I've been rethinking Iceland and think it should be added eventually. I know Iceland probably has the lowest priority of all European countries, but allow me to make my plea.MandelSoft wrote:Probably not. What other significant freight destinations are there in Iceland but Reykjavik? I think we would have a hard time to actually select cities, because let's face it: can you name another big Icelandic city? Probably not...Purno wrote: Out of curiousity, are there any very, very, very long term plans for Iceland? I'm not sure how much cargo goes by truck IRL there, but it is a part of Europe. (And based upon pictures I've seen, it's a pretty landscape up there).
There's plans to expand further up north (northern Scandinavia), south (Spain, Italy) and east (Russia). And there's very long term plans in consideration to go further southeast (Turkey, Greece). By that time, all of Europe is covered. Except for Iceland. At the moment, Iceland is being considered to be ignored because of it's lack of any bigger cities. In this plea, I'll be doing a bit of research and eventually come up with a concept of a map.
Population
Iceland doesn't have a lot of population. This list on Wikipedia shows that Iceland's largest city has 120,000 citizens, and the 2nd largest only has 30,000. And those 'big' cities are all close to another, leaving the rest of Iceland relatively unpopulated. Of the European countries, it has the lowest population density of 3.1 pop/km². To compare; Russia has 8.42 pop/km² and Norway is the 2nd European country with the lowest density: 15.6 pop/km².
Freight
But this is a trucking game. We're hauling cargo, not people. Iceland's economy is largely based on the export of fish, fish products, aluminium and ferrosilicon. If we were to translate that into ETS2 industries, we'd need a few coastal fishing towns with food factories (EuroGoodies), an aluminium mine (Steinbruch) and chemical industry to process ferrosilicon. This schematic from Wikipedia shows Icelands other export products. There's a minor export of farm products, which allows a few eAcres farms to be placed.
Infrastructure
Wikipedia states Iceland has 13,000km of road, of which 8,000km are unpaved. These unpaved roads could be useful to make a few challenging routes. The main road is a ring road around the island, which connects most of the inhabited area of Iceland. The inner part is mainly unpopulated. The main transport hub is Keflavík International Airport which is located approx. 30km west of Reykjavík. Iceland has almost no railways, so all transportation needs to be done by road.
Size
Iceland has 100,250 km² of land, which makes it same size as Portugal (91,470 km²) or Bulgaria (108,489 km²). This means there's plenty of room and there's little space issues like in most other European countries.
Landscape
Wikipedia has some pictures which say more than 1000 words. Iceland's landscape is unique enough to offer a different view when trucking in ETS2.
Suggested concept map
https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit? ... dgxK_YG54A
To make this map, I started with a screenshot of the Czech Republic (77,000 km²) as a reference to the amount of roads and cities that'd fit into Iceland. Iceland's main road is a ring road, numbered "1". All bigger towns are located at or near that road. Unfortunately, most of Iceland big towns are locates near Reyjavík, so I left those out. All of the towns are coastal, and likely rely on fishing. Since there's no ETS2 industry which is based on fishing, I chose EuroGoodies as the most appropiate one. A few towns have an aluminium plant. I added chemical industry to those. Unfortunately I was unable to find where the raw aluminium is mined. I suspect the mines are more landinward. The southern coast of Iceland has no notable towns (apart from Árborg, but that's pretty close to Reykjavík). In order to make sure the southern road is being used, some remote industries should be added. Possibilitie are eAcres (farming), EuroGoodies (fishing) or Steinburch (aluminium mining).
Advantages and disadvantages
- Iceland is remote, any job to/from it will involve a lot of ferry time.
- Iceland is underpopulated and won't offer many cities and complex infrastructure.
+ Iceland will offer a few small villages and rural roads.
+ Iceland has a unique and varying landscape.
- Iceland is relatively unimportant and has a very low priority.
+ Iceland doesn't depend on other parts of the map, and can be made anytime.
+ Iceland inner lands could offer a rough and challenging terrain.
+ Iceland inner lands could be left out to save time.
- The ring road involves quite a bit of mapping only to connect a few villages.
+ It's possible to only include Reyjavík without doing the rest of Iceland.
Conclusion
Don't get me wrong. I don't expect you to start working on Iceland right now. I agree that all the other parts of Europe are more important, and I don't want to push the developers, who are doing this in their spare time. But I simply think it'd be a shame to ignore Iceland and to leave it out completely. Considering the quote of MantelSoft at the start of this post, it seems like the devs are having troubles to find reasons to include Iceland. I hope this bit of research helps them out with that. If there's anything else I can do, please let me know.
