Economy Overhaul?

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Max
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#11 Post by Max » 13 Jul 2018 09:49

expenses are quite close to real ones.
the only thing that cannot be scaled are loans. if you play with income factor beware the loans.
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BK Vissers
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#12 Post by BK Vissers » 13 Jul 2018 12:28

I set g_income_factor to 0.05 and I’m still making money. But it does suddenly make burning a red light more than once a bit more problematic. There are trips where I lose money, but then I make it up on another one or two. Since I am not interested in buying multiple trucks or getting another garage, this setting is moderately challenging. I might lower it to 0.04 or 0.03.
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#13 Post by rookie31st » 13 Jul 2018 13:07

Max wrote: 13 Jul 2018 09:49expenses are quite close to real ones.
Yeah, if you talk about existing expenses. Gas and moving violations. Did I forget anything? :D
Garage requires no maintenance and does not generate utility and tax bills. We don't have to pay full cost of repairs because of insurance. And we don't need to make insurance policy payments because insurance is free.

Loans cannot be scaled, but they can be revised in bank_data.sii
Simply increasing loan terms does magic - default period for $400K is 10 weeks, but changing it to standard 3 years (156 weeks) reduces daily payment from over $5K to just $437. Sweet
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canuckster
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#14 Post by canuckster » 13 Jul 2018 13:34

Kids would get tired of this game quickly with a realistic economy, but I would agree to make it an option.
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#15 Post by rookie31st » 13 Jul 2018 14:41

Oh, this is not about realistic economy but simply more realistic and detailed expense categories. Right now income factor is about 20x of average real life income of a truck driver. I am not asking to change it since it can already be changed through g_income_factor

What I am asking is more spending categories and more realism in managing your company. Garages should not be treated as parking lots, they need to have more purpose than just truck storage place and discounted fuel depot (which is pointless anyway with default income factor). We really need to be able to repair our trucks inside our garages. And this should be cheaper than visiting dealer or truck service, but each garage should generate maintenance cost (utilities and property taxes). Maintenance cost may be minuscule so kids don't complaint, I don't really care as long as we have them and able to mod those amounts for the purpose of realistic economy. We just need them coded, even if SCS Software keeps them at $0 by default.

Same for insurance payments. Make them $10 per day for each truck by default, but changeable through some .sii file. This won't bother most players but will give hardcore base a source to create better and more realistic economy mods.
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wolfedg
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#16 Post by wolfedg » 13 Jul 2018 15:25

The problem with more realistic profits at this point is that there are still too many expenses outside of the players control. There are still intersections in the game that pile up with traffic, requiring the player to take risks that would not be normal and of course theres the blind as a bat and as stupid as a rock AI that will drive right into you in some circumstances or suddenly stop on an interstate. Once more of these issues are dealt with I could see myself playing a more realistic income, but not until.
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#17 Post by flight50 » 13 Jul 2018 18:10

@wolfedog. Your speaking of a totally different topic. The AI issues is something different than money issues.

I like some of the thoughts that are generating in here. I agree that we need more ways to cost us money for the company we run. As it stands, my income factor is 0.3. I tried 0.05 but I have negatives across the board in the thousands with all my garages and drivers. Not realistic at all as I should be making money not loosing it like that. There is no point in even having drivers and garages if no profits come about. I haven't been able to make a personal mod for whatever reason to adjust things a before since the 1.31 update for what ever reason. There is a skin purchase trick that was mentioned to me but I haven't gotten around to looking into it. My preference though is to not have to mod the game but somewhat of a Simcity/City Skylines version to control money flow.

Now SCS did say that in the future, they hope that WOT can be this more in depth and more realistic experience. But that is way off into the future.
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#18 Post by rookie31st » 13 Jul 2018 20:11

@flight50, yes there is something wrong with AI drivers because they do not profit with low g_income_factor
I was using 0.1 for some time and was slowly going down while having 14 hired drivers and no loans. There is some expense factor which needs to be adjusted manually. File economy_data.sii has AI driver parameters

fuel_cost_per_km: (0.6, 1.0) # for driver simulation
driver_max_cargo_damage: 6.0 # in %, decrease with skill
driver_maintenance_cost: (0.9, 1.5) # maintenance + insurance, range in $/km
minimal_driver_salary: 350 # fixed part of driver's pay
driver_revenue_per_km: 10 # in $

I think something here is not affected by g_income_factor so revenue/expense gets screwed
I will play for several in-game weeks using g_income_factor 0.05 and then try to figure where AI drivers are losing money, because in current economic environment lacking most expenses my trucking company must be profitable as long as revenue covers fuel and minuscule repairs.
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#19 Post by dave_th » 13 Jul 2018 22:07

The way I look at it is the economy is the game that justifies the sim. The sim is the skill needed, in this case its driving a big ole truck; and the economy is the justification for taking 'One more load and then I'm off to bed [for sure this time]'.

This game is most interesting up to L25 when the economy means something, after that I have so much money it no longer matters if I drive the next load or not. I would love to have a deeper economy to keep the game interesting and to do that the economy has to stay valid much longer, it should mean something when I pull that load of logs into the depot.

More things to spend money on would be a boon and this thread has listed many good ideas. And by more things I mean more than just the Garage/truck list we have today. 65 trucks and 16 garages later and they are becoming old hat. This current profile is almost finished and time for a re-boot, likely to coincide with Oregon.
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Re: Economy Overhaul?

#20 Post by rookie31st » 16 Jul 2018 23:15

driver_maintenance_cost: (0.9, 1.5) # maintenance + insurance, range in $/km is the problem when using reduced g_income_factor
This parameter is fixed and causes consistent losses by AI drivers. I have reduced the values 20 times to (0.045, 0.075) and could see some profit from AI drivers with g_income_factor 0.05 however cheapest cargo on the market still results in some losses from some drivers. I am fine with it assuming trucks need maintenance and insurance payments from time to time and thus do not bring profit every single day, but it might need further adjustment to ensure long term profit

P.S. Just figured that driver_revenue_per_km: 10 # in $ is actually driver's fixed pay per distance
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