Chapter 2: Economy & Logistics

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Economy & Logistics for Vehicle Concept Artists — Vehicle Worldbuilding

Vehicles do not exist in a vacuum; they are the moving parts of a larger economic machine. Worldbuilding that ignores fueling, maintenance, spare parts, labor, and supply lines creates vehicles that look convincing on a turntable but collapse in a believable setting. For vehicle concept artists on both the concepting and production sides—across indie speed and AAA scale—baking economy and logistics into your decisions makes silhouettes inevitable, kits reusable, and gameplay richer. This article frames economy through era, tech trees, faction identity, and environment fit, then connects those choices to fueling, maintenance, and supply chains in ways you can express through art and handoff.

Era defines cost structures and the shape of infrastructure. In a diesel‑age frontier, fuel depots, drum caches, and tanker trucks are the circulatory system; maintenance is mechanical and human‑scale, with parts forged or machined locally. In a near‑future electrified society, high‑voltage depots, standardized battery trays, and smart chargers form the network; maintenance shifts to diagnostic electronics, module swaps, and software updates. A fusion‑era polity funds cooling towers, radiator farms, and isotope logistics; maintenance involves shielding protocols and thermal management as much as torque. Anti‑gravity or field‑effect eras invest in capacitor banks, emitter foundries, and rare material refining; maintenance is high‑skill with strict safety zones. Your vehicles should wear the era: filler caps and jerrycan racks, charge ports and tray rails, reactor service hatches and heat sinks, emitter rings and capacitor access panels. Production pages lock these cues into callouts so props, levels, and VFX can build the loop around them.

Tech trees express economic progression and path dependence. When a faction’s power branch shifts from ICE to hybrid to electric, the logistics tail changes: fuel tankers give way to mobile chargers or battery swap trucks; exhaust after‑treatment spares are replaced by inverter modules and coolant manifolds. If the mobility branch evolves from wheels to hover, the spare parts taxonomy moves from tires and bearings to field emitters and power electronics. A tech tree that preserves identity while unlocking capability can be drawn as a logistics map: what depots, tools, and skills each tier demands. Concept exploration benefits by designing vehicles that visibly plug into these networks. Production benefits by standardizing hardpoints, tray sizes, hose couplings, and adapter plates that let variants share infrastructure.

Faction identity is economic behavior made visible. A salvage guild runs on scavenged fuel blends, mismatched tires, and rebuilt hydraulics; their vehicles show external filters, patchwork lines, and universal brackets drilled to many bolt circles. A technocracy prizes uptime and latency; their fleets standardize modules and use predictive maintenance, so vehicles feature quick‑release trays, RFID‑tagged panels, and clean service corridors that are easy to animate. A militarized empire manages contested supply lines; their designs mount dual‑fuel capability, redundant pumps, and armored access. A nomadic utility culture optimizes for repair in the field; their vehicles carry on‑board tool chests, fold‑out cranes, and hand‑winches. These choices become silhouette anchors and material languages—ladders and racks, panel numbering, color‑coded hoses, and stenciled service marks—that can be locked in livery and greeble grammar. Production callouts turn them into repeatable kits for modeling and props.

Environment fit modifies the economics of uptime and transport. Desert worlds stretch supply lines and punish filters; vehicles show cyclonic pre‑cleaners, canvas fuel bladders, and shade tents at waypoints. Arctic worlds make seals, heaters, and cold‑soaked batteries the bottleneck; designs display insulated lines, removable thermal skirts, and external power umbilicals. Jungle climates corrode fasteners and saturate filters; vehicles wear sacrificial coatings, raised breathers, and quick‑drain sump plugs. Urban theaters focus on maneuverability and downtime; fleets need curbside charge points, modular bumpers, and standardized door heights. Maritime settings prioritize saltproof materials, cathodic protection, and deck‑friendly tie‑downs. Aircraft and VTOL craft demand ground support equipment, hangar clearances, and fueling carts; lunar or vacuum operations require dust abatement and radiator shadows. Concept pages should pair silhouettes with depot and waypoint props; production packages should supply scale, hose/cable standards, and service clearances.

Fueling is a ritual you can stage. ICE worlds need fill caps placed for gravity and safety, splash shields and bonding cables for drums, and clear paths for tanker booms. Hybrid and electric worlds need charge ports at heights compatible with docks, with indicator lights and safe latch geometry; battery swap trays demand robust lateral guides, lift points, and lock pins with readable color coding. Hydrogen or exotic fuels require high‑pressure couplings, vent stacks, and purge routines. Fusion cores require interlocks, cooldown windows, and heat sink swaps. Anti‑grav systems might recharge by pad coupling or capacitor slides; emitter banks need demagnetized zones. When you define fueling choreography, you create anchor points for animation, VFX, audio, and level design to collaborate, and you give marketing moments their visual grammar. Production callouts should give dimensions, reach arcs, and keep‑out zones so the rituals work on set.

Maintenance is your vehicle’s second life and a strong source of character. Friendly civilian fleets show accessible filters, color‑coded reservoirs, and clean labels; aggressive military fleets show covers over belts, armored lines, and split‑pin fasteners; utilitarian workhorses show dinged steps, replacement panels, and tool wear on edges. Routine maintenance intervals determine panel break logic: if a filter needs weekly access, it should live behind a small, hinged door with a serial label; if a part is lifetime, it can hide behind a large remove‑once panel. Suspension bushings, brake pads, and tires/track shoes signal duty cycles in material and geometry; vehicles with long supply lines may carry spares on racks or incorporate dual‑use parts that can be cannibalized. Production benefits when you specify service intervals and access paths in callouts; rigging benefits when hatch arcs and tool clearances are drawn; physics benefits when mass estimates account for carried spares.

Supply chains explain why some shapes recur. Standardized pallet sizes lead to compartment dimensions; common bolt circles lead to hub and nacelle interfaces; hose and cable sizes drive clip spacing. If a faction shares a 600 mm battery module, vehicle floors and sill heights will reflect that; if tracks use a common pin size, bogie spacing and sprockets will converge. Shortages change silhouettes as much as abundance: a world low on copper will favor optical data links and aluminum busbars; a world rich in hydrocarbons will oversize tanks and underbuild radiators. Concept art should telegraph such dependencies with consistent proportions and materials; production should codify standards in hardpoint sheets and kit libraries so modeling and live‑ops can scale without drift.

Economics also determines failure and salvage states. Vehicles designed for contested routes need quick‑disconnects that prevent spills and fires, shear bolts that break predictably, and panels that can be replaced without realigning the chassis. They also need damage reads that make gameplay sense: a punctured radiator changes plume behavior and reduces power; a severed HV line forces limp mode; a cracked emitter ring reduces hover height. These states belong on silhouette and callout pages, not just in VFX briefs, so implementation can align art, physics, and sound. In AAA, a destruction tree informed by logistics reduces guesswork; in indie, a few explicit failure sketches prevent hand‑waving late in production.

From the concept seat, economy and logistics are prompts that generate better ideas. When you ask, “What does a refuel look like?” or “Where does the spare live?” thumbnails get sharper and factions diverge naturally. Moodboards fill with depots, tools, and wear—not just hero angles—so your silhouettes have context. From the production seat, economy becomes checklists and kits: hardpoint standards for racks and couplers, cable/hosing colors and diameters, panel numbering systems, and a small set of reusable depot props that make levels coherent. The same information flows into UI and localization: labels become diegetic, warning lights gain meaning, and maintenance logs can appear on screens.

Indie and AAA cadence differ in density rather than philosophy. An indie project benefits from a single evolving “operations board” that shows a vehicle, its fueling and service choreography, and the three props a level needs to stage them. A AAA project distributes these ideas into a world bible, with economy chapters per faction and environment, depot kits, GSE (ground support equipment) catalogs, and maintenance iconography mapped to livery standards. Either way, a change log tracks updates so older vehicles can receive retrofits in fiction and in the asset library without eroding style consistency.

Closing the loop means letting money and logistics shape form. When fueling, maintenance, and supply chains are visible in proportion, paneling, and hardpoints—and when those choices are encoded in deliverables—your vehicles stop being isolated sculptures. They become nodes in an economy the player can sense in a glance, and collaborators can build around without debate. That is how worldbuilding produces fleets that feel lived‑in, functional, and inevitable.