I leave fines on so I have something to spend money on. And I turn fatigue off so I can be a solar powered driver.

Originally posted by Qrazy:

I leave fines on so I have something to spend money on. And I turn fatigue off so I can be a solar powered driver.

I hadn't thought of that. I am sitting on like 10 million and no idea how to spend it. Now I do. Thanks for the idea.

Yes, I drive to the allowed hours from real life and try to create a narrative of a real life Truck Driver.
However, I do cheat a bit because I turn off traffic fines. I also run the Hard Mod with realistic payments as I do not think in the real world truck driver can become millionaires, this I think is the only fault with this game.
If the hard mod was not available, this game would be in the bin quick smart

Both fatigue and fines disabled here.

Do follow the basic traffic rules necessary to deal with the NPC traffic. Speed limits, turning indicators, lane selection, road-side signs, traffic lights, weigh stations, etc.

Don't care about any in-game resting every X game hour or every Y km/mile. Instead i take IRL rests from the game, preferable before I start making mistakes because I got sleepy. In ATS any mistake hits the co-insurance rate quite hard...

As for the "realism" I have Advanced trailer attach", "Air brake simulation" and "Realistic fuel consumption" enabled.

you can change the income factor using the console. default is 1.0 so if you set it to say 0.2 all job income will be reduced to one fifth of the default. this has the advantage of not needing to wait for a mod to be updated after a client update

Originally posted by MagnusA:

Both fatigue and fines disabled here.

Do follow the basic traffic rules necessary to deal with the NPC traffic. Speed limits, turning indicators, lane selection, road-side signs, traffic lights, weigh stations, etc.

Don't care about any in-game resting every X game hour or every Y km/mile. Instead i take IRL rests from the game, preferable before I start making mistakes because I got sleepy. In ATS any mistake hits the co-insurance rate quite hard...

As for the "realism" I have Advanced trailer attach", "Air brake simulation" and "Realistic fuel consumption" enabled.

Right-on -- it's a *driving simulator* about driving a truck, I'd think following its road laws is part of simulating that. IRL breaks from the game are my rests, besides skipping the in-game nights. I have a mod that makes violations less strict as it is in vanilla, so no more random speeding tickets for going 5 over from nobody around. Red light violations are completely disabled, of course.

The speeding tolerance in-game is 10% over the limit. However, the game calculates your speed in decimal values while only showing you whole numbers. This means that your speedo will show that you're travelling 60mph but the game might be calculating it as 60.5kph and give you a fine for speeding. I use "10%-1" rule to be safe. ;)

I have fatigue turned off, but that's because I prefer to impose a day/night cycle that actually makes sense on my driver. First rest stop I hit after 18:00 in ATS or 19:00 in ETS2, I stop and rest.

All traffic fines I leave on, and I judge my recent performance by the total violations (minus "refball" like the left-on-green glitch or an AI driver drinking too much virtual Budweiser out there and straight-up running into me like an idiot) in the Career tab.

Of course, I actually like the fact that AI drivers are terminally stupid in these games. It's the single most realistic thing about them.

Originally posted by Ryu:

...

I heard - by experience 3 over is the sweet spot unmodded for me. With the ticket rework mod, it's 5 over. Not that I'm complaining but it's definitely something I've noticed.

Originally posted by SimuLord:

Of course, I actually like the fact that AI drivers are terminally stupid in these games. It's the single most realistic thing about them.

I've actually turned off violations for vehicle collisions mainly because Prius drivers seem to haunt me from the real world into the game. Even then, keep your guard up a little or the robots will give you a dosage of psychological horror!

Fines = on. Even though it irritates me to get fined when the AI drivers T-bone me and I get fined.
Fatigue = off. Rest time is not adjustable. I use the console for resting.

I have resting turned on because I do like the extra challenge of having to find a resting spot and plan your breaks to make the best use of daylight, and in ATS it lines up nicely so that you can drive during the day and sleep at night without issue.

In ETS your driving time is limited, so you can't stay on the road as long and end up with your sleep schedule waking you up in the middle of the night. I've still left it on even in that game for now, but I have considered turning it off there too, or adding in that mod which adjusts driver hours to mirror ATS instead.

Be a shame to lose that element of realism and tactical problem solving though...

I always play with fatigue off, and recently I too have been playing without traffic violations. going the speed limit on a 400+ mile long trip is just a time waster. sorry but i'm going 65 in a 25. sorry not sorry

Originally posted by Desiire:

I always play with fatigue off, and recently I too have been playing without traffic violations. going the speed limit on a 400+ mile long trip is just a time waster. sorry but i'm going 65 in a 25. sorry not sorry

First, it doesn't matter to me what anyone else does with their installation of ATS.

Second, if you just don't play the game at all then you wouldn't have to waste any time at all driving in it . . . j/k

Have fun your way. You do you!

I play pretty much the same way as the OP. Use the dev console to take my 10 hours downtime, sometimes more depending on when I want to start the next day.

Thank you HAL, that will be a great help in the future Cheers