Employed drivers develop "habits"?

[Wakou22]

A strange thing!
I am a relative n00b at this. I have three garages. One is just my 'home' garage (London). One has 5 drivers (Riga, Lv) The other has 3, (Nice Fr). Two of my drivers from Riga have developed a "habit" of going to Palermo, Sicily (It) This is great! A very long way (90 hours ish), and very well paid. One of the others seems to have a fondness for Kristiansand (No).
But! Two of my drivers from Nice have developed a "habit" of going to Birmingham, UK. This would be fine, a nice long-distance trip, usually carryiing well-paid cargo. But they invariably return empty! Far, far more than the 10% of journeys people have suggested would be the norm. Can I influence this behaviour?
Also is there a way to look at a drivers's "log" going back more than 7 days?
(I am a nightmare, micro-managing "boss", I would hate to work for me! )

[Dougie_1974]

Interesting topic.

[MrAbner]

Sometimes relocating them to another garage seems to help motivate them. But if you don't have a lot of cash, buying garages may be out of the question.

[scaniadriver01]

did you set the priority of the driver to an other option other then default
you can tell a driver to take the longest distance delivery.. most valueble cargo etc..
when i had it at default my drivers would only do short trips but then it takes a long time for them to level up..

i used to set mine to longest distance to gain as much XP as possible so the driver could level up faster and when its at the highest 10.0 score let them do the most valueble cargo so your driver starts to make money

[Some newbie driver]

The only real "habit" the drivers have is to ALWAYS take the most profitable job available. That means that, except very rare scenarios or not highly trained drivers, they will usually take the longest job available (due how the abilities work, the distance is the best factor in increase the profitability of a job)

The rest is a question of how jobs are generated. They are not random, not at all. Every company has a list of cargoes that will deliver or accept; the total combinations are huge, but way less than pure random . Also, not all the cargoes appear with the same frequency and I would bet that also the possible destinations don't appear with the same percentage. So, a combination that a far away location with a frequent cargo will make the drivers to usually take that route.

Now, the returning always empty. Let me guess: Those drivers still don't have the long distance ability at max level? It happened once to another player that the available trip going was inside its driver's range; but the return trip was just outside the range (because it was from another yard of the same city that was far away; for example a quarry in the outskirts). if that's the case, relocate the drivers to a different garage until they have improved the long travel ability. If they have already maxed the ability, then it should be reported as a bug.

Regards

PS: @Scaniadriver we cannot configure the AI drivers to chose different jobs. We can only chose their preferences in which abilities they will level up first. Nothing more.

[scaniadriver01]

PS: @Scaniadriver we cannot configure the AI drivers to chose different jobs.

this is not what i ment with my comment...

letting your AI driver do long distance only can be done at all levels.. even if he/she is a 0.1 score driver.. job doesnt matter

[Some newbie driver]

Maybe I didn't understood well your message.

[Steve Pitts]

Two of my drivers from Nice have developed a "habit" of going to Birmingham, UK. This would be fine, a nice long-distance trip, usually carryiing well-paid cargo. But they invariably return empty!

You have fallen foul of a side effect of what I consider to be a bug (see Hired drivers obsess on longest distance trips) but which others consider to be perfectly reasonable and SCS have not even acknowledged. I bet your drivers in Nice have a long distance skill of 5. Therefore their maximum driving distance is 1500 kms and whilst there are journeys from Nice to Birmingham that are under 1,500kms the journeys back, due to some quirk of the route calculation, are all over 1,500kms and hence they cannot find a return job. Once they reach level 6 in long distance the issue will go away and instead they will simply plough the same furrow (probably to Vyborg, if you have that DLC), over and over and over again.

you can tell a driver to take the longest distance delivery.. most valueble cargo etc..

No you can't. That setting is called Training Policy and the only effect it has, that I can tell from the data, is to decide which skill the next level up will increase. You can have a driver set to Fragile and have them never take a fragile job - job selection is largely random.

[Wakou22]

Thank you @Steve Pitts !
Is there a way to look at driver logs going back more than 7 days?

[bobgrey1997]

I would think it would be 8 days, but not longer (or shorter). If it's 7, that's a bit odd.