Texas Discussion Thread

[Outlaw Transport]

Is that a joke? How is a discussion on future map development considered off topic in an unofficial thread about an upcoming DLC?

[Madkine]

, some Texas relevant too.

Your memory is faulty, after this comment I reviewed the 5 pages and here are the Texas related comments:

Yeah Texas is my most anticipated. Montana and Texas will hold us over for a while.

Texas should include more than just more roads. I hope we all can agree on that.

@Outlaw Transport There was almost no map discussion in what I removed, there was discussions on cargo, trucks and the general direction SCS is taking.

[Outlaw Transport]

Sorry @Madkine, spoke without looking - I thought the whole discussion got nuked.

[supersobes]

The split posts have been renamed to "Game Improvements (Split from Texas Discission Thread)" and have been placed here in Feature Wishlist & Suggestions.

[clifflandmark]

While I don't specifically mention Texas, what I'm saying is definitely directly related to TX. TX is right in the center of the United States. TX is a sign that SCS is halfway through.People expected many more features with Texas.That's exactly why I'm nervous. A number of structural changes should now make the game aesthetics appeal to more customers.

[SouthernMan]

The split posts have been renamed to "Game Improvements (Split from Texas Discission Thread)" and have been placed here in Feature Wishlist & Suggestions.

Discussions may have strayed a bit, but it was always with the reference of "this could come in Texas DLC". But that's ok. Good job, mod.

[flight50]

Actually Texas is not exactly in the center of the US. That would be Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri. Now Texas is center to the South yes. Its the midpoint of I-10. West of Texas and East of Texas on I-10 is about the same for all of I-10 in Texas. That says a lot. San Antonio is about the mid point for I-10 from East to West coast. Getting halfway across the US will be nice indeed. Getting over the Texas hurdle...the beast..the scary state as SCS calls it will be huge. I think beyond 2022 for us and SCS will be nice. I'd love to go North of Texas a couple of states next just as I'd love to surround Texas first before going too far North. Whatever we get, we need SCS to implement a new region is coming to ATS. Implement regions in ATS just like new regions are done in ETS2. Get that going for ATS and more of the copy paste thoughts/new will diminish. Once Kansas comes....the same needs to happen there. It starts the Midwest region.

The copy paste.........yeah some recycling will happen but to say nothing new will come, just means nothing from the Texas micro site was viewed. Even one new company/industry removes the "nothing new" is coming. We aren't getting as much as Montana in terms of new industries/companies it seems but Texas will add new for sure. A state this size, a map this long in development, SCS would be in serious trouble if they copy pasted everything. Its not a C2C map mod so no way SCS gets away with too much copy paste. There will be many things reused but I can bet there where hundreds of new assets created specifically for Texas. Impossible to make Texas 100% all new. Add several more years to the dev time for that.

[oldmanclippy]

Welll I particall agree with ya @oldmanclippy. Depends on what a person is looking for. We all have different taste. Even weigh stations, truck stops and rest stops. I'm not interested as I mentioned but someone could love them, lol. But yeah you see one, you kinda see them all.

Highway junctions. I think Texas adds enough twist to the equation that people will like them. We don't have those getting lost junctions in ATS yet. If LA was reworked before Texas's release, we'd have it there. Houston and DFW should offer a bit more than complexity than Portland, Denver, Seattle and Albuquerque.
Airports. Although we have them, no two are alike. Its how they incorporate them around the rest of the city that could be interesting. They are not as isolated as Denver's.
Water Surfaces and Fields. Honestly we have no clue what these are about. These could be interesting I think. I was puzzled to see them but we'll get them eventually.
Cattle Farms ,Quarries, Chemical Plants and Refineries.. We have all 4 in the game now. We know their intent, we get an idea. No new industry/concept. But with these, I don't see why they recycle. I think Texas brings new for all 4 honestly. It would be disappointing not to. Quarries, Chemical Plants and Refineries have been in since the beginning. Time to think outside the box for them and retool. Something totally different in appearance. I don't know if Texas as mines to feature some else needs to take the spotlight. My thought, we get different vibes.

