Early Experimental Preview of Career Concept

Have you ever planned to add an oil and antifreeze check to your career so that there would be a need to open the hood. This can be used as a car wear, cars with high mileage have high oil consumption and more wear on piston rings, which makes the power less

 

That's awesome)

 

can you allow us to have time play in career mode

 

so that we can set the time to move normally becuase time is frozen right now
--- Post updated ---
i probably should have used a comma

 

You Guys are amazing, Not anything Todo with career mode but will the Vulkan renderer be fixed cause it's currently vram heavy and pretty much cannot be used on 3060 mobile cause you'll end up with 20 FPS lol

 

Can't wait to run an LWB H-series full of delivery stuff, like its a covet, around WCUSA at night!

 

I would accelerate the wear of tires, brake discs, pads, oil and things like that by a factor of 10, the main thing is not to overdo it.

There's no need to turn our favorite game into something simplistic)

 

The improvements to career mode are awesome!


Regarding the oil/coolant/other maintainance stuff, I think one good implementation would be to simple have it a occasional cost similar to insurance.

For example:

Regular maintainance every 200 km
300 km = cheaper as as you maintain the car more seldomly but as a result the changes of something breaking or wear and tear on parts increases.
400 km = even cheaper but raising value loss of the car and change for things breaking down /wearing down faster significantly
1000 km = maintainance is for corwards, who needs working brakes anyway...

Joking aside, the gameplay mechanic that I could image would be something like

- regular maintainance = you pay often and you pay (relatively) a lot for maintainance. Benefits include reduced value loss for the car and peak performance (minimal wear and tear) on all parts. Use for cars that need to have their performance stay as high as possible or your beloved joy ride.

- reduced maintainance - probably the most economical midterm option. You pay less for maintainance but the increased wear and tear will make this a poor choice for cars that you intend to drive a long time/long distance. Use for your workhouse cars of average value that dont need peak performance.

- poor maintainance - The cheapest (short term) option. Do only the most mandatory safety related stuff and let the rest of the car rot. Use for throw away cars that still need a certain amount of reliability because you would really hate to walk all the way back from the Spearleaf Island. Value of the vehicle decreases significantly and wear and tear are high.

- No maintainance - This car is garbage and there is no point in spending a single penny more on it than absolutely necessary. Safety is for whimps anyway and a nice walk in the pouring rain at night is good for your health after all. (because it died on you in an inopportune moment) Use this for vehicles where chances are high it wont survive it first fuel tank anyway. Very high value loss makes this punishing for vehicles that you intend to resell and severe wear and tear greatly reduce reliability quickly.

Unlike insurance which gets cheaper if you increase the distance driven between payments, regular maintainance is cheaper than suffering the value loss of the vehicle and the decreased performance from the increased wear and tear. Of course the question is, how much do you care about the value loss and the reduced performance/reliability.

Maybe an opening up the hood minigame could reduce maintainance cost similar to self repair (for tiny damage).


The interesting thing about maintainance from a gameplay perspective is that you could make it based on vehicle type and power source.

Petrol car = cheap to maintain, good reliability and average wear
Diesel car = more expensive to maintain, good reliability and lower wear
Electric car = cheap to maintain, excellent reliability and low wear... now if it wasnt for the initial price tag.... (and possible battery degradation)

Petrol Commercial Vehicle = cheap to maintain, good reliability and average wear
Diesel Commercial Vehicle = Significantly more expensive to maintain, good reliability and low wear.
Electric Commercial Vehicle = Cheap to maintain, excellent reliability and low wear but very expensive to buy and due to the longer distances a commercial vehicle tends to drive, battery degradation might be a more serious issue which could mandate a rather expensive repair.

Petrol Truck = cheap to maintain (for a truck) high reliability and low wear (those things are build to last) . Ohh, and all fuel stations love you.
Diesel Truck = the great fuel economy of a maximized efficiency combustion engine comes at the price of substantial if rare maintainance needs. Still cheaper to run than the petrol truck in the midterm but those maintainances hurt when they occur. Very reliable and very low wear.
Electric truck = Belasco Electricity Services Inc. is happy to gift you this Platinium Customer Card. Please message us in advance so that we can start up a few additional nuclear reactors before you start to charge. No, we have no idea why the lights went out in the harbour area all of sudden . Cheapest to run and to maintain but should that battery die on you, you better have a mortgage ready...



I really like how old/high mileage engines have unstable idle and look forward to more stuff like this. A few more ideas for failing parts:

- Brakes getting worse with mileage (which makes braking longer which might increase thermal stress)

- Tires getting worse with mileage (less grip)

- Clutch with increased slip

- Manual transmission shift times increases

- Automatic transmission shift time increase and the occasional misshift (not changing into the next planned gear on the first time). So instead of 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 it would be 1 - 2 - 3 -misshift - still 3.... - 4

- DCT: Only even gears today. Not 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 but 2 - 4 - 6

- CVT: Software Bug "Big Oil" I am sorry but I can only do 6000 RPM no matter the speed and load. Software Bug "The Ecologist". Sorry, you wanted power? Not today, 1500 RPM is all you get. Get out and push from behind if you need more. Random RPM changes....

