trucks and buses have stopped

[SugarySnax]

Took over a number of AI and ended up with 3800 total trucks and buses. There were still other AI playing with yet another 1500 vehicles.

I was trying to beat the red AI. I didn't want to sell my vehicles as I thought they kept bringing up my reputation in town (rating) so that I could destroy more buildings around his airports. This seemed to be working. I also destroyed pavement leading to his bus and truck depots. This jammed up some of my vehicles but most of them continued making stops. At some point I decided I had to get rid of thousands of vehicles. I went to the main list to the drop down and selected "send to depot". I think a few depots were blocked off or had lost access to the roads, but there were still many other depots open. Most of my vehicles went into "stopped" mode. I see no way to restart them in mass. I wondered if I could just delete them. I'd be happy to delete them without getting any money as I'm sure this would get my computer out of lagging.

Is there a way to restart 3500 trucks and buses with a few clicks?

[Alberth]

When you open a depot, in its window at the bottom right corner is a red and green flag. The green flag starts all vehicles in the depot.

[Zuu]

In the list of all road vehicles, there is a button at the lower right of the window to start all. Repeat for aircraft, train and ship and you are done.

[SugarySnax]

I was so freaked out when everything stopped, I didn't see the x that I must have hit by accident earlier. It stops all the trucks and buses. I hit the green dot next to it and it took a long time because of the lag, but they all started moving towards the depot. I'm down to 900 now, with little lag. That's after buying off the big red guy. I must have sold 3500 road vehicles. It took hours.

Later...
I've sold off even more vehicles. It bothers me because I just sell everything that shows up in the depots that I happen to click on. I'm not doing this after thought. Its just dumping. My lag goes away but so does my rating at the town so I can't knock down buildings and buy land which I need for bigger airports. This is why you don't want to play bigger maps with large vehicle limitations. My computer just can't handle it.

I'm wondering if five upgraded buses is enough to keep a bigger city's ratings. In the beginning its more than enough, but once they've got a big population, five buses does not appear to be enough to improve city ratings. Can anyone tell me how this works? The youtube videos seemed to think that there was no gain in effect beyond five buses.

Its too bad theres no way to send worst performing vehicles of companies you just took over to depot.

[Alberth]

Its too bad theres no way to send worst performing vehicles of companies you just took over to depot.

You can sort your vehicles on "profit last year", and then open and send the bad ones to a depot. With 3500 vehicles however, that would be quite a lot of work as well.

[SugarySnax]

Yes but also low profit sometimes means something else. Bad routing or trapped. I removed a lot of intersections and entrances to bus stations and trapped a lot of vehicles belonging to opponents in order to reduce their profits. It works but later, when I buy them, I have to find all the missing pieces of pavement and fix them or I'll get endless pop ups and lowed income. Five hours later I'm still finding trapped buses. It just isn't much fun playing with 3000 vehicles.

Throwing away new trucks is a waste but it doesn't really matter if you have a billion dollars. The thing driving me nuts is that even having a bus route with five buses has no effect on improving the city's rating of my transportation company. If I build more buses, I'll soon be taking over another company and I'll once again be throwing away buses without knowing if they're the new ones I just set up unless I go through some tedious grouping thing.

[leifbk]

I just isn't much fun playing with 3000 vehicles.

Been there, done that. I find the game a lot more rewarding with a few hundred vehicles. Maintaining several thousand becomes boring.

The thing driving me nuts is that even having a bus route with five buses has no effect on improving the city's rating of my transportation company.

I think you have got that a bit backwards. The number of vehicles doesn't really matter on the town board rating. The town board will be very pleased with you if you have just one regularly serviced station inside the town proper. You are probably confusing with the town growth, which will become maxed out if you have 5 regularly serviced stations inside the town area.

[Alberth]

It works but later, when I buy them, I have to find all the missing pieces of pavement and fix them or I'll get endless pop ups and lowed income. Five hours later I'm still finding trapped buses. I just isn't much fun playing with 3000 vehicles.

So why buy AIs? or one step further, why even have AIs? If you like taking over companies and cleaning up mess, by all means, go ahead, but you don't seem to enjoy it.
That is, what is the fun part in playing OpenTTD for you?

Many experienced players don't play with AIs at all. Personally, I like the challenge of setting up an industrial freight network, I don't need nor want AIs interfering with that. When I get bored, I have BusyBee to give me new random transport assignments, and usually, from that, I get inspired to extend the network further again

[Baldy's Boss]

Here is my old archetypal game put together from buying other companies...the integration tasks that remain to be completed are legion,but perhaps the OP would enjoy trying.

