Transport Tycoon Forums

Orite, can anyone guess how I did this?



Count 'em, it's 25 squares long. No, it's not a Photoshop job, it's for real.

It should be possible to go even longer than this, but I couldn't be bothered right now, this was just a test. I thought of this trick while sitting on a 10 hour flight from Houston to Amsterdam today, and just got around to testing it. I'll whip up some screenshots to show how you can do it, but meanwhile I want you to start guessing how it's done I might post a hint later.
Good luck!

Hehe, I do the same thing. I never bothered to stretch it all the way to 25 though, that's nice.

I use your same technique to connect a bunch of industries all under the same station. In one of my games I have 5 coal mines connected even though they are like 3 screens apart. You just build 1 station segment next to each of the industries, then on the side somewhere you build the main loading/unloading part

Just putting 1 station piece next to each nearby procuction industry and walking them to a main loading station is easy, but that doesn't help you make the main loading station this long. If you try to build a one-track station plainly you'll notice it starts complaining once you get to 16 pieces. There's a special trick to making it longer.

Since I'm in quite a good mood right now I'll give you the first hint: it's got something to do with the station name.

Forum Link
Tip (same topic)

Meh, I knew I should've searched the forums better. No more sloppiness from now on =P

Anyway, I use a variant, where I build parallell stations to "gravitate" the station name towards one end, while simultaneously removing all but the last station pieces from the other end.

Doesn't seem like many people know or bother to use this trick from all the screenies here, though...

But in order to get the single station piece 3 screens away from the main station you need to do the same thing that you did. Got to keep building/removing stations in order to pull the name over to where you want to build the main

Then you're playing at a low resolution.

Anyway: Tyrell seems to be right in the linked topic: once you make a station with more than 80 tiles total, you get a "Station too large" message, as opposed to "Station too spread out" which you get when trying to place a station tile more than 8 tiles away from the station title's position. I made it to 33 too, and when doing it like Tyrell, going further is impossible, because of the 80 piece limit.

However, I just had a break-through. It seems Tyrell missed something important. When you use parallell stations to gravitate the station name towards one end, you get to 33 tiles length. And of course, when you remove those stations to leave just the main station, the name will end up in the middle of the station. So I thought, why don't I just remove the middle pieces? I can just fill 'em up when I'm finished pushing the end of the station, and the station name moves back to the center! This also removes gravity from one end, allowing me to extend even further! Right now I'm at 40 tiles! I'll experiment a bit more to see how far I can get it. ^_^

EDIT: All right, I can't be buggered to continue =P 50 tiles should do it.

80 tiles is the hard limit to "station too big"

Ive written a tutorial on big stations. Just looking for a spot to post pics.

JT

There's no point building long platforms in many places, just one block'll do especially at a terminus, and if you have a through station, just mark platforms as one way only.

Ludicrous we have to do that as a workaround, though.

Stylpe wrote:EDIT: All right, I can't be buggered to continue =P 50 tiles should do it.

Hehehe, I know what you mean
Nice job there

Wow, Now that's a big station

I forgot to mention I put one piece of maglev for each 10th tile from the bottom right.

metalangel: I'm not sure I understand you. Just one tile? Wow, must take a century to load/unload at that station. You do know that loading/unloading a wagon that's not entirely in a station takes maybe 7 times longer?

Stylpe wrote:....You do know that loading/unloading a wagon that's not entirely in a station takes maybe 7 times longer?

The additional time it takes is proportional to how much the train exceeds the station length by. A train with its' end car just slightly sticking out won't take as long as a train with a couple of carriages behind the station.

Yeah, I know that, it was the case in TTD too, but if you want a large station with lots of platforms you sometimes *have to* have a few carriages stick out because of that stupid limit.

DarkMatter wrote:The additional time it takes is proportional to how much the train exceeds the station length by. A train with its' end car just slightly sticking out won't take as long as a train with a couple of carriages behind the station.

That's what I tried to say, seems I wasn't specific enough =P

Metalangel: That will have a serious impact on effectivity. I'd rather have many shorter trains than long ones that don't fit in their stations. But maybe this is a discussion for a new topic.

Stylpe wrote:That's what I tried to say, seems I wasn't specific enough =P

Actually, you were *too* specific.