Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

OpenTTD is a fully open-sourced reimplementation of TTD, written in C++, boasting improved gameplay and many new features.

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MarkShot
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Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by MarkShot »

I am not much into sandbox style games. I have play SimCity4 and City Skylines. People do beautiful things with them. But I have to admit that I, myself, am not a very artistic individual.

So, what I am looking for in a tycoon style game is some competition and challenge.

I enjoy RT1(D)/RT2/RT3/Tropico(1)/Tropico(4).

I understand that I can plug in some AIs to run OTTD. In fact, I have read a few papers written by computer science students doing AI thesis on the various popular AIs. (I am a retired Systems Designer, Software Engineer, and CTO.)

My question is can you get a good competitive game going with the AI modules loaded (ala the railroad tycoon series) or are they mainly for decoration and you are primarily playing sandbox?

Thanks.
Wahazar
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by Wahazar »

I like challenging economic settings. I'm running my server using JGR Patch Pack, thus I can increase (using base cost newgrf) construction prices to reasonable amount, for example 100-500 kGPB for locomotive, 800kGPB for depot etc. Why JGRPP is required? Because there is a patch increasing maximal amount of debt up to 5 MGBP.
Now the challenge is to plan to buy expensive vehicles and infrastructure which would earn money enough to: pay 4% loan interest, and collect enough money to buy new vehicles (there is also 'pay for broken engine repair' patch thus using old or not well managed vehicles increase overall maintenance cost).
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Projects: Reproducible Map Generation patch, NewGRFs: Manpower industries, PolTrams, Polroad, 600mm narrow gauge, wired, ECS industry extension, V4 CEE train set, HotHut.
Another favorite games: freeciv longturn, OHOL/2HOL.
MarkShot
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by MarkShot »

There is only one part of your reply which I don't follow.

You are running a server? Are you hosting multiplayer or are there some features gained by a server which are not available in single player mode?

Thanks.
Wahazar
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by Wahazar »

MarkShot wrote: You are running a server? Are you hosting multiplayer or are there some features gained by a server which are not available in single player mode?
Of course multiplayer. You asked about competition and challenge :)
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PikkaBird
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by PikkaBird »

Gamescripts are probably the way to go if you want a "challenge" or some goal that's not a sandbox. "Challenging economic settings" are very boring, if they mean you continually have to wait for money until you can build, and they restrict you to building the most economically efficient services (which are, spoiler alert, planes and coal trains from one corner of the map to the other).
Last edited by PikkaBird on 27 Mar 2019 14:26, edited 1 time in total.
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kamnet
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by kamnet »

MarkShot wrote:My question is can you get a good competitive game going with the AI modules loaded (ala the railroad tycoon series) or are they mainly for decoration and you are primarily playing sandbox?
Many AIs can stomp a mudhole in your backside. :)
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acs121
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by acs121 »

I do neither of both with my friends. We rather use JGR's Patchpack, and do co-operation, trying to rule the world with not-just-one-company,
_dp_
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by _dp_ »

AIs are a waste of time and messing with economics will likely make it boring instead of challenging.
Check CityMania servers, they have numerous modifications to ensure fair and rich competitive gameplay and highscores there are very hard to beat.
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eekee
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Re: Style of play? Competition or Sandbox?

Post by eekee »

Oh, I like challenging sandbox play, myself. :)) It's keeping complex, busy train networks running smoothly that makes me happy. I have tried to make the economy challenging on occasion but, playing without patches, it's just trivial. Select the bottom entry of the graphs menu, see what pays well with slow trains. Make a modest-length line with that cargo to make sure you have some income, then start building a longer one for real income. Do it right and you'll be clear of debt in 2-5 years even with maximum interest and no attention to subsidies. This has worked with every climate/GRF I've tried, although I perhaps haven't tried all that many GRFs. I do recall going back into debt with some GRFs, but I always reach the money-no-object phase of the game quite soon. These days, I just use NUTS for most games. It's even less of a challenge economically, but it's designed for complex busy networks. It's also free of the annoyance factor of odd-length wagons.

I recently started a game on a 64x4096 size map, making long main lines which are going to be a challenge to keep running smoothly. I chose that size because I wanted the long distance but didn't want the huge save files of my one 2048x2048 game, nor the pause for auto-save. 64x4096 = 512x512 in size, but there's so much more distance. There's also the challenge of not having much width to go around things. There's one tiny thing wrong with it: windows open in the top left, and my line goes top left to bottom right. 4096x64 would solve that.

Edit: I say "complex, busy", but I don't mean as much as the #openttdcoop players. I can't get my head around all their tricks.
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