Should I get Automation, and is it worth the price?

I am hoping to purchase Automation soon. It looks like a really cool and fascinating game, and the reviews are pretty good. I would like to know what is your opinion so you can help me decide to buy this.
Thanks!
(Posted poll to help as well.)

 

I personally would say no and no, seems lacking even by tycoon standards and the price is way, way too much. That said it depends on you yourself whether you get it. If you think its worth it go ahead.

 

Yes. I'd recommend Automation.

I find Automation to be very enjoyable. It does have a couple issues here and there, but it's still good nonetheless.

It can also help you learn more about the inner workings of a car. I know I learned some stuff while playing it.

 

Depends on what you are expecting. I wanted it mostly for creating cars for Beamng. In that regard i was honestly not too happy because of false expectations. The problem is that the general shape of the car you build is more or less determined. You choose a preexisting model like "90s european sedan" and then you can alter some points of the car a bit. But the general shape is fixed as is the wheelbase. Then you can add fixtures like doorhandles, frontlights, grills, mirrors, etc. which is fine. But you cant alter the shape of those either too much. Most of them can be stretched on the X and Y axis. But eg stretching a frontlight "diagonally" is not possible. Which annoyed me really in the designing process of some cars because i couldnt match some angles of the fixture with the angles of the cars body. It just looked awful. You can work around those things but it can alter your orginal vision by a lot.
To be fair: there are a lot of premade bodys to choose from and in the steam workshop are even more. And if you're not a weirdo like me who wants to rebuild specific not so popular cars it probably isnt even a problem at all.

Apart from that building a car is fun. Building a engine is IMHO the best part, i lost hours in building my dream 5-cylinder. There are also some scenarios which are fun. Like "build a engine for a tractor pulling team with 900hp but under 10k$ building cost and easy maintainability". Its still in early access so there is also more to come.

 

it's MS excel with better graphics ¯\_( ͠° ͟ʖ ͠° )_/¯

 

It honestly kinda hurts me to say it because I love tycoon games and building engines honestly is a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth much in its current form. Of corse there isn’t really a tycoon angle to this game at the moment unless you play the version with the lite campaign. So far the challenges have been “meh”. Not terribly interesting. Most of my time has been in sandbox mode.

The car creation so far doesn’t really do it for me. I wish there were more parts to play with. Being an in development game I can’t fault that too much, but AFAIK the engine options currently in are all that’s planned. engine options such as diesels, electric, and rotaries. I really wish the controls were like Spore, aligning parts currently sometimes just isn’t possible.

Porting engines to BeamNG cars does feel tempting, but IIRC someone (@NinetyNine! I think) said that the models are so high poly that performance can become an issue. Speaking of performance, my laptop really does not like Automation. Yes I have a computer on the lower end, but the fact that even Wreckfest doesn't need all minimum graphics to be playable but this does really annoys me. Exporting cars is fun too, but I’m sure we are all mostly familiar with that aspect by now.

I have 19 hours on record (all on the recent version) and haven’t felt the interest to play in awhile if that’s anything to gauge. Glad to have it and look forward to future updates but I can only recommend this version during a significant sale.

 

There is a certain addictive quality to Automation.
I was concerned that the body styles would be limiting, and in some ways they are, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The body styles are far less limiting when you don't view them as a limitation, but rather a guide - a foundation upon which to construct a car's design in your eyes. You build the powertrain, you construct the chassis, you determine the weight of the car, and the paint styles. Then comes the "fixtures" - the big design aspect of the game.
At this point, the soulless shell becomes a canvas for creation. Although the various "fixtures" are labeled as being various items, the game doesn't tell you that you can't use bumpers as roof racks. The creation of an Automation car is less Ikea-build-a-car and more Lego. Sure, you can follow the instructions and create a boring car that isn't remotely inventive, or you can forego the instructions and piece together your own creation. Make a sunroof out of a headlight, stick exhaust pipes out the hood, who cares? It's your creation, you do whatever you want to it.
But then, you have the entire aspect of the car becoming alive. The amount of time you spent creating your vehicle is directly proportional to the amount you will enjoy your creation. I easily spent $+ hours just creating the visuals of the cars below. Remember, you aren't just limited to placing fixtures, you can also edit the materials of the fixtures as well. You can tint headlights, black out bumpers, and just about anything else. You can throw a V8 into a 2 door microcar just as easily as you can throw a turbocharged i3 in a 1950s pickup.


^Green car is world's angriest Saturn SW2
And when I loaded them in game, I had a blast with 'em. Sure, it isn't like the handcrafted cars of @Driv3r1142 or @Re:Z_IA , but it is something I can call my own.

That all being said, the game isn't perfect either. Numerous times I ran into issues with various fixtures clipping through the car's body and creating holes. The spoilers and wings will fight you when you try to place them anywhere. Low, loping idles of older engines doesn't seem to be easily accomplished.

