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While previously talking about the sculpture monuments of Russia on our blog, we have purposefully left out a very specific type of these structures. Let’s take a look at why you should always be on the lookout for any interesting entrance monument in the upcoming Heart of Russia DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2!
Entrance monuments are unique structures most often made of concrete, or they can be variously decorated signs or inscriptions. Their main purpose is to indicate the entrance of a city, which is a type you will most commonly pass by in this expansion. Every city will make its best effort to let you know you are officially entering their administrative area. Speaking of which, these monuments also serve as markers of three important Russian administrative divisions - oblast, okrug, raion.
Perhaps the most important one out of the three is the structure indicating the border of a so-called oblast (province/region), which is a type of federal subject of Russia, that serves as a first-level administrative division. Another use includes marking an administrative okrug (district), which involves outlining a district inside a city, which is sometimes divided into smaller units - raions.
It looks like even with a slight GPS malfunction, no trucker should get completely lost in the Heart of Russia map expansion. And if you cannot wait to pass by numerous of these entrance monuments and signs, make sure to add the DLC to your Steam Wishlist to show us how excited you are to be able to drive through this fascinating country!
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It’s time to reveal another new industry arriving in the upcoming Texas DLC for American Truck Simulator. And once again, as is often the case with this state, it’s going to be something big! Let’s take a look at the Cotton Industry and explore what makes the local production unique.
Texas produces more cotton than any other state in the entire U.S., with roughly 40% of the country’s total production. The fields are located mostly northwest and southeast, covering more than nine million acres, which is an area equivalent of approximately 14,000 square miles (36,259 square kilometers). Thanks to this, you will have an opportunity to drive past these fields, which will offer a characteristic view of oil extraction machines or wind turbines being surrounded by an incredible amount of white cotton plants.
The beginnings of cotton production can be traced all the way back to 5500 BC and it is amazing to see how far it has come in the modern age. This progress has mostly been achieved by the development of the cotton gin, which is a machine used for processing cotton. The final material has a large variety of uses, for example in the textile industry. It is perhaps thanks to its flexible utilization, that cotton is the second-highest ranked commodity based on the market value in Texas.
It seems that the cotton industry is truly an important part of the overall economy of The Lonestar State. And if you cannot wait to drive past the vast and iconic fields, make sure to add the Texas map expansion to your Steam Wishlist, so you can show us how excited you truly are. Also, make sure to stay in touch with all the latest news, as we still have a lot of information to share with you in regards to this massive state!
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The Game Moderation Team is responsible for moderating the servers to ensure that everyone plays by the rules and can enjoy their time. We have not shared what goes on behind the scenes in this team often, which may have been a breeding ground for common misconceptions such as that we do not do enough work or that we are barely present on the servers. This blog provides an insight into the core activities of the Game Moderation Team in 2021.
Report systems
In TruckersMP, we have two separate report systems: the web report system and the game report system. The game report system is used to report users directly in the game but does not guarantee a review. As such, game reports can time out after a while. In order to accommodate users to push particular situations for a guaranteed review by one of our staff members, they can utilise the web report system; however, they must record and provide their own evidence. We regularly receive comments from users that they are unhappy about their game reports being timed out. We understand that this is not an ideal situation, but it is a necessary means to keep things manageable around here.
In 2021, our team received 287K web and 1.1 million (!) game reports. We are talking about 1.4 million reports in total, in just one year. It is practically impossible to review all those reports with a relatively small team consisting of volunteers, which is why we base our decisions on where our focus is needed the most. In the first half of 2021, our focus was mainly on the web report system as we experienced extremely high pressure on that system. This pressure eased during the summer; during the rest of the year, we were therefore able to shift our focus towards game reports and an increased in-game presence. In total, we reviewed all 287K web reports and 195K game reports last year.
Bans and appeals
The total of 482K reviewed reports, in addition to live moderation on the servers, resulted in a total of 307K bans. Of those, 169K bans were issued through the website and 138K in-game. Our staff members received 107K ban appeals, of which 5% were accepted. This figure is shockingly low and we regularly receive signals from our staff members that appeals are based on improper grounds. A large number of appeals are solely based on pointing fingers to brothers, sisters or even pets; or are used to say sorry or to ask for another chance. Please keep in mind that when submitting an appeal, your appeal has to be informative, detailed, and contain sufficient grounds and possibly counter-evidence to explain why your ban is not correct. If you submit an appeal that does not meet our conditions or is very bland and lacks solid reasoning, it is unlikely that your appeal will be accepted.
