Best Setup

[robnufc]

Hi, First time poster long time player

I was wondering with all the available downloads i know what i want just dont know what to download so i thought i would ask for help

So here goes:

New and old Industries

New graphics for all vehicles

Ai to use everything or as much as possible instead of just flooding the game with road vehicles

Make road vehicles harder to make so much money from

Make the ai dominate slower eg build up their company rounded

New Graphics for construction and industries

Whats the closest to this and any extra suggestions would be great

[Zuu]

Regarding AIs there are two comparisons on the wiki that might be of interest:

• http://wiki.openttd.org/Comparison_of_AIs
• http://wiki.openttd.org/AI:Test_AIs

[Eddi]

New and old Industries

try: (in order of complexity)
PBI
FIRS
ECS

New graphics for all vehicles

there's really too many to list. usually you would use a set that is most accurately trying to model the vehicles of your country.

[kamnet]

New and old Industries

I guessing "new" and "old" refer to certain time periods.

For industries before 1920, try FIRS. The only problem is that there's not a lot of great vehicles or trains to try to use the further back in time you go, so making a profitable game may be difficult. FIRS has a nice selection of industries that morph in look between 1920-1990, along with some new industries that come along as time marches into the 21st century to replace older industries (modern grain mill to replace windmill grain mill, steel plant to replace forge, waste collection & recycling, etc.).

ECS industries will operate before 1920, but they'll have mid-20th century graphics. Some of them will update into more modern designs, particularly the power plant (which accepts both coal and fuel oil) and the factories. Land-based oil pumps will start being phased out in the 1960s in favor of sea-based oil platforms.

[falconne]

I'm in the same boat. I'm new to the game and experimenting to figure out which combination of patches and newgrf's would give me the best game experience.

From what I've worked out so far, the best way to give the game more realism and more of an economic sim aspect than just being a transport sim, is to use a patch bundle like YACD along with either FIRS or ECS vectors. I also think I need to fiddle with settings quite a bit to make the game balanced... I tried YACD with ECS and the early game didn't really work; in ECS industry production is really low at the start and when what little that is produced is divided up between half a dozen destinations it can take one coal truck 6 months to pick up a full load.

It would be good to have a wiki page where experienced players can list good "bundles", combinations of patches and newgrf's with appropriate settings that they've discovered enrich the game significantly, but also keeps it well balanced and playable.

I was also wondering how do the AIs cope when you use modifications that significantly change the game like these?

[kamnet]

I'm currently using ChillCore's Patch Pack (v13_7) along with Zuu's TownCars, Chillcore's Aiai_caramba, Zutty's Pathzilla (which has some serious bugs and hasn't been updated), and Michinweb's WmDOT. For the most part I've not had any serious issues with them in CHIPP, which includes a ton of patches including CargoDist, Daylength w/ Sprinkles and Towngrowth Needs Goods.

Aiai_caramba and WmDOT are both primed to create roads. Aiai_caramba has crashed on me a few times and now doesn't look like it builds at all, but I'm not sure when it started doing this, it may have something to do with WmDOT. WmDOT is a freaking BEAST. It builds roads, it builds them fairly fast. They're not pretty in any sense, or always efficient, but, hey, it's not *MY* money being wasted! It starts from the most ideal location and slowly builds networks out, which allows me to cheaply plop stations along the way and start building transportation networks - first buses and mail, then rail passengers and mail, then goods, then lastly airports. Pathzilla largely keeps to itself, buys a bunch of cheap vehicles to start making deliveries, and eventually crashes. Next game restart it does the whole thing over again, but it stays out of my way.

I think I'm probably going to ditch Aiai_caramba in favor of WmDOT, and add Zuu's PAXLink to develop bus feeder services into my rail stations and airports, and Hephi's MailAI to manage mail trucks and planes. All of these working together with Infrastructure Sharing (IS) should make for a fun game which sees a lot of growth and expansion.

