Scaling the East U.S.; why it matters.

[Izmaragon]

Hopefully this doesnt get buried... Didnt know where else to put it and the previous place didnt quite fit, so maybe it goes here as it is more of a suggestion to the devs for future planning.

A video some months ago by someone addressed the problem that ATS will have with the scale given a couple years time, which is why we saw a shift to ":Yes, we're also doing Canada now...". This is something we saw with Washington State, where there were too many larger cities along with many other points of interest and even 1:20 was a bit too constrictive for some parts of the state. The devs did what they could with that and moved on, but we're seeing a bigger problem on the horizon of the Eastern states...

South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and in particular Rhode Island.

That last mention is not inconsequential as R.I. is the smallest state to do alongside Connecticut. In fact, I got to thinking that it would be beneficial for SCS to consider doing a test model in house of the two states for scale testing purposes, because what scale would fit for Rhode Island? Would they have to go up to a 1:10 for the smallest state? If you look at a map [like Google], Much of Rhode Island is taken up by the capital city, and outside of that, there isn't much noteworthy besides the Naval industry.

But as Rhode Island itself is only roughly 50miles by 50 miles, it would be of benefit to SCS to use this state as the "scale test for the future if you will. You know, a modeling mock up for internal testing as any scale more than 1:15 will cause Rhode Island to be a "blink and you miss it" state.

And perhaps they are already looking at this internally, this post is pure speculation anyway. Its years before we hit Rhode Island, but I thought that it would be a good idea to push the plan of a state that could be used for testing. The devs dont even need to say anything really about it, but Rhode Island and Connecticut will be among the most difficult states in terms of scaling [besides NH and Vermont]. Just makes sense to look at those future states as internal tests beds. Just a general area layout of city size, road network and geographic feature inclusion to see what fits. And I'm sure they do stuff like this already for their current planning, but I'm suggesting a look at New England before it gets to the center stage.

Anyway, this is why I posted this here, because we dont necessarily know h9ow the scale issue will be handled as we get close to the East coast and we as players, are not sure how the devs are looking at this issue. After North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, there's Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania that could be looked at without a scale change, but Ohio is like Washington State; a number of larger cities that people would like to see included versus a scale that will need some sort of adjustment for the east.

Feel free to discuss.

[Frayner]

I don’t see them using a different scale for the east coast of America. Europe is even more condensed then the USA and they haven’t changed the scaling at all from one side of the map to the other, even where they have reworked the map.

So I’m sorry to say, we’re just going to have to live with 1:20 scale and what they include and don’t include.

[MLH82]

They got Luxembourg in ETS2 without any problems. As it is even a bit smaller then R.I. I dont see why it should be a problem with the current scale.

R.i. probably is a bit easier too, as it can be pushed into the ocean for a bit. Just like they did with LA and San Diego in the Cali rework. Moving the coastal line a bit, can create some extra space without messing up the map too much.

SCS does have some tricks for mapping in dense areas. The Benelux rework and the Ruhr Area rework in Germany can be considered good examples of what to expect on the East Coast in my opinion. Both the Benelux and the Ruhr area have a higher population density then the NorthEast corridor of the US (Boston - D.C.)

[Izmaragon]

While that is true, also consider that Luxembourg area is one of the oldest parts of ets2; at the time last visited that area in that game, it was not redone yet .

To an extent, that is true, they have managed to shove a lot into a smaller space before, but when you have multiple larger cities as well as geographical features along with a road system where the roads themselves are larger in terms of lane size with a road system that takes up more space. EX: There is that Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire [somewhere i that area at least]. Now, it is a ways off, so we dont know what people will want included in NH and Vermont yet, but that would be one of the sights mentioned in a future idea thread for that area.

The reason it might seem more difficult for scs is because there's a lot of cultural reference sites, historical points, lakes, geographical features besides all the cities. Figuring out how to do that within the state boundaries is the big thing that will take the most time.

Edited after looking at ets2.

