OpenTTD needs to be harder!

[Omnixus]

I see that OpenTTD got really easy to play lately. Construction speed starts to matter more than any other factors. Basically who has the most vechicles/longest railroad connections has the victory in pocket. No big deal in it...BUT people know this pattern so good that games tend to end after 2 or 3 years which is a bit silly now. Firstly TTD was never a quck game and secondly in my opinion when game starts to concentrate on "fast clicking", not "brain cracking" it ceases to be funny.

So i came up with an idea to create a mod or server that includes very harsh vechicle limitations (like <50 trains and <100 trucks) and mayby significant increase in costs of infrastructure's building and holding.
What i'm trying to say is to make players concentrate more on utilizing their infrastructure and vechicles to maximum instead of pumping more and more of both. This i hope would encourage to build very complex layouts with trains having to load two different products on two different stations and then unload them in one or two separate stations (i can't come up with more complex ideas for now).

The thing is that i'm uncapable of gathering any people myself, to say if this idea is good or not, nor making a mod cos i dont have necessary knowledge for it. So please comment or hang me for it

I'm sorry if this topic was discussed before. Didnt see similar threads.

[3298]

No need to make a mod (whatever that's supposed to be ... we have NewGRFs, scripts and patches), just lower the allowed vehicle count in the advanced settings, load a basecost NewGRF (get one from the in-game content download) and set its parameters to something higher than default (in the NewGRF settings window). That's it.
You might want to turn on infrastructure maintenance (another advanced setting) as well, it makes the game charge a bit of money per company-owned tile per month.

[kamnet]

As mentioned above, you can go into advanced settings and lower the number of vehicles, and any other changes that make the game more difficult. If you wish, you could distribute a copy of your openttd.cfg file. You might also want to try competing against some of the more challenging AIs, or download some of the competitive GameScripts. Also, as mentioned, you could try downloading a BaseCost NewGRF mod which makes the costs of things more difficult. Finally, you might want to give Vaulter's Hard Pack 0.8 patch pack, which is a customized version of OpenTTD with higher difficulty levels.

[lukasz1985]

I agree with OP. The OpenTTD is too easy. The main reason is that it doesn't mirror the real life economical model. The growth of the income per tile traveled is to high - this is the main reason why this fails.

The other thing is that there are no destinations for goods. This also counts for the game to be easier. This cant be solved arbitrary by patch like cargodest. The consumer demand is the definitive factor in growth and resources transport is always organized so that the final goods are distributed to the end user. The exception here are the investment goods which are used to grow or retain current production level.

The only way I can see this issue might be solved for now is using a game script. There is one that can nicely imitate this: Citybuilder by Aphid.

I also dont see how do you want make game harder by limiting the vehicles. That wont make game harder - it will actually make game easier and less complex without a huge amount of vehicles.

But what OpenTTD really lacks of is depth - and the above solution might add some.

It's important that the default industries are not variant, so if you want to have real fun you may want to use FIRS industry replacement set.

[YNM]

The answer is totally simple : the scales used in game.

Now, I have to ask : what is the equivalent of a single tile of OpenTTD in real life ?

[Eddi]

what is the equivalent of a single tile of OpenTTD in real life ?

depending on which angle you look, something between 5m and 500km

[drivebyhobo]

The number one thing makes the game too easy, is that people usually play without property maintenance. Adding the Basecost mod into the mix makes for a very a realistic challenge.

[lukasz1985]

There is one thing that need clarification. Actually everyone can make the game any difficult, but it's no good.

It's no good because the game doesn't have a constraint, that would make the things straightforward.

What I mean is that in most games there are three basic levels of difficulty: "easy", "medium", "hard".

They are also present in OpenTTD but are not appropriate for what they mean in game, because the game is still easy at "hard", and very easy at "easy" and "medium".

I think if this was solved somehow the game would gain a lot, because installing NewGRFs to solve this problem has several problems:
First is that - it is not obvious that this is the way to solve difficulty problems.
Second is that - even if you know that you have to install newgrf the problem is that they work upon the base difficulty setting, so the question is what will be the result of combining a difficutly setting with a certain newgrf.
And third is that there is added complexity to the whole process, because many of this grfs have their own settings.

In the end is that the outcome is hard to predict. It requires to experiment with settings, that makes things a lot of inconvenient.

If you ask me - I think OpenTTD needs some cleanup in this area.

[planetmaker]

What I mean is that in most games there are three basic levels of difficulty: "easy", "medium", "hard".

They don't exist anymore for quite some time (at least pre 1.3.0). Basically for the reason that they did not make much sense and many more things, like you also noted, had a much bigger impact on difficulty than those few settings. All settings which previously were found under 'difficulty' have been integrated with the other 'advanced settings' in categories where they best(?) fit.

[mfb]

Making money is easy, but it is not the only possible goal in the game.

[planetmaker]

Making money is easy, but it is not the only possible goal in the game.

