Base Map Rebuild (CA, NV, AZ) General Discussion Thread

[SenseFM]

I am hopeful that California's rebuild will bring more companies. So far only some roads have been reworked, and no marked city has been touched. Once deliverable cities start to get some changes, I believe it's highly possible that new companies can be added. Califonia's economic variety offers many opportunities.

[CodArk2]

@SenseFM well Hornbrook got rebuilt and renamed Hilt. It used to only have a gas station and nothing else but now has a bitumen and voltison. I do kinda hope the redo eureka and ukiah in the next refresh, and retouch Redding (which was already updated but now looks out of date again).

[interstate trav]

I’m enjoying the Mileage signs, they add so much. I must admit iI was hoping for Red Bluff and the 99 but who knows what’s to come. The 5 feels very much like California and I can’t wait for more.

[TheAmir259]

Personally, what i'm looking forward to next, is at the very least, the rework of Sacramento. But the space constraint in that area as a whole, seems to indicate that they don't have much room for expansion, a rework of the city might not bring much, but i'm also hopeful for US 50 to make it in too, there seems to be quite some space for them to fit in, although it might be tied with a light rework of Carson City.

[canuckster]

Hope San Francisco gets a major rehaul and we get the 580 up to the Bay bridge instead of that weird spiral they got going on now. They need to get rid of that weird backroad south of the city, that road has never made any sense and looking at real world maps I don't understand what it's supposed to be.

Also want to see more rest stops along the I-80 between Reno and Elko. Winnemucca could definitely use some kind of overhaul as well but I think the rest of the state is pretty fine as is, no real need to tinker with it too much.

Arizona layout wise I think is pretty good as is, just needs an update on the vegetation textures and overall cosmetics.

[flight50]

I'd redo pretty much all of Nevada. Wyoming is the culprit of that success. I-80, US-95, US-50, US-93....if Nevada can look anything like Wyoming....the base map would be a lot more attractive and appealing to get more people into buying dlc's. California's quality is up there with Colorado. Utah is up there. Why not bring Nevada to the same standard. Arizona to follow. Arizona is the one that doesn't need a ton but even it lack behind what SCS is able to achieve now. If all of ETS2's old stuff is about to get reskinned, I don't see why the bad parts of California, Nevada and Arizona can't be upgraded. Now I'm coming from a landscaping point of view. The backgrounds in most of the base map leaves a lot to be desired with what SCS is doing now.

I-80 is awesome in Wyoming. To get that same level of SCS quality straight thru to San Francisco would be sweet and a long time coming.

[SmokeyWolf]

I think for the most part Arizona is fine. Cali and Nevada need the most love for sure.

[angrybirdseller]

Arizona will be mostly texture and landscapes improvements and face-lifting the cities with newer assets. Arizona AZ-347 can replace AZ-85 and US-70 extended to connect US-191, along with US-180 from Holbrook and St Johns, Alt-89 Bitter Springs and Fredonia can add Marble Bridge. California and Nevada will get 85% of the work on the base map when it said and done. Arizona think bring up to the level of New Mexico will be acceptable as they have similar housing and biomes.

[TheAmir259]

We can all agree that Arizona should come last, But reworking the north definitely needs to come first. Especially the I-80, driving on the country roads in Nevada is more tolerable than the I-80 west of Utah. Currently, for the rework progress, it seems like they have a daunting task of the cities rework, since they stopped north of Sacramento. I will be satisfied if the (major) cities around these areas be reworked even at the expense of the rework's southern limit being at the I-580 to I-5 junction at Tracy.

Because that alone, is already big enough of an area (or region actually) to cover, already having 7 marked cities (or towns) to cover which includes San Francisco, San Rafael, Stockton, Sacramento, Oakland, Oakdale & Truckee. Santa Cruz itself might also be worthy of a rework too actually, but ultimately i'd prefer that this region be heavily reworked which may include merging of several of the unneccessary marked towns (Especially Oakdale but merging Oakland into San Francisco would also be nice). I also wonder why they chose Santa Cruz instead of San Jose, but it might be due to scale limits and trying to fit the sceneries, although i would probably swap them in the rework if possible. In which case, if Santa Cruz's inclusion would make it 8 marked cities.

[Tristman]

@TheAmir259 In the .dds file (which doesn't necessarily tells us what SCS' plans are), San Jose is marked as a city and San Rafael is omitted. This give us some reason to believe that San Francisco might be pushed north a bit, to allow room for San Jose in the future. But of course we don't know if this will actually happen.

I think the next part of the California rework is tough, because in a lot of this area (Sacramento, San Francisco) it's probably difficult to really touch the roads without having to change the cities. So I could see SCS taking more time for the next step of the rework to then give us a larger area that is reworked. Alternatively, they could first rework Redding, Eureka and Ukiah so they don't have to touch the whole Bay Area yet. A third option would be working on the I-80 east of Sacramento, but I don't know if that highway is going to move at all to make more space for a potential US-50 (also shown in the .dds file), and I don't know if just the I-80 east of Sacramento is worth releasing as a stage of the rework for SCS.

Regarding Arizona, completely agree that it could use a lot of polishing but not as much rework as CA and NV. I think Arizona mostly suffers from outdated assets/backgrounds, highway ramps that are too short and corners that are awkward to drive through at a reasonable speed. There is also space in Arizona for more roads and maybe even an extra marked city, as it was originally designed in the 1:35 scale.