Hey guys, today I uploaded another update to Steam.

As I do every week, I've adjusted the fuel prices to the current weekly average for the individual US states in the game. Nothing special, then.

The second point is an adjustment of the pricing structure for freight transport rewards. I can add a few explanatory words here.

Normally, ATS offers insanely high rewards, sometimes over $150 per mile. Okay, at the beginning of your career, it might be a little less. But, in general, the numbers are completely unrealistic.

To bring the rewards down to a more realistic level, I've so far misused one or more scaling factors in order do modify just a few files. The result were rewards of up to around $2, $3, $4, or $5 per mile. However, there were also plenty of extremely poorly paid jobs in the lists. For example, jobs with 20 foot containers appeared with 5, 6, or 7 cents per mile. And that, in turn, is just as unrealistic as the original rewards of over $100 per mile - just to practice a little self-criticism.

So I sat down and studied the cargo trailer system in ATS to understand the mathematics behind of how it's integrated into the game. Don't worry, I'm not going to start with calculus or third-order differential equations here. It's all much easier...

To make things easier, I wrote a small program that reads all the cargo definitions and all the trailer definitions in the game and then calculates all theoretically possible cargo trailer combinations. The result is currently 21,139 possible different cargo trailer combinations (including all regular cargo DLCs). And when you consider that you could drive each of these combinations back and forth between any of the thousands of destinations in the game, the possibilities are almost endless.

Each of these cargo trailer variants naturally has its own specific reward. This can be calculated from the cargo trailer combination. Nominally (this means without rank- and level-based bonus rewards), the reward ranges from $0.28968 to $116.19 per mile. During my research, I discovered that certain cargo trailer combinations are paid differently than others. If goods are transported on a special trailer, the reward is modified (e.g., frac tank, beet harvester, etc.). Then you have to treat everything separately. It's a somewhat inconsistent system that SCS has come up with. Perhaps this has developed historically...

Since I wanted to create a consistent pricing structure for all cargo trailer combinations, I scaled the total reward (again, excluding rank- and level-based bonuses) between $1.64 and $3.02 per mile. The scaling was non-linear because I wanted to eliminate the extreme overvaluation of some cargo types (e.g., boom lifts). I also added an extra reward of 16 cents per mile if a job involves valuable, oversized, or overweight cargo. For jobs involving hazardous materials, there's a completely arbitrary 2 cents per mile extra for each ADR class (this detail is open to discussion).

Heavy or bulky loads that consume a lot of fuel or require slower driving should be paid slightly better to compensate for the additional effort. This also applies to the transportation of hazardous materials, which in real life also require an expensive permit.

Well, on average, all cargo freight combinations result in a base pay of $2.08 per mile (standard deviation $0.2 per mile). I think that's OK for now. For cargo from the Oversize Cargo DLC, there's an additional 25% on top. Just to emphasize the special nature of such a transport.

Hopefully, when you look at the job lists, you'll see a good mixture, just like I did. And all jobs have adequate and appreciative pay. Large, heavy, and expensive cargo, as well as special cargo, will be higher up in the job lists sorted by pay. Simple containerized cargo will be further down the list.

Some people will certainly notice that small shipments are further down the list than large shipments. This is due to the ATS reward system. In the game, the reward for a shipment is calculated based on cargo units (for example, a pallet of flour, 1 cubic meter of oil, 1 piece of car, etc.). Small trailers naturally only fit a few cargo units, and therefore the payment for a small trailer is also lower than for a large trailer. To make as much money as possible, you'll be tended to drive the largest trailers possible. That's simply the logical consequence. You'll just have to put a little more effort into corners or braking distances.

Okay, that's all for now as an explanation of the modification to the cargo reward system. There may be a few minor adjustments, but overall, I'm happy with it.

All cargo definition files in the game were modified for this update. I hope the transition goes smoothly for you. Due to a typo, I once messed up my game economy and had to reset it. Therefore, I can't comment on this point with any qualifications.

Otherwise, I wish everyone safe travels, always clear roads and lots of cash in your pockets.

Change log:
* updated fuel prices and dependent maintenance and insurance costs
* complete revision of the pricing structure for freight transport
* adjustment of the long-distance reward compensation
* increased rank-based bonus reward for urgent jobs from 0.8 to 1%/rank again

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