Montana Discussion Thread

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oldmanclippy
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1301 Post by oldmanclippy » 09 May 2022 14:02

Agreed that Deepgrove desperately needs a competitor. Let Deepgrove have Washington/Oregon/California, let the new company have Montana/Wyoming/Colorado, and let Idaho have both. Or just have both of them in all those states. Either way, if Texas launches with more than one Deepgrove that would be a disaster. Having 2 talented 2D artists on ATS full-time now should allow them to go nuts on creating competition in all these 1 company industries. I'll refer once again to the graph (pre-Austria rework and pre-CA phase 2 rework) I made comparing company prevalence in ETS2 vs ATS:

[ external image ]

ETS2's company distribution is very healthy. Really only in the basemap do I feel like there aren't enough companies. In every DLC post-Scandinavia, the company distribution is great. ATS needs to be at least half as good as that. We need more companies with just 2-7 prefabs, and fewer companies with dozens and dozens of prefabs. ATS in its still relatively early state should not have 7 companies with more depots than the company in ETS2 with the most depots. That's just lazy. Make new competitors for each of those companies, then take half the existing depots per industry and assign it to the new ones. Don't even need new prefabs right away, just new 2D art. It would make a massive improvement.

I am really liking that new landscaping prefab. And those mountain models in pics 2 and 8. ATS set a new standard for mountains, then ETS2 beat it with the Austria rework, so ATS will need to reach for that new quality bar with Montana.
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1302 Post by harishw8r » 09 May 2022 15:04

flight50 wrote: 08 May 2022 20:40 ^I was also referring to harish's statement than logging is tied to the PNW. I was stating there is a lot more logging East of I-35 because I-35 runs the entire North to South stretches of the US. I-45 doesn't. There is a ton of green ahead for ATS and logging is part of that.
Thanks for the clarification. Never really paid attention to the eastern part of the country, today I learned.

Loved the way they elucidated the supply chain thing. Looking forward to see more of that in the game. Montana as a DLC looks perfect so far (Wyoming is almost perfect IMO, and Montana might help Wyoming strike out that 'almost').
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1303 Post by angrybirdseller » 10 May 2022 08:09

There is foresty in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas there plenty left on the map. Then you have northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine where there timber industry as well. There is different types of lumber Red Maple in the North and Loblolly Pine in the South then the west has Douglas-Fir.

Different woods have different uses along with the fact further east the harvesting is done on private property, and some wood is best for furniture and decorative items and others best for home construction.
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1304 Post by flight50 » 10 May 2022 13:38

^Exactly and this is why I made that map. Due to the different lumber around the country, SCS needs to bring that lumber diversity with different colored lumber and introduce new things like more dimensional lumber, plywood, pressure treated, fence pickets, landscape timbers, molding/trim and fence panels as logging makes its way around the US. We have barely gone beyond the surface with the lumber industry though so its not the end by far. Its established with Oregon and just like the oil/gas industry and any other industry, its should get deeper.

More middle man companies can come into play. We really don't have lumber yards yet. That's another big part of the lumber chain. We have saw mills which is not the same as a lumber yard. We have Plaster & Sons distribution but again, that is not a lumber yard. A lumberyards gets truck loads and train loads. A lumber yard is basically your distribution center for lumber. Places like Home Store, Plaster & Sons and Olthon Homes can order from a lumber yard as well as export/import along with to and from other lumber yards. So the lumber chain is getting deeper and I'd expect a few more cargoes to come in that process with an actual lumber yard. Plywood should already in ATS but its not. That a huge part of lumber missing in ATS. There is CDX, OSB, BC and pressure treated. Not to mention the furniture grade plys like Maple, Birch and Red Oak. I learned a lot working in Lumber/Building materials in my 9.5 years working part-time at the Home Depot. So I'm aware of a lot of different lumber and building materials along with lots of other products that I help customers with over that time span.

Lumber yards are primarily in the cities, sawmills are outside of the city. Plaster & Sons is not a true lumber yard. Its a building material center. Not the same. Building material centers is pretty much like Home Store but we need something like DixiePly or 84 Lumber as lumber yards. If this part of the chain comes, that pretty much closes up the depots. At that point, we just need more construction companies. Plaster & Sons and Butimen is all we have. We'll need more retailers like Lowes, Menards and 1-2 more places like Plaster & Sons that house lots of building material supplies like cements/asphalt, insulation and roofing. If we can get more for the building material chains, that polishes up the construction industry.
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1306 Post by oldmanclippy » 17 May 2022 15:14

Upcoming blog posts (subject to change/addition/removal of course):

Gameplay #1
Yellowstone National Park
Weight Stations
Helena
Missoula
Water Surfaces
Glacier National Park
Landmarks
Nature in General
Border Summit Pass
Road Network + New Signs
Mining/Extraction
Airports
Lewis and Clark Expedition (Pompey's Pillar is the only physical evidence of the expedition, which is right off of I-94 east of Billings)
Special Transport
Release Date Announcement
WoTr Event
Release
Community Showcase
Last edited by oldmanclippy on 17 May 2022 15:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1307 Post by supersobes » 17 May 2022 15:14

SCS Blog wrote: ...several industries to deliver to and from, including an electric network service and electric substation.
I wonder if this means that we'll finally see electrical transformers and junction boxes as flatbed loads. Those loads are quite common to see on flabed semis in real-life.
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1308 Post by MarkON » 17 May 2022 15:20

The schedule really looks promising in terms of time.
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1309 Post by Shiva » 17 May 2022 15:24

electrical transformers, atleast those I have seen where I live, here they are special transport in size.
But there are smaller too. So, we could hope for those on flatbeds :)
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Re: Montana Discussion Thread

#1310 Post by oldmanclippy » 17 May 2022 15:28

These screenshots look amazing, and the mountain models yet again look great. Got to keep up with Austria! :)

I don't see Our Lady of the Rockies anywhere (then again she is very very small as seen from Butte / the interstate), hopefully that landmark was not omitted. It's the 4th tallest statue in the United States:

[ external image ]

It's good to see how far along Montana is. ~15 blogs to go before the release date announcement. If 10 of those blogs come after the switch to a weekly blog cadence, that would mean 20 weeks left till the announcement, which would put Montana in the mid-October window. Sounds about right to me, as I was thinking September or October for a release date. I do think the number of blogs remaining rules out an August release.
Last edited by oldmanclippy on 17 May 2022 15:30, edited 1 time in total.
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