And my answers:
1\ No. Even if someone will make a game containing a bunch of much beloved classic trucks and even bigger map, I doubt the approach to simulation of truck's systems will be equally good.
2\ Because when I was a kid, my parents bought me a HT+HT2 disc with a first PC
. And if more seriously, I usually preferred other game genres and felt myself more as techie-geek than as driver, so ability to turn the truck into a real eye candy amazed me after a single peek. The admiration for a diverse cargo market and giant map have come much later.
3\
Softlab's Hard Truck and Hard Truck 2, then
SCS's HT:18WoS, then (much, much later) ETS/ATS. No more than two hundred hours in early games, and about 250 hours of ETS+ATS per year (I play them since autumn'16).
4\ I can only remember the lack of a CB radio, but ETSMP fixed this.
5\ Since I can't imagine driving in ETS without 900-degree wheel (it's one side of the coin) and really consider this game as a guilty pleasure (the opposite side), my choice was to buy heavy used G27 and upgrade it with a range-splitter knob — and that's all. No spending a lot of money for just a game.
6\ Tried a few trucks (mostly in ATS), but quickly returned to basic ones.
7\ Use the
car speed limits, disable fatigue — yes. Auto-parking, no fines, simplified truck control — no, don't ever think!
8\ In HT2 I liked diamonds (expensive and non-fragile), in ETS before 1.32 — machines from HPCP, later — tank-containers (I just love how they look
). In ATS — Dynamite The Almighty!
9\ Since SCS gave us a lot of freedom in realism options (I even can't remember another game with such a long list, maybe it can be only
IL-2 Sturmovik), I would like another one: ability to disable regional trailer restrictions. And I really miss the
.aac radio stream format — there are a plenty of my local radio stations, which I can't load to playlist.
10\ Not so different from what I saw in Youtubers' walkthrough of ETS. But in HT2 I usually did the opposite moves — the economic model was so bizarre, so not listening to common advices was more profitable.