Idea for Mod (#1): Satisfy town's needs to get elected Governor

[JosephWhoWhatNow]

Hey, folks. I'm hoping someone will create this mod for OpenTTD. I haven't learned how to mod OpenTTD. I made a couple of mods for Transport Fever 1 and 2, but haven't looked at OpenTTD yet. Maybe when I have more time I will.

Objective: Win a general election as Governor over all the cities of the map by supplying towns with 3 basic categories: food, goods and energy. That can be expanded in later versions of the mod, but for starters, just 3 categories would be fine.

Food would include grain and livestock already in the game. More can be added later, like fruits and veggies and others.

Goods would be just the goods produced in the game already. This category can be divided into many different types of goods later on.

Energy would be wood and oil already produced in the game. This category can be expanded to include electricity and gas later on.

Every year there is an election for governor. Each town on the map will have voting rights based on their number of inhabitants. The more people live in a town, the more votes they have. To make it simple, say they have 1 vote for every 100 people living in the town.

To get the towns to vote for you, you need to satisfy their demand for those 3 categories described above. All people across the map will have the same need for these 3 categories. People need food, goods and energy. That basic formula is the same for all towns, big or small.

The player needs to collect the resources, process them, and then deliver them to each town. As he does, the player's approval rating with the town will increase. Clicking on a town will tell you how you stand with the town, and how much they need of each of the 3 categories so you can plan your deliveries.

So the mod gives the player a reason for delivering items to the towns... to get elected as governor.

That would be the same objective in multi-player, where players compete against each other to satisfy the needs of towns and win their votes.

Some may focus on delivering to the largest towns, since you'd be able to satisfy more people for the same infrastructure expense. But don't neglect the small towns, because towns will grow faster when their needs are satisfied more fully. You can win a small town early in the game and hold on to their votes as they grow in size, provided you keep delivering more and more to them.

I'm tossing this out there for anyone to mod this. I don't mind if you turn it into a stand-alone game and sell it and make a lot of money. I won't complain that you owe me something. I just want someone to mod this so I can play it!

PS... If a modder wants to do this, I'd be happy to keep in touch to answer questions and provide more suggestions.

[kamnet]

While there is no idea of a "governor" in OpenTTD (it's a transport game, not a city planner game), there are many "city builder" gamescripts which require players to deliver specific types of cargoes to towns in order for them to grow. Some of the popular ones include Renewed Village Growth and Neighbors Are Important.

[odisseus]

At first glance, these rules may look similar to the city builder game, but there are a few key differences. First, each player's area of responsibility is the whole map, instead of just one town. Therefore, direct competition will be almost inevitable. Second, there is no goal to reach a certain population size. With sufficient starting loan, you could probably win majority support just by providing a bus service in every village.

As for what the "Governor" title would mean in the game, I see a few possibilities. It could be just a decorative title awarded at the end of the game, similar to "Tycoon of the century". If the game continues after the "Governor" is determined, the current holder of the title could receive a town authority boost across the whole map (I know game scripts are capable of doing that), or perhaps receive automatic subsidies for every transport route.

[JosephWhoWhatNow]

Thanks for the info and tips, fellas. I'll have to try those mods. They look interesting.

I reworked the idea. Here's what I'm trying to acheive. The players still run transportation networks, but as countries or states that control zones of the map. Each one his own zone or country.

All the land on the map is divided into sectors, like countries or states, from the beginning of the game. The player (or players) choose which country (state) they wish to play. Attention should be given to ensure an even distribution of resources and towns in each territory.

Maps could be drawn to resemble continents, like Europe or Africa, with multiple countries. Or a map could be of just one country, like the US or England, with multiple states. Maps could also be made for different time periods, like WW1, WW2, and other periods from the start of railroads in the 1850's.

Maps could also be