Low garage productivity

[7dylanrobinson7]

Soooo I have a full garage in Tuscon with 5 drivers, but the productivity is at a lousy 17%. But it's my newest garage and the drivers are all 1.7 - 0.8 ratings, so that may be why. I'm pretty sure I have to wait for them to level up so they can do better jobs. But is there something else I'm missing? Please let me know

[Aspen Ridge]

No...you are correct...it takes a certain amount of in game days for a garage to be productive.
As driver ratings go up you will see the difference...if you are also driving out of the Tuscon garage you will see it progress much faster...otherwise your 5 drivers will slowly begin making money.

[Ashes]

I've noticed in some garages that some, if not all, driver's do squat,..and with top of the line trucks etc. I generally punish them by moving them to a new location & give them a low powered derelict truck. A day or two later they're 100%. And they get to keep the pile of crap truck they were demoted into. For some reason Price, UT is the garage where this happens most often for me? (over countless profiles, persistently - annoyingly, grr)

[The Pitts]

Originally posted by 7dylanrobinson7:

the drivers are all 1.7 - 0.8 ratings

Pro tip: rating is absolutely useless as what matters is their level which is controlled solely by their XP. Sadly SCS chose to show you a meaningless rating instead of either of those two more useful measures but you can determine level for any driver that has levelled up more than once by counting the skill pips.

Just leave them to do their thing and before you know it they will be earning enough for that productivity to reach 100% (you don't even need five drivers in a large garage to reach that arbitrary figure).

Originally posted by Enigma:

driver's do squat,..and with top of the line trucks etc.

I have no direct experience of hired hands in ATS (unlike in ETS2) but I have seen anecdotal evidence that too powerful trucks and access to certain trailer combinations may actually prevent your drivers from finding a job. Keep it simple to start with and the game's simple mechanics will reward you.

[7dylanrobinson7]

I dont' think it matters what kind of trucks you give your drivers. I've heard from lots of sources that upgrading their trucks has no value.

[ttower]

Originally posted by 7dylanrobinson7:

I dont' think it matters what kind of trucks you give your drivers. I've heard from lots of sources that upgrading their trucks has no value.

The person above you, Pitts, is actually the primary source for driver productivity information posted on Steam. His testing in ETS2, which is essentially the same, proves that there is a 10% boost when you give a driver a better truck. This boost, however, is not sufficient compared to the cost of upgrading for it to be worth doing. Your best bet for making money, is basic trucks.

[The Pitts]

Originally posted by 7dylanrobinson7:

I've heard from lots of sources that upgrading their trucks has no value.

I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that your sources are incorrect with the caveat that I have no direct evidence for ATS only lots of it for ETS2 (where we've been debating the same issue for years and the same statements have been made in the past) and the presumption that ATS is going to function the same way.

For the gory details, check out this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782878952

[Greyhawke]

Originally posted by Enigma:

I've noticed in some garages that some, if not all, driver's do squat,..and with top of the line trucks etc. I generally punish them by moving them to a new location & give them a low powered derelict truck. A day or two later they're 100%. And they get to keep the pile of crap truck they were demoted into. For some reason Price, UT is the garage where this happens most often for me? (over countless profiles, persistently - annoyingly, grr)

Don't you remember?! That's the franchise garage that you licensed in perpetuity to your son-in-law who had no rw trucking or business experience, just a hot off the press Business Administration Bachelor's from State Community College.

j/k

OT: Making enough money in the game has never been an issue for my play style, so no issue with it one way or the other, from my work or any hired drivers. Matter of fact, I don't have any, and own just a single garage - with my current profile.

[MirkoC407]

Making enough money should never have been anyone's issue for long with vanilla economy...

[eagle74]

Originally posted by The Pitts:

Originally posted by 7dylanrobinson7:

I've heard from lots of sources that upgrading their trucks has no value.

I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that your sources are incorrect with the caveat that I have no direct evidence for ATS only lots of it for ETS2 (where we've been debating the same issue for years and the same statements have been made in the past) and the presumption that ATS is going to function the same way.

For the gory details, check out this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782878952

Thanks for sharing. I will bet lunch money that it works in a similar manner for ATS. Two questions:
1-For core parts should you give your driver the ones with the highest unlock level?
2-I am confused on the Copy Config bug. So what is the proper way to update your fleet that will also update the bonus? Just update each part manually one at a time?

[The Pitts]

I would argue that if your aim is to maximise that number in the top right hand corner of the Route Advisor that you avoid upgrading the big ticket items as those will take up to five in game years to amortise their original cost. In ETS2 engine and gearbox were somewhat better in that regard than chassis and cabin but a quick look at the ATS data suggests that engines are worse in some cases.

