Car Park Capital: Mechanics Guide

A simple guide to how protests, pollution, fuel, farms, and evictions work in Car Park Capital once the tutorial ends.

Car Park Capital: Mechanics Guide

The tutorial stops at the basics. This covers the systems that show up later, from protests and pollution to fuel, food, and evictions.

General tips

• See all your prices in one menu. Go to Statistics > Money > Configure Pricing. This makes pricing much easier to manage, especially after a level-up drops your Carbrainess because of a new mechanic you haven’t started yet.
• Expect Carbrainess to drop when you level up. Each level can add a new need you haven’t met yet. Save some cash as a level-up gets close, so you can build whatever your drivers ask for next.
• Leave room in your drive-thrus. You can edit them later to add new unlocks. Plan for at least 4 drive-thru units.
• Create your own parking demand. Many objects in the build menu generate parking demand, usually at a high cost. Build a lot in an empty area, place these objects next to it, and drivers will head there.
• Think about where factories and refineries go. Placing them far away means less Civil Unrest and no hit to parking demand, but cars and gas take longer to arrive.
• Spread out your drive-thrus. Packing many into one spot slows traffic, even though drivers don’t complain about it.

What raises Civil Unrest

• Destroying bus stops and train stations
• Evicting people from their homes
• Destroying plants and trees, either directly or through pollution
• Building certain structures, such as refineries, pumpjacks, and factories
• Building in restricted areas on some maps, such as the pyramids on the Egypt map

Unrest only goes down when you deal with protestors and riots, or when you build Plastic Trees. Plastic Trees usually unlock near the very end, so most of the time you’ll be handling protestors.

Riot control

Protestors are handled by Riot Control buildings. Each one supports a single truck with up to 10 slots for police and dogs. It’s not yet clear what police and dogs each do differently. One setup to try is 8 police and 2 dogs per truck.

You can set a riot truck to patrol. It will then deal with any minor protests it passes on its route. It doesn’t seem to handle larger protests, though those may simply have started outside the patrol range.

Minor protests

Once Civil Unrest goes above 50%, minor protests can happen. A protestor glues themselves to the entrance of one of your businesses, and that business stays closed until you remove them.

Click the protestor, or the notification on the left, to open their menu. From there you can send a riot control truck to their location.

Riots

At 100% Civil Unrest, a riot can break out. A large crowd of protestors gathers somewhere on the map and starts marching. If they reach one of your car parks, or gather at one, they may set cars on fire.

Send your police as soon as possible. Unrest above 100% likely means more protestors show up. The riot only ends once you’ve dealt with nearly every protestor.

Fighting protestors

When police reach a protestor, they leave the truck and start fighting.

• Both sides have health. Click the truck to see your units and the protestors.
• Bigger fights may wear your units down. Check your trucks and be ready to build more. New units spawn at the truck and join the fight right away.
• Feel free to send every riot unit you have. As far as is known, only one riot can happen at a time.
• If a truck loses all its units, you get a defeat notification and the truck returns to its garage. Replenish the units and send another truck if you have one.

After the fight, send your units back to their garage so they can heal and be ready for the next protest.

Pollution

Some buildings and vehicles pollute the environment around them:

• Oil Refineries
• Car Factories
• Oil and Gas transport vehicles
• Plastic Tree Factory

Transport vehicles leave oil spills along their route. Expect a lot of pollution on the roads between your refineries and gas stations.

Downsides

• Nearby trees and plants die, which raises Civil Unrest.
• Cows on your farms die.

Upside

• Land value falls, so land gets cheaper. The discount can reach 100%, which makes the land free.

Car Shop Carousel

Everything for making and selling cars is in the Cars & Parking menu. The Carousel is where people buy their cars, and each one holds 10.

You don’t need a factory to stock it. You can buy cars for the Carousel directly at $200 each, so set your sale price above that to make a profit. A price of $250 usually stays in the green zone, even after a level-up.

Car Factory

A factory makes a car roughly every 30 seconds. Open its menu to pick which cars it builds. On the Florida map, this may be the only way to get boat cars.

Factory cars always come out grey. Build Car Paint Shops if you want them in color.

Factories pollute and lower nearby parking demand. On the plus side, they don’t need a road connection, because Car Carriers handle delivery.

Car Carrier

Car Carriers take your factory cars to your Carousels. Each truck holds 4 cars, and each lot may store another 4. Connect carriers to your roads so the trucks can make deliveries.

Car Paint Shop

New owners are likely to head here after buying a car. It’s a drive-thru where they customize their cars. Each paint shop needs a payment station and a spray booth, and the payment station must be built first.

