Base Map Rebuild (CA, NV, AZ) General Discussion Thread

[flight50]

See, now you guys have me actually pulling up Reno to look at it on Google, lol.

Ohhhh, yeah. We need an update. The UP yard would be great. Its long and skinny and fits South of I-80 very well. Do it. Add to that Reno-Spark Livestock Center. What do we have now? Livestock. Mark it up. Just fix the livestock trailer.

If we ever got diversity in ATS Lowe's and Target works very very very well for alternates for Home Depot and Walmart. Do Spark Blvd and bring on Lowe's and Target. South of I-80 off the same road, there is Petro Travel center. East of Sparks there is absolutely nothing to conflict with Sparks Blvd. Otherwise the TA Travel Center off S McCarran Blvd would come but there is no good industry to take advantage off that exit except warehouses. That is okay but SellGoods is played out. We need 2-3 new logistics companies thru out ATS. Why do we have just 1 baffles me. There quite a few in ETS2. Iirc, double digits at that. I'd rather see Target and Lowe's mixed it with the casinos than Walmart again.

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East of the Petro there is a Sparks Salvage yard (Avalanche Steel) and a Peterbilt dealership. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5228117 ... !1e3?hl=en

South of I-80 along I-580, things will be tight because of Carson City. A road that should shrink anyways to push Carson North. So develop I-580 North of I-80. Give us US-395 @ NV-659. There is WinCo Foods and Home Depot. With or without Lowe's off Sparks, we can get Home Depot. Follow NV-659 East enough and it can connect up to Sparks via surface streets. A good detour to get to US-395 from I-80 if need be. Equally as good, go ahead and make NV-659 West and connect it up to I-80. A half arc North of Reno. Multiple ways in and around the city if a detour kicked in.

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I'm sure there is a solid 8-10 depots that could spice up Reno. Now I don't remember what ATS has for Reno currently. I never stop there. But I am sure it can use some accuracy. Its along I-80 and I-80 is due for a sweet makeover to match current dlc quality. Reno is the largest city in Nevada along I-80 and it needs space to make it great.

@axl135 Agreed. I too am well aware that reefers double as a dry van. But some prefabs do not make sense still. There is zero reasons to have a Kenworth logo on a reefer. There are other instances too for several depots. If we have owned trailers, sure, we can use reefers. But I do freight market and WoT. Or just staged trailers period on some depots. Reefers don't belong everywhere if immersion is in play.

Its shouldn't be difficult to make sense of reefers vs dry vans as props on prefabs. What we haul is a different story. If we don't use owned trailers, the trailers need to make sense based on the prefab they are located on. Cargo to/from a prefab vs props on a prefab are not related by any means.

[axl135]

@flight50 Thanks for pulling up Reno on the Google maps. That city definitely has so much more potential than what is currently presented, and yes, it could include neighboring areas since that is now a standard practice with later map dlc’s.

[flight50]

NP. Honestly speaking, if SCS moves Carson City to line up US-50 better, I'd be okay with Reno also shifting North and maybe even a tad Northeast to give it more space. I-80 has a butt load of wiggle room because of how it routes East to West. SCS can take complete advantage of how I-80 wiggles thru both California and Nevada.

Moving Reno North/Northeast also allows SCS to squeeze in all of US-95 this time and even add in Fallon as scenic with a remote depot or 2. Fallon is along US-50 and US-95....I don't see SCS missing it as scenic honestly but ya never know. I'm a lot more confident in the way SCS maps now to get a pretty good Nevada when its time. They have a lot more experience now and kind of know what fans are expecting. Sure everything still won't fit, but since 2017's first paid dlc, they keep getting better and better with accuracy within limits.

[Sara]

@flight50 I don't think moving a city a little further north would be the way to go just to fit in a road though. If there is one thing with SCS, is that they are trying to be as accurate as possible with the locations when placing down the cities, towns, and all the roads, which isn't really an easy task, but having a more accurate location for the cities and roads is better than just moving things to places where it may not make any sense.

