A fun little hot hatchback with excellent fuel economy and emissions, by Swift.
It's been a winding and occasionally difficult journey, but we are excited to share the latest update to Automation with you - the Ellisbury Update!
What's new in the Ellisbury Update? Far too many to list here in great detail, but we will show you the highlights of what's new!
Car Designer
Vehicle Emissions and Fuel Economy Calculations
For about as long as Automation has been publicly available, the emissions calculations have been incredibly basic - one could even say "not representing reality"- that changes with the Ellisbury Update. For the first time, Automation now simulates vehicle emissions in a way that closely resembles the real world, with carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides - the chief pollutants from automobile exhaust - being calculated in a realistic fashion, and tested using real-world test cycles.
An engine in need of quite a bit of emissions optimisation, with the graphs showing where the test cycles hit in terms of throttle percentage and engine speed.
This mechanic translates into Campaign Mode in a fun and challenging way, where players will now see a financial compliance bonus/penalty on each car they sell; make a car that exceeds the standards and you will get a cash bonus on every sale, miss emissions standards and you have to pay a compliance cost on every car you sell...choose wisely, because that one special outlier of a car that you're counting on to boost your prestige might just sink your company financially!
The new emissions and fuel economy page from Detailed Stats shows you everything you need to know about your car's fuel economy and emissions results! This engine isn't going to be legal to sell for long, or at all in some regions...
These new mechanics also extend into the completely new fuel economy calculations, which are also now based on real-world test cycles and will much more accurately reflect the values that real cars could and should achieve.
Engine Component Overhaul
The heavily revised engine bottom end component selections; notice the engine power density limit, and the new upboring capability!
We have added more nuance in the component choices you make while designing your engines. All components have torque limits, and contribute to the overall power density limit of your engine. What is power density, you ask? Power density basically exactly what it sounds like - how much power your engine is producing in comparison to its overall size. A small, heavily-turbocharged inline-4 making 400 horsepower is going to have a very high power density, especially in comparison with a lazy, low-revving pushrod V8 making 400 horsepower! What's more, your choice of crankshaft, connecting rod and piston will have a dramatic effect on your engine's ability to rev to high RPMs; a weak crankshaft combined with heavy pistons and rods is not necessarily a good combination anymore!
We've also changed how engine variant bore and stroke is handled; to give your hard-working engine families even more flexibility, we've increased the ability to reduce bore and stroke on your engine variants - with the attendant bonuses and penalties one would expect, but we now also allow you to up bore your engine past the limit set by your engine family, but at a cost!
New Dyno Simulation
Lots of information on display in our new engine dyno simulation.
With all of these new mechanics and interactions, we found that our old engine dyno simulation just wasn't adequate in conveying the right information to the player, in the right way. So, we've completely re-designed the simulation from the ground up! In the previous simulation, your engine ran at maximum load - full throttle - at all RPMs. While this does provide meaningful information about performance, it's actually quite rare for a car to be in that condition, and virtually the entirety of a fuel economy and emissions test cycle is done part-throttle across a wide range of RPM. With the new simulation, you can now see exactly where your engine is performing properly - or where it's causing you to fail emissions tests.
Drivetrain Overhaul, including new transmissions, differentials and tires
Many more choices and new interactions on the Transmission tab; this gives the player unprecedented control over their drivetrains now!
One of the largest changes we've made for the Ellisbury Update, is a complete re-think of how drivetrains work in Automation, especially in the context of transmission behaviour, and how all-wheel drive works. Due to popular requests - and in no small part because of all the changes we made in LCV4.2 to the engine simulation - we have been able to add continuously variable transmissions, or CVTs, to Automation. We've also brought back sequential transmissions, though this time, properly, instead of the mis-named automated manual transmissions we had before! We've also implemented full player control over gear ratios, either by speed or by ratio, so that you can now completely customise your transmission to your desires. Beware though, transmissions now have many limitations in place - ratios that are too spread apart incur a reliability penalty, as does your choice of transmission type! CVTs have huge advantages in terms of their mechanical properties, but they do not handle high engine torque levels well at all!
The new traction tests will show exactly where your car is losing grip, and under what conditions. This one does reasonably well off-road!
All-wheel drive and differentials have had a complete re-work as well, to go along with the completely new grip calculations (more on that later). We now have all-wheel drive options that cover a much wider swath of the frankly staggering number of variations of AWD systems that exist, and a better, more accurate simulation of the effect that differentials have on all drivetrain setups. You can also now visualise how your car performs in various grip conditions, and on different surfaces, in our new traction/grip screen!
We have, for the first time, no-joke slick tires in Automation...in several variations no less!
