Distribution centers

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Would the addition of Distribution Centers be a good idea?

Yes
5
83%
Yes but simplified
1
17%
No
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 6

Tobias M
Posts: 1
Joined: 04 Feb 2023 16:03

Distribution centers

#1 Post by Tobias M » 04 Feb 2023 17:33

Hello fellow people of the internet!
EXCUSE THE LANGUAGE AS ENGLISH ISN'T MY FIRST LANGUAGE

Introduction
I have been playing ETS 2 now for a long time, and ATS for quite some time as well, and I have really wanted something extra to spend your money on or upgrade your company with when you got to a point where really you would just keep buying trucks and garages to infinity. That is why I have thought of something new and at least for me kinda exciting that could be implemented into the game.
Adding the ability to buy plots of land at different locations in or around cities and towns where you could place distribution centers and potentially even some with rail, sea and or air connections depending on the location. I think this feature would be a great addition to the game as it would add something new, different and exciting for players to try to utilize in order to make the best, most profitable, and reliable transport company.

The idea goes as follows
As soon as you reach level 25 ex. you will get an email from the bank suggesting you to take a look at the options for expanding with company even further with something like a distribution center. In the email from the bank they would send a "link" to a land plots site in the menu from which you will be able to look at different plots of land that can be cleared and prepared for building a distribution center at. You purchase a land plot at your prefered location and then you can click on the location to mange it, so it will give you the options to build one or two different sizes/types of distribution centers, sell the land plot for a variable price etc. Once you have spned some money building the distribution center the point of spending that money would be so that you could sell storage space to competetor companies for a variable price depending on the amount of space they require to store their items as an ex. in trailer loads or pallets, you would then be "rewarded" the price your "customer"/competetor is paying once every day or week or something like that, for an added daily/weekly profit buffer. Furthermore you should be able to send cargo to your distribution center and then one of your hired drivers could come and pick the cargo up and drive it the last bit of its journey to the destination. And drivers should also be able to deliver cargo to the distribution centers, this should in theory cut down the cost and likelyhood of drivers having trouble finding cargo and driving back emptyhanded sending you a big invoice for fuel and maintainence of the truck. Therefore yet another reason to spend money purchasing a distribution center would be to cut down driver costs when they cant find cargo to transport, because then they would just go to your distribution center and pick up a trailer load from there instead of driving all the way back to their homebase/garage.
A cool addition to the idea thought of while writing would be having the abillity to deliver the building materials to the site yourself and being able to see the building being built in maybe just 2-3 steps dependent on how much material you have delivered. And delivering the materials needed yourself should then also be able to reduce the total cost of building the center whilst also gaining you a small profit from selling your service to the builders.

How should it be implemented
You would buy plots of land the same way you purchase garages currently in the game, so in theory I think you should be able to just reuse that same peice of code. In order to manage your plot of land it would work as a custom menu that is kind of its own seperate menu where you have options to: "Build distribution center" in a options in regards to size, looks and connections to rail, sea and or air depending on the location. "Sell land plot" in order to sell the plot of land for it to go back to its original state of being an untouched peice of land. Once you have bought the distribution center you should have a menu kind of like the garage manager right now to have a complte overview of the different distribution centers you have and what connections it has, how much space and use it gets etc. Then you should be able to on one of your owned distribution centers to manage it and customize it, this would just be a button you click that enters you into a custom menu for that specific distribution center from which you would be able to "sell owned stored cargo" sell empty storage space to potential clients set up maybe something like the hiring menu. Furthermore you should be able to mange the clients you already have in a similar way to mangaing your own cargo by just clicking on your customers set up in the same menu as the cargo you have stored there yourself. Options to mange current clients could be, higher/lower rent price, kick out client, limitaions of what cargo and how much storage space they can utilize etc. It would be a nice feature to add distribution center staff/warehouse staff in the general hiring menu as people you could hire to make your distribution centers run more effectively and maybe add some capacity to them depending on the workers skillevel as utilizing the space efficienly is key in a warehouse/distribution center.
I think if you are understanding me correctly you will get the idea that I am trying to utilize as much of the similar/same features that are currently in the game in order to make this addition to keep it as simple, smooth and easy to implement as possible. Yet I still understand that this is a big addtion that will require a long time to make if even possible, all up to the developers and mangers to decide.

Menu list order idea:
  • Main ingame menu
    • Land plots menu
      • Owned plots menu
        • Specific plot management menu
And then from the hiring menu you should have a drivers section and a warehouse section so you can toggle which type of staff you want to see in the hiring menu before you click hire. And then in the specific plot mangement menu you should be able to assign warehouse staff to that specific plot if there is a distribution center currently build at said location.

Pros and cons
Pros
  • - More fun and motivation to keep progressing at the higher levels of a profile(company)
  • - Added gameplay of managing your own company effectively
  • - Different and more diverse ways to earn more revenue and grow your company
  • - More locations for you to discover and deliver to and from
Cons
  • - Very complicated and sophisticated idea
  • - Difficult and time consuming to implement
  • - Could become confusing to use if not implemented simplified
After thoughts
In my head this idea sounded ingenius, fun and smart but writing it down it now sounds way more complicated and sophisticated. This is an obvious con to the idea as it makes the idea extremely difficult to implement but could also lead to confusion fromn the players. However even after writing it down and thinking of this, I still believe that this would be a good addition to the game and would definetely add something new, fun, exiciting and good for players close to running bored on a profile with high level as nothing new will unlock from them continuing to progress with the exception of potentially Steam achivements for the people playing via Steam.
For the fellow forum users and players of the game please do not hesitate to reply with your thoughts on this idea and maybe some constructive critisism and or feedback so we could smoothen and better this idea together for it to earn more potential.


Hopefully this has been interesting to read, and hopefully I have spiked some interest in your mind so you would participate in this strawpoll in order to show the developers how many people could be interested in this silly idea :P
https://strawpoll.com/polls/ajnEONpOjZW
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