Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 114: Randomizer

 Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 114: Randomizer

I recently discovered a site that served as the basis for the Automation challenge found in this video - the CEL Challenge. When you visit it, you will be greeted by six spinner wheels arranged in two rows of three. As shown in the screenshot below, the upper row contains the three main wheels. The first wheel indicates the vehicle's Class, the second wheel refers to its Era, and the third wheel refers to its Location. The lower row contains a set of optional wheels representing secondary requirements. The Unlucky Wheel (left) indicates a negative trait that hinders the vehicle, the Lucky wheel (right) indicates a positive trait that benefits the vehicle, and the Luck wheel determines which of the requirements shown wheels either side of it, if any, will affect the build. In addition, there is a button at the top-left corner marked "Spin All", which spins all six wheels at once.

An overview of the CEL Challenge spinner wheels. The upper row contains the primary set of spinner wheels used for a random Automation build suggestion in the CEL Challenge, from left to right: Class, Era and Location. The screenshot shown above indicates that the randomly generated build suggestion would be a 1990s Italian supercar - a highly desirable combination in real life (and a realistic one as well). The lower row contains the secondary set of spinner wheels used in the CEL Challenge, from left to right: Unlucky, Luck and Lucky. Here, the Luck spinner landed on Lucky, so the effect of the Unlucky spinner (left) can be ignored, but the effect of Lucky spinner (right) had to be taken into account - in this case there is no limit to the budget for the build.

If you click on the "Spin All" button, all six spinners will be shown at once, and the results will be shown after a few seconds. Examples of the combinations that can result are shown below.

An example of realistic (above) and unrealistic (below) CEL requirements generated by the "Spin All" button.

Regarding the Luck spinner, it may provide benefits and/or handicaps to the build. If it lands on "Lucky", only the effects of the Lucky spinner can factored in; if it lands on "Unlucky", only those of the Unlucky spinner are taken into account; if it lands on "Both", the effects of both the Lucky and Unlucky spinners will be considered; finally, if it lands on "Neither", neither of those spinners' effects will affect the build. In fact, it is possible to end up with secondary requirements that range from the appropriate (such as automatic transmission on a luxury sedan) to the unrealistic (such as semi-slicks on a 1940s truck) and the utterly incompatible (such as two-way catalytic converters for any class, in any era before the 1970s). If you end up with a set of incompatible requirements, you should start over from the beginning.

Above: An example of a set of CEL requirements in which the effects of the Unlucky spinner apply, but are actually beneficial when the result of the Class and/or Era spinner(s) is/are taken into account. Below: A set of incompatible CEL requirements. Although the era is set to the 1940s, the secondary requirement for 2-way catalytic converters (which are not available in that era) also applies, and as such, an Automation build fulfilling both requirements is actually impossible.

Here is a brief explanation on some of the possible CEL options, assuming tech pool values of 0 for all engine and trim sections:

• The Supercar class includes hypercars. Also, if the Class spinner lands on Luxury, you must spin the Class spinner once more to determine a specific class for your random build suggestion.
• The Oil Crisis era can be seen as a subset of the 1970s, spanning the years 1973 through to 1975 inclusive.
• The 2010s is not represented on the Era spinner, presumably because in some ways, it is too similar to the 2020s to merit inclusion.
• Regarding the Location spinner, Oceania could be interpreted to refer to Australia and New Zealand. South America, meanwhile, mainly refers to Brazil and its neighbors (such as Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), and Asia could be represented by much of East and Southeast Asia, excluding China and Japan (both of which are separate options).
• With regards to Unlucky and Lucky options, "12k Costs" should be interpreted as a maximum approximate cost of $12,000, and "Lowest Fuel" should refer to 85 RON low quality unleaded fuel, whereas "Unlimited Fuel" can refer to a complete absence of octane limits. Speaking of fuel, "Oil Crisis" sets the era to Oil Crisis (which encompasses the years 1973-75 as described above) regardless of where the Era spinner originally landed on. 
• "-5 Quality" imposes a maximum quality of -5 on every slider; "+5 Quality", on the other hand, imposes a minimum quality of +5 on every slider. The "+15 Quality" and "-15 Quality" options, meanwhile, refer to applying the required amount of quality to all sliders (unless otherwise specified by the builder). It should be noted that each positive quality option is incompatible with a negative quality option and vice versa, nor is the "12k Costs" option compatible with the "Unlimited Budget" option, and the highest and lowest-quality options always take precedence. Finally, the "Lowest Fuel" option is incompatible with the "Unlimited Fuel" option.
• In the sandbox mode, automatic transmissions of any kind (as distinct from automated manuals and dual-clutch transmissions) are not available before 1950, nor are 2-way catalytic converters available before 1972. Also, in real life, the latter were phased out by around 1981 as emissions standards became ever stricter. In addition, carburetors of all types would be banned altogether in many markets from the 1990s onward for the same reason. Finally, cross-ply tires were universally available in the 1940s and 1950s in many markets, but became less common from the 1960s onward, before generally disappearing altogether by the end of the 1970s.
• If desired, the "Automatic" option can refer to a regular (not advanced, auto manual or dual clutch) automatic transmission with 3 speeds or fewer.
• FWD is available from the outset (albeit only for longitudinally mounted engines - transverse FWD is not introduced until 1961), but AWD configurations for longitudinally and transversely mounted engines are not available until 1981 and 1990 respectively.
• The Luck spinner can yield any one of the four options: Unlucky, Lucky, Both or Neither, the results of which are described above.
• The "20 Fixtures" option (which limits a build to a total of 20 fixtures) for the Unlucky spinner is incompatible with the "Unlimited Fixtures" option for the Lucky spinner. Likewise, FWD and AWD are incompatible with each other.
• When creating a CEL combination, you have two options: either you ignore the effects of the second row of spinners, or you don't. The former is preferred by newcomers, whereas more advanced users (like me) often choose to take the latter route.
• "Change Class" requires spinning the Class spinner once to get a new result. Ditto for the "Change Location" effect, except that it requires you to do the same with the Location spinner.
• In the context of CEL, an incompatible secondary requirement (regardless of whether it is from the Lucky spinner or the Unlucky spinner) is one that does not exist in the era that was generated.

For the sake of faithfulness to the original intent of the CEL Challenge, I shall use the full set of spinner wheels. With this rule in place, here is another example of a CEL combination I ended up with:

Above and below: Another example combination randomly generated using the CEL spinners. This one is for a 1990s British sports car, with no special requirements.

In this case the result is a 1990s British sports car, but with the Luck spinner landing on Neither, the effects of the Lucky and Unlucky spinners are ignored. The resulting car will be the result of the next post in this series.