[SugarySnax]

It works but later, when I buy them, I have to find all the missing pieces of pavement and fix them or I'll get endless pop ups and lowed income. Five hours later I'm still finding trapped buses. I just isn't much fun playing with 3000 vehicles.

So why buy AIs? or one step further, why even have AIs? If you like taking over companies and cleaning up mess, by all means, go ahead, but you don't seem to enjoy it.
That is, what is the fun part in playing OpenTTD for you?

Many experienced players don't play with AIs at all. Personally, I like the challenge of setting up an industrial freight network, I don't need nor want AIs interfering with that. When I get bored, I have BusyBee to give me new random transport assignments, and usually, from that, I get inspired to extend the network further again

I'm trying the settings and features. I don't know how they're going to work until I try them. I liked playing against the AI when vehicles were much more limited, but I think I'd like to try with my vehicles less limited and I don't think that's possible. The game has a lot of good tools but also some less useful things. Its easy to say, "Why didn't they build the game like this or like that" 20 years after it came out and after playing all the tycoon games that improved on those features in ttd.

I don't think it was a good idea to have to send vehicles to depots in order to upgrade or delete them. Its much easier to deal with large numbers of units in Railroad Tycoon because you can swap engines for better ones while they're rolling along. That's not how it works in reality but this game doesn't need to be a slave to reality. I can just pretend the train went to a depot and switched engines and got tuned up. They knew we didn't need to see every screw tightened in TTD, but I guess they thought not pulling into the station to switch engines or sell would be too abstract.

I'm now playing with road vehicles disabled for the AI because I couldn't figure out how to start a new game without the AIs I loaded. Taking away the road vehicles makes it almost like the AI don't exist. One thing I did like about the AI was they built a lot of stuff fast and you could buy it and quickly build a huge empire. That's great if you like small airports and spending your whole day deleting the AI's road vehicles. Why didn't they put the town's rating next to the name of the town instead of the population. I can guess the population from the size of the town but I have no idea what the rating is until I click on rating and I already have way to many things to click on.

I don't get iron mines and oil drills. You set up a transport system for them and they disappear after a few short years. What's the point of that? The goods don't appear to sell for that much so what's the point of dealing with all that complexity and temporary supply?

[Baldy's Boss]

There's a setting option for how many AI competitors to allow,you can set it to the minimum (as well as specifying a particular AI for each slot if desired).

[SugarySnax]

I think I ran into that setting once but I haven't been able to find it since. There are an awful lot of settings and drop downs. I just looked again. If anybody knows where this setting is and can tell me if its in options or settings and if in settings under what category, that would help.

[Sylf]

Main menu (before you load or start a game) -> AI/Game Script Settings -> Maximum no. competitors.

[Alberth]

Its much easier to deal with large numbers of units in Railroad Tycoon because you can swap engines for better ones

There is autoreplace for this. In the global vehicle list (the train/etc icons in the toolbar), at the bottom is a drop-down. The top entry leads to autoreplace.

There is also auorenew to replace old engine with new engines of the same model, ie every 20 years or so.

I don't get iron mines and oil drills. You set up a transport system for them and they disappear after a few short years.

In temperate climate, oil wells can only lower production, as they get replaced by oil rigs. iron ore mines normally don't disappear if you service them well. Always have a vehicle loading is a simple rule to that.

We indeed have too many settings, but all attempts at removing a few have failed so far. Simplest solution to find something is to use the searchbox. You may have to switch to something else than "show basic settings" or whatever it is called.

[SugarySnax]

Thanks to you, Sylf, I found it. Hope I remember where it is this time. AI/Game Script Settings -> Maximum no. competitors.

I'm pretty good with autoreplace and autorenew now... If I remember to set them up right.

Finally figured out and then remembered that goods only get made when oil is dropped off and they start disappearing after a little while. Gotta leave goods trucks parked there waiting for full load so the stuff doesn't evaporate. Somehow, the rewards don't seem proportionate to the amount of care you have to give to setting this up. Then the trucks drive back empty and earn nothing. I was thrilled when it worked but what a crummy deal. I'm better off just moving coal around and then later playing with planes. The planes make huge fortunes for one run, maybe a million dollars or more.

If the game was set up right, maybe severe limits on planes, like max 30 planes and very few coal mines. Moving goods might be worth it. Either that or increase the reward for a truck full of goods to $50,000 or $100,000.

Tell me again why I have to design the game. Shouldn't it already be designed?

