The other day, just as I was wrapping up a play session, I decided on a whim to check the available jobs. I don't do many of those any more, having gone over almost entirely to restoring cars from the junkyard and the salvage auction. (This will turn out to be important.) One of the available jobs was a Morena Bizzarini (one of the game's fictional cars, which in this case is Totally Not a Lamborghini Diablo) that needed some engine work.

When it arrived, it was in appalling condition, as the "job" cars often are. The job was one of those "repair with parts of minimum condition: 30%" ones, where the customer clearly doesn't really give a shit as long as it runs. I decided not to tackle it then, saved, and quit the game.

The next time I played, I forgot that the Bizzarini in Bay 1 was a customer car with a specific list of things that needed fixing. Instead, I blithely went ahead and did what I would normally do with a junker: I completely restored it to 4×100 (that is, 100% condition in all four categories the "Car Status" screen measures, Body, Interior, Frame, and Parts). To do that you have to tear the car down until you're working on individual automobilium atoms, refurbish all the parts that are refurbishable, buy replacements for all the parts that aren't, and then put it all back together. For an exotic like a Bizzarini, it costs thousands upon thousands of credits to 4×100 a badly deteriorated car, and that doesn't even allow for the hundreds of man-hours of labor such an undertaking would represent in the real world.

Fortunately, CMS2021's "job" system isn't sophisticated enough to have things like, you know, customer expectations. I haven't tested this scientifically, but I suspect the payment for the job is set at the beginning and doesn't take into account how long it takes you, or whether you buy parts you didn't need, et cetera, so I just ended up taking a huge loss on the mission rather than randomly presenting a customer who was expecting an oil change and a replacement exhaust manifold with a $100,000 invoice for the complete museum-quality restoration of his long-neglected supercar. And since I've been doing really lucrative things like restoring and reselling junked classics and supercars* for quite a while now, I have a fund balance built up in-game that can absorb that sort of thing easily. So, no actual consequences.

Still, it's pretty funny to imagine the owner's reaction. "That... that's not my car, is it?" "Yeah, sorry, I got a little carried away." :)

Hell, I can afford it, maybe I'll just start taking occasional jobs and doing them that way on purpose, like some kind of car mechanic Secret Santa.

Oh yeah, also, a while back CdrMike said:
>Nah, the real mystery is why does it cost you nothing to detail a car
>in the car wash shack, but still costs $100 if you detail it while
>it's on the lift?

They fixed that! (Possibly at the same time they added the window tinting cart, which I almost never remember to use.) Detailing the interior is free in both places you can do it now.

--G.
* I have restored more Pagani Zonda Revoluciónes than were actually made IRL
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.