But we're still a long way away from seeing any rebuild for Nevada, so who knows what will come.

[flight50]

Its not about fitting in a single road. Please reread all my post. I stated its to gain space. Space as in all around for everything. You'd be wrong in your thought about being too accurate. Being to accurate is why many things are not in the game now. US-101 @
I-80 is a great example. SCS is better off taking the ProMods and Reforma approach. It's perfectly okay to exaggerate things to get them to fit and/or be more immersive. Immersion means a lot more than city placement.

I will give you several examples of SCS cities not being accurately placed. Cheyenne is pushed a tad North because of Ft. Collins. Ft. Collins is too far North. Carson City is off. Vancouver Washington is off because of Portland. Portland is too far North. Bellingham is off. It's too far North. Hornbrook was fixed and turned into Hilt. There are many times when the cities may not be accurately placed but they can be accurately modeled if they are relocated at least. Many on here would rather an accurate city model vs accurately place on a guiding map.

You haven't been around long but I will tell you a little secret. The game map and the game world, are 2 different scales. They will never match up. The game map is a guide only. The game world is infinite space. Literally infinite. It has no boundaries but because of the game map, you are fooling yourself thinking there are boundaries. There are none which is why SCS sticks with Prism.... it does what they need.

Look at the game map from SCS and in map mods. Tell me how many times roads are in or over the water? Over a river? The game map means nothing. When you are driving in the game, the game map is irrelevant. It's a guide only. We can have an position icon over water but in game we are on roads on land. So your thought of SCS needs to accurately place city per this guideline map is not the best move for ATS at all. You are welcome to disagree but I can assure you, more people can careless of a city shift if the city itself is accurately modeled. Especially with today's mapping standards.

[Sara]

Hmmm, yeah, you do make a very valid point, and I have to fully agree with you on that...

[TheAmir259]

As a reinforcement, my initial argument that started this northshift idea was that Carson City, unlike the others, is too drastic in its improper positioning/alignment. To me, I simply can't tolerate that Carson City location being south of that turning point (on the stateline), as shown in my previous post, and the alternative/fix which may drag Reno northwards, is more tolerable for me, and it also works wonders for fitting in more locations and features on other roads, like for example extending the I-80 so that it would look better and such, basically what flight50 said.

And as i previously mentioned too, while I could tolerate the slightly-off positioning of those other cities mentioned, not so for Carson City in particular due to how it is way beyond that mark and that raising it further up to its supposed correct location (at the expense of Reno being higher up) would actually benefit us more, we can also get an extra town or scenic one on the 395 (Southwards ofc) while getting US-50 at the same time and such.

[fra_ba]

Well technically the game world is bounded by game map (game scale actually) otherwise they would choose a bigger scale to incorporate more details. The exaggerations will not entirely address the issues caused by game scale limitations and I think SCS will not implement them.

[flight50]

We've already seen SCS go Reforma style in Colorado and North of Redding. I'd rather people have fun with my map with a few exaggerations that too short of a road....which is what the base map is. Not enough curves to lengthen segments. Trying to follow Google Maps to a tee is not the way to go. In the Great Plains or should I say East of I-25, they don't have a choice but to go with straight roads and some angles. There aren't many curves East of I-25 until you get further East beyond I-55 for the most part. Even still, there are good stretches that are straighter than the West. The interstates are straight than the US and State Hwys though.

[Xaagon]

I agree that taking artistic liberties with the maps is the way to go. For example, US-101 has these big sweeping S curves on the ATS map that don't exist in real life. If SCS modeled US-101 closer to the google maps version it would run in a much straighter path. Instead they chose to add the curves to simulate some of what would be smaller squiggles on the real world map and the result was a feeling of more realism when actually driving the route.

In the case of Carson City, a northward move would align it better with US-50 and actually put it closer to where it would be on the real map. Moving Reno north would just make room for a better Reno. Since the Pyramid Lake area is not in the game there's really nothing other than a realignment of US-385 to get in their way.