Update Speculation thread

Im convinced they will make spearleaf island bigger / add loads of new stuff to it simply because it would be really weird if a 2+2 lane, 20 story tall half kilometer long suspension bridge with a metro link was built to an island that only has one oil refinery and a little lighthouse on it

 

and a big port
honestly its probably a main shipping hub

 

But even that wouldn't make sense, as there is a plethora of coastline on the mainland that would make more sense for ports to be on. It's one of those things that the more you look into it the less sense it makes, almost wanna give it its own thread just going over how little sense it makes lol

 

deeper water so it can have bigger ships
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makes perfect sense

 

Live in a coastal town myself which is the reason the island caught me so off guard, the water in by the mainland shoreline is indicated to be deep enough to allow for the passage of large-draft cargo vessels due to the height of the suspension bridge, which would be made at such a height only if it was needed to allow for vessels below to pass by, in any other case a bridge lower to the ground with multiple concrete supports instead of a suspension bridge (which also is designed to allow for the widest possible area between towers to allow for ships to have extra room to maneuver below them) would be more fiscally sensible, think the low-slung bridges in shallow waters like the Florida Keys vs the deep water suspension bridges found in places like NYC or San Francisco which have heavy vessel traffic passing below them

Further, to place the port on an island and not the land directly behind the island makes even less sense when considering sheltered waters. Ports generally tend to exist in sheltered waters, ie: any water that isnt directly exposed to open ocean or far enough away from open ocean to mitigate its effects. During a storm, ships docked on the far side of the island, exposed to the sea would face much harsher conditions than those inbetween the island and the mainland, as the island acts as a wavebreak stopping any large waves aimed at the docks. This isnt such a problem in the modern era due to the much stronger equiptment in use but still a prevalent problem and would have drastically effected where the port would be placed when original plans for it were being drafted (belasco city lore oooooo how fun)

Finally, dredging shoreline to allow for deeper vessels to pass through is not an uncommon practice, in fact, most of the great lakes are connected by dredging up the surface of the riverbeds between them to allow for passing ships to go through, I had also lived near the Detroit river for some time and got to witness first hand how manmade shipping channels can work.

Long ass post but basically td;dr: Spearleaf Island port makes zero sense

 

Pretty much all of West Coast issues (like the stupid useless highway and too small suburbs) are just due to the fact that originally it was made to look cool and be a mish-mash of everything, and not to be a drivable realistic place where career mode would take place. Krallopian directly said this somewhere in the Career thread. So now they're just working with what they have and adjust it little by little, but even then there's only so much you can do without restarting the map from scratch. The bridge was there already so why not reuse it.

 

Yeah no, which is sort of a shame because there was a post somewhere (long time ago though) stating how they had put a good deal of time into trying to plan out parts of the city to be realistic by being like 'oh we want to use realistic street planning and development to make it feel authentic' or something along those lines. Either way it would still make sense to see some sort of expansion onto spearleaf, or at least see its density grow to have enough of a population importance to make it seem a little more reasonable.

 

they could probably make it more economically needed by putting some oil pumps there making it so the island just happens to have easy access to oil

 

I think they could extend some of the stuff like highways outside of boundaries. They don’t need foliage or any extra detail. I wish the highway on west coast was at least twice the length

 

Jungle Rock Island is one of those maps that could use some attention, or if not, even get merged by some other "Not-so used" map. i just think the cover / looks of the ma are kinda unappealing and the heavy vegetation around the map would that make that worse by not giving the player some good crashing areas to have fun in. so IMO they could make some area a bit emptier or add new area just like so mentioned. sure, some of those Beam movie makers use the map here and there, but for actual playing... the map is just a bit too crowded and doesn't really have that much cool / mention-able stuff for anyone to memorize, like every one knows West Coast by something like it's bridge system, or the city towers, ect. but not so much for JRI.
so it could use some "reworks" and tweaks here and there.

 

Jungle Rock is my third favorite because of the heavy vegetation. It helps sell it as a jungle… island. It wouldn’t be the same without its foliage. Landscapes across it vary and become equally as identifiable as places in West Coast.

Crashing stuff is best left on Gridmap V2 and whichever map it’s naturally suitable. Currently Jungle Rock acts as one of the best immersive places for relaxing and trail crawling. I’d be strongly against it being reformed.

 

Im mostly on the side of adding a whole new area and directing that just for creating high-speed crashes (or just an area for going super high speeds) witch could use a bit less vegetation (that new area), if gets added, like the vegetation level of ECUSA is pretty ideal for a whole new area IMO, to be fair, JRI used to be a military island used in WW2, according to the BeamNG lore atleast, so i would be no surprise if they make some areas (newly added one if they do) a bit emptier and less jungle-ish, sure, nature could do alot since that time, also because JRI is abandoned, but, the overall idea of having some bit emptier new area (witch could act as some militarized area during when JRI was in use and demonstrate such stuff) in some outer edges of the map would be pretty ideal to me. either way,i just said my opinion, and who's here to care about some random dude's opinion?

 

The FH5 Car Pass kinda sucked but a map pass would add a good amount more content than "here's a new car, play with it for 15 mins then forget about it".

Just an example/idea.
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Hehe, gotta love it when you make a solid point and they don't respond! (as of now)

 

Somewhat related: the thing that bothers me the most about WCUSA is the details. The development pattern is fine for the main map (considering its size), but the signage and older (development-wise) markings are either not used enough or rather nonsensical. I might do a write-up pointing everything out when I'm bored enough.

Both of those things were very on-point with ECUSA, even having routes numbered 1 and 2 is correct since it's inspired by Maine/NH.

 

Finally, the approval of mods has begun to work!

Several mods have appeared on the repo!

 

More than "Several" TBH. i've received 17 alerts of just mods being uploaded / updated in the past minute!

 

This will be a good sign.Developers can finally put more energy into game updates. Maybe on this lucky Tuesday, we will receive a teaser.

 

Ok I have a very precarious theory but hear me out:
If the Coding team has been working overtime to fix engine related issues in the game, does it mean the Art team got more time to work on something? Even though Tdev told us not to expect anything of .33, I'm pretty sure there will be an unexpected new vehicle or remaster that's not part of the T-Series.

 

technically if there were shouldn't we have already heard something about it?

 

I asked this some time ago and got a pretty definitive answer that it's not the case.