My problem now is that oil tankers bunch up. It would be better if they visited a rig and set off for a refinery and then another tanker would pull up to a rig. This would give the rig a chance to pump oil up into their holding tanks but no. All the tankers pull up to the oil rig at the same time and drain the holding tanks and then they all set off on the long journey.

I set them to wait for full load but then it seems like the oil rigs stop pumping. I built a dock but with both rigs in the catchment area but only some of the oil goes to the dock. What am I supposed to do here? I want tankers to fill up and go to the refinery. I don't want the oil rigs to stop pumping.

Next I went on to try to build some hub airports. Why does the game only let you buy land one tile at a time?

[Baldy's Boss]

I've never had trouble taking possession of an entire airport site at a time,be it city or international.

Lots of settings means the game allows for lots of different play styles.

[Alberth]

Somehow, the rewards don't seem proportionate to the amount of care you have to give to setting this up. Then the trucks drive back empty and earn nothing. I was thrilled when it worked but what a crummy deal. I'm better off just moving coal around and then later playing with planes. The planes make huge fortunes for one run, maybe a million dollars or more.

If the game was set up right, maybe severe limits on planes, like max 30 planes and very few coal mines. Moving goods might be worth it. Either that or increase the reward for a truck full of goods to $50,000 or $100,000.

Nobody said you cannot have truck transport something else on the way back. You do have to arrange that yourself though.

As Baldy's boss siad, it's a sandbox game, it allows lots of playstyles, but that does mean everybody has to set it up to their preferences. I think almost every player has a unique setting. Pre-configuring it for one style means it makes life more complicated for all other styles.

Tell me again why I have to design the game. Shouldn't it already be designed?

Only you can decide if you want limited airplanes or powerful trucks, or both, or neither because aircraft and trucks do not interest you. Everybody plays the game differently.

My problem now is that oil tankers bunch up. It would be better if they visited a rig and set off for a refinery and then another tanker would pull up to a rig. This would give the rig a chance to pump oil up into their holding tanks but no. All the tankers pull up to the oil rig at the same time and drain the holding tanks and then they all set off on the long journey.

There is a setting called "improved loading" that loads a single vehicle until it's full, and then move on to the next (it's slightly more smart, it starts loading the next as soon as possible, you only notice that when there is a lot of cargo available).

I set them to wait for full load but then it seems like the oil rigs stop pumping. I built a dock but with both rigs in the catchment area but only some of the oil goes to the dock. What am I supposed to do here? I want tankers to fill up and go to the refinery. I don't want the oil rigs to stop pumping.

Small suppply speed and big boats don't go well together. It works better if you have more but smaller ships. Default set is crappy for that, but lots of ship newgrfs, like squid (aka fish2), have smaller ships for that purpose.

Next I went on to try to build some hub airports. Why does the game only let you buy land one tile at a time?

Why are you buying tiles? Just plop down the airport. Tiles buying is only useful to reserve some ground for future use.

[SugarySnax]

Never had a problem placing airports? I'm trying to put the intercontinental airports in highly populated areas, often between two dense cities. If I don't buy up the land early, I have to knock down buildings and sometimes skyscrapers which costs a lot of money and angers the town governments. Pretty soon they stop me from knocking down anything. They don't like leveling land either.

I build in the cities because that gives me a huge passenger and mail base without setting up some complicated truck and bus route, although that might be a better idea.

Why do I have to knock down trees to buy land? That lowers my rating.

I'll have to look into that improved loading thing.

There is a downside to having so many settings and adjustments - it takes a long time to become familiar with it all. Of course the upside is that it can keep you interested for a lot longer, maybe years longer, but some of us spoiled noobs like it better if the seasoned folks make things simpler for us because dammit, the world revolves around us selfish noobs!!!

I don't care if the game is 20 years old. I can't believe I can't rotate the airport. Its bad enough I can't rotate the map, but the airport.... I guess Jesus died for nothin.

[Sylf]

I don't care if the game is 20 years old. I can't believe I can't rotate the airport.

You can. You just need to use OpenGFX+ Airports.

[Zuu]

Leveling land does not lower town rating. Removing trees does. Also, plant some trees and the town will like you more again.

Feeder systems can help to connect an airport (or other type of station) with larger part of a town. Either use the transfer order or set cargodistribution to symetric or asymetric for passengers. See the linked wiki article for how to do it using the transfer order. For a demo, you can also use the PAXLink AI and look how it sets up feeder systems (when it succeeds to not go bankrupt ).