you're working with, such as if your car company has built an Inline 4 engine since the early '50s, and you're now in the late '60s building a different family of I4s.
As mentioned, repeatedly throughout this guide, the engine block is the core of the car, in multiple ways. Choosing the block is something that should be considered heavily each time you build a car, since each different block type has various benefits, and weaknesses. The block and heads cannot be changed, but the other components that connect to them can be changed per family to create variants of the same engine family.
Inline 3: The Inline 3 is a budget engine. Without forced induction via a turbocharger, or a very aggressive cam profile this engine is not capable of outputting very much power. When sized over one liter, or CC, the engine tends to rattle violently and that often tanks the reliability of the engine and comfort to drive the car mounting it unless a lot of quality is put into the bottom end. They'll also usually come apart completely if sized over CC, even with tech and quality spam.
Due to the small size of these types of engines, it is feasible to use just single barrel carburetors and single point fuel injection, making the engine even cheaper. It does tend to work for cars where high power isn't required, such as City cars, and smaller Family cars.
This engine is also pretty much the best economy engine due to the lack of so many components compared to other engines, which in turn reduces friction to slow the engine down. It will be obvious to buyers that you're trying to be cheap though, and this engine is usually very bad for prestiege. Inline 4: A slightly higher cost budget engine, with four cylinders instead of just three. This is a very common engine, with a higher fuel displacement than an I3, due to the extra cylinder, assuming the bore and stroke are the same.
As a result of this higher displacement, and extra cylinder, you can get this engine up to around 3L or CC before you start to run into some issues with the bottom end. Each piston is run in pairs, and as a result the engine still isn't very smooth since all pistons point up.
A good choice for most cars which aren't trying to be fancy, and aim to keep costs low. Inline 5: Available starting in The Inline 5 is overall a relatively smooth, and slightly premium ish engine. This engine is noticeably long, and may have some trouble fitting into smaller engine bays.
More displacement means higher power however, and this engine can be made fairly massive without running into significant smoothness issues. A good mid range engine for larger cars. This engine is inherently smooth, as it essentially links together two I3 engines, and runs the pistons on opposite ends of each other at the same time, such as both outside pistons, both "middle" pistons, and then both of the inner pistons.
This reduces any shake that would normally be present on other engine types, even at a high CC. Due to this smoothness, and overall larger size, this makes a very good engine for premium cars, such as convertibles, and other larger models while still being reasonably priced.
The hard part is getting it to actually fit into the engine bay. V6: Essentially two I3 blocks stuck together onto a single crankshaft. This engine doesn't become available until the '60s.
This engine has the displacement of an I6 in the length package of an I3 engine at the cost of some height, and the added complexity of needing two separate camshafts.
You usually get some weight savings versus an I6. This block type also gets a small advantage in using smaller types of intake, as the pistons and valves are closer to the intake compared to an inline engine. This engine also tends to not run very smoothly, even when compared to an Inline 4. It's a good alternative to the I6 when you need to save space, and a bit of mass, and has many practical applications in many car types. V8: Similar to the V6, but with an additional cylinder per side.
The V8 is the bigger brother of the V6, and offers more smoothness, and power compared to other engines of their relative displacement. They are very practical, if expensive engines, which can be used in a variety of cars.
It generally is preferable to use a 90 degree V8 however if smoothness and reliability are priority. This engine also only becomes available in the '60s, as 90 degree V8's are more natural to run, and don't require special firing orders and balancing shafts.
However, some manufacturers may still wish to work with a familiar bank angle and choose to go with a 60 degree V8, usually if they've produced V12's or V6's in the past. V Two I6 blocks combined. This engine is incredibly smooth to run, and is also usually incredibly expensive to tool, engineer for, and produce. This is the highest scoring engine for prestiege that you can get without purchasing the V16 DLC, as well as the longest engine. In very many cases, a V12 is more than sufficient to get the job done when compared to a V V6: Similar to the 60 degree V6, but instead of a 60 degree angle, the pistons are aligned at a 90 degree angle from each other.
This creates a very similar performing engine to the 60 degree alternative, at the cost of smoothness, and often some reliability in the engine. You will save space vertically at the cost of extra width, and more fill factor. The 90 degree V6 is not as naturally balanced as the 60 degree version, but may make engineering cheaper for companies which have routinely produced 90 degree engines, such as a V8 which was relatively common on sports cars.
This becomes available at the same time as the 60 degree V6 as well. V8: The 90 degree V8 is in many ways similar to it's 60 degree variant. However, due to it's design, it can have two crank configurations. The first is "crossplane" or the normal crank where the crank has an arm at a 90 degree angle from the next arm. This is generally smooth, and leads to an "American" style V8 generally, with a bit of a "grumbly" engine sound for lack of a better term since the firing order is more staggered.
