Rework ATS Prefab Thread

[flight50]

For the most part, the dealerships are pretty much okay in ATS. Modern US truck dealerships need to look nice if they want to sell trucks. A lot can be said by the way a dealership carries themselves. ETS2 got a needed overhaul and they look great now. ATS is not to bad but a few updates would be nice.

Red = Service line. It would be awesome if dealerships were like garages. The doors open to our garage, we drive in and thru it. Same thing could happen with dealerships....if the door opened. Brings another level of immersion. Drive out the back side and continue on our way to pick up a load or drop one off. Limit, 53' trailer and pup doubles. All others, detach on the lot and pick up later. But for the most part, conventional trucks need more space to maneuver so the more space the better. Sometimes we need quick repairs and its a lot of work to drop trailers all the time to get repairs.

Cyan = small tweaks to prefab. Each below is different.

Peterbilt - Ditch the grass island. They serve no purpose. Would make it much easier to pull into the service bays for service. Allows much more space as well. New trucks for display, turn them around. Face towards the street. We should be able to see the trucks. Show them off by turning them to the entrance road.
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Kenworth - Either straighten out the peninsula or ditch it too. Allows more room. The divider to pick up piggy back trucks under the canopy, get rid of it. Allows more space to maneuver back there. When servicing a truck, allows space for truck and trailer to clear. The display trucks, turn them around. Show them off. Always face trucks towards the entry street.
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International - New prefab that already looks good. Implementing service garage is all that is needed
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Volvo/Mack example of combined dealership - It's perfectly fine to combine the two in the US. It does save space and you can sell two truck brands. Perhaps do a few combined and a few separate. But either way, the current dealership can use a makeover. If separate, we should have to totally different dealership. A copy pasted dealership has no appeal to the game. It doesn't say independent prefabs. The building resembles more of a warehouse with it many doors and most bring facade. Update the building with more glass. Glass is always a major part of any dealership wither its semi trucks or cars. You won't find many newer US dealership that don't favor glass or plexi glass. They look elegant. Get rid of all the interior gates. They serve no purpose either and takes up usable truck space. The dividing booth, get rid of it. It takes up space and doesn't do anything. The new truck area, lots of usable space that can be given back to the parking lot. Make it smaller. This area could be gated off if desired to separate the parking lot to sleep from new trucks to sale.

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Western Star - Not techincally in the game yet but follow the same as International. The prefab in the game files look great. Just make a service line.

Freighter - same as Western Star and International. Western Star and Freightliner are like Volvo/Mack. They too can be combined and share the same lot. They are the same company. In the US, Peterbilt and Kenworth are the only brother/sister companies that actually have different lots to sell brand new trucks. Of course there are dealerships that sale a variety of brands under the sun. These are not the ones I refer to. I am speaking of manufacturer specific trucks, not private owners from small used/new truck lots. I am sure someone will take this out of context and debate but mixing brands should only be done if a used truck dealership is created in ATS. Either keep them all separate or allow the the brands mentioned to combine dealerships.

[SmokeyWolf]

Every Freightliner and Western Star dealer is under one dealership and are combined. Should be as such in ATS. I would also combine Pete/KW as well as Volvo/Mack too.

[howey]

Yeah I agree with Larry on Combining them together has they seem to be the norm in most cases from what I have seen. Even over here combined dealerships like Kenworth /DAF, Mack/Volvo etc are pretty popular.

@flight50 what do you mean by limiting trailers exactly like to enter the dealer or in the drive in workshop your suggesting?

[flight50]

Only in the workshop. So all single pivot trailers and pup doubles. All others, park it in one of the parking lanes because you are probably too long. Drop the trailer, go get service and then reconnect. Put I think a pull thru service in ATS/ETS2 would be great. Of course they need to add more immersion to it like oil changes, check tire pressure, check fluids clean windshields (hoping SCS figures out a way to add dirt), etc.

Now if SCS wants to take it up a notch they can do one of three things for the trailers:
1) Add a trailer maintenance facility. These can be much larger, longer and accommodate all trailers but you get no truck service. Adds a new prefab with different functions.
2) Add another component to the existing truck dealership for the trailers. requires a lot of map editing though.
3) Enlarge all the parking lots for dealerships. Also may require some map editing to make space. Upon entering the dealership you must choose what you want to maintenance. Sort of like now. But depending on what you select, determines what bay door you go in. One bay is for trucks, the other is for trailers. The difference is, the icon for each. For trailers you have to roll in to hit the trailer only trigger point. One size fits all. So the longest trailer is the size of the overall garage now. Then you have your truck bay in which your truck only triggers the service.

Of course there are other things to add. Cutscenes for maintenance. There can also be an option in the menu to either keep the game like it is or you can use the new pull thru service feature.

[SmokeyWolf]

Trailer maintenance should be a seperate dealer by itself. Truck dealers don't work on trailers. All truck dealers make you drop your trailer.

[howey]

@flight50 you gave me some ideas after reading your reply which I will explain more later on when I have the time, but all in all even your suggestions would bring in more interesting gameplay for the maintenance side of things.

@Larry71490 it's funny you mentioned that because I came across a website on the weekend accidently that was a Peterbilt dealership called Montana Peterbilt in Billings Montana I think that also sells and repairs reitnouer trailers was abit surprised tbh I had the same mindset as you on that. Must be a rare thing.

Here is the link for it if you guys are interested https://montanapeterbilt.com

[SmokeyWolf]

@howey I didn't know that.

[flight50]

First time for everything. Perhaps isolated situations in which we can have a few truck/trailer repair shops can exist. But I'd love to get separate trailer shop as well. If we get dirt on trucks, then truck washes comes to life. Between truck dealers/services, general truck service shops, trailer service shops, truck stops w/scales, truck washes and then weight stations, we'd pretty much have all the basics covered. If all cylinders are going, I am sure together the complete immersion package is made.

[Reignman]

I like the idea of working service garages. Perhaps the game should advance several hours while your truck is getting repaired too. Longer for more severe damage.

I like the prefab tweaks as well. I don't understand the point of that divider curb at the Peterbilt dealership. I drive over it anyway.

I also noticed you don't have to bring your trailer with you to the shop to get it repaired lol. I left it at a company one time to quickly go get my truck fixed, but saw the trailer got fixed too.

[flight50]

Well, it looks like we got a small tweak to the Mack/Volvo dealership. better than nothing. The small "L" fence in the far Northwest corner was removed. Thank you SCS, this makes it much easier to move around on the prefab when we have a trailer attached and when we are trying to leave.