Do Drivers Use Nearby Cities?

[Lord_TCG]

Hey,

Im reasonably new so wanted to run this by the community before purchasing another garage.

It's my understanding that the hired drivers get one job away from their home garage and then their second MUST be back home again. Sometimes they cannot find a second job and just drive back home, or their first job is of low pay and local. But my question is, if you have two cities very close together (Amsterdam/Rotterdam, Manchester/Liverpool for example) can the drivers get jobs from both cities/nearby locations or must they always stay in their home city?

Thanks a million!

[Ryu]

They always return to their home city. And the chance to return empty is always there, even when the driver is completely skilled up.

[Lord_TCG]

Originally posted by ~{DCMT}~ Ryu:

They always return to their home city. And the chance to return empty is always there, even when the driver is completely skilled up.

Okay... But can they get outgoing jobs from a city near to their home city? Or just home city to destination and back again?

[Supernovae]

Originally posted by TurpoChargedGaming:

Originally posted by ~{DCMT}~ Ryu:

They always return to their home city. And the chance to return empty is always there, even when the driver is completely skilled up.

Okay... But can they get outgoing jobs from a city near to their home city? Or just home city to destination and back again?

Always Home City--> Some other City --> Home City again. A bit annoying, but drivers always make money given enough time. They usually start by losing some cash though.

[Viss Valdyr]

Originally posted by Cadillac ATS:

Originally posted by TurpoChargedGaming:

Okay... But can they get outgoing jobs from a city near to their home city? Or just home city to destination and back again?

Always Home City--> Some other City --> Home City again. A bit annoying, but drivers always make money given enough time. They usually start by losing some cash though.

well, it IS their home city aftar all. They want to be with their family from time to time (not like our hearthless protagonist-driver)

[Lord_TCG]

Originally posted by Viss Valdyr:

Originally posted by Cadillac ATS:

Always Home City--> Some other City --> Home City again. A bit annoying, but drivers always make money given enough time. They usually start by losing some cash though.

well, it IS their home city aftar all. They want to be with their family from time to time (not like our hearthless protagonist-driver)

Well not entrely true because we pick from a wide range on the Drivers Ad.net thing and assign them to a city, we don't know where they came from initially...

But thanks for the answers, was trying to be smart for my next garage with a strategic placement. Normally for my own jobs I'll take from a reasonable range from my current position, rarely travelling without cargo. I thought they would do the same with a cleverly placed garage. Shame!

[hackintoshchap]

Best advice for adding your initial garages to to pick cities that have 5 or 6 close ETS 2 companies for cargo deliveries and pickups. Cities like La Rochelle in France are likely to be better than Nice which only has (from memory) about three ETS 2 companies.

[Viss Valdyr]

Originally posted by TurpoChargedGaming:

Originally posted by Viss Valdyr:

well, it IS their home city aftar all. They want to be with their family from time to time (not like our hearthless protagonist-driver)

Well not entrely true because we pick from a wide range on the Drivers Ad.net thing and assign them to a city, we don't know where they came from initially...

But thanks for the answers, was trying to be smart for my next garage with a strategic placement. Normally for my own jobs I'll take from a reasonable range from my current position, rarely travelling without cargo. I thought they would do the same with a cleverly placed garage. Shame!

They probably move to the new location. Like you would normally do. But ya need to park the truck in the depot first... So even when they live elsewhere, truck needs to be parked

[Lord_TCG]

Originally posted by hackintoshchap:

Best advice for adding your initial garages to to pick cities that have 5 or 6 close ETS 2 companies for cargo deliveries and pickups. Cities like La Rochelle in France are likely to be better than Nice which only has (from memory) about three ETS 2 companies.

I have only come across 4 in a city so far as my maximum. I've heard of people using MODS to get 30+ but I'll keep exploring to find better cities. Only at 15% or so

[Lord_TCG]

Do you know if when a garage is in France, as it has so many toll roads, does that come out of the Drivers % or am I still paying for those? As insignificant as it maybe, early game every penny counts

[hackintoshchap]

Originally posted by TurpoChargedGaming:

Originally posted by hackintoshchap:

Best advice for adding your initial garages to to pick cities that have 5 or 6 close ETS 2 companies for cargo deliveries and pickups. Cities like La Rochelle in France are likely to be better than Nice which only has (from memory) about three ETS 2 companies.

I have only come across 4 in a city so far as my maximum. I've heard of people using MODS to get 30+ but I'll keep exploring to find better cities. Only at 15% or so

If you have the base map, then the following should still apply:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/227300/discussions/0/666827315897998590/?l=bulgarian#c666827315974926644

"There are five cities on the map that have 5 industries in them:

Berlin, Gdansk, Milano, Paris and Salzburg."

[The Pitts]

The number of depots in a city makes NO difference to the productivity of your hired drivers.

[Lord_TCG]

Originally posted by The Pitts:

The number of depots in a city makes NO difference to the productivity of your hired drivers.

You sure? 99.9% of all players seem to suggest the better the city the less chance of no jobs and more chance of higher paying jobs??

[Viss Valdyr]

No jobs is a hard number 10%

[The Pitts]

The returning empty is completely random, I will quote myself from another thread from a while back (since the post concerned contained lots of other comments that are unrelated):

"It does genuinely appear to be random. I have one driver, who started out with a single point in ADR and another in Ecodriving, who has performed 102 journeys (51 out, 51 back) without coming back empty once. I developed him along my 'standard' trajectory, a point in every skill, two points in Just in Time and then switch to Balanced, and at the end of those 102 deliveries he has three points in all skills bar High Value which is four.

Conversely, the first driver I hired, who is among my top three drivers for XP and has six points in all bar Ecodriving in which she has five, has returned empty five times in her last eighteen trips (18 out but only 13 back)."

As far as the higher paying jobs go I see no evidence for that in my (inevitably limited) data either, with driver skill playing a far bigger role in profit per diem than anything else, although quoting from elsewhere again:

"my own analyses suggest that it makes not a blind bit of difference to your hired drivers where you place your garages - the freight market that the player sees affects only the player driver whilst the AI drivers are just a set of simple rules that are unaffected by the local economy. The one exception to that statement is that those garages that are close to ports with long distance ferry routes will negatively affect both how quickly (in terms of game time) your drivers develop skills and how much money they make on a per diem basis. So those drivers in a garage in Rotterdam (a city with a relatively good economy) will actually perform less well than those in Bern (a city with a relatively poor economy) because all of the time they spend sitting on a ferry is unproductive."

[Lord_TCG]

Hmmm thats interesting. So in actual fact you seem to suggest ports are bad for business? And the range of skill point spread for AI drivers makes little or no difference?

Then surely it doesn't matter who you hire as the game is random and has no strategy to it and is pointless? *sad face*