Random OpenTTD questions...

[CoRnJuLiOx]

Hey all, i've got a few questions i'd like to ask regarding some aspects of OpenTTD.

1. Is it possible to indirectly influence the growth of any town in the game (apart from funding new buildings and roads) simply by ferrying passengers to and from it, or shipping any of its products elsewhere?

2. Aside from cheating, is there any other way to influence the production of, say, a farm for example? I've currently got around 5 trains running a route (can't post screens of it right now..) from a farm to a factory, and only the first three get anything worth shipping. The rest get like a few items a piece, and i'm not to keen on setting them to "full load". It takes a long time.

[King of Prussia]

1. Yes, the growth rate of cities is influenced by the number of vehicles picking up/dropping off cargo within a certain radious of the city centre. Putting a little bus route from one side of town to the other is a good way to start cities growing fairly cheaply.

2. Delete one or more of your trains, why did you build five in the first place? Full load is generally best for non-passenger trains. I believe there is a patch floating around that increases resource output if you keep the transport ratings at a certain level.

[Vorn]

Using full load is the only way to balance the timing on trains without driving yourself bonkers. Currently your other trains are arriving too soon after another one of your trains to pick up any decent amount of cargo.

The optimal loading strategy is to use short trains on full load, just long enough that the second train arrives just before the first train finishes loading. This way, cargo is loaded immediately (so you don't lose any to platform delays), all available cargo is picked up, and your trains run on a semi-regular schedule, reducing jam-causing burst traffic.

Vorn

[DaleStan]

1. Yes, the growth rate of cities is influenced by the number of vehicles picking up/dropping off cargo within a certain radious of the city centre. Putting a little bus route from one side of town to the other is a good way to start cities growing fairly cheaply.

Close, but wrong. It's the number of stations in the city that were serviced in the previous month.

[CoRnJuLiOx]

Cool, thanks for the help. I guess I was over-anticipating how much cargo needed to be shipped when I built those trains.

[Haukinger]

You can use this patch. It makes production increases dependent on amount transported and increases overall production level.