Why should I bother doing "External Contracts?"

[ilyvion]

Maybe it's just me, but the "Freight Market" jobs always pay way better, like right now, I can pick a job that pays €27.22 / km from where I am, or, should I go into "External Contracts," the best paying job is for €22.56 / km. If we ignore filtering for where I am (and also ignore very short deliveries), the best job in the "Freight Market" pays over €35 / km.

[Wolfgang]

External contracts give you more time (the time which stands there is the time IRL you have).
But you also have to acknowledge that the external contracts are already filtered by your location (you can not get any contracts for a city which is very far away). You also need high skill levels for the contracts to really pay off.
My jobs are mostly above 50€/km no matter if I choose external contracts or not. (Though money doesn't matter with the progress I have.)

[GHKtruc]

Because they pay less. I'm assuming you don't have many driver yet, because as you do you'll get drowned in cash in less time it takes you to drive across a country.
External contract + owned trailer makes for nice reduced income/money sink

[pieperjohanns]

Originally posted by ilyvion:

Why should I bother doing "External Contracts?"

Because you have more time (they are in real time) and your stats are saved to the website so you can compare them with others. They have also a more professional feeling to them because you get your job from a regularly updated server list, you can't crash and visit the repair shop without losing your job and you can't teleport.

[K®o©K]

It seems to me that External Contracts generate much more jobs that make use of the DLC cargos (heavy cargos and high power cargos), which pay quite well.

Also, as I prefer shorter jobs (2-3 in-game hours), there is more of those in External Contracts, so I end up using picking those more often than the ones in the Freight Market. I also often forget to sleep before taking jobs so the fact that the game time is not tied to the delivery time allows me to sleep whenever I need to without running late.

[The Pitts]

Benefits of WoT jobs:

a. a larger selection of jobs to choose from in your immediate vicinity
b. deadlines are real world time and thus can relieve any time pressures especially for short distance jobs
c. because only real world time matters it is possible to arrange to drive mostly in daylight by taking back to back rest periods

Disadvantages of WoT jobs:
a. no urgency related jobs which reduces revenue
b. everything is in real world time so you have to make sure that you can complete a job in the time you have available to play
and, although it matters not to me,
c. if you normally play with the speed limiter off then you will find yourself restricted in top speed

[Sandhill]

Agree with above, AND WoT jobs are in a way more challenging in that you do not get do overs...wreck your truck and there is no going back to a previous save.

[Silverkite]

Originally posted by ilyvion:

Maybe it's just me, but the "Freight Market" jobs always pay way better, like right now, I can pick a job that pays €27.22 / km from where I am, or, should I go into "External Contracts," the best paying job is for €22.56 / km. If we ignore filtering for where I am (and also ignore very short deliveries), the best job in the "Freight Market" pays over €35 / km.

do them only during events and only if you care about cosmetics and some achievements that will show only on WoT website.
I found myself enjoying WoT contracts only on ATS cause the speed limit is a little more higher than ETS2, since I take mostly heavy cargo jobs it saves me time fumbling with VirtualSpeditor, trucks in ATS do not rollover so easily like in ETS2, there is no tollbooth hell, you can ignore weigh stations, ATS is more shortcut friendly than ETS2, there is more room for driving on the wrong side of the road when the game decides to bother you with his artificial time and speed sink, on ATS you can actually send cars flying, you can pit maneuver cop cars without rolling over, most of train crossings allow you to chikane through them instead of creating an invisible barrier.
ATS cons are:
Loading bays are small as crap and most parking spots are as stupid (can't be helped)
AI is more stupid and totsugeki happy than ETS2 AI (I wonder why)
Sadly moving bridges can't be skipped with a simple set_time or by disabling AI traffic
Some roads and places are not so truck friendly especially with the bullbar glitch
Hitboxes inside quarries, countryside and somtimes even inside common roads are sluggish as you will either get stuck, damage your truck or damage your trailer/load even if you are just slowly creeping near a wall with enough room to pass through

[per.oqvist]

Originally posted by Sandhill:

Agree with above, AND WoT jobs are in a way more challenging in that you do not get do overs...wreck your truck and there is no going back to a previous save.

hmm have I just been lucky it does seem you can load saves? I need to crash an external contract now and see what happens :D

Feel unrealistic to get infinite amount of time to complete contracts. Since the world is compressed the time should also be compressed but yes don´t really matter unless you have other plans for the evening. For me it´s just another option to get more jobs. Level 30 and money dont matter much now so its mostly about finding routes where I have not been before and interesting cargos.