Before taking that first job to begin building our company, I thought this would be a good time to look at game options as these affect gameplay. On the main screen click on the cog icon just to right of centre at the bottom. You will now see the Options menu. The gameplay menu is available from here. But, before you head off to that area, I just know the music is starting to get on your nerves, so pop into the audio menu first to turn it down! 😉
Ok, now to the Gameplay Menu. The decisions made here affect the realism of your game so you should give some thought to your choices. The good news is, you can get to the options menu at any time and alter settings if you are not happy about something – even in the middle of a job! There are two main sections of which the first deals with game settings. You probably won’t need to change these as they mostly tend towards the realistic. The odd ones out are the parking dialogue options. I leave those on because there’s always that parking job that is taking too long and the dialogue gives you the chance to opt out when dinner’s ready 😉
The truck setting section is more important for realism buffs. Braking intensity and trailer stability are important. The position of the braking intensity slider I have chosen is based on advice in a forum from a Volvo truck driver – he felt the braking was about right in that position. It’s not an exact science though and some trucks seem to brake more/less harshly than others especially if you are using non-standard trucks. My trailer stability setting is a bit of a guess 😉 Advanced trailer coupling should be checked – it probably needs to be renamed realistic trailer coupling as when un-ticked it becomes easy trailer coupling! You probably want to turn off automatic engine and electrics start unless your chosen control settings mean you need it on. Turn on Airbrake simulation – this means that the brakes will run out of puff if you over use them! Turn on Realistic Fuel consumption too – otherwise every run will be something like 38l/100km regardless of cargo weight, engine size, etc. You can set up the cruise control to your personal preference.
Mod’s or Modifications – these are another way of improving the game experience. This is a screenshot of the Mod Manager. At a basic level the game is fine without mod’s but a by adding some key ones in you can improve the ‘Immershun’. Initially you will probably want to stick with the in game icons for parking and job collection – but when you are confident in your parking you could add in the HN Immersive Symbols mod which replaces those. Ignore the truck mods in the same picture – they’re something you may wish to add in the future for your enjoyment rather than as an immersion enhancement. If you look in the column on the right though you will see in the centre DP’s Realistic Traffic – this mod makes the ai more variable throughout the day with busy and slack times. It also makes the behaviour more realistic with some drivers taking greater risks. That’ll keep you on your toes – Highly recommended 🙂 There are also the Real European Companies and Real European Gas Stations mods. All of these immersive mods are found in the Steam Workshop and are updated automatically once you have subscribed to them. When starting the game you will need to open the Mod Manager and activate each of the mod’s you have installed.
In this second screenshot are a group of traffic and trailer mods made by Jazzycat. These will make the traffic on the roads and the cargoes available for you to haul more varied. I can still remember driving in Germany after installing the Bus pack and being pleasantly surprised to see a Belle Coaches vehicle in their blue and yellow colours. These mods are too large for the Steam Workshop so you will need to download them from ets2downloads (one of several download sites). Just search for Jazzycat. There are instructions on how to install these to your game on the page but also there are plenty of videos on YouTube to show you how. A word of warning – make sure you click on the correct download button as there are a lot of adverts and other things on the downloads site. I think that’s enough for this post – we’ll be taking some jobs as a driver available for hire in the next post.
Images from Finchley 