In previous versions of Automation, we had limited tire choices available, and that forced us to make some compromises in terms of how the various tires behaved and how they all related to one another. Moreover, we also felt that cross-ply tires were not really simulated in an adequate fashion, and there was no real need to stick with them any longer than it took to research radial tires in Campaign Mode. All of this has changed, plus we've also added - for the first time - a selection of racing tires to Automation, in both radial and cross-ply forms. These all export to BeamNG as well, so you can now finally make that race car of your dreams!
New Test Track Visuals
The new test track looks and behaves a lot better than before. You can even see a little representation of your car now, too!
The old test track simulation will be retired in this update cycle, but at the moment we are in an in-between spot: new test track visuals, some improved calculations, but without the planned new underlying systems that will move the test track simulation to a new level. We've gone to high-resolution background images for the test track (for both custom tracks and the Automation test track), and we've added a lot of background features in the simulation that we will be taking full advantage of in later updates; this is a work-in-progress item, with more functionality and features to roll out later on, including a standalone track editor for you to smoothly create your own tracks!
The new Ellisbury Tri-Oval, for those who haven't seen it yet!
As part of the track simulation revamp, we've added the completely-new Ellisbury Tri-Oval race track. Available in oval and several challenging road course layouts, the Ellisbury Tri-Oval is one of the crown jewels of motor racing in the Automation world. We are working on several more tracks located within the Automation world; more on those in updates to come!
Campaign Mode - Competitor + Country Techpool and Sankey Charts
How the techpool progresses based on region in Automation. This will add some significant advantages - or disadvantages - depending on which region you've chosen!
Up until now, your AI competitors in Campaign Mode did not make use of their techpool at all. This meant that as you worked your way through a Campaign game, your competitors would become easier and easier to compete against, as you could liberally apply quality to all of the parts you've been researching through the game. Now though, your competitors can properly utilise their available techpool, which will make for a much more challenging middle to end game, doubly so if you turn up the difficulty settings!
Additionally, every country in the Automation world now has its own default techpool progression, which helps further differentiate each country from one another, and poses unique challenges in any playthrough. Some countries start off far behind the others and catch up, while others start in a dominant position and then slide backward as the rest of the world catches up.
The Sankey chart sheds a lot of light into what's going on in the car sales simulation.
In this version, we have opened up the "black box" of the Automation sales model for all to see in Campaign Mode. With the new Sankey chart, you can see exactly what your competitors are selling and how many, in whichever country and market demographic you choose, right down to each competing car's stats. After all, real-world car companies don't operate in an information vacuum, so why should you?
BeamNG Exporter - vehicle dynamics overhaul!
A funky early 90s supercar concept, by D Point.
All of the changes we've made to engines, drivetrains and tires in Automation have necessitated a major rework of how BeamNG exported cars are handled. In LCV4.2, there was a slight bug where Automation exports had approximately 25 percent more grip than they should have had otherwise, which, while fun under some circumstances, meant that exported cars were not well-balanced at all with native BeamNG cars at all. With everything that went on under the hood of the Ellisbury Update, this was the perfect time to not only correct this bug, but also address several complaints we had about how Automation cars behaved in BeamNG. Tire grip has been extensively reworked after several thousand kilometres of driving and writing about exported cars and their behaviour, and now we feel confident that exported cars drive better than ever, from both an objective and subjective point of view.
We've also added in all kinds of provisions for handling custom textures and materials better in exports, and added the groundwork for a number of other functions that we will be working on in subsequent updates.
Notes about migration
So with all of these huge changes, those of you who have been with us for a while might be feeling a little bit apprehensive about a new version of Automation, as in the past, this often meant that all of your cars and mods were no longer going to work.
This is no longer the case.
All of your Sandbox Mode cars from LCV4.2 - the previous public version - will migrate more or less seamlessly into the Ellisbury Update, and all mods compatible with LCV4.2 are fully compatible with the Ellisbury Update. There might be some re-work needed for engines and drivetrains, what with the amount of changes we've made there, but everything else should be basically unchanged from LCV4.2.
As always, any Campaign Mode saves will NOT be compatible with the new version.
What's Next?
A slick and modern luxury sedan, courtesy of Arteos.
As with any major release, there will be bugs to fix and patches to release, so there will be a period where that's what we are concentrating on. If you experience any issues with the Ellisbury Update, please let us know in the Steam forums, on our official Discord server or on the Automation subreddit. We will be working hard on fixing any bugs that you encounter, and we will keep you updated with our progress. After we're comfortable with where the Ellisbury Update is in terms of stability, we move on to the Al-Rilma Update. And for those who have been following the news, that means one word, that the entire community has been waiting for since 2011...
Superchargers. Get hyped, because that's only the start of what's planned. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and now on Threads for up-to-date news and community happenings!
Cover and banner car build by mat1476