Earlier this year, we reduced the total number of appeals per ban from 3 to 2, since third appeals barely ever made any practical difference apart from causing extra work. We ask players to make careful use of the rights that we offer, as abuse of those rights may result in systems becoming stricter in the long term. It would greatly benefit our staff members and the community if we could spend our time on more reports or employ more in-game presence instead of having to spend time on reading and replying to appeals that are based on improper grounds.
Server activity and the impact of Covid-19
The most activity on the servers, and thus also the busiest days of the week for the Game Moderation Team, are on the weekends. In 2021, we recorded a total playtime on our servers of 31.2 million hours (compared to 37.8 and 30.5 million hours in 2020 and 2019, respectively).
The server activities in 2020 and the first half of 2021 were elevated due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Many countries around the world took measures to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, such as working from home and total lockdowns. As a result of that, our team had to step up their game to address the extremely high pressure on the web report system. The most intense period of increased activity during the pandemic was between March 2020, when many countries around the world initiated a lockdown for the first time, and May 2021. May 2021 was a record-breaking month for our team with an all-time high of 40K web reports in one month and an all-time high daily record of 1,890 web reports on May 16th. In the image below, you can see an overview of the server activity and the pressure on the web report system during that period.
The peaks in April 2020, July 2020, November 2020 through January 2021, and May 2021 correlate with the peaks in the globally reported confirmed Covid-19 cases (confirmed by data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at the John Hopkins University). This may be explained by social distancing as many countries initiate lockdowns as a response to those peaks, and lockdowns cause an increase in stay-inside activities such as gaming. Besides peaks, there are also some drops in activity visible, primarily during the highlighted downgrade periods. When SCS Software releases a new version of the games, our developers have to reverse engineer the updates to make them compatible for use on our servers, and during that time players are forced to downgrade their game version. Activity on the servers, and therefore the pressure on our team, quickly restores once the newest game version is supported.
Demographics and recruitment
The TruckersMP community is very diverse with players coming from countries all over the world. Although our team primarily operates in English, we offer support for a large variety of languages by hiring users from all parts of the world. In addition to that, we receive great support from other staff members who help us with translations. This ensures that we can deal with reports that contain foreign languages and it helps us communicate with players when they are not proficient in English. Our Game Moderation Team (as of the 1st of January) is globally represented by 105 team members from 33 different countries across all continents (with the exception of Antarctica, as we have not hired any penguins yet). Game Moderation Team members are aged 24 years old on average, ranging from 17 to 50 years old. Moreover, they average 1.5 years of experience as a moderator.
Team members come and go on a frequent basis and as such, recruitment campaigns are frequently held. In 2021, there were three recruitment campaigns for the Game Moderation Team: February, May, and December. We unfortunately often have to disappoint many applicants given the large interest in our team and the strict requirements and expectations. In 2021, we received 1,556 applications (data from the ongoing December campaign is not included). Of those, 114 (7.3%) candidates were invited to an interview and 57 (3.7%) were eventually accepted and onboarded to our team. This gives you an impression of how many applicants do not make it through the selection process. If you are interested in joining the Game Moderation Team, please keep an eye on the recruitment page.
Concluding remarks
As you can see, the Game Moderation Team has not been sitting still in 2021. With our team of dedicated volunteers, we are working hard to review as many reports as we can. Unfortunately, we cannot deal with all game reports simply because the influx of new reports is extremely high on that system. As a community member, you can do your part and help us reduce the workload for our team by not reporting every minor incident to us. Not every incident has to be punished and can also be resolved by yourself by recognising that players sometimes make mistakes. Our goal is to let players enjoy their time on the servers whilst ensuring that they play by the rules. Let us cherish that goal as a community.
Looking forward, in the future we will have one integrated report system that will make it easier for us to moderate the servers and review reports more efficiently. Our lead Game Developer briefly talked about that system in an earlier blog a few months ago. Moreover, we are also studying a new ban system which is intended to standardise bans; this will increase consistency, fairness, and transparency among the bans that we issue. More information about that will follow once we have designed, developed, and implemented the necessary changes.
We hope this blog has provided a meaningful perspective of what the year 2021 meant to the Game Moderation Team and that it has resulted in a broader understanding of what the team is capable of doing in a year. 2022 will be a year with new challenges and opportunities and our team will continue working on keeping the servers safe to the best of our ability.
Drive safe and enjoy your journeys!
