Transport Tycoon Forums

Hey guys, I've had my eye on this game (OpenTTD) for a while now and I'm really enjoying. After reading the tutorial and wiki extensively I've got a pretty large transport network set up, but I still have some more advanced questions that I'd appreciate answers too.


1. I'm playing in the subarctic climate and I'm wondering, what is the best way to distribute food to cities you want to have grow? I've been using food trucks and for one city that was fairly out of the way even aircraft (sometimes at negative profit), but at best they only seem to provide a food delivery every other month. Would I notice substantially higher growth if I could get food reliably transported every month? Is there a better way to distribute a little food from one plant to several different towns?

2. I'm in the mid nineties and after noticing monorails become available in 1999, and thought that it would be a good alternative to my rather pain to manage bus networks in my major metropolitan area (one central city with about 10,000 people and a few others between 500-3000 people). After just starting a quick game in 2050 to see how the game evolves, I noticed monorails are no longer available. Are they even worth getting, seeing as they seem to be eclipsed by maglevs?

3. It seems to me that after the first few decades after you develop some cities, conventional one way transport routes (I.e. coal to a power plant) quickly gets overshadowed by simple passenger routes, as cities begin to generate tons of passengers and mail that can keep several full trains busy, and as they can pick up cargo both ways, are far more profitable. Am I missing something about industries, and if not is there any way to change the cargo prices to make industrial transport more competitive?

4. Is there any way to make days last longer? At the 45 year mark or so, I'm having a hard time keeping everything up and running with replacing vehicles and dealing with changes that make routes unprofitable, let alone expand. Just increasing the length of a day from around 2-4 seconds would make things much more manageable, doubling the real time that it take vehicles to be replaced, and perhaps helping with my first problem as it will be much easier to make food deliveries every month. Other than a much longer game, is there any other side effects that I haven't thought about in doing this, if possible?

4. You need the daylenght patch.

Yes, that does seem to be what I'm looking for, thank you. Is that sort of like a beta for a future release of OTTD or what? Will it work on my current save?

Patches require to compile OpenTTD from source. Often, like in this case, the result will be incompatible to official OpenTTD versions as all people need the exact same version to play jointly on a server. Savegames made with such patched version also cannot be loaded with official OpenTTD versions anymore either.

_________________

OpenTTD: manual | online content | translations | Wanted contributions and patches
#openttdcoop: blog | wiki | public server | DevZone
DevZone - home of the free NewGRFs: OpenSFX | OpenMSX | OpenGFX | Swedish Rails | OpenGFX+ Trains|RV|Industries|Airports|Landscape | NML

1. If your aim is to supply almost every town with food, I think it is good to use trucks. Usually I try to find a food processing plant above the snowline, supply it with lots of grain and livestock, and then distribute the food to nearby towns. Or if those towns are further away, it may be a good idea to set up a feeder service by building a train station above the snowline, transporting the food there and then picking it up and transporting it to the towns by trucks.

2. Monorails don't become obsolete, at least if you're playing with the default vehicle set. The default monorail engines are available indefinitely.

3. If you provide good service to industries, their production will increase on the long run. See http://wiki.openttd.org/Game_mechanics#Industry_production.

Thanks for your reply.

1. Okay, that is pretty much what I've been doing, but I haven't noticed a lot of results. Is there anything else I could transport besides food and passengers to help with population growth?

3. Yes I read that page. While I'll admit I don't have that many good ratings (as it seems hard to keep a rating up with without providing a lot more transport supply than you need, causing your trains to wait for cargo), my main concern is that as passenger trains can pick up cargo both ways, that freight trains basically have to make twice as much money in one trip as a passenger train does, and I don't seem to notice that at the current value of the cargoes. Thus if I had a limitless supply of say coal and passengers the passengers would still be more profitable due to them getting picked up at both stations, while the freight train needs to return empty.

Since the percentage of cargo that you get from industries/town houses is directly related to the rating you have, it is a good idea to provide that extra amount of transport to improve your rating. That will increase the amount of produced cargo/passengers that you will get to your station.

To grow towns (from memory):
- Provide each month the cargoes that are mandatory for town growth
- Have at least 5 stations with frequent service in the town

See the game mechanics for the exact specification. The amount of cargo delivered is not relevant here.

_________________
My OpenTTD contributions (AIs, Game Scripts, patches, OpenTTD Auto Updater, and some sprites)
Junctioneer (a traffic intersection simulator)

Towns grow very slowly on their own. Providing the mandatory cargoes and loading/unloading other cargoes to up to 5 stations will increase the town growth enormously. See The OpenTTD Wiki.

