Early Experimental Preview of Career Concept

Used like that the commercial garage and yard across the street work very authentically, a good example of a well designed depot. I spawn my tractor, then my trailers, then the dolly, hop in the tractor and drive across the street, Hooking them up from the parking spot is four smooth movements and it's out the gate in about 1 minute.

I just updated and started a new playthrough this evening, noticing the traffic driving more appropriate speeds for the most part and lots less weird lane changing behavior. Looked like no smaller vehicles going into Spearleaf marine logistic, just MDs which makes more sense and the trailer pickups are pointing with the lane arrows in there now. Seeing the MD series on the road is a fun new challenge for my aggressive delivery style, I can't just blast those out of the way with T-series bullbar and no consequences like smaller cars and trucks.

 

I wonder if there has been plans for a dispatcher, which would provide you locations where to go to pick up cargo?

I do think about typical situation where jobs are handled by the office and driver is just given orders where to go.
This could be simulated somewhat easily by picking up some random cargo by random delivery point with a script, but perhaps script could have adjustments for preferred length or income and number of cargo slots, where it might soon become less simple.

 

On the subject of authenticity very heavy 128 slot industrial parcel cargos would be nice by default somehow, there's no real point to the T-series and MD-series doing milkruns with under 500kg parcels. A mod "accidently" added ones up to 2,000kg in my last playthrough as far as I can tell. Seeing them in the list gave me gold fever, I spent hundreds of very enjoyable hours figuring out how to pull $50k-$150k single loads using your lovely T-series. It forced me to sample every combination of upgrade and trailer finding the right build to do it consistently and try other career aspects just to afford that chase.

It sounds overpowered but it's challenging work, a huge time sink, requires lots of thinking ahead and good practices to pull off, big losses if you rush or make mistakes. Even the most "gamey" combinations I came up were on par with an upgraded van in terms of $/hr with exponentially higher repair cost for mistakes.

If you put in up to 5,000kg XL cargos X 32pcs even rarely you'd create endless self created minigames for anything that can hold a XL boxes.

 

I do see how heavier pallets would add more interesting game play, but also there might be issues with lesser vehicles, that still could hold XL boxes. D15 maximum legal load might be slightly less than what would make interesting challenge for XL box delivery in MD or T series.

I do not know if game has possibility to limit weight of box, it is perhaps just the slots which are checked, so XL box might need to be low weight to make sure loads work with all vehicles.

XLHeavy boxes of course could be introduced to work around for this.

 

It's a comma separated list of weights like 100, 200, 300... then there's a random few kgs added so it's not a round number the base game list ends at 500kg maybe, I'll fix it however I want in the long run if I have to but I think it'd be fun for a lot of playstyles.

The big weights would be fun for small vehicles too, there's very lucrative loads available depending on how fast you want to move it and being able to know how much you can get all the way there. It would taunt greed with not being able to pull the last hill, blowing tires and breaking suspension being rough, roll overs, devastating damage if you hit solid objects...

I did a couple runs from the island to the quarry with over 60,000-80,000kg on one 48' flatbed, it's doable, not safe, legal or within the trailer specs, failed like 5 attempts for every one success. A D-series and gooseneck with 10mt+ or a H-Series with 5mt inside would be a fun challenge in a game focused on simulating physics.

 

I'm really excited to play the new career mode tomorrow morning

 

I should have been more precise with my wording, I saw earlier that you guy were going to implement multiple vehicles to be used (rented) by the player to help them complete missions. The vehicle(s) you would provide would be able to complete the bare minimum to achieve a single star. My idea would further expand on that concept to provide the player with 3 different vehicles (at a higher % of the income taken away based on the capability of the rented vehicle). So the slowest vehicle would help the player get a single star and take the least amount of earned money whereas the highest performing vehicle would be able to get all stars from the given mission but take the highest cut of the player profit. Unless you guy are planning to do straight up rental racecars like you do with the commercial vehicles and equipment (which I have my own ideas for).

Thank you as well for the quick and active responses. Update time must be the most exciting time for you guys!

 

Hi, I think the insurance renewal in 0.34 is bugged whereas it wasn't in 0.33.3. I hope this is the right place to report it.

TL;DR: Insurance renewal is charged too often because the distance ticks down too quickly. This may be caused by a more general bug (unconfirmed).

I am making the assumption that the trip meters / odometers in the cars are accurate. They feel like they are working, but I didn't use the distance app in career mode as I thought I'd mess it up by going in and out of walking mode. Deliveries felt much harder to make money from and the "Insurance renewed! Tier..." message seemed to be popping up all the time, which prompted my investigation.