The other crank is a "flatplane" where the crank has the arm alternating a full degrees, and is essentially two Inline 4 engines on the crank. Flatplanes are more common to European V8s and have their own specific, more "angry" tone. A flatplane is generally more efficient with it's exhaust, and can deliver slightly more mid range power 3k to 5k RPM per cycle with a single exhaust as a result they also sound terrifying with race intakes and straight pipe exhaust at high RPM too.
V A middle ground between the V8 and V12 which isn't available until ' It's a pretty prestigious and large engine, and it's a good choice for luxury cars, as well as high end trucks. It has an extremely distinct sound to it as well. V16 DLC : For when you want the absolute most out of the car.
The V16 is stupidly expensive in terms of materials and engineering. It's extremely prestigious, being one of the smoothest engines available, as well as having the highest piston count. The V16 is basically always restricted to high end sports and luxury cars, as a result of it's usually massive cost, and the sheer amount of power they are capable of producing. Boxer 4: Boxer engines are pretty unique compared to most of the other engines noted above.
Both sets of pistons are set across from each other and connect to a single crank. This makes for a very wide, very short engine. The Boxer 4 has four pistons, obviously, and it has a much lower center of mass, making it a good choice for sports cars. The Boxer 4 is also generally smoother than a same size Inline 4. Boxers tend to have trouble with single intake systems, since the pistons on each side are set so far apart from each other. The Boxer 4 can fit into nearly every car in the game in the Mid engine compartment longitudinally, if made small enough as they are the length of an Inline 2 which isn't a thing in Automation.
Boxer 6: Similar to the Boxer 4, with 6 pistons, clearly. The Boxer 6 is smoother than the Boxer 4 by a small margin, and has higher displacement.
It can serve in place of a V6 engine in many cars where height may be an issue, and width isn't, such as low bonnet sports cars. Nearly all of the heads are available at the start of the game, they play a major role on how well the engine will perform, and at which point you might run into valve float the point in which the valve doesn't snap shut completely due to high engine RPM.
All configurations shown here are two valve per cylinder on an Inline 4. Push Rods OHV : This valve system has a single camshaft mounted inside the engine block itself regardless of configuration which handles all of the valves by pushing a rocker with rods, hence pushrod, the valves above the pistons are sealed inside the block as well. It's one of the cheapest types of head assembly, but it tends to have major issues with higher RPM engines since there are so many parts that handle the valves.
As a result this type of head is usually best used in cars where high RPM isn't necessarily required, such as trucks, and some city cars. Due to the way it works, it can't be used with any of the fancier variable valve techs either. This valve system is extremely compact, and can allow for some large engines without eating into engine bay space too much.
Just wait until you look at the campaign mode. Fair warning, the campaign mode of Automation is not for the faint of heart. It is math-heavy, getting deeper into how well you market your car in the 5 different countries with loosely mirror America, the UK, Germany, India, and Russia , as well as how much you sell your car for, and how desirable it'll be after 5 or 10 years.
In short: it's hard I know because I've played it many times, and only broke even once. That being said, it still provides the player with a great sense of pride to make and manufacture their own trims, see the profits rise, and create a car with lasting desirability.
It requires the player to update the trims every year, and predict what might be appealing before the car comes out. You truly are running a business. And the campaign does take itself quite seriously, so if you're looking to challenge your brain, and your automotive design skills to create a car that isn't only good, but desirable, marketable, and profitable, you'll find hours of fun manipulating the numbers in the Light Campaign, which is constantly being updated and refreshed to reflect the real world as much as a videogame can.
There are plenty of tutorials out there to help new players, such as this one created by the developers themselves:. But after all this car building, what can you do with them?
Well, you can take lovely photographs of the cars you designed in the Automation game In what may very well be the greatest crossover in videogame history, Automation allows you to export any of your creations to BeamNG Drive. If you're not aware of what Beam is, it's a soft body physics simulator used primarily for driving and crashing cars. While it's not entirely realistic, the crash damage is more accurate than that of other racing games, such as Forza.
If you slam into a wall at 60mph, you won't be able to just roll it over and keep on trucking. While the exporter isn't perfect, it's constantly being updated so that the cars you make in Automation are accurately reflected in Beam. So rather than looking at numbers and figures, you can find out how easy your car is to drive by doing some lap times. Or, if you're just feeling silly, use Beam to crash cars in spectacular fashion.
That's quite fun as well.
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