Managing big maps

[Tycek]

Hi. My usual map size in a classic OTTD game is 512x512 and I usually focus more on cargo than on passengers. On this map I have usually around 150 trains and 100 road vehicles and sometimes there is too many things to handle. I saw, that people comfortably play on much bigger maps than I do, so I would like to ask, how do you micromanage all the things such asi old vehicles or growing production of industry?

Now I know, there is a feature for automatic replacement of old trains and vehicles, but sometimes these trains go to another depots, than they are suppossed to and so they get lost. Also there is no option, to add more carriages to a train, so how do you manage industry, that produces more cargo, than your trains can handle.

Similar thing with trams. When I send them to the depot for renovation, they skip some stops, go to the depot, and then they go the other direction, than they are supposed to and then it is all just horrible.

So how do you manage these things, or how much do you prefer your games to be perfect?

[Sylf]

For the part about trains going to undesirable depot: there's this old thread talking about it.
Basically, you can place depots more strategically - make the depots accessible to trains that are leaving small (raw material pickup) stations.

This has couple of benefits.
One, trains will never get lost from visiting depots.
Two, when you have hundreds/thousands of trains, you won't flood one/few depots on the map when you use automated train replacement command.

It also has some problems.
If you play with infrastructure cost, the added number of depots can inflate the infrastructure cost more than you may like.
You will also need to manage those trains that may only travel between major stations, such as trains that travel between steel mill/paper mill and factory/printing shop.

[Alberth]

Like you I play around 512x512, although sometimes with a weird size like 128x1024 is fun too

I solve lost trains by building all junctions such that a train can always go in any direction, ie from each entry to all possible exits. Besides fixing lost trains, it also makes OpenTTD use your tracks more effectively, one one set of tracks get fuller, some trains make a small detour and use less busy tracks all on their own.

From what I have seen, people playing on bigger maps either have less tidy maps, or they build longer stretches of straight tracks, sometimes in an effort to simulate inter-city distances (for the money it makes no sense at least, as you get plenty of that whatever way you play).

I would also not be surprised if some people think "bigger is better", and never even consider playing a smaller map.

[andythenorth]

I play 512x512 or 256x512 or so. I've played bigger, I don't find it fun.

[Baldy's Boss]

Like you I play around 512x512, although sometimes with a weird size like 128x1024 is fun too

I solve lost trains by building all junctions such that a train can always go in any direction, ie from each entry to all possible exits. Besides fixing lost trains, it also makes OpenTTD use your tracks more effectively, one one set of tracks get fuller, some trains make a small detour and use less busy tracks all on their own.

From what I have seen, people playing on bigger maps either have less tidy maps, or they build longer stretches of straight tracks, sometimes in an effort to simulate inter-city distances (for the money it makes no sense at least, as you get plenty of that whatever way you play).

I would also not be surprised if some people think "bigger is better", and never even consider playing a smaller map.

Sounds like the problem I'm having at Green Victory on the Malwell-Gruhaven line (see the Financial Effect thread).

[Cadde]

If by manage you meant how to make profits then all one needs to do is make a silly long route and cash in millions upon millions per train (because trains carry the most cargo too) delivery of COAL. Yeah, every time i start a game i start with COAL because then the rest of the game is basically sandbox, no economy to worry about. But i am going to change that with a GRF i am making.

However, if you are talking about keeping things tidy in your transport networks... Well, i generally don't bother with the smaller stuff like road vehicles. I build them for fun but i set them to auto-separate timetables and occasionally check the station list to see if there's some overflows happening. Underflow is a non-issue because COAL.
Then i focus my efforts on trains mostly. Making sure they don't have to stop needlessly through managing their timetables in such a way that each train arrives at the same stations with some time / distance apart.
Freight trains generally get priority on the network because they are slow to start and they pay the most. Passengers always come second. But again, i am trying to change that via a GRF.

Either way, i don't really micromanage things. I build a route, set up timetables and then i forget about it. Only checking in occasionally to see if the vehicles are late or overflowing with cargo.
And because the map is so big, it's generally simple enough to expand the network for capacity and even separating slow and heavy trains from fast ones.
I have tried really hard to punish myself for expanding needlessly through expenses. But it always comes back to "i have COAL so i will just wait year and use those 300 billion £ to build 16 tracks wide to accommodate 16 different trains", which makes the game dull in the end.

I wish i HAD to micromanage things a bit more sometimes. Which is why i am fiddling around with my own GRF at the moment.

EDIT: Oh and i don't like small maps. They look ugly (heightmap limitations) and provide no real challenges otherwise. Sure, feeding COAL 2000 tiles away defeats any economy gameplay but the same problem exists on smaller maps, just not as effectively game breaking.
But i like mountainous maps where there's still room to build huge stations at a cost. Smaller maps doesn't really allow one to run a 60 length train around "horseshoe curve" for any distance.

So again, if only cargo didn't pay twice per distance then all would be fine with larger maps for me.

[Lesarthois]

I play most of my games on 1024*1024 maps.
Bigger is too big for me, you get lost easily and planning for things like planes get a bit confusing.

I don't micromanage as much, as far as vehicles goes. I only really care about tramways, I try to keep my mail and passengers tramways running in opposite (Passengers goes from station A>B>C>D while mail trams goes from D>C>B>A, but that's because most mail trams I have are much slower than passenger trams).

Depending on how you play, I'd recommand, for bigger maps, to have more water.
Boats can be good for local shipping, but unless you have a very huge industry and you're early in the game, there is nothing a train can't handle.

On the other hand, for very long distance shipping, cargos come as good things mover.
NewGRF ships that add cargos up to 1000 tons really crank the gameplay up. (there are even bigger ones, but frankly needing to carry 4800 tons of coal? Well I play with FIRS were production of cargo is capped so unless I had a bunch of producer in one hand and the only recever at the other...).

Planes can also get interesting to play with those maps, and it's fun to see a Concorde/Yate Haugan crossing the map at 2200kph.
Bigger maps also offer more occasions to play with several ways to carry cargo, from several production sites to one destination.
It also allow you to play longer. I imagine that if I started a map in 1789 like I sometime do, by 1950, I would have totally filled a 512*512 map

[Tycek]

Well recently I started playing with FIRS, so that acutally solved my worries about cargo overflow at the stations. Now the only cargo that overflows are passengers.

I also wondered about the problem with skipping stations when autoreplacing trams. Would it solve my problem, if I added stop in depot into its timetable?

[Lesarthois]

If you are really worried about skipped stations, indeed, scheduling a stop in your depot for maintenance is a solution. Now unless you call all your trams for autoreplacement, normally, they get replaced when they go for their last maintenance.

It's something that I get amused to, more than anything, especially when I have "vehicles never expires". Last time in my game, it's 2018, and I spot a plume of white smoke in the streets...
What's that?
An Altwin steam tram had escaped being replaced, because it was put in another group of vehicles
It was extreme, but usually I let my vehicle last to the very end of their life, unless they are losing money or not fitting to the task (too small/too big/too slow/too expensive/too too yoo too).

It's not rare that in my game, I have steam locomotives that stay in regular use up to the 1980's Make sense. The last ones in my NewGRF get available in the late 50's, and some last 30 to 40 years. If they earn money...