If you were the developer, what scale would you make the map?

[VTXcnME]

Tree walls won't create space that doesn't exist.

It's going to be very interesting/terrifying what some places in the Northeast look like.

[Tristman]

I think it will “look” fine, but a lot of stuff is going to be cut. They will have to pick and choose what to feature much more than in the west.

[flight50]

Honestly speaking, when SCS did the rescale in 2016, had they had even just 2 map teams then (20 mappers) no reason to not be 1:17/1:18 as I think they would have went just a tad larger than mainland ETS2. 1:15 would still be too large for a team of 20 with only what 15% of the US mapped. Instead they went smaller than ETS2"s 1:19 and went 1:20. That small difference adds up believe it or not.

[VTXcnME]

@Tristman Absolutely best way to describe the northeast I think.

Tree walls do wonderfully to hide things naturally backed up to one another, but they can't create the space of driving along tree lined roads for miles between cities. 30 miles in game is what? 4 or 5 miles IRL? (I haven't had coffee yet, so math isn't mathing right). New England will lose it's feel with the tree lined stretches between towns/cities. It's not going to be authentic, IMO. It can't be. You can try all the tricks of the trade with tree walls and any other visual tools, but the feel of driving through open country is going to be hard to capture when cities are stacked on top of each other. 30 miles distance IRL vs 30 miles distance at 1:20 scale is vastly different. You'll be bouncing city to city to city with precious little forested land in between. Or they gotta cut cities and landmarks. As an example, when I ride my motorcycle from Maine to Vermont- I spend probably 4 of the 5 hours riding along tree lined highways and state roads (US-2 is a great road for motorcycles IRL). 80% of the trip is me navigating tree lined roads. That's the part that's going to be hard to duplicate.

We're leaving out the fact there are three mountain ranges that go thru NH/VT/ME with the Green Mountains, the White Mountains and the and of the Appalachian mountains (that end in Maine). Huge geographic feature for western Maine/Northern NH, Northern VT that will probably have to get wildly minimized or completely pooched on it's in game representation. Cities are all well and good, but its the geography and views that really make a state feel right. at 1:20 scale, with these small sizes.... eeeh... It's going to be very interesting what SCS does to make the states work, or look like their real world counterparts.

I agree that graphically it'll be great, hopefully better than Montana as it's probably 5+ years out (optimistically). I have no doubt on the graphical abilities of SCS. But what will have to get cut so everything fits is what's going to make it feel wrong. Vermont (unless they make the capital and one other town deliverable) is going to feel like one big city with zero tree lined roads between the two. Rhode Island might as well just be called Providence Town, as the city will eat up just about all the available real estate in the state. New Hampshire, like Vermont, will be city backed up to city with no forests in between the two.

[SouthernMan]

That's precisely why I'm looking forward to the day that SCS arrives in the northeast. I'm really curious to know how they're going to do that region where, for example, it's going to be totally fictional imo. Yes, I know, if we consider the fact that scale other than 1:1 everything will be fictional, but still in the west the landscapes look good in the current scale.

Anyway, again, I'm quite curious to see how they make those completely small states. It will definitely be a challenge for the mapper teams, I speak from experience. I've tried to adapt my map edits several times in that region and... I can't, it's too fictitious to the point of not having the feeling of being in place(mainly New York City and Newark).

[justgettingold]

I think that y'all forgot we already have something like the Northeast by SCS. It's called ETS2. It will have the same scale-induced problems like any other region, they just will be more obvious and ridiculous-looking because of more important stuff being omitted and idk, state welcome signs changing each other within minutes of driving lol.

They really just need to figure out the perfect city:country balance before this area, so the cities which make it into the game could be properly-sized, allowing for representation of the rural areas, and they have plenty of time to do that. They started ATS with cities too small, now they are, mostly, too big. I heard Montana was especially good in this regard though? Still haven't gotten an opportunity to check it out.

[flight50]

I wouldn't really compare the Northeast of the US to ETS2. Distance wise to the next city, perhaps that's similar which is how compact an area is. But outside of that, not everyone owns or plays ETS2, so there's nothing to forget. The relation between both games are different vibes and its those vibes that get people playing. There's sparse and compact areas in the US. That's adds to the diversity. We'll just have to wait til ATS can get us more Eastbound.

But if I want compact, it doesn't mean I'm going to jump in ETS2 to get my fix. I'm just gonna have to wait til SCS gets there.

[VTXcnME]

@SouthernMan Yup. Def gonna be interesting!




I do wish folks would stop drawing the comparison to ETS2. We get it, ETS2 has small states too.

[xXCARL1992Xx]

all he is saying with this that we already have a case where small areas are mapped to scale, the 3 Baltic states arent really big in comparison, Estonia is the smallest one (if we exclude the enclave of Russia) that is between West Virginia and Maryland in size, if we look at the enclave, it would be comparable to Connecticut in size (it is a bit bigger then Connecticut but not by much)

[VTXcnME]

Respectfully- if this is what folks are comparing for "small sized"....

Estonia- 17,463 square miles. (In 1:19 scale)

New Hampshire- 9,349
Vermont- 9,616
Connecticut- 5,543
Rhode Island- 1,216

These states are about half the size (1/10-ish for rhode island 1/4-ish for Connecticut) of estonia. It's really not the same thing at all, considering ETS2 is built at a slightly larger scale. The ETS2 has small counties argument doesn't really work for how ATS will be able to address the small size. Exceptionally small size.