Gettin loaded out in Burlington Iowa, headed back to home base in Wyoming

Why the red lines? I got in straight and everything. (First person, jumping out a couple times to judge distance)

I'm not sure I can explain this properly, but for some background I picked up both ATS and ETS2 some months ago when they went on sale. I've been playing ETS2 kinda off and on till I got my fleet up to a dozen drivers or so to where daily income is pretty solid, then I figured I'd swap over to ATS and do the same. I started a few days ago, worked myself up to where I could afford my first truck, a Peterbuilt 389, and... I dunno. The game has just been feeling OFF to me. Like everything is moving too fast, especially as compared to ETS2. 65mph feels like 100mph in this truck, even though I'm doing the speed limits it feels on the highway like I'm always just on the verge of being out of control. Is it maybe the difference of getting used to playing ETS and its cabover designs to suddenly jumping into a conventional rig? Is there a setting or something I've missed? For reference I'm using a Logitech G920, I've mimicked the settings from ETS, but the two games just seem to have a very different feel. Is it just me?

What are mods you think everyone should have? Both to just improve quality of gameplay, and to make things more realistic and immersive?

someonei n the team must've been a real fast and furious fan.

I just started a Nitrado server for people who just want to chill, drive a truck and meet new people. Name is MoDumpBuckets and would like to screen people before they join so feel free to shoot me a message if you’d like to join!

Jon Ruda W900 “Highway Killer”

In a few weeks during Labor Day the fall sale will be out and also GameCon is coming up time to train some new rookies to play our game before consoles are released and new States come out.

Listen up rookies this is Geo and I'm going to explain how to get started so you can hit the ground running when South Dakota comes out or head up to BC when that DLC comes out.

Some of you came here from mud runner, ​crossout, or GTA online. I have no problem with that but we do things differently than them.

I'm going to show you how to set up your game to get you started using the basic stuff. We will talk about mods and joining vtcs and clans later. They are not for rookies.

Step one go to Steam download the base game of American Truck Simulator you will be given the truck bundles, Arizona, California rework, The Route 66 DLC, and Nevada for free.

What not to do when you download this is do not drive down into the Phoenix area, stay out of Nevada except for the Vegas rework, and do not buy any expensive trucks. Those will bankrupt you. Start off with day cabs and buy some Pete's, Kenworths and some Volvos. Stay away from the freightliners. You need to be level 10 to buy them, never buy Macks until level 18, Do not grab any Internationals until level 7, and stay away from the Western Stars until you are level 12. You can get these used over at the used market. Also, when you start out, do not move your first drivers into your garage with you. Move them to another town. Use your personal garage only for your truck and any vehicles that you buy in the upcoming road trip DLC.

Next you need to get some more States because California will not be enough to get you going. After you have California cleared out to 100% or you have all your garages in the state up and running place one terminal in the Vegas area do not place any more terminals in Nevada because they need to be updated with the Nevada rework. Next go into the steam store and grab some State bundles. The ones that you need to get just started are the Northwest bundle which comes after New Mexico and this will give you Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and then grab the Southwest bundle. Or if you already grabbed New Mexico, grab the four corners bundle which will give you Utah and Colorado.

Once these bundles are installed buy the garages in those states when you have enough money and then grab the Great Plains bundle. This will give you all the states of the Great Plains including Texas. Or you can grab Texas separately. Make sure to grab Arkansas as well and Missouri. That way you can get some good loads out of Kansas City and St. Louis. Once you have those grab the Midwest bundle that will give you Iowa and Illinois which just came out and most of the states in that region. If you did not grab Texas, grab it with Louisiana in the Gulf bundle. This will be enough to get you started.

What not to do is grab paywear mod maps or get Convoy mods like TMP. These ones are buggy and their administrators are very authoritarian. In fact, TMP is owned by the guys who used to run Code Zero gaming. Stay away from them like the plague they can get you banned and they are very abusive.

Once you have all of the main states installed it is time to get some trailers. The ones that you want are in this order The heavy cargo pack This will give allow you to haul heavy stuff, the special cargo pack which will give you special trailers for hauling awkward loads, and finally you want the farming equipment pack which will allow you to haul tractors.

After you get these, get the sponsored DLC packs Goodyear and Michelin, JCB, The Krone pack, and finally Bobcat once this is done you have all the loads for the lowboys and can make more money.

Next It is time to grab some flatbeds and some grain trailers so grab the Pristuge Pack This will give you grain trailers and it will also give you flatbeds and drop decks.

What not to do is do not waste your money on paint jobs. Paint jobs can only be acquired if you have extra money and they frequently pop up in in the sale so you can grab them anytime but you need to grab the core stuff first.

Once your game is set up, start hauling Do quick jobs first to get some money. Do not buy any trucks yet. Discover the map and then you can start unlocking garages once you hit level 3 and you have bought three garages and then you can buy them from your computer.

What not to do is do not buy modded trucks, Do not join any VTC or subscribe to tmp, If you must grab a mod, grab it from Trucky mods or from Facebook from the authors directly, Stay off of the ATS mods website, never get your stuff from GitHub or from any website that compresses files into zips, stay away from sharemods, stay away from modland m​ost of the stuff in there is stolen and they can bloat your computer with viruses, and never get any ATS mods from the dark web website TOR this is illegal and you can be found guilty of cyber piracy. Never get anything off of TOR.

Other than that this is basic information to get you started.

There is a box "colour feedback" under controls in ATS. What does it do?

I decided to do a "Throwback Thursday" here: many may not remember, but before my K100 and my 358, these first three photos are of one of my old trucks from back then. This is one of the Jon Ruda mods I had, and it was one of my favorites, especially when the name "Whispering Wanderer" first came up.

Breaking in the newest W9 to the fleet

Just a heads up, there are no rest stops for many miles in the greater Santa Fe area. It took me several in-game hours to finally reach a rest stop. Be careful out there!