Which ats city should be reworked?

[EthanE40]

The entirety of California should get a rework, especially the 3 big metros of LA, SF (add San Jose while you're at it), and San Diego.

Phoenix I think should get a rework too. While maybe not as much of a priority, it doesn't seem as big in ATS as it is in real life.

Tucson and Reno could get some minor reworks as well. Other than that I can't really think of anything else.

[flight50]

Yeah I can agree with the 3 major areas in Cali. If nothing else, at least those 3. Everything that came with Oregon though, I wouldn't touch it. Those are up to par with current dlc's imo.

[Skoot]

LAX is a must have, I think. And having such little amount of airports on the whole map is a nonsense - only France in ETS2 has 8, and 2 of those are on tiny Corsica. And then there are Italy, Baltics and Black Sea countries where there's at least 1 airport depot per country. I really don't get the logic behind all this.

[flight50]

Its about space. Denver's airport had to be there. There is absolutely nothing to conflict with it. Not to mention its the largest airport in North America by land area and the second largest in the world. Its the cargo airports or cargo areas of an airport in North America we need. Strictly passenger airports don't make a ton of sense. LAX like the ports is on the Pacific. Use the water and push the Western coastline of California out by 5 miles or so. There is absolutely nothing that can be done with the water out there. Use the space. If it looks weird on the map and people complain....oh well. In the game when you drive the roads, you would never know the in game map doesn't match the overall reference game map. There are places on the map that are already off like Carson City, Nv and Vancouver, Wa. But you'd never notice this if you are in the game driving. Its nothing new and I expect more of it to come. Everything can sync and look perfect. Besides, we can about the in game roads.

If people complain about roads being in the water, they clearly didn't actually go into the game to drive those same roads. Those are the people that also complain about anything SCS does for free. 9 times out of 10, they don't even own all the dlc's. People complain to complain. That's just how it is. But if California is restricted on space inland, the Pacific can provide some relief to some of the congestion that could make it into a rebuild. I-5 can get more room for stuff South of it. That also allows for a few other Interstates, depots and more urban development to take place if the Pacific is stretched out. Easy real estate to gain there.

[Xaagon]

Speaking of CA, I just remembered that I really want the US-101/I-580 interchange redone. In real life you exit US-101 to go to I-580. In ATS you have to exit US-101 to continue on US-101. (speaking for southbound traffic)

[Sora]

Winnemucca tbh, it's easily the worst city in the game relative to how central it is in the map. Los Angeles might be 20x worse but that doesn't mean much if I'm passing through Winnemucca 20x more frequently. A Winnemucca rebuild would basically render every city in Nevada "tolerable", at least; some of them could still use a little work but at least the likes of Ely and Elko are almost strictly voluntary to pass through.

California is like the UK in ETS2: almost everything there needs to be redone, but mercifully it's easy to avoid, and avoid it I do. California at least has some decent parts (like Death Valley and parts of NorCal), but honestly there's more of it that needs to be redone than not. Basically all of southern California is questionable, and while the north is a bit better, it still has stuff like "Oakland", San Jose missing, and Hornbrook being mapped over literally any other city near California's border. (Alturas, Crescent City, Weed, or Yreka all would have been better choices, and if you're desperate for a city that screams "California border", Needles does it better.)

If it's gotta be California, though, Oakland bothers me the most. I'm not sure it's smart to prioritize that, though, because you'd probably need to redo SF at the same time and SF is actually sort of okay? I mean it's definitely not VLF-tier but at least it captures the San Francisco vibe pretty well. It feels more like the city it's trying to be than pretty much anything else in CA, even if it's still weird. I'd honestly say it's in the better half of ATS California cities.

Actually on second thought I vote Sacramento. The city itself is decent, but the road network is desperately crying out for the completion of US 50, CA 99, and Business 80 relative to their current incarnations.

[flight50]

Vanilla Winnemucca isn't good I agree. I suppose since I run the Sierra Nevada mod, it gets a pass from me. SN's Winnemucca is pretty good along with Sacramento and all the other cities/towns they have done so SN gets me by honestly. I understand not everyone run mods. I-80 in general can get a touch up in vanilla game play. Pretty much all of I-15 in Nevada is new. An upgraded I-80 could spice up the base map though. If most interstates in the base map got love, that would be boost ATS nicely. The backroads are so so and are mostly doable. Mainly upgrade mountain models and/or textures for those and a few other tweaks and the backroads on the base map are good.

Crescent City and Weed are actually in the game. They are scenic though. Several cities in California are not present. I'm not saying add them as mapped though. Some just can't fit. We'd should be okay just getting some more as scenic and let the larger adjacent city absorb them to get depots. There are some good areas in California not represented though and adding a few more can add a little more value to the game to get people back into Cali. If California got a similar treatment as Las Vegas, I think most would be okay. A complete rebuild though, I still don't think ATS fan base numbers justifies it. ETS2 has about 19k daily. ATS just under 5k. That to me says ATS needs to work the existing map on a when you have spare manpower vs a rebuild team for the entire state. In smaller phasing portions is good, but on a large scale as Germany is asking for a bit too much at this point.

[Sora]

I should have said marked, I guess, but I'm aware that those cities (except Yreka I think) are all in the game; I just feel they all would have been better as delivery points than Hornbrook is, unless there's something particularly impressive there that I'm unaware of.

Certainly I know it's unrealistic to expect a complete rebuild of California at this time, but that doesn't change my opinion that it largely needs it. Pretty much every city in California (aside from, like, Oxnard) has a valid argument toward why they should be the highest priority, almost all of the signage is wrong, the vast majority of the prefabs have been deprecated, and even the road network itself can be pretty janky (although I concede that it's much better now than it was during 1.1, or even following the rescale). An isolated rework of Los Angeles or Sacramento or Fresno or the Bay Area would be wonderful, but it doesn't actually change much if all of those areas are still surrounded by pre-rebuild California. Vegas, by comparison, is right next to Utah/Arizona and is mostly connected to the rest of Nevada via US Routes, which feel less out of place even when they're of questionable quality.

Trying to mimic this with California by starting with the border doesn't seem very effective, though. Eureka and Redding feel like cities in very low need of reworks relative to the rest of California, Barstow is arguable but I don't think it's that bad, and the only reason I even remember El Centro is in the game is the Christmas event in which nobody ever went there. Moreover, a 'proper' LA rework would basically mandate a rework of Southern California anyway, because LA essentially defines that entire region. By the time you're done with LA and Bakersfield, you're basically halfway done with a California rebuild.

[flight50]

I think the least the devs can do is rebuild Southern California, then the Bay Area. To me, that gets a lot more people traveling back to California just like it seems that Vegas now has traffic thru it. The bottleneck is removed and a massive upgrade. City skylines is a big thing with ATS fans now. Depict US cities in the base map more realistically in comparison to newer dlc city's and the fans will respect the ATS base map just that much more.

[SmokeyWolf]

Further east we go the more the map will be off especially in the northeast.