_________________
Coder of the Dutch Trackset | Development support for the Dutch Trainset

So it is generally better to have excess capacity as they will eventually be filled due to the increase in production. Thanks.

I did read that wiki page before Transportman, but I wanted a little bit more explanation/advice, hence why I came here to see what the veteran players usually do. For example that thing about 5 stations. Does that mean that it simply counts the number of frequently used stations, that it counts the cargoes acquired by up to 5 different stations when determining growth, etc. In the first one the number of stations is important, the second its ultimately the volume of cargo that drives growth.

_________________
Correct me If I am wrong - PM me if my English is bad
AIAI - AI for OpenTTD

Okay, that's kind of interesting. I've been preferring to join my stations together when possible to reduce the number of random stations I have to deal with, but now I see that's really not a good idea to join stations at all (at least until you get 5 stations in a city). I guess the next question then is do multiple stations say take from each others passenger pools? Or do they go to the highest rated stations like most cargo?

If stations share a catchment area, the two stations with the highest rating get the cargo (passengers are just cargo in OpenTTD). The amount each station takes, depends on the rating. If you want to grow a town, you can make a temporary bus service until the town has a size you want.

_________________
Coder of the Dutch Trackset | Development support for the Dutch Trainset

Some random thoughts on multiple station in one town:
you can have a setting like this:
- one truck stop in the city to receive food
- one inter-city train station for passengers (and possibly mail) - this can be a fast train like turbo train, monorail, etc
- local passenger service (either train or bus), feeding (transferring) the passengers to the above mentioned inter-city station

With that, you will easily have 5 stations or more. And use of such tools as train/road vehicle groupings, shared orders, etc, managing your vehicles should be doable.

In order to make industrial hauling more competetive it is recommended to dual haul cargo.

This means that at station A you pick up coal, Deliver it at B, Pick up more at B1 (on the same end of the line, and drop it off at A1.

This allows your trains to always be full going down the mainline.

...its also a good way to dominate competition servers

_________________
"Pumping out awesome"

http://www.artforcestudios.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/KippurCatArts
Openttd 101: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAriYewKvj8

Thanks for the replies guys, I think I understand these now. But while I'm here I figure I may post some of my questions about newGFXs (if this is the wrong forum to ask about them please redirect me).

1. Is there any page that breaks down the major newGFXs? I looked at the GFX forum on this site and already tried a few from the in game downloader, but a list of the popular newGFXs would be a great help for new players, as the sheer amount of options and acronyms make it hard to go through.

2. Regardless of the answer to 1, is there any GFXs you would recommend? I started out trying the North American Renewal Set (NARS), and liked it A LOT, but it disabled monorails and seemed to have limited inner city transport options (which granted North America does). I'd be especially interested in ones that add trains to the default set or that have a good balance of all train types.

Here's the website that the in-game downloader is based off of. Note that downloads are listed by number of times downloaded (and thus popularity).
http://bananas.openttd.org/en/newgrf/

I would recommend the 2cc set, Metro Subway Set, and US Train Set. Note that at least one of these is not on the website/downloader and must be searched for on google. It's quite easy to find, though.

_________________
Like my avatar? See my screenshot thread
Chill's Patchpack, an awesome collection of OTTD patches

Mind that those numbers are since last update. So when a new version is published, the counter is reset to zero.



A set that builds on the basis of the default vehicles and enhance them is OpenGFX+ Trains. The Tropic Refurbishment Set for tropic climate is also an interesting set that is not overcrowded by options.

_________________
My OpenTTD contributions (AIs, Game Scripts, patches, OpenTTD Auto Updater, and some sprites)
Junctioneer (a traffic intersection simulator)

Exactly. Thus the count given there is rather an age indicator than a popularity indicator. If you e.g. look at hte download count of NewGRFs uploaded at the same date, you'll find that the download count is approx. linear with time and much less dependent on what kind of NewGRF it actually is. What DOES matter is whether a NewGRF (or AI) is compatible with current stable OpenTTD or only nightlies.

_________________

OpenTTD: manual | online content | translations | Wanted contributions and patches
#openttdcoop: blog | wiki | public server | DevZone
DevZone - home of the free NewGRFs: OpenSFX | OpenMSX | OpenGFX | Swedish Rails | OpenGFX+ Trains|RV|Industries|Airports|Landscape | NML

I'd suggest the newgrfs by Pikka, they are are well put together and usually well balanced. They also make you think about which engines to choose for certain applications, especially if you use higher running cost settings etc.

_________________
Don't panic - My YouTube channel - Follow me on twitter (@XeryusTC) - Play Tribes: Ascend

OpenTTD: manual #openttdcoop: blog | wiki | public server | NewGRF pack | DevZone