[robnufc]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies will be taking a look at all the suggestions, one thing i need to clarify was new and old industries, i meant new industries eg not default industries but still keeping the default industries aswell, eg just adding extra industries to default starting ones

with the new vehicles for my country the ai sometimes cant run so will take a look at links above

also i am looking at the patches any real good ones for uk?

[Sylf]

I think OpenGFX+ Industries is pretty good - it only uses the industries included in (O)TT(D(P)), but let you add industries from climates from any climate in any other, except Toyland. Like, you can have fruits and rubber plantations and paper mill in temperate climate. It's a moderate expansion of industries compared to ECS or FIRS, but it can still be fun.

Canset Trains GRF also has small number of additional industries that you can enable.

[falconne]

As for me, I realised none of the AIs are handling YACD yet and are going bankrupt or stagnating in my game pretty quick, so that puts a damper on that for me. Which is a shame, because I really wanted at least passengers to have predetermined destinations. I suspect they don't handle ECS very well either.

[planetmaker]

As for me, I realised none of the AIs are handling YACD yet and are going bankrupt or stagnating in my game pretty quick, so that puts a damper on that for me. Which is a shame, because I really wanted at least passengers to have predetermined destinations. I suspect they don't handle ECS very well either.

If I were an AI author I'd not tune my AI knowledge about any patch which may or may not hit trunk with a known or unknown influence on how the game behaves. ECS on the other hand is a well-established and known NewGRF. To find that supported by AIs is thus MUCH more likely.

[falconne]

If I were an AI author I'd not tune my AI knowledge about any patch which may or may not hit trunk with a known or unknown influence on how the game behaves. ECS on the other hand is a well-established and known NewGRF. To find that supported by AIs is thus MUCH more likely.

Yes that's what I was hoping too, seeing as how ECS seems to be pretty well established some AI devs will start tuning for that in anticipation. I hope YACD is considered in the same way, even though it doesn't implement appropriate NoAI api's yet.

[planetmaker]

Yes that's what I was hoping too, seeing as how ECS seems to be pretty well established some AI devs will start tuning for that in anticipation. I hope YACD is considered in the same way, even though it doesn't implement appropriate NoAI api's yet.

To make it clear: For an AI author it is wasted time to support features which are not in trunk. ECS on the other hand is to my knowledge supported by a number of AIs. They might not do as well as with default industries, but hey, which human player does?

[Dave]

also i am looking at the patches any real good ones for uk?

Couple really. There's a lot of British stuff kicking about. The best of the bunch must be the UKRS2 set, with PBI, which is from the old UKRSI set and is a fine industry set that's not very complex and conveys much of what does kick around on the network (the only one I can really think of that's missing is China Clay, and we have normal clay to replace that). Pikka also has HOVS, which is an (admittedly very old) GRF that contains replacements for the original buses. Bob's random vehicles also has a few along these lines.

As for airlines, there's the World Airliners Set which will probably contain quite a few BA and other UK-based liveries.

There are some appearance sets too. Pikka has a couple kicking around (tracks is my first thought, then TaI... was that Pikka?) and I believe Zephyris released a small alpha with some British houses in? Road sets and the like also exist.

British interest is very well represented - after all that's where the temperate climate was originally based and as such a lot of people still chase the British style, both in terms of appearance and gameplay.

Don't like to plug myself (ha) but I'm one of those chasers, along with some noted others, links below:

Me
JVassie
Ameecher

There are LOADS of others, but Vass and Gavin are the best with British stuff (although as all three of us are far less active on our forum than once upon a time, we're quickly being caught!)

[Kogut]

As for me, I realised none of the AIs are handling YACD yet and are going bankrupt or stagnating in my game pretty quick, so that puts a damper on that for me. Which is a shame, because I really wanted at least passengers to have predetermined destinations. I suspect they don't handle ECS very well either.

If I were an AI author I'd not tune my AI knowledge about any patch which may or may not hit trunk with a known or unknown influence on how the game behaves. ECS on the other hand is a well-established and known NewGRF. To find that supported by AIs is thus MUCH more likely.

AIAI is supposed to work with ECS.