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Welcome to Ukiah, California, a northern California city with a small-town charm, an inviting downtown and local industries. As an already existing city in American Truck Simulator, you may have delivered here a few times before, but you're about to see this old city in a new light!
As part of the California Rework project, Ukiah along with several other cities will be receiving an update, bringing new assets, textures, and updates to surrounding road networks. One of the most noticeable changes to Ukiah is the introduction of a new industry!Ukiah is one of many areas in California known for its vineyards and wine production. Dotted with numerous small vineyards, the Ukiah Valley region has perhaps the deepest grape growing roots in the County. With the rework of Ukiah, players will be able to deliver essential equipment and produce to and from one of the vineyards located in the city.
On your travels in Ukiah, you can discover what makes one of the smallest cities in California a popular destination for locals and visitors alike. Ukiah also has a new neighbour, The settlement of Hopland! Curious explorers might also find a small secret road they can use to create a local shortcut. No matter your reason for visiting, we are sure you will enjoy all that Ukiah will have to offer in this future update.Want to learn more about our plans for the California rework project, as well as what the future holds for the state and beyond? Read more at our dedicated, read more at our latest California Dreamin' Development Insight blogpost. Like what you see? You can look forward to more of these blog posts highlighting cities being reworked in the California rework project and we can't wait to share more with you!
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Time goes by so fast and our Christmas Toys of Yesteryear event must now, just like the most wonderful time of the year, unfortunately, come to an end. In true holiday fashion, drivers from all across the world have tirelessly participated in delivering gifts in both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator.
With brightly-decorated Christmas gift trailers and festive painted trucks, you set out on December 16th to deliver Christmas cargo and hit milestones with the help of our in-game tracking icons or deliveries tracker at WorldofTrucks.com. We hope the theme of vintage toys and our desire to share the magic with you by offering them as nostalgic gifts have brought out the best possible memories and the sense of the true holiday spirit.
Once again, the collective strength of the #BestCommunityEver has produced incredible final numbers, so let’s take a look at how you all faired throughout the duration of this special event.
Absolutely amazing work truckers! We are truly impressed by your effort. After all, apart from showing individual willpower by earning the special decorative lighting for truck cabs, the power of the #BestCommunityEver has prevailed in a very short time, unlocking all the reward tiers for unique cabin accessories. Thank you all for participating, you can all be proud of yourselves and your fellow truckers!
You have also flooded our social media with hundreds and hundreds of posts using the hashtag #XmasToysOfYesteryear. It was great seeing truckers from every corner of the world take part in the event and share their experience with us. We are grateful for you letting us know about your progress via screenshots, videos, or simply by writing a couple of kind sentences!
We also appreciate you taking the time and visiting our special Live Stream dedicated to this event. We have enjoyed hanging out with you all and seeing your excitement in the live chat over at Twitch and Youtube, and we hope our game designer Gavin will grace us with his presence once again with something unique and new sometime in the future!
To every driver who took to the roads and delivered gifts in this event, once again, thank you! It brings a lot of joy to our team to know how much you enjoy these events, and we will do our best to always make them feel unique and memorable. But until the next one is ready for you, we’ll see you on the road!
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Apart from being a country that is full of interesting locations and well known for its rich historical heritage, Russia also boasts a strong and self-sufficient economy. That is why it is hardly a surprise that in the upcoming Heart of Russia DLC we will introduce a brand new economy complex - the Wagon Factory.
The Wagon Factory is going to be a unique economy depot featured in the upcoming map expansion. In total, drivers will be able to find 3 such manufacturing plants in Russia. One is located in the city of Tikhvin, another one in Saransk, and the third one is in the outskirts of Moscow. Interestingly, this depot is going to be one of the few from the economy category which you will be able to directly drive into.
These locations will contain numerous assembly lines that in reality produce tons of metal casting products and wheelsets, along with the construction of thousands of wagons per year.
There’s still a lot of information to explore and present to you in regards to the Heart of Russia DLC. The best way to stay in touch with all the latest updates and news is to add the expansion to your Steam Wishlist, so make sure to press the button and show us how excited you are for everything this update will bring!
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While Montana’s national parks, vast forests, and untamed wilderness areas are some of the finest offerings of the local nature, proper truckers have to remember the reason for their journey whilst admiring the scenery. Today, we are delighted to share with you screenshots of several depots and information about the new industries arriving in the upcoming Montana DLC for American Truck Simulator.
Waste Transfer Station
A transfer station is a building or processing site used for temporary deposition, consolidation, and aggregation of waste. This station is used for sorting of the waste to plastic, glass, or paper, and then all of these materials move on for recycling, or they return to different factories to be used in production.
