Town ratings

[mauried]

Im trying to figure out how town authorities rate the various players in their towns.
For some reason which I cant understand , I consistantly get poor - atrocious ratings and its not obvious why.
Its quite possible Im doing something wrong which is fair enough.
Why Im asking is that also AI players in the same town get ratings of excellent to outstanding, even though all they have done is build 1 bus stop and havnt even provided a bus to service the bus stop.
Is there any way to find out how the rating is determined for both normal players and AI players.

[_dp_]

TLDR: plant trees
https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Game ... ity-rating

[Taschi]

Your rating gets dropped whenever you do terrain modification, which includes tearing down trees - which of course tends to happen a lot when building new infrastructure.

The "plant a bunch of trees" workaround is one approach - another approach is, when you're building new infrastructure, place the stations first and then build the connecting roads / rails / whatever. The town can veto building stations but it can't veto building most other objects.

To be frank I do not particularly enjoy this gameplay mechanic and do not believe it adds anything meaningful to the game in its current form. Luckily, JGR Patchpack has an option to turn it off.

[Eddi]

note that opposite to what the setting says, towns don't actually care about landscaping, only about removing trees and buildings

[mauried]

Thanks all.
I know about the tree planting solution, but it usually only works well once, then it works very infrequently or not at all, once your rating gets to atrocious.
Likewise for the land alterations.
The only solution ive found after the rating gets really bad is the bribe the town authority, which does work if you dont get caught, but its extremely expensive.
The bit I cant find out is why your rating in a town goes down when it was previously very good or better when you arnt doing anything adversly in the town or nearby.
Anyway Ill perservere on .
A useful feature which would help would be to advise the players when a town rating goes down much like the other messages you get, at least that way you could try and fix it immediately.

[jfs]

If you have a bunch of poorly served stations in the town, i.e. where vehicles never stop, or completely overloaded with waiting cargo, that can also cause your reputation to drop. I don't remember the exact details right now.

[LaChupacabra]

I know about the tree planting solution, but it usually only works well once, then it works very infrequently or not at all, once your rating gets to atrocious.

It works every time, but you have to remove existing trees first. It doesn't make sense, but that's how it works.

The bit I cant find out is why your rating in a town goes down when it was previously very good or better when you arnt doing anything adversly in the town or nearby.

This mainly applies to leaving unsupported or under-serviced stations in the city. The second option is to accidentally remove some trees while building a road or track near to the city.
Anyway _dp_ gave you a good link above, it describes how the player's actions affect the rating. Alternatively, here you have another list


It comes from the proposed changes in the topic of what and how should affect the company's assessment. Here you see the current impact. "P, N, H" refers to the Local Authority attitude setting (permissive, neutral, hostly).

A useful feature which would help would be to advise the players when a town rating goes down much like the other messages you get, at least that way you could try and fix it immediately.

First of all, what would be useful is to limit the impact of tree removal on the score. It is hysterically tall now. It is enough to build a 20 tiles road near the city and the local authorities will start to hate you.

[mauried]

Thanks for the info on the chart, very informative and most makes sense .
Does this chart also apply to AI players.?
Also if you buy out an AI player who has a bad rating in a town, do you inherit the bad rating?

[jfs]

AI players (since version 0.7) play by exactly the same rules as human players, they can't get around that kind of restrictions.
When you take over a company, you only take over the vehicles, infrastructure, and financials, not any reputation or goals. (You keep the rating you had in every town before the take-over.)