Cities grow too fast

[douglasrac]

Is there a way to make the cities grow slower? They grow too fast. If I put a tram service they almost double size in 1 year. That means my service is always bad. If I start to worry about other thing, like creating routes for industry, and I go back to the city it's a mess. Too many people. It's impossible to follow the growth.

In Railroad Tycoon 2 I can choose the economy growth rate. Is there something like this for Locomotion?

Also, there is no demand for Goods? I just deliver them to the city, as much as I want?

[Lighthouse]

If you want to build in your own speed You could use a little helper program Autopause.
Autopause V1.5 can be found here:
http://www.locomotion-fanpage.net/wbb/i ... tem&id=374

You can set the program that it "auto" pause the game after each click with the mouse some where in the landscape (on/off with F5 button). That way you have the time to check some other area´s then where you are currently building and you can easily plan ahead because the game is in pause mode.


After the city has grown to a certain level it wil accept goods and / or food. You get a message when the stations in your city´s will accept it.

[douglasrac]

Thanks for the tip.

After the city has grown to a certain level it wil accept goods and / or food. You get a message when the stations in your city´s will accept it.

I know that after a while they require food, but how much? I can just deliver how much I want? No limit?

[kingmush360]

Yeah, no limit, the population in locomotion are very greedy!

[Deewalla]

While not perfect. I'll "mark out" some space for the City to grow into. Thus limiting it's size and it's population. I do this with track running towards the city. The city will build roads right up to your "markers" but then won't be able to cross it due to the track. Can do this to mark out a future station area too and let the city grow around it.

Like I said, not perfect, but it works.

-Deewalla

[douglasrac]

While not perfect. I'll "mark out" some space for the City to grow into. Thus limiting it's size and it's population. I do this with track running towards the city.
-Deewalla

I don't understand how is the algorithm of the cities in this game.
When I build a tram track, in a while the city start to grow real fast. Just the tram track and soon the city become metropolis. And this is not nice, that's why I became this topic.

Now I put stations in the city, and serve them with everything: passengers, mail, food and goods and they are stuck. No grow, or very slow grow.
Maybe it's because of where I put the train station. In the middle of the city, of course, to reach more people. But now the city doesn't grow. Where should I put the station then?

It grow too fast or doesn't grow at all. What is wrong with this game?

[Hammo]

I think one of the biggest factors in city growth could be the number of passenger journeys. When you've got trams running, you usually get more "passenger journeys" than with conventional rail/etc. I think buses have the same effect if they don't get lost/stuck/whatever, as happens occasionally. Plus the strange routes they sometimes take through cities.

[Nawdic]

If I remember, there is a boundary post which is visible in creator but invisible in player on the fanpage. Its worth a look, I don't know if this is what you are looking for exactly.

[douglasrac]

If I remember, there is a boundary post which is visible in creator but invisible in player on the fanpage. Its worth a look, I don't know if this is what you are looking for exactly.

Which post? I don't see it. There is a link? If the post is invisible I will never see it.
Sorry if I don't understood you correctly but english is not my first language.

[Illegal_Alien]

See the datcrawler, in the "other" section.

and i quote:

ID: 65
Boundary Marker
.dat filename: BLDSTOP
Description: This is a little tool for Route style maps. It allows the map builder to set a route through a square map to give the illusion of a larger map by placing boundaries where he would like to prevent the player from passing through.
Author: Chicago Locomotive Works / Plastikman
Object Type: Other
Date Added to database: 2009-12-22 13:17:16
Website / Download / Discussion: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=44708

And some other variations.

[CN_Rail]

Yes, I find that too. I just put up with it.

[lemming3k]

Are there any mods that fix this? I've been toying with putting railtrack everywhere to stop them building too much, but this is expensive and time consuming. At the moment it seems pointless playing beyond 20 years or so as towns get too big for the size of vehicles so quickly.

[Illegal_Alien]

Erm read the topic? answer is no.

[Krakr]

Are there any mods that fix this? I've been toying with putting railtrack everywhere to stop them building too much, but this is expensive and time consuming. At the moment it seems pointless playing beyond 20 years or so as towns get too big for the size of vehicles so quickly.

Depends on your definition of "fix". My definition can be found right below.

[lemming3k]

Erm read the topic? answer is no.

I did. Sidetracked into "autopause" talk, followed by goods/food delivery and discussion about various growthspeed tricks, but nobody actually came out and said there was no mod or way to edit files to fix the issue. Thanks for clarifying.

Are there any mods that fix this? I've been toying with putting railtrack everywhere to stop them building too much, but this is expensive and time consuming. At the moment it seems pointless playing beyond 20 years or so as towns get too big for the size of vehicles so quickly.

Depends on your definition of "fix". My definition can be found right below.

Well ideally a mod/file/algorithm edit - but I know that might not be possible so I think a fence might have to do! Thanks I'll have to download it.

[CN_Rail]

Are there any mods that fix this? I've been toying with putting railtrack everywhere to stop them building too much, but this is expensive and time consuming. At the moment it seems pointless playing beyond 20 years or so as towns get too big for the size of vehicles so quickly.

Why does Atari not release a patch that fixes this problem?

[Opan]

It's been talked about before. Chris and Atari had an incident that made Chris leave taking the rights to modify the exe with him.

it's believed that Sawyer still owns the original IP to the game series.

[sleeming88]

If you have the cash going spare you could try building an elevated railway around the town which is only 1 high (I don't know what the professional term for raising and lowering the land is) so that the roads can't pass under it, preventing the city from expanding beyond it. Obviously it would look a bit silly but you could always add some stations use it as a perimeter railway or something.

[Emperor Darth Sidious]

In that case the best thing to use is Krakr's Boundry fence. Unlike the Boundry marker this one is removebla in the game if you want the town to expand you just replace the fence and the town can grow bigger.

I use this tool in all of my games and I love it !

[uktrackbuilder_loco]

It's been talked about before. Chris and Atari had an incident that made Chris leave taking the rights to modify the exe with him.

it's believed that Sawyer still owns the original IP to the game series.

Right I have been doing some digging at TESS ( US Trademark Electronic Search System ) and found out the following.

Atari, 469 trademarks listed, Locomotion is not shown amongst them
CS, 3 trademarks listed , two for Rollercoaster Tycoon, 1 for Transport Tycoon
Info games has two, Microprose and Falcon
Microprose, 109 records

In short if CS does own the rights to Locomotion it was not trademarked in the US at that time under that mark and also the UK trademark office does not show any entry for Locomotion registered to Atari Europe S.A.S.U
In short the bit about all of the trademarks being the property of their respective owners seems to be a misnomer in this case

If Locomotion is not going to get any official support from Atari or CS maybe we should now finally push for it to be made open source. That way we can edit out the bugs that we know exist in the game and can improve it with official sanction to make it more user friendly and reliable.
Before you say I am going off topic Badger what I was trying to say is that CS is independently very wealthy from the RTC series by all accounts and this game probably hasn't crossed the consciousness of his management company for several years except when they were asked to allow the long station patch, etc to be developed.