Torque Converter: Locking up is not my thing.... enjoy the classical feeling of a slushbox now.

Electric: Wait, you wanted to go forward? Not reverse? Pesky details for an aging ECU.... and it is not like the police cruiser behind you wasnt ready for scrap beforehand. Ohh look the officer is getting out to thank you personally for relieving him of that heap of scrap.
Lets better be safe than sorry, I am not sure if you are driving forward or reverse,so I am limiting forward speed to maximum allowed reverse speed.

Steering: You wanted to go 45 degree left... I made it 50 degrees because I really like the look on your face as the shadow of the oncoming semi falls upon it.

Suspension: Bottoming out on not really large bumps (risking damage to the oil pan) and general instability of the vehicle at speed.

Limited Slip Differential: Not limiting anymore or getting welded.

Intake: Clogging reduces power output and increase fuel consumption

Turbo: Reduced boost pressure as bearing wear reduces peak RPM

Supercharger: Reduces boost pressure and increased engine drag

Valves: Yes they were rated for 6500 RPM... but that was 20 years and 300000 km ago so if I were you, I would not tempt fate.

Piston Rings: Hey, I just wanted to inform you that today is my final day at work. (Possible fine for violating emissions standards by burning oil, needs regular oil refilling = higher maintainance cost and limited driving distance before engine damages occurs.

Exhaust: Who needs the parts behind the driver seat anyway? (Fine for being loud and driving without emission cleaning)

AWD Clutch: Either failing or permanently locked

Headgasket: Refill coolant every 25 km or things get hot.

OilPan: You dont mind if I mark my territory right? Oil pressure is overrated anyway. (Fine for polluting the environment)

Traction Battery: I am not feeling well, you only get 25 % of the rated power output today. Recharging? How about NO.

Combustion Engine: Wear and Tear reduce compression, somewhat lowering power output (especially when cold)

Electric Engine: Bearing Wear increases internal friction, slightly reducing power output and increasing energy consumption for a given load.




Yes, I realize that a lot of those things are not implemented yet/may never be implemented. It is just an idea collection.




General Feedback/Bug Reporting:

Take this report will a grain of salt as I am running a heavily modded game but the Cargo Pickup Screen is unreliable. It does not properly open when it should from time to time. Pressing F5 fixes the problem most of the times.
I have had similar issues with the garage computer in an earlier version of the game that are gone now, so whatever was changed for the screen for the garage computer may be just the thing needed to make the cargo pickup screen appear reliable.

Something that would be great not only for career mode but for the game overall, would be to display the distance in miles/km of the current map route. What I mean is that you dont only get a blue line on the map but also a distance in m/km/miles. So if I am sitting at the Refinery and click on the map to set a route, it not only displays a blue line but also displays the distance. A small on screen info would also be nice about the remaining distance, similar to garage to garage gameplay. That way you could also find out the distance between spawn points on huge modded maps like Land of Sands. (instead of having to drive hundreds of kilometers in real time)
Bonus points for displaying the total distance of time trials and races in advance.

Regarding Delivery Gameplay: It would be more user friendly if the game automatically selected the next drop off point as a route. It gets annoying with time to always have to go to the map and then set a new route.
So if I have destinations

A
B
C

once I arrive at A, I should automatically get a route for B (maybe as an option)
Bonus point for making time limited cargo the next route automatically.

If that is not possible, it would be cool so set multiple routes manually. So I first click on A, then B and then C to get a full route from A - B - C. Like a real world navigation system where you go from Warsaw over Berlin to Paris.



Cargo Box Priority:
I am not sure if this is already the case, but when loading cargo, the inside vehicle cargo boxes should be choosen first if the item fits into it. In english, I want to load the XL sized box on the roof only when all boxes inside the car are full/the part does not fit into one of the smaller boxes. The reasoning being that just in real life, you want to use the most dangerous (for driving dynamics) option the least and last.



Thank you for your great work and Happy Holidays!

 

What a nightmare this is starting to resemble an arcade game, not a car simulator, everything should be logical, wear and tear of parts should be reasonable and linear, even if it will be imperceptible at low mileage, artificially emphasizing it is not cool.

 

Maybe what would be cool after having police implemented.is driving uninsured and no tax lol

 

I like the idea of wear overall but I think it's also covered by this:

What this could be is pre-existing damage on used cars that you buy, not something happening when you drive the car for a long time yourself. Maintenance is really not something most players will ever reach.

