What's the best setup to play FIRS?

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Cool Loser
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What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by Cool Loser »

In terms of map. You see, since I'm still a newbie, I play 512x512 with very few towns and very few industries, so I don't get overwhelmed. The problem is that is not unlikely that some industries only have one place to send their stuff, so no matter how many trains I send to cover that route, there are always hundreds of units of cargo waiting (obviously most of the time these industries are in Gong Ho level), which I guess affects adversely the station rating (which by the way I don't know exactly what factor is affected by in the mod). Or maybe I'm missing something else in my strategy.

I'm not entirely familiar with all the advanced options, but I'd say I play in a kinda easy difficulty level (for example, I don't use infraestructure maintenance). As for FIRS itself, right now I'm playing a subtropical map with In a Hot Country Economy.

What do you think would be the ideal setup to enjoy FIRS at its best, not only in terms of map but also of other mods, difficulty settings, etc?
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by kamnet »

I would suggest that if you still feel like a newbie that you step away from FIRS and any other mods, and focus on learning and mastering the basic game. Once you have experience and an easily make it through playing with the default industry and vehicles, you'll be able to step up into a NewGRF industry set like FIRS or ECS Vectors and more easily identify how to deal with the increased logistical issues.

As to your current issue at hand, the solution would be to play on bigger maps with more cities and more area for industries to populate on. This will give you not only more places to deliver your goods, but there's ability for those cities to grow and increase demand for finished goods.
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by Cool Loser »

kamnet wrote: 18 Sep 2019 16:15 I would suggest that if you still feel like a newbie that you step away from FIRS and any other mods, and focus on learning and mastering the basic game.
B-B-But with FIRS industry is soooooooooo cooler and entertaining than vanilla... that I don't think I'm able to go back now :/

:)

You may be right, and it wouldn't be the first game where I want to run before walk.

In this game, when you play in a big map with many industries and towns, do you generally try to connect most of them, or do you give up the least interesenting ones and focus on one or maybe two chains? Not only speaking of FIRS but also vanilla.
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by kamnet »

Just depends on how I want to play. I'd say in most of my games I start out with just satisfying a few chains between areas. I might start out with passenger and mail service between two towns, so that I can build up my town ratings. Then I'll find nearby industries that I can complete a chain on so I can deliver goods to towns so that they'll grow, and I can go back and add more passenger and mail service. When my industries produce more goods that I want to deliver to those towns, I'll start looking at making connections to other towns, then build up passenger and mail networks to them, and then start looking at those regions for new ways to expand.

I tend to play on large maps 2048*2048 or larger. I find that if I get bored working in one area, I can basically start over in another area and use my profits to start there, and then switch back to old areas to see where I can now grow and improve. My core game I've actually played off and on continuously (at least once a year for a period of 2-4 hours at a time) since 2009 and I've easily put thousands of hours of game play into it.
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by andythenorth »

I usually play 512x256 or so.

Things you could try...

1. Use a basic economy, they don't have as much depth, but can be fun.
2. Turn down the amount of cargo you get from supplies. You can configure 'enhanced' and 'gung-ho' to produce less, in the newgrf parameters :)

I play a lot of Steeltown, it's my favourite economy, but it's crazy deep, all the chains are connected to each other. :twisted:
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by Cool Loser »

kamnet wrote: 18 Sep 2019 17:12 Just depends on how I want to play. I'd say in most of my games I start out with just satisfying a few chains between areas. I might start out with passenger and mail service between two towns, so that I can build up my town ratings. Then I'll find nearby industries that I can complete a chain on so I can deliver goods to towns so that they'll grow, and I can go back and add more passenger and mail service. When my industries produce more goods that I want to deliver to those towns, I'll start looking at making connections to other towns, then build up passenger and mail networks to them, and then start looking at those regions for new ways to expand.

I tend to play on large maps 2048*2048 or larger. I find that if I get bored working in one area, I can basically start over in another area and use my profits to start there, and then switch back to old areas to see where I can now grow and improve. My core game I've actually played off and on continuously (at least once a year for a period of 2-4 hours at a time) since 2009 and I've easily put thousands of hours of game play into it.
I see. Sometimes I rush to complete a chain before polishing and adjusting every step, out of fear of "wasting" resources produced in one of those steps if I don't connect it immediately with the next. Then I have lots of routes to fine tune and I feel overwhelmed. u_u
andythenorth wrote: 18 Sep 2019 17:35 I usually play 512x256 or so.
And what towns/industries density?
andythenorth wrote: 18 Sep 2019 17:35Things you could try...

1. Use a basic economy, they don't have as much depth, but can be fun.
2. Turn down the amount of cargo you get from supplies. You can configure 'enhanced' and 'gung-ho' to produce less, in the newgrf parameters :)
#2 is a good idea, I'll do that. As for the economy, I think I can handle it so long as I stick with one chain and not try to connect every single industry. Not that I'm gonna play a perfect run minmaxing everything, but I'm just learning and I don't expect those results, I'm fine with that.

Thanks a lot for your answers guys!
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by TrainLover »

Personally, I do passenger networks as my primary way of making money on FIRS. In the regular start year of 1950, there are a lot of towns with high populations, and passengers are a higher paying cargo than anything else. After I do passenger networks, I start with the regular coal, iron ore and steel.
Developer of North American Passenger Liveries: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=87228
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Cool Loser
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by Cool Loser »

Hmmm. I assumed passengers were one of the worst payed cargoes, according to the ingame graphics. In any case, I'm not really struggling with the difficulty, on the contrary: the issue that led me to start the thread is that some of my industries produce such a HUGE amount of resources that I literally don't know how to handle them, so I assumed the parameters of my maps are creating unbalanced games. I started another sub-tropical map with In a Hot Country economy and diamonds make the money flow by the millions.
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by jfs »

Passengers have multiple advantages: They're in large supply, you can transport them in both directions unlike most industrial freight, low weight per unit meaning less powerful vehicles can carry more at higher speed.
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by Cool Loser »

Fair point, I'll keep it in mind.

It's just that I heard several guys on Youtube saying passengers line are a bad idea in the early game, and it made sense to me.
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by jfs »

Sure it takes a while to get towns big enough for passengers to be really worth it, but it's still a good idea to set up some bus and train routes for passengers early on, even if they barely make a profit or even run at a loss. While you then focus on some profitable industry routes, the towns you started servicing will slowly grow, and suddenly you'll have some great central stations in several large cities.
The really important lesson is how town growth works: What counts is having many stations where you pick up passengers often. It's not enough to have large capacity or transport a lot of passengers, if a station sits for too long without a vehicle picking up even a single passenger, town growth slows.
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Re: What's the best setup to play FIRS?

Post by Cool Loser »

That's very useful, thanks. I like passenger lines as much as the next guy, though now that I'm discovering FIRS I tend to focus on industry. But I'm gonna start puting into practice your advice right now.
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