Quarries - sand and limestone are missing. When we get them.
Chemical - with Dow, BASF, LyondellBasell and DuPont in Houston and along the coast, time to start thinking resins, plastics and bio-chemicals. Asphalt, household chemicals, chemicals to make paint, fertilizers, hazmat, etc. There is a lottttt that can be done with chemical. Expecial with tankers coming. Tankers can play a much larger roll in ATS with the right prefabs in place.
Refineries - probably the same but we should have complex ones by now. ETS2 does a great job with huge industrial assets. Maybe ATS adopts some thinking from who assets are built for ETS2. Coastal with deep sea rigs are in the equation for Texas too.

Texas is leading the US in 3 categories. Oil/Gas, Cattle heads and Cotton. I think each of these will have to make impacts for ATS. Cotton is the only new kid on the block though. Cattle farms should be remote and hugggge at least. Put these is places that SCS can't do much else with. Oil/Gas, time to get complex prefabs with these. We need fields of mazes just like logging camps should be by now. We should have 2-3 ways into huge areas along with 4-5 different paths to get to 2-3 different sites within a 1x1km space or something. Cotton....this brings Textiles into play at some point into ATS. Everything around us uses cotton in some type of way in real life. Is this how we get Kohls, Ross, TJ Maxx, Target, Sam's, Costco, JcPenney, Ikea.....no telling but it can help.

I get that SCS doesn't want to bring every industry and new company all at once. It would be hard to find industry/companies for future dlc's. What I'd like to see with every new map dlc, is revisit some old industries here and there and bring in some of those middle men companies. Livestock, we really should have processing plants and cold storage. Milk, we really should have packaging/processing and distribution. Agriculture, we need distribution centers to haul to prior to grocery stores. Concrete, as stated before, where's the limestone. Where's the plant to create bagged aggregates. Where's the precast facility to bring in concrete to make precast tubes. We have precast cargo but no place that actually makes them. When a new map dlc can't feature new industry, add more to an existing industry to get it deeper.

Oh yeah those are all examples of expanding on those topics, which I think blogs would be appropriate for. I just mean that if a blog covers something already in the game and doesn't show a new twist on it, then it's probably not worth making a blog about.

The split posts have been renamed to "Game Improvements (Split from Texas Discission Thread)" and have been placed here in Feature Wishlist & Suggestions.

I strongly approve of this decision

[flight50]

I agree. I think we are getting some filler stuff with Texas until Montana releases. Then go all in with juicier Texas blogs. I'd be surprised if Texas has less than 25 blogs, excluding the releases and Cruising Texas blogs.

I also think we get some untalked about stuff from now til Texas releases or should I say 1.46. I think we could get a couple projects from the vehicle team which includes that Daimler hint. Thar should be a 1.45 project.

I'd love to get something with Texas that was similar to Washington's Forestry pack. Oil/gas could be a huge hot sale. Or make it in general to several industries in Texas that could include:
(4-5) oil gas related cargoes
(2-3) livestock
(1-2) cotton related
(3-4) construction/bldg materials
(3-4) agricultural related

Just scenarios here for example, but 13 on the low, 18 on the high would be big. I'd pay more that tge $3.99/4.99 price tag for some meaninful cargo that is not core content. Huge opportunity for Texas there. At least one new feature coming with Texas will give it a boost as well. At $17.99, people will need to justify the jump from $11.99.

[danbywinby]

Another DLC similar to the Forestry cargo one but for something related to Texas would be amazing and would instantly make Texas better. But there's nothing to even hint at this so we can only dream and hope.

If SCS are indeed holding back the juicier details about the Texas DLC then obviously it's understandable because at the moment they want to push Montana because that's coming first so it does make sense. But they are actually damaging the hype for Texas by showing us all of the 'copy pastes' of the DLC so in order to overcome that they will have to show us some very juicy stuff before the DLC actually releases.