Truck Trailer Service
Services for truck trailers are an important part of every trucker’s life since inevitably every driver has to visit these areas sooner or later. But repairs and parts will not be your only focus while visiting, as you will also be tasked to haul numerous materials to and from some of these locations.
Great Falls Airport
The Great Falls International Airport is a public/military airport southwest of central Great Falls. The Federal Aviation Administration records say that the airport had an incredible number of 155,204 passenger boardings in 2010. This area will be represented by a large storehouse in the game and the drivers will be able to haul many characteristic materials.
Talc Factory
Many of you may be familiar with the mineral known as "talc". It can be crushed into a white powder that is most commonly referred to as "talcum powder". Most of this material is used in Montana in the production of paper, paints, and coatings, as well as the making of plastics, rubber, and ceramics. With such a wide variety of final products, it is hardly a surprise you will be able to haul to and from a couple of these factories.
Sugar Plants
Sugar is made from cane and sugar beets. The latter is heavily harvested on enormous local farms, which have produced billions of tons of these plants in the span of the last couple of decades. Converting sugar beets into sugar is a complicated process, which is then followed by a distribution of the final, and additional, materials. These additional cargos will include, for example, betain or carbon dioxide gas.
Grain Elevators
Montana is known for producing high-quality wheat and barley, and grain elevators are large granaries used for storing these materials. You will realize how important these areas are for the local economy while driving on the US-2 highway, which is surrounded solely by fields for several miles.
Electricity Network Service
The energy company located in these services is responsible for installing and maintaining various kinds of electrical equipment, including generators of various sizes. It does not produce this equipment but stores it. The company then distributes the generators to neighborhoods, ranches, stock auctions, depots, and Electric Substations, which is an area for direct installation of the generators.
Silane Gas
Silane is a flammable gas that is pyrophoric, which means that once it’s released into the air, it can ignite without an ignition source. This makes the production and transportation of silane gas an extremely complicated and dangerous matter.
Landscape Supplies
These areas will contain gardening supplies including plants, flowers, trees, gravel, stones, rocks, paving, fences, grass, and fertilizers.
Although these screenshots depict "work in progress" depots, we hope you are still intrigued by what is to come for this map expansion. If so, make sure to add Montana DLC to your Steam Wishlist. We still plan to share with you a few new industries in the future, so stay in touch to not miss out on anything interesting.
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As the world’s largest country, Russia has vast and various landscapes to explore. Driving there is an experience in itself too, as you’ll encounter all types of road, from slick highways to bumpy dirt roads. In our upcoming Heart of Russia DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2, our team has been hard at work to replicate some of these road networks.
During the early research phase of Heart of Russia, which has been on-going since the release of 'Beyond the Baltic Sea', many of the roads highlighted for the road network of this DLC were quite old and very well used. However since that time, local map sources were updated which allowed us to bring in some recent changes, which we have replicated virtually to bring the most up-to date road network possible.
Our teams have also taken a new approach for a lot of road assets in the 'Heart of Russia' DLC, such as bridges, railings and curbs; which are bigger and denser. Traffic signage have also been a particular focus for our teams too, as there is quite the variety of them in Russia. Besides the standard road signs on poles, we encountered new challenges, such as hanging signs, dynamic warnings, new horizontal signage, unique railway crossings and many more.
Whilst Russia maybe known for its very well-used roads, the truth is that most of the major road connections intended for truck transport are in good condition; especially around major cities such as Moscow, which are very well maintained. One type of Highway that drivers will often find themselves driving on are Russian federal highways, which are owned and maintained by the government as they are of regional and intermunicipal importance for the country and economy.This does not mean, however, that we have not encountered completely different situations in other areas. Prefabs, textures and assets have been especially adapted to the various roads conditions found across this vast country. Our teams have also focused on creating a better ratio between local roads and highways too. Drivers will find themselves often routing onto local roads rather than on a highway, as smaller roads make up a majority of the road network in Russia. You can also expect to find quite a few dirt roads too! Just be sure to keep an eye out, as these tricky roads are often used by local traffic too.
Our teams have focused on bringing lots of unique and small details to the road network in Heart of Russia, which we hope is evident from the screenshots in this blog. We cannot wait for you to explore them all for yourselves! We hope you enjoyed this first look at some of the roads that will be featured in the Heart of Russia DLC. If you did, then consider adding to add Heart of Russia to your Steam Wishlist. Огромное спасибо! -
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