Indeed. And especially with the possibility to use a game script, there are many options and possibilities to define a goal (or several)

[Ailure]

They don't exist anymore for quite some time (at least pre 1.3.0). Basically for the reason that they did not make much sense and many more things, like you also noted, had a much bigger impact on difficulty than those few settings.

IIRC, they in some instances actually made the game "easier" at the harder difficulties if you involved AI's, as the default AI that is in the original Transport Tycoon (Deluxe) would suffer from having a lower loan limit.

Difficulty wise, with the current NewGRF's (FISH+eGRVTS+UKRS+AV8+FIRS) and settings i'm using the main thing that makes the game too easy is mainly due to how many passengers cities tend to spew out (even when something like cargodist is involved). Citybuilder scripts kinda solves that problem already though, by making cities harder to grow big too fast, and there were also work in progress town newGRF's that offers way lower passenger production than vanilla. But it's hard to strike a perfect balance, especially as soon you start mixing in newGRF's from different authors. And the original game was designed around 256x256 sized maps, when now most players play on larger maps with routes stretching far further distances.

A remade economic model could bring some additional challenge, though elements would have to be optional to not scare away players who prefer a more sandboxy experience. Kinda like the new maintenance cost system, which I find to be a step in the right direction, it actually made me more mindful about building unnecessary tracks and spamming signals (which turns into a eyesore when it's on every other tile anyway).

[evilgrass]

Sorry for the bump, but I have a question: are there also newGRFs that increase the cost of running vehicles? Because I did some googling, and it seems that for train companies at least, about 2/3rd of money is spent on running vehicles, about 1/4th on building new stuff, and the rest on infrastructure maintenance (i.e. not a very big amount. Source: https://www.aar.org/economy/Pages/Railr ... tment.aspx). So while turning on Infrastructure Maintenance in Advanced Settings is all well and good for making the game harder, it is very unrealistic because IRL the biggest expenditure is on running the vehicles. Wouldn't it be cool if some trains were simply to expensive to run on certain routes (*)? Then, e.g. if transporting passengers and using cargodist, the player would be forced to use local, cheap trains to assemble to passengers at a big station and only then use a fast train for a long distance haul. Like IRL.

(*) and yes, in the current setup you can also have routes where it is too expensive to run a train, but those are far too rare.

I'd like to have to fight for survival for once (even in late game), instead of creating islands in the sea to build tracks on

[planetmaker]

Use the base cost mod NewGRF. You can change the running costs for each vehicle type there separately.
http://wiki.openttdcoop.org/BaseCosts_NewGRF (download via ingame content download)

[evilgrass]

Ah, right. Sorry for my inability to read; I somehow thought the basecost grf was just for raising the cost of property maintenance. Which it isn't. Thanks.

[Phreeze]

if you want costs, play with inflation turned on. you get massive running costs ! (and adjust the running costs too, advanced options)

[Baldy's Boss]

My Gondborough game (see separate threads) certainly got into plenty of trouble thanks just to property maintenance,breakdowns,and inflation.It's still too early to tell if my Plonnville game can persist further.
UKRS/NARS vehicles cost more to buy and run than default-set counterparts so those seeking more challenge can buy only those,and don;t forget the option to jac up the interest rate at the opening.

The one thing that I think makes things unrealistically easy is the willingness of customers to take stuff shipped a long distance when much more local sources would be available cheaper.

[YNM]

For me, OpenTTD is quite hard. Creating a profitable line is certainly "easy"; but serving all towns, in a realistic manner, is hard. I often have a game where I just serve half of the scenario, half left barrely served. Also, I often impose my own limit on road and rail gradient; often one level higher or lower after 4 or 5 tiles. I often also limit myself on rails curve radius, whenever possible it should be more than one (or half ?) a tile, only in severely restricted cases I'd make them. Also limit on bridge height and length, although I set them to max. Indeed, I like to have realistically looking networks instead of networks that makes full optimization on everything.

Also I always use NewGRFs. OpenTTD is not just about money ; you can carve your game to a point you like !

[bear1]

My impression is that there is plenty of stuff out there to make the game more challenging than the base (which I lazily enjoy playing most of the time). As other people have voiced, you can set your own challenges. Either by reducing the number of vehicles allowed, or by looking to serve all producers. Of course, things like reducing the number of towns/suppliers makes that more difficult early on. What happens if you concentrate on the villages and ignore the big cities?
Cargodist, and any future development of it, offers new challenges I guess.

I find ensuring that cities get >80% of their passengers shipped on a train network without blockages is problematic!

[V453000 :)]

obviously money is but a trivial piece of nothing in OpenTTD.

The possibilities and game logic allow for massive complexity which supplies the player with years of constant development and improving of his networks and the way he builds them.

openttdcoop.org is a proof of that, the building techniques have been improving for years already, same goes for STILL finding new possibilities, and it is not stopping.

If you say openttd is too easy, build a large network and try to make it work well, transporting a lot of cargo.