Suggestions

Hi Gerben,

Happy New Year!
Thanks for expanding to Germany!

A few suggestions:

1. How about adding personnel to the player's HQ? Standard HQ has 1 secretary and 1 dispatcher. To do international shipments, you need an additional dispatcher as well as a EU customs agent?
2. How about adding a lowboy trailer and letting players bid on those specialist jobs (eg moving cranes, bulldozers, extra high & wide containers or airplane parts (Airbus ;)). The lowest bid gets to do the job -- reverse bidding.
3. And/or a double decker trailer, to allow for transporting cars and/or extra pallets?
4. Lastly I've been thinking if it should be possible to add a system of challenges to the game. e.g. an estafette where players have to pick up pallets (or parts) from different manufacturers/cities before delivering it to the customer. The challenge would be for the players to find a route that's time efficient.

Thanks!
MM

Happy new year to you too!

 

Yeah, more trailer variety is defintely on the backlog. I also like the estafette idea, this was something I was already intending to build in the form of a sort tutorial for new players. Basically shows you how to go from one city to another with a job, changing a trailer, moving to a different city just so you can get a better job.

 

Apart from that specific tutorial I want to add achievements. "X tons of cargo", "X miles driven", "X international jobs delivered", "Repaired a vehicle 3 times".

 

I had thought about personnel, but that adds a lot of overhead for not that much gameplay. At least they way I envision it.. but maybe you have some great ideas.

About personnel: yes and no... I would make a "scalable" office: For every 4 trucks: 1 secretary, 1 dispatcher & 1 mechanic. Once you go international, you'll need an EU customs agent as well.So each month you'd also have a fixed cost: office & personnel. That should make it slightly more "real" ;)
Do you have plans to scale up the game past 8 trucks?

Also I've been wondering what happens when the maintenance level of a truck falls below 5% (or even 0%)? Does the company get to pay for a tow truck to get the truck towed back to the garage? Or would it be possible for the garage to have their own tow truck?

I agree: achievements are necessary to keep people playing: people have a fundamental need to collect things. Especially things like accomplishments/achievements :)

Another challenge idea: depending on the number of trucks one has, make do something specific on a certain day of the week (e.g. Thursday Thousand (make a thousand $ for each truck on Thursdays), Manic Mondays (make at least 10 trips with each truck), Simple Saturday (make no more than 1 trip on a Saturday and return to the garage), ...). Some of these could be once or twice a month.

Maybe add some general random factors once in a while that affects game play. e.g. a trucker's strike in Germany (gridlock: twice as long to drive but double pay), oocassional gridlocks around some cities, ... as well as fixed factors such as national feastdays, patron saint of truckers day (only maintenance allowed, St Christopher on July 25th), etc.

One last suggestion: I know this sounds silly, but you could have a PvP side game where 2 truckers compete against each other. Maybe something in the form of the Miles Borne game?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mille_Bornes

A few more suggestions ;)

• Although I l like and understand the 2 columns (jobs & vehicles), wouldn't it be possible and clearer to combine the info in single cards: Vehicle ID/Name, Status, Maintenance level (instead of maintainability!), Trailer Type, Cargo, Distance, Money, Departure & Estimated Arrival. That way one can see at a glance which vehicle is where transporting what.
• I showed the game to a friend of mine who is a mechanic at a large garage. He pointed out that trailers also need maintenance, although less than trucks themselves. According to him it depends on the trailer manufacturer, but on average trailer maintenance will cost 3 to 5% of the yearly cost to maintain a truck.

 

If your vehicle is below the required maintenance wear a job incurs it will just not allow you to do it. You'll have to go back to My Garage and repair it.

 

I like the idea of random events like gridlocks or national holidays. I know for example Germany bans 7.5 ton trucks on Sunday. But we can also introduce weather like heavy rain, fog or snow, which will mean more fuel usage or extra wear on the maintenance.

 

The 2 columns thing is often done so it looks good in the mobile version of the game. This game is set up with a responsive layout and I do my best to make it work with all screen sizes. (Although the forum, which is a 3rd party plugin, doesn't work well on mobile sizes). But I guess I can have a look at refreshing the dashboard.

 

Also I think we should have a 'Truckers Cafe' where you can perhaps chat and play games. Maybe I can start off with rock-paper-scissors, as this is an easy and small mini-game to implement. I looked up Mille Bornes and it does seem interesting!

It's not that I'm against the 2 column screen, I just thought there is some overlap and a "simplified" card could combine and make the info easier to overview.

Heavy weather can also incurs lower speed limits in some countries...

No idea if something like this site exists for the Netherlands nor whether or not this might be useful to the game:
https://transportbelgie.info/verkeersvoorschriften/
and
https://transportnaarduitsland.nl/over-ons/europese-bestemmingen/

I really like the idea of the Trucker's cafe for chat & games! Miles Borne is an old game yet quite fun to play. Via the wikipedia page you can find a playable freeware to give you an idea how it's played.

Is there a possibility to add a "sorting" system to the trucks as they're shown in the dashboard? i.e. to the show tankers or the reefers first

Maybe you can place it as an option under "My Company"...

I have an idea: why not make the maintenance level of each truck a functional element in the game?

I mean once the maintenance level drops below 50%, there will be an increasing chance of breakdowns and delays due to emergency repairs...
Maintenance level:
between 40% & 49%: 10% chance of a breakdown
between 30% & 39%: 20% chance of a breakdown
between 20% & 29%: 30% chance of a breakdown
between 10% & 19%: 40% chance of a breakdown
and between 1% & 9%: 50% chance of a breakdown

Yeah, once we implement the concept of delay (induced by traffic, weather, breakdown) those are all good suggestions.

What if you were to add another achievement based on the number of hauls?

If you want to be funny, you could use bingo call names for the the achievements... Maybe use them for hauls x 10?
If you want, I can easily come up with some rhymes to cover for the 91-100 range :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_bingo_nicknames