The thing about road 1x is that it's impractical to start with 2T jumps if you want tight spacing, and if you start with 1T jumps, it's impossible to avoid annoying ratio jump discontinuities even if you are totally non-limited by cog count.
You could solve the problem by doubling the sizes of all the sprockets, but that's impractical with a half-inch-pitch chain. You could switch to itsy-bitsy chain pitch, but then the costs would shoot way up and sprocket life would be reduced.
With the capabilities of modern derailleurs, the flexibility of modern chains, and with e-shifting and synchro-shift becoming a thing, personally I'd like to see a modern take on half-step.
50-46
11-13-15-18-21-25-29-34-40-46-54
But, some people might still say that you lose the smooth shift pattern at the outer edges if you want to avoid cross-chaining.
SO.
Wild solution: Switch the chainrings around. Put the big ring on the inside and the little ring on the outside!
46-50
11-13-15-18-21-25-29-34-40-46-54
Even, reasonable-chainline shifting all the way from 46-11 (~110GI) to 50-54 (~24GI). 20 gears with step sizes of around 8%.