 

There is a beauty in the very idea of being happy that a car is not immortal. It is nice to realize that you can put the car on cruise control, periodically refueling, and in the end get real wear and tear of parts, oil and everything else... if we talk about racing mode, this function is much more demanded there, the car in such a mode is under huge stress

This applies not only to career mode but to the game as a whole

 

Idea for hardcore mode, there should be a risk involved when pushing a car to the limit, when you crash the game calculates G-force and if is it high enough you die or get heavily injured - hospital and health insurance mechanic involved. If you die game over.

 

Unfortunately we still need to consider the fact that dev resources are not infinite and accept that some features should be skipped because they will be barely used.

 

No one is demanding the here and now)

But imagine these headlines on youtube videos - "in what game have you seen such attention to detail, the car can break down for high mileage?"


And there are a lot of such meticulous players who check the most not obvious things in games, personally for me at one time was astonishing when I dropped the car from a height of 20 kilometers, and the car accelerated to a great speed, but when approaching the ground slowed down because of the denser atmosphere) air resistance increased, you know, Ambient temperature is also very dependent on altitude

 

Just found out about these forums, and this thread, so I made an account to post here. I've been playing this game since I bought it in 2017, casually on and off for almost 600 hours now. It's been such a cool game and this latest update of career mode has me really excited. I had a lot of ideas, worries, thoughts on career mode but I have just taken the time to read through this entire thread. It's really exciting to see this is in such good hands, and it sounds like the team working on it really cares and wants to make a great experience. But, I've never had this kind look behind the scenes into something I'm having so much fun with. So I just wanted to throw out ideas of what I think would be nice additions, fully aware they might be worked on, or not the direction you want to take the game, but I can't resist throwing in my 2 cents.

I have a heavy preference for simulation games and realism. I'm ok with my ideas being unpopular, but I'm going to lay them out here incase they get picked up and implemented in the future. Cause you never know! Wouldn't be able to live with myself I didn't get my ideas I have to the person making it!

1. I would like more trackable historic stats for my car. Right now I actually write down the mileage of the car at the time of purchase, the "end of day" when I stop playing, when I fill up with gas so I can calculate my gas mileage. I have to write it down, because if you crash enough and replace enough parts, you can never see the original mileage that was on it at purchase. It would just be cool to see stuff like:
   
   • Miles driven per day.
   • Lifetime miles
   • Miles per crash
   • mpg stats
   • $/mi spent

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2. I already know the answer to this one, I read it just a few moments ago, but fluids wear and tear. Being able to make the choice to abuse my car, or take care of it, and actually have that reflect later down the road with parts failures, or engine running rough, or gears not working. It's seems like it's already there partially with the synchro damage.This definitely gets into the weeds with nerdy stuff, I would set up maintenance schedules for my cars. Keep your garage stocked up with supplies, or you can pay people to change it for you. A few examples of this I would be happy to see implemented if possible. (would this make the experience more fun? Doubt it. Would "I" have fun? Yes. lol)
   
   • Heavy loads on engine before the engine oil and coolant is up to temperature has a chance to cause damage.
   • Towing heavy loads with inappropriate vehicles can burn up your transmission fluid, ultimately causing transmission damage if you don't change the fluid.
   • Diff fluid getting ruined if you drive through deep water and submerge the differentials.
   • Reduced MPG and/or power as you filter gets dirty.
   • Old brake fluid that has water contamination has extremely poor brake performance.
   • A lot of these things could be implemented when you buy used cars, instead of just making them mundane on all your cars.
   • Buy a really old cheap vehicle that hasn't been maintained, all the fluids are old. You can run the risk of trying to do some jobs to get some cash before you fix it up or flip it.

   ​
3. Really excited when reading about stop light cameras, speed cameras, and police. Hopefully before those are truly implemented, AI pathing and behavior is figured out. I am all about being a nerd and following the road rules and driving in traffic, but that is impossible with the current traffic AI. But, I know how far the AI has come since 2017 or whatever year it was implemented. Regardless I feel like these behaviors should be taken care of before we start getting penalized on our driving. And as I said, they are a vast improvement. It's really these 3 aspects I hate about them. If these three aspects got fixed it would be a huge improvement. I have faith this will be fixed someday though.
   
   • Turning lanes mean nothing, it's a guess when this is an intersection where they follow the lane logic or not.
   • Wildly inconsistent speeds, they slow down so they can weeble wobble around in a lane for 3 seconds, then they put it to the floor and do 80.
     
   • Random braking down to crawling speed to merge onto highways.

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4. It honestly boils to those 3 topics for me. I had more ideas, but reading through this thread I am confident they are going to take it in a good direction. This latest update is proof of that. Thanks for reading my thoughts if you made it this far. And thank you for the great game, I'm excited to see where it goes in the future.

Overall I'm really positive and excited about the direction it's going in. Thanks for all the work you do!