West Balkans Expansion Discussion

[oldmanclippy]

@ninjawarrior1x3 You have all 10 inter-DLC crossings confirmed on your map already:

Italy -> Slovenia x1
Austria -> Slovenia x2
Hungary -> Slovenia x1
Hungary -> Croatia x1
Hungary -> Serbia x1
Romania -> Serbia x1
Bulgaria -> Serbia x2
Bulgaria -> North Macedonia x1

Total 10

@Rascian I think this DLC is really gonna suffer because of design decisions SCS made in 2013 (Hungary) and 2019 (Romania and Bulgaria) and did not correct in 2023. The border crossings take up so much space that they couldn't afford to start them *after* crossing the border on the IRL map due to previous maps' roads being really close to the WB borders.

[Adriatic Sea Team]

Yeah, but I guess that's the price we have to pay. From what I've seen by dev. camera, I'm pretty satisfied with the quality and new tricks used by the mapping team. One interesting thing is that hidden roads for Iberia were released in Open Beta 1.40 in February, two months before Iberia was released. So, there is a probability that West Balkans is not as far away as we might think.

Also, we are at that stage where Pavel said that sectors are coming to the base game, so we might be entering the final stage of testing and polishing.

[Aziz]

Perhaps the wind farm could be a delivery destination? It's the largest in Serbia.

I did notice a turn into a long dirt road that ended up in what looked like wind turbine construction place. All in vast flat area full of fields. My guess? There will be a turbine blade to deliver.
Can't tell where it was though. But I appreciated the drawing distance, that is something you don't see in the middle of nowhere in ATS. It's just fields going forever.

[Adriatic Sea Team]

Northern Serbia, between border with Romania and Pančevo.

[ninjawarrior1x3]

@oldmanclippy
Well, 8 of them have checkpoints and 2 of them (Hungary-Slovenia and Italy-Slovenia) don't, so I'm not sure if SCS would count them. (And SCS also mentioned about 3 border crossings within the Schengen zone before Croatia joined Schengen. And my map already has 4 of those, which leads me to think they're only counting crossings with checkpoints).

Also, Pécs and Szeged were added in a separate update in 2015.

@Aziz
I wonder how many depots Belgrade will have, assuming all of them are included as part of Belgrade. For comparison, Madrid and St Petersburg jointly hold the ETS2 record for most depots with 12 each.

[oldmanclippy]

@oldmanclippy
Well, 8 of them have checkpoints and 2 of them (Hungary-Slovenia and Italy-Slovenia) don't, so I'm not sure if SCS would count them. (And SCS also mentioned about 3 border crossings within the Schengen zone before Croatia joined Schengen. And my map already has 4 of those, which leads me to think they're only counting crossings with checkpoints).

Also, Pécs and Szeged were added in a separate update in 2015.

Oops yeah 2015 not 2013 then my bad. Still a long time ago.

I think you've got the border count mixed up though. There are 10 crossings in general (not specific to stopping/not stopping), and 3 of the physical borders between countries are Schengen. The latter I finally figured out what they meant because it can't be 3 road crossings so it must be 3 country borders on a map. Italy -> Slovenia, Austria -> Slovenia, and Hungary -> Slovenia. But like you said there's 4 road crossings from Schengen to Schengen. So it must mean country borders in general. And here's what they said about the 10:

Part of this project also includes the creation of 10 border crossings between existing countries in Euro Truck Simulator 2 which are Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Austria and Italy. Three of these borders are part of the Schengen area and do not require stopping.

If border crossing only means ones where there are checkpoints, then that means that there would be 12 total inter-DLC crossings, but I just don't see where those missing 2 would come from. They would have to add 2 of the following, not including what we've seen in the open beta:

Hungary to Slavonia
Iron Gate I
Blagoevgrad area

The only one I could see them adding at this point is Hungary to Slavonia (although I think it's probably coming after release if ever) since Iron Gate 1 is pretty much ruled out, and there's no sign that they're preparing to add Blagoevgrad either. And that would only get us 11 total inter-DLC crossings. So I think 10 is the right number, so I don't think the blog was only counting crossings with checkpoints.

...

Won't we have 3 non-checkpoint crossings? Unless trucks have to stop at Spielfeld/Sentilj too?

[krmarci]

I wonder what a Budapest-Osijek trip will look like...

[ninjawarrior1x3]

@oldmanclippy
Ah okay. Thanks for clarifying that up. I think I might have seen someone else talking about that one earlier and got confused. So this brings my tally up to 21 border crossings with 9 more border crossings between WB countries still to be seen.
You don't have to stop at Spielfeld but there is a physical checkpoint structure there unlike at the Italian or Hungarian borders with Slovenia.

I was initially thinking that the area around Trieste should have 2 crossings (one for eastbound travellers and one for southbound travellers), however that might not be the case. The H5/NSA326 seems like the better road to have now that we know Koper is coming and we therefore need a direct route between the 2 port cities which the A34/H4 would not have given us.

I do think that the completed A5 extension north of Osijek and into Hungary as the M6 needs to be added in a future update. Perhaps the best time to do this would be alongside the rework of Hungary, as they would have a blank canvas to work on anyway so that they can redo the road network as a whole as well as the cities themselves. In the meantime, prepare for longer detours when delivering to Osijek (especially from the north).

[oldmanclippy]

@krmarci I think at launch, Budapest to Osijek will be pretty rough. Either take the M7 or the M5 and then loop back around to Slavonia. My theory is that they are waiting for the Vc corridor to be complete before extending the M6.

Does anyone know the status of the Preljina-Pozega section of the A2 in Serbia? The most recent article I can find is this that said it was scheduled to be finished in 2022, but it sounds like they were having issues making the tunnels https://www.srbija.gov.rs/vest/en/17036 ... y-2022.php

[ninjawarrior1x3]

@oldmanclippy
I've also found Nature #13 in the hidden roads at this location:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/U5rYtGR1qZS9QLit7