Less trains?

[Taschi]

Hello guys,

I'm new here (but have played Locomotion and some other games in the genre before) and I have a question for you:

can you point me to some scripts / settings / NewGRFs that help me to get the number of trains in my network down?

In my current game (running from 1902, with the SBB vehicle pack, no FIRS/ECS) I pretty much need a two-track line for every single passenger line between two cities, and even with that I can't get all the passengers and mail transported, and if I want to get anywhere with my freight trains, they need two tracks on their own as well, which means I end up with a bunch of four-track lines running all over my map.

But I enjoy playing "realistically" (not using gamey tricks like block signals every three squares when my trains are 7 squares long, having lots of different vehicles in my network, having some single-track lines and some multi-track lines, as is fitting in a certain situation, using tracks for multiple lines), and watching my trains mingling in stations. With how much freight is generated with my current settings, I can't really do that - everything just clogs up.

Any recommendations on that?

Thanks in advance,
Taschi

[Transportman]

Everything in OpenTTD is scaled to get a playable game, but things are scaled differently. You try to play "realistic", but you hit the limitations of those scalings. Not really much you can do about it.

You might want to use timetables, you can get frequent drops with that, without having trains bunching up (unless your wait times are too low) and turning off CargoDist (if active) will reduce the cargo flow in your network.

[Alberth]

There are newgrfs that reduce passenger generation.
Also, an industry NewGRF like FIRS doesn't raise production over time. Using reduced industry density while generating the map helps too (as well as playing a normal map, like 256x256 or 256x512).

On the other hand, rather than trying to transport all, you can also decide to just concentrate on a few industry chains.
That should give you some room to max out performance.

[arikover]

If your town get too big too quickly, you can also try the 'Neighbours are important' or the 'Balanced City Growth' Game Scripts, which tends to slow down town growth dramatically.

Alternatively, you can select NewGRFs that offer high capacity vehicles, like: JapanSet (great commuter trains), Iron Horse (ther is a parameter to increase passenger capacity) or the Finnish Train Set (ultimate capacity for freight trains).

[leifbk]

As Alberth says, you don't have to transport everything in this game. You don't have to transport passengers at all if you don't want to. On the other hand, passenger transport is hugely profitable. But then again, profit isn't really what this game is about at all. Forget the High-score table, it's just a leftover from the original TTD and doesn't really tell anything about how you're doing.

Rule 1: Have fun

[Eddy Arfik]

I use a daylength patch that doesn't alter production levels to achieve this, with a factor 4 single tracks can be used efficient in many cases

[Taschi]

I use a daylength patch that doesn't alter production levels to achieve this, with a factor 4 single tracks can be used efficient in many cases

That sounds like a good idea, will give it a try.

Concerning the other suggestions: I use the SBB train set right now and would like to continue doing so because it is great and I like Switzerland, but might check out some of the suggested vehicle sets in other games. The capacity problems are mostly with passengers, I usually manage to get a couple of freight lines for on the same two-track rail line, only when I add passengers I need a second two-track rail line.

And I would just like to have situations where building a single-track line and putting two-carriage trains / short DMUs/EMUs on it is reasonable. That would make the game just a bit more challenging for me, I would need to think more before just blindly building the next two-track line with a bunch of full-length trains.

(I use a x5 size modifier for cities with a reduced number of cities to make up for that, because I prefer to have some places where I can build tramways right off the bat, because I like tramways and a bit of variety. So that might be part of the problem as well.)

Thanks, everybody!

[Panando]

In some cases ships can substitute for trains very effectively while greatly reducing micromanagement. For example in the squid pack the hovercraft carries 400 passengers (equivalent to a long passenger train), travels at about 80km/h on canals and the canal and docks are much more compact than railway junctions and stations. Furthermore canals and docks have infinity capacity - as ships don't participate in collision detection you can just add more and more ships without upgrading infrastructure.
The hovercraft is particularly nice because it is competitive with trains in both capacity and speed. However all ship kinds enjoy the benefits of non-congestion.

Cargo ships are a lot slower than trains, but can have very large capacity which essentially results in them moving as much cargo as a train per year, but enjoying the benefits of non-congestion.

And (newgrf) ships (generally) have another nice feature, they can refit to other cargo types for free. This means with pax you can just use 'refit to available cargo' to automatically balance the transport of passengers and mail. Cargo ships can also be used like this if you have several different cargo types moving between two stations, with such a setup you only need to add more ships, and don't need to worry about having the right kind of wagons, nor trains blocking each other.

Canals are not generally good for long distance. They are best used over shorter distances where LOTS of stuff has to be moved. On routes which are short enough that trains spend most their time just getting up to speed, consider using canal shipping instead.

Making this feel realistic is a separate challenge as IRL ships obviously totally do suffer from congestion. You might want to re-imagine canal-shipping as barges, conveyor belts, pipelines or even floating cargo down the river (in the case of logs).

[andythenorth]

Try Iron Horse grf with the capacity parameter set to "Excessive"?

I'm not sure if it's excessive enough mind - but try it and post in the Iron Horse dev thread if you think it's too small? I might increase the capacity multiplier for that setting...

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=71209