Personally, I believe I got my money's worth. I've spent 20+ hours on it and have a handful of cars that I am proud to say that I created.
@fufsgfen has spent tons of time making and tweaking cars that are interesting to mess about with. Perhaps download a few of those and try them out in game to get an idea of how you like Automation's cars?
Edit - Realized it is 2AM. Off to bed I go.

 

Automation is a good way of building cars to your own design and with the recent integration with the BeamNG Exporter its a way for you ACTUALLY experience the cars you build in one game so you can drive them in BeamNG

 

In about 7 weeks (bought it in June 16th) I have spend 113 hours with Automation, it is fun and one can really loose sense of time when building all kind of "what if" cars to test in BeamNG.

However as with all WIP, if one excepts it to be complete game, there will be disappointments, with WIP game you don't pay what there is currently, but you will fund game to be something in future and you get to play with it before that future arrives.

So it is lacking a lot of gameplay elements in current state, car builder is quite buggy, some things are not even close to their final state, but one can't really review WIP by what is currently has, but more of what potential it has, what are the plans in future and how likely it is that team building game can bring those plans to reality.



Somehow I end up with car designs that could be described as extreme most of the time, which means exporter is not quite up to task, it works fine with normal cars, but supercars etc. tends to end up such way that one has to fix them by editing files a bit, however I find that quite fun part of creating car actually, it also offers simple stepping stone to modding world.

Improving AM exported vehicles is quite big part of my playing of AM and BeamNG currently, there are so many areas in making car to BeamNG that one is easily overwhelmed and gets bored when it can take days to get car to work, but with AM one can get car to work in a flash, then it is just improving and testing that is needed to do, which makes learning more modding skill much more approachable than banging head to wall several hours which always seem to be case with anything I try to made from scratch.

After playing with AM exports I have now much better understanding of many aspects of car building to BeamNG, but also can see how many areas I need to learn which I really didn't realize even existing before.

So for me it has been best thing ever, for someone else it might not be so interesting.

Cars certainly are lacking, some do require quite a lot of improvements after exporting and can be bit much or pretty dissapointing, when car simply is not usable, no matter what one does. For example one of my trucks is such, that any corner taken at speed makes it shake and vibrate so that it loses grip and spins out, really fat rear tires and soft jbeam of the bed makes it so, generally wide big tires are not coming out so well from the exporter, so there are limitations and that can lead to disappointments if one excepts to make sporty vehicles with it to driving in BeamNG.

There are also problems with aerodynamics and weight distribution in exporter.

They did update engine models though, those are much more usable now, also they will keep improving exporter too, right now AM team is focusing on campaign which is good as lite campaign update will give lot more game to AM and I really am looking forward of tycoon part to arrive into it.

So without knowing what you except or want from AM, it is difficult to say if it is worth to you, but hopefully this gives some idea what to except.

 

The problem is that I have lag with automation cars!

 

I found it to be quite the investment in 2012 when I first got it I went off it for some years but since the Beam 0.13 update I have been back in it and today, I released my first ever mod I would link it but I am unsure if thats within the forum rules to advertise mods on here or something I feel for now I wont advertise it here, but if your good enough and contact the right people on the Automation side of things they can provide help for when you build cars, and then when you import them over to Beam and they work out well enough, you can upload them here for the world to see and get actual user based feedback on them

 

Is it an okay game? Yes, It seems to do most of what it tries to. Although that really only goes as far as making engines and car bodies.

That aside its way overpriced, even with the 30% discount. There are far more games with far more content for much much less.

 

I highly recommend it. For the first week or so I owned it, I kept seeing cars on the street and getting ideas for Automation. It is a bit overpriced, but the potential you have playing it is pretty much limitless.

 

as ndx said, its what your look for. Do you like building cars, then yes this is the game for you, if not the don't buy the game

 

I'd say its worth it if you want a car design sandbox, and a way of experimenting with car designs in BeamNG. In that respect it'll give you an experience no other game does right now, particularly with regards to engine design. It's certinally not flawless, and you will run into a few bugged things, paticularly with the exporter, which is so wildly complex that it'll never work perfectly 100% of the time.

If you're interested in the tycoon side of things i'd wait a while though. Should be a good playable version of that in next update though.


Full Disclosure: I'm one of the Automation developers, so I guess I would say you should buy it
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Honestly, that could basically be the box quote review for Automation

 

It doesn't matter how simple it is, it'll never work 100% of the time.

 

Well true! But it's complex enough that it probably only works 95% of the time.

 

Keeping design close to typical production vehicle is easy way to improve that percentage with current version.

My designs tend to be not so typical, so I end with issues like too heavy tire nodes which cause vibration, that happens with very wide and low profile tires, also jbeam flexing, that is what I get when putting over 500hp engine to 70's pickup, who would of thought, so I guess that is actually kinda realistic

However making something that is mass produced, like some econobox or GTi, those cases work just fine.

So it is a lot to do with choices user makes, going to extremes is bound to lead problems, in everything really

 

Wait for a sale.
It's not worth the full price but at a discounted price it's pretty good.
Recently mods have been improving and there's this "modular lights mod" making it very good, so get it on sale.