Perhaps you're correct, but we shall see, and I have now looked at ets2 and seen the rework what was done there, at least map wise. Seems good.

But I still think that ATS east coast somewhere will be adjusted in scale. Alabama, Mississippi, South Caroline, Florida, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York State, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts all have at least some areas of regional density that are similar to those 3 westernmost cities in Germany that look to have the garages in a row. I dont think it can be done without somewhere being scaled to fit.

Perhaps there are tricks theyve done, but ATS overall has larger assets [roads, depots, etc], so the larger asset size must be taken into account. In the end, what they decide to do, I just hope that they make sure whatever they do will work for those more densely populated regions of ATS that are yet to come. Trenton, Atlantic City in Jersey, plus the various cities in that region are in a very crowded theatre when it comes to making a map. In the end, I just want to make sure that it is done so that they dont ever need to go "...Sorry, but we're to need to rescale again..." I'm sure they are desperately trying to avoid such a thing again.

All we can do is wait and see what happens.

[Locusta4258]

When i bought Illinois i felt that they condensed the map and i knew that it's going to be a recurring problem if they continue on a 1:20 scale. For example Delaware will be almost non existant in a 1:20 scale.
In my opinion the entire game should be rescale to 1:5

[parasaurolophus67]

^yeah that's not gonna happen.

[TruckingWolfUSA]

Yeah that’s definitely not happening. Keep dreaming lol

[robty96]

The overall scale of 1:20 will not change. They can rescale some parts of the map like they upscaled bigger cities in the reworks of ETS & the California rework of ATS without problems but this means to cut somewhere else to fit the overall 1:20 map scale.

What happened in ETS2 with cities that had some space around was that cities became larger and the distance/road between them smaller.

Now if you have lots of big cities/places of interest next to each other, what SCS have to focus on what they want or have to to bring in the game and then cut anything which
does not fit into it anymore. The mentioned Ruhr area of ETS is a good example. People who might not be familar with that area will say "Well, you have 4 big cities there, that's cool!" but many german players actually complain a lot about missing big cities from
"The Pot" as we like to call it but SCS just couldn't place more cities into that location due to the map scale issue.

There was an example where SCS directly addressed that they had to cut down the rework of Magdeburg because of the intense upscales of Berlin and Hannover.

While rebuilding Magdeburg, we had a limited amount of space to work with. With that in mind, we decided to put our focus on the industrial part of the city which turned out really great.
Truckers will come across a windmill factory and a food mill in the nearby harbour. Source

Another examples of ATS with the California rework are Sacramento which has been cut down pretty much and the Salton Sea, California's biggest lake, which has been omitted in the rework.

So doesn't matter whether there are big cities, cultural reference sites, historical points, lakes, etc., SCS have to focus only on the most important places in such areas.

In my opinion, a small test map doesn't make much sense since they need to work at the entire map as a whole, and not a separated map part which does not consider space/scale problems of the surrounding states.
SCS need to paint the picture as a whole. You cannot cut one piece out of it, and then place it later onto the bigger picture/frame. It wouldn't fit with the entire picture/frame.

Having said this, I personally think the way that makes sense the most accomplishing the northeastern coast area to fit the entire map scale of 1:20 would be to start with the largest and most important places first and place them onto the map.
That would be New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Baltimore for the U.S. and Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal for Canada. None of those cities should be cut down or even omitted.
Then they have the freedom to place anything else what they like in between or cut it out. Even if it's any other interesting spot.

This might also be important to do before approaching the area with other state DLCs in the next few years.

And in case, small states need to be cut down to its minimum then. In case of Rhode Island, maybe only Providence and Newport to fit between all surrounding cities of major importance like Boston, Worcester, Springfield in MA and Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut.
And those all need to fit into the space between the cities of New York and Boston as being of higher priority again.

Now people ask, "How would such a scaled down version of a state could work as a separate map DLC?", which indeed is a problem if you take into the economical viability of a DLC.
The answer is either dropping the price of such a DLC significantly or - which in my opinion would make much more sense - group several tiny states in one DLC together.