Oil and fuel

Once your Car Dependency level is high enough, drivers start asking for fuel. It moves through this chain: Pumpjack → Crude Oil Transportation → Oil Refinery → Gasoline Transportation → Gas Station. Placing any of these lowers parking demand nearby.

The game menu lists gas as “optional”, but it’s unclear what a gas station does when it has none.

Fuel tips

• Watch the Oil and Fuel counts in the top left. If one keeps dropping, build more of whatever produces it.
• Place refineries with care. Their pollution kills trees, and every tree that dies adds unrest. Nearly every building in the chain also cuts parking demand.
• Don’t put them too far away either, or deliveries slow down. Pollution only kills trees; people aren’t affected.

Fast food drive-thrus

Drive-thrus give your cars somewhere to get food.

1. Build the first tile.
2. Extend the drive-thru using the arrows in the build menu. The queue must be a few tiles long before you can place anything.
3. Once the queue reaches the minimum, place the food tiles, starting with the Ordering Window.

Available tiles:

• Ordering Window: Required, and must be placed first.
• Fries Stall: Gives the car some food.
• Sauce Post: An upsell for extra sauce.
• Hamburger Stall: Unlocks later. More filling food keeps cars satisfied for longer, but it needs a supply of patties.
• Soda Stall: Unlocks later. Covers the drinks need.
• Drive-Thru Loop: Appears to be cosmetic only.

Hamburger and drink stalls can be added to existing drive-thrus once you unlock them, so leave some spare room when you build.

Farms

After burgers unlock, every Hamburger Stall needs patties. Farms supply them.

• Cow Field: Cows grow here on their own until they’re ready for slaughter.
• Barn: Collects nearby cows and takes them to the grinder. Its range seems to be about 3 Cow Fields, so you can fit several in. It only delivers 4 cows at a time, though, so don’t overbuild.
• Meat Grinder: Turns each cow from the Barn into 4 patties. Every grinder has one truck that delivers to drive-thrus around town automatically.

Farm tips

• Pollution kills cows. Build farms well away from factories and oil refineries.
• Since one cow makes 4 patties, you don’t need a huge herd.
• If the map has wild cows, pick them up and drop them into a Cow Field for +1 cow.

Amusement

Amusement becomes a need once Car Dependency is high enough. Meet it with Car Ferris Wheel drive-thrus, which you build like any other drive-thru.

• The wheel takes up a fair amount of space, so don’t squeeze it in.
• Each ride takes a while. Give it a longer queue or put it on a quieter road to keep traffic moving.
• Rides are free, so the wheel earns no money. Don’t build too many.

Drinks

Drinks show up as a need as your Car Dependency rises. You can add them to any food drive-thru with a Soda Stall (see Fast food drive-thrus).

Soda Vending Machines also unlock, but it’s unclear how much they help with the drinks need. Drivers have to get out of their cars to use them.

Toilets

At a high enough Car Dependency level, drivers need a bathroom. Toilets are built like any other drive-thru.

• The order of the toilet, paper, and perfume tiles doesn’t seem to matter.
• The toilet animation is slow, so a longer queue may help.
• Public on-foot toilets can also be built, but it’s unclear whether they help with demand.

Fires

When a large protest breaks out near one of your car parks, or you leave a protest alone and it keeps marching, protestors may set cars on fire. A Fire Engine Garage lets you send fire trucks to put them out. You can also set a fire truck to patrol an area and extinguish any burning cars it finds.

A Fire Engine Garage takes a few minutes to finish building, so placing one after a fire starts is too late. Build it in advance.

Cars you don’t save in time are destroyed and have to be towed.

Towing abandoned cars

Cars are sometimes abandoned. The exact cause isn’t known, but it happens most often after large protests.

Abandoned cars lower the parking demand of the lot they’re stuck in. With enough of them, drivers refuse to park there at all.

To clear them, build a Tow Truck Garage from the Cars & Parking menu and send out tow trucks. You can also give tow trucks a patrol route so they remove any abandoned cars they pass.

Towed cars need somewhere to go. Build a Junkyard to scrap them. Keep in mind that a Junkyard lowers nearby parking demand.

Evictions and suburbia

Plots you buy may still have tenants. You can’t evict them onto the street, so they need a new home first.

1. Build suburban houses. They can go almost anywhere, but each plot fits only 2–3 people and takes a minute or two to build. Keep a few ready ahead of time.
2. Evict the tenants once there’s room for them in suburbia. Each evicted person adds 2% Civil Unrest. If you have a radio tower, run the “Suburban Dream” broadcast to cut this to 1% per person.
3. Demolish the empty high-density housing and replace it with parking.

Credit: @Lago