Starting a car with a zero'd trip meter and making a note of the "Next payment in" distance, I can reproduce a discrepancy between how far the trip meter says I've driven and how far the insurance screen says I've covered. I have checked this in a 0.33.3 save which was transferred to 0.34, a newer save that was created in 0.34.0, and in a profile I just created in safe mode in 0.34.1.

Furthermore, I accidentally stumbled upon what I believe to be the cause. It seems like the distance measurement for the insurance is now taken from the engine rotation rather than the distance the wheels have covered. I found this because I was trying to get FOV key bindings (for zoomed in screenshots) and left my D45 idling -- I thought I better double check the "Next payment in" distance and it had changed while I hadn't driven anywhere! In safe mode I sat in the Shuffleboard Garage and redlined a starter car in neutral until the engine got too hot and that subtracted 1.7km. Until I found this I thought 0.34 might have been charging me for the distance the AI traffic were travelling, however in 0.34.0 I watched the traffic for some time with my D45 spawned (but engine off) and the insurance distance did not change.

This bug may not just be part of career mode. Last night (in 0.34.0), I was messing around with an 800-series in the (main menu) Garage and I noticed the MPG figure went up while revving against the launch control(?) and went back down again when returned to idle. Both these issues could be related to distance being taken from the engine rather than the actual distance travelled by the vehicle as a whole.

I have included some screenshots of the trip meters and renewal distances. First, on my main save file, I have a "Next payment in: 21.8 km" but according to the trip meter I only got 6.8 miles (11.1 km) driving a D45 box van. On a separate save file I created in 0.34.0 to try out a different play-style, I have a "Next payment in: 19.3 km" starting at 172505.2 mi and renewing at 172512.1 mi (a difference of 6.9 mi or 11.1 km) driving a Pessima. The distances being similar is a coincidence because both vehicles are automatics and the converter slip on launch is contributing to the discrepancy between distance the wheels and the engine have 'travelled'. The last two screenshots are from the rev-in-a-garage-without-moving test.

 

I don't know if this is common knowledge but you can salvage a load if you can get another vehicle to a wreck. I did BA and Riches while my truck was burning. I called my favorited minivan to start another cargo run from RIch's with it and out of curiosity I opened my map/cargo menu. Clicking the wrench icon allowed me to move cargo from the burning truck to the van and I was able to save all my deliveries with two trips in the minivan. This cool as heck and I wish I knew about it sooner, not only can you mitigate losses, a guy could use a van to fill a centrally located larger vehicles for big final deliveries.


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I was wondering about something along those lines, in a recent restart I blew through the 300km milestone in 2hr 15 minutes. That's doable in a car but not when I was driving an MD at 15 minutes in, the thing barely does 140kmh bobtailing downhill on the highway into town, well under 100kmh 99% of the time.

**edit on that note I get crazy wheel speed in the sand between shuffleboard and the highway shortcut, through the quarry which is a part of almost every run I make...**

 

Found a bug on the Highway Loop 2 Race where the AI doesn't know where the 6th checkpoint is. It seems like it is misplaced and that makes them start go in circles and eventually run into a pole...

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Also, it would be great to be able to drop off trailers in reverse like you would in real life, but sadly the parking spot is so small that the truck doesn't reach to it...
I think it's an easy fix to just make the spot a bit bigger in areas designated for bigger vehicles (also considering you have to stop in that small spot with a big truck if you want to do parcel deliveries) to make delivering a bit more immersive

 

Get out pull the handle, step into the target and trigger it on foot for peak immersion.

 

Yep, I highly doubt you're averaging over 133 km/h in an MD because that would be extremely impressive! haha

I did consider wheel speed/distance, especially when I realised I was doing my 0.34 testing on a save file where I drive more recklessly, but I think this is falsified by revving a stationary car also causing the insurance distance to tick down. However, shouldn't wheelspin work the other way around (the cars think they've gone further than the insurance screen / 'GPS' distance)? Besides, my numbers show around a 50% increase and I doubt either of us are spinning 50% of the time on average. I'm certainly not in stock engined vehicles.

 

Not 50% but my wheelspin ratio is up there especially on my gravel shortcuts, still don't see wheelspeeds numbers explaining 4 hours of driving in 2 hours. I haven't timed anything but I play in marathon stretches trying to met goals faster and get a feel for timing, I'm 36 hours into a play session with just restarts, the insurance seems to be extra taxing now among other things.

 

I've been doing a bunch of delivery missions with my ETK-i and once I unlocked trailers, I made the mistake of buying a medium frame/rear end MD series. Only later found out that the fifth wheel upfit is only available on the short rear end MD. But because it's a core part, I can't swap it and buying the short frame is very expensive. In fact, it's more expensive than the whole MD series. This is really unbalanced. Not to mention the lousy payout of doing deliveries vs. playing the motorsports career. This could maybe improved by seriously raising the money rewards for progress like delivering 100 parcels. Currently it's $400. Could easily be 5x that if not 10x.

