R&D — Production | The Undercut Wiki

Designs are blueprints, not parts. The Production tab is the factory floor where a blueprint becomes a physical unit you can bolt onto a car. It is the one R&D tab that spends money instead of Work Units, and one of only three tabs open during pre-season — where you build all three cars.

How to open it

Car icon → Production (tab 6).
Design-ready emails carry an Open R&D → Production button that lands here directly (RndScreen::new_production()).
Reachable during pre-season, alongside Inventory and Private Testing, while the rest of R&D is greyed out.

Known Designs — one row per component

The table lists one row per component, showing that component’s default design (not every version):

Column	Meaning
Part	Icon + name
Ver	The default design’s version badge
Quality	Its frozen loot tier — every copy inherits it exactly
Perf	`current_perf` on the 0–100 scale, with the hatched head-room to `potential`
Reliab	`fiability × 100`
Stock	Unfitted spares you already own of that exact version
Cost / piece	`production_unit_cost(component)`
Default	`Choose default (N)` — opens the version picker, N = versions known
Action	`Select` — opens the Manufacture Order popup

The header line also shows your available budget.

Per-piece cost

Production cost equals the reference new-part price:

Component	Cost / piece
Engine	$1,500,000
Body	$1,200,000
Floor	$500,000
Gearbox	$200,000
Rear wing	$120,000
Brake	$110,000
Electronics	$100,000
Cooling system	$100,000
Front wing	$90,000
Fuel system	$50,000
Suspension	$50,000

Choosing the default design

best_design_for auto-picks the highest version number for a component — the one carrying the cumulative improvements and any trait-fix version bump. Choose default overrides that with a specific version.

The default design is not cosmetic. It is what gets reproduced by:

the Production tab’s Select flow (the popup still lets you page to another version);
the Repair tab’s New $K emergency purchase;
the “Fix a Problem” list in the Design tab, which reads the default design’s traits, not the fitted part’s.

The chooser lists every known version newest-first with its spec; a per-row Set button commits it.

The engine has no design. It is supplier-rolled once per season into a shared vintage — every customer of that motorist gets the identical unit. It never appears as a designable part, and a replacement engine is cloned from the best engine you already own (same version, same traits, pristine), not re-rolled.

Select opens a modal over the tab:

Part name + quality badge.
Version picker — < vN > with an (i/n) counter, so you can build an older spec deliberately.
Performance and Reliability preview bars.
Quantity — [−] n [+], clamped to 20 pieces per order.
Totals — Standard: $X Rush (+50%): $Y.
A red warning line when the standard total puts the team into the red.

Delivery options

Situation	Buttons	Delivery	Price
Pre-season (`current_phase ≤ TOTAL_PHASES`)	`Build now`	Immediate, straight into spares	Standard — no rush fee
In-season, no loadout locked	`Order (next GP)` + `Rush (+50%)`	After the next GP / immediate	Standard / `× 1.5`
In-season, weekend loadout locked	`Order (next GP)` only; Rush drawn grey and inert	After the GP	Standard

The locked-weekend line spells it out: “Race weekend — rush unavailable (the truck is packed); orders deliver after the GP.” An instant part could not reach the circuit, so the +50% would buy nothing.

There is no budget wall

Production never refuses an order for lack of cash. The team simply goes into the red. Bankruptcy only triggers after 3 consecutive GPs with a negative budget, so short-term build debt is a legitimate strategy — especially in pre-season, when income arrives before the first race. The Repair tab’s emergency New $K purchase follows the same philosophy.

In Production — the pending queue

Standard orders appear in a second panel, “In Production — arrives after the next GP”, listing part + version, quantity, and a Cancel button.

Queued jobs deliver in the post-race pass: each copy is pushed into inventory as an unfitted spare and an email is sent (“3× Front Wing v4 delivered”).
Cancel refunds the standard (non-rush) amount — unit_cost × count. Cancelling a rush order is impossible (it delivered immediately), so the refund can never exceed what was charged.
Pending jobs are lifted by later improvements: propagate_improvements_to_spec raises a queued job’s initial_perf / potential / fiability to the improved spec. Ordering early and developing afterwards is not a trap — the parts arrive at the current level.

Advanced

Order before the improvement, not after. Because pending jobs are lifted to the improved spec, a spare ordered on Monday and improved on Wednesday arrives at Wednesday’s level. There is no reason to delay an order to “wait for the upgrade”.
Copies are exact. A design’s stats are frozen at delivery of the project (quality + traits rolled once). Every piece produced from it is byte-identical: same quality tier, same traits, same potential. There is no per-piece luck.
Build spares of what breaks. A destroyed part is swapped for the freshest spare free of WU cost. With no spare, your only path is a rush purchase at 1.5× — $2.25M for an engine. One $500K floor spare pays for itself the first time a floor is destroyed.
Pre-season is the cheap window. Instant delivery at standard price and no rush fee, every order. Build the two race cars and the mule there — the mule is what makes Private Testing run at all.
Watch the Stock column, not your memory. It counts spares of the default version only. Four v2 wings in stock show as 0 once v3 becomes the default.
Version-paging is a real tactic. An older, cheaper-to-build version with a better trait set is sometimes the right spare. The popup’s < > arrows exist for exactly that.

Common mistakes

Believing a finished design means a finished part. A completed project only registers a blueprint. Until you produce a copy in this tab, nothing changes on the car.
Paying the rush fee in pre-season. Every pre-season order is already immediate at standard price. The Rush button is not even shown there.
Rushing during a race weekend. The button is grey; if you want a part at this track it had to be in the Weekend Loadout.
Ordering 20 engines because the button allows it. The clamp is 20 pieces, not 20 sensible pieces — that is $30M.
Forgetting to re-pick the default after a trait fix. A trait fix creates a new version that automatically becomes the newest — usually what you want — but if you had manually pinned an older default, it stays pinned and the fix is never produced.
Cancelling a job you already improved. The refund is the original cash; the improvement WU spent lifting that job’s spec are not recovered.