Beyond that I have to admit that I've not been interested enough in the outcome to figure out which parts are the best value for money (I have all the data but have not been inspired enough by the thought of the work involved to come up with a definitive list because doing it properly means factoring in how much each part really costs you since when you add it at truck build time that number is different than the price in the game data and if you upgrade a truck you get a refund on any existing part that is replaced - I have cobbled together some calculations but the effort involved in cross-checking those numbers in game leaves me cold) and what work has been done in that area has been focused on ETS2 because my co-author only plays that game.

Simple advice based on what I do see in the ATS data is to concentrate on the highest unlock level wheel elements (nuts, rims, etc.) which are reasonably cheap and multiply by twice the number of axles and things like mudflaps, but a simple comparison of the cost vs. the unlock level should give you some idea.

As to the copy config. bug, that is something that kaki_gamet identified - they did all of the leg work in terms of conducting experiments whilst helping me get the kinks out of the formula - but from my own experiments you can always reset the slot efficiency to the correct value by making a change to a truck's configuration. Thus use the copy config. once you've set up one truck of a given make and then manually adjust one item on each truck - perhaps the steering wheel, since there's only one of those.

HTH and if you really want to experiment with this then I can provide the same raw truck parts data as I did for ETS2

[eagle74]

The Pitts, Thanks for your detailed response.
On Q1 sorry I was not clear. To me its more about understanding game mechanics & not about whether its good economic policy or ROI. Either way upgrade or not you will be floating in money. I'm considering running a test with the premise that truck upgrades in ATS work in a similar manner as your work demonstrated for ETS2. Right now my game has 40 drivers. About 10 have the KW T680 day cab with the short 6x4 200 gallon & Eaton 13 speed. Most of the rest have the FL Cascadia day cab base model. I plan to upgrade the core parts for the KWs to see if it matters. My concern is that there is so much noise (variation) in the data that it will not be obvious. It will be a long time b4 all drivers reach full level so no rush for me to do anything yet.

On Q2, it sounds like the bonus will be realized if you follow the protocol you outlined or if you just manually upgrade each truck individually. To be safe I was planning to move a truck to an empty slot, upgrade it, & then relocate the driver back on it. But it seems that this may not be necessary.

Lastly, I was not suggesting that you do any additional work. I just wanted to learn from your experience to point me in the right direction.

[eagle74]

OP, My newly hired drivers are always setup to train on Long D up to rank 5. Then, they get moved to train on hazardous cargo to rank 6. As soon as they start making longer trips they will start making decent money. The training order for the other skills does not matter much except I leave fuel economy to last. This approach has worked well for me.

Edit: The experts say that setting them on balanced is best so I would follow that advice.

[ttower]

Originally posted by eagle74:

OP, My newly hired drivers are always setup to train on Long D up to rank 5. Then, they get moved to train on hazardous cargo to rank 6. As soon as they start making longer trips they will start making decent money. The training order for the other skills does not matter much except I leave fuel economy to last. This approach has worked well for me.

I remember hearing about a problem with this approach. I do not remember specifics, but I think it had something to do with drivers taking purposefully long loads, even if shorter loads will be more profitable. This may have also been unique to ETS2, where ferry crossings can significantly affect hired drivers, which is not an issue in ATS.

[The Pitts]

The biggest problem with that approach is that hired hands develop exactly as the player driver does and therefore by concentrating on long distance you are denying them the bonuses that they should be getting from doing high value, fragile or urgent/important deliveries which affects both how quickly they acquire XP and how much revenue they earn.

A driver just left on Balanced will develop better than one whose long distance is pumped up initially to the exclusion of the other skills but if you really must micro-manage then you want to put a single point into Long Distance (because that has an effect on pretty much every job your driver does) then two points into Just-in-time (because that can also affect every job the driver takes) then single points into High Value and Fragile (probably doesn't matter which order) before looking to specialise. Personally I would then try to keep adding single points to all the skills bar Ecodriving pretty much in step but if you prefer to 'specialise' your drivers that will probably work too (but bear in mind that just because your driver has particular HazMat skills does not mean that the game will keep creating such jobs for them).

Originally posted by eagle74:

My concern is that there is so much noise (variation) in the data that it will not be obvious

Which is why it has taken so long since the feature was added to the game for anyone to figure out if it actually made a difference or how it worked. Fortunately for ETS2 I have _a_lot_ of data (currently 4,633 saved game files spread over 1,344 in game days) with at least 100 drivers for at least the last two-thirds of that time, but for ATS I have nothing useful because I've played solo (although I do have 1,447 saves over 417 in game days to allow me to analyse things like the Freight Market).

Unfortunately because the random number generator is responsible for pretty much every aspect of your employee's behaviour there is no getting away from the noise and without being able to study the details of every job the driver does (some data is only available whilst the job is in progress with the rest in profit logs that only exist for an in game week) it is impossible to work out whether any changes to the truck are making a difference.

[eagle74]

OK, the experts have spoken & I will defer to them for the best training option. Balanced it is.