 

The MD is a pain like that in general, it would behave better on the highway if you could have longer frame with a daycab and 5th wheel. I just did a marathon session seeing if I could make trucking profitable with the current economy and it was disappointing. Took me 15 hours to get my own 28' flatbed trailer and a fully upgraded MD, I'm really good with that combo. I was doing organized rounds manually placing cargo in my bins to keep full XL boxes open for good big cargos and using the little stuff to keep a bit of weight on my 5th wheel at all times.

I had to have minivan on standby to do $200-500 runs just to afford minor repairs on the "big rig".

I also did up a T-series flatbed with a build that works very well, quicker loaded than a van or PU upfit and almost as nimble. It was no better, even with my skills maxed I couldn't find enough continuous cargo to cover losses.

 

Loading of boxes currently is grouping by destination, I would be interested to change this to load boxes full so that one box will be used until it becomes full and only then load would be placed to new box, but I'm not sure how to achieve this.
Of course it is possible to load boxes manually, but I do wonder if there is possibility to create a mod that would give more varied options or if this functionality is not moddable at the moment?

Surely IRL cargo pricing is too complicated for game purposes, but here cargo base price varies for example from 0.23eur/kg to 0.065eur/kg depending if load is 500kg or 20 000kg, not sure if there is such in the game,or if there is even need to have such in the game, but it would make large loads from single customer somewhat less interesting than smaller loads from numerous of customers.
Also IRL there is a startup/pickup cost, which is something like 150-300 euros as there is no such in game, some cargoes can be bit harder to make money from, but game is game with game world and limitations, so these might not work too well with the game.

I do believe taxis IRL also have a startup fee, not sure if upcoming taxi mode will have that, also to be honest, while I have used taxi quite a few times IRL I have never paid for it.
For reasons which I am not quite well aware of, usually in games there are no startup fees for deliveries, so there might be a good reason for that, it just is that I have not that much understanding of these game balancing methods.

MD series vehicles are old used vehicles with high mileage, but frame parts are new, so new parts for old vehicle can cost more than old vehicle.
Sometimes I have ended up situation where I bought a vehicle which then could not be added cargo options I thought, so I have one career profile to test things out where I have performed small memory editing to allow sufficient funds to learn what works and what does not work.
I'm not sure if that is an optimal solution, but then again I am not aware how to actually solve the issue as game has so many combinations.
There could be some kind of book to check which possibilities each vehicle would have, but essentially whole game is more or less of try something and find out.
With career mode this can lead to roguelike situations, where your only option is to start a new or grind with car deliveries to get some basic cargo capability.

Then again that is some form of realism as well, if you make uneducated choices IRL, there is no undo button either, but surely I do have hoped there would be, quite numerous of times.

 

1. I noticed that the start of a new save game is way too easy. I'd rather see the game to start you of with a single garage in some industrial area (or something similar to that) and you have to make progress to unlock the others if you want. Because whats the point of owning Belasco city garage when you're playing as a cop or taxi driver (I hope to see that after some update)?

2. Also the car prices are not accurate. How can a 35 year old Covet still cost 12 grand? I'd rather see it around 3 to 4000 with low milage and good condition... (Of course, starting money would be a lot less to make it realistic)

3. I'd like to buy used car parts (espacially on older cars, there should be way less options for new parts because they simply wouldn't exist) and repair my car manually by replacing what's nessesary to keep the car running.

4. And if you total your car so the frame is bend or anything, normally it wouldn't be repairable. The insurance would just give you the money that the car is worth and make it a write-off (not repairable or too expensive) and you either do it yourself, sell the car for scrapmoney (200 - 500, depending on the car), or put it in storage and use whatever is still useable for other cars.

5. Please devs, Make the Vivace stop spawning in traffic. The car wouldn't be sold in the USA or at least give them the right license plates.

All that (and more) would add a lot to the realism.

 

I'm curious if car markets will be accounted for in general. I bought a K-Series and it turned out to be EUDM spec, which would of course be illegal in real life since it's far under 25 years old. I wonder if in the future you'd need to legally import old cars from other markets, or find a seller who has? But then the 25 year rule would make the FCV completely unusable in the career. Maybe there could be illegal imports, so you can get them through a different process? Banning out-of-market cars is probably going too far for most players but as a stickler for realism I'd love it

 

Stuff like this really needs to be fixed.

This is like an '82, not a '23, and it does not only have one mile on it, as seen by the wear and tear on the paint. It's also not worth $8,400, because it's literally stripped out.
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Twice?

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This seems... dangerous.

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Where do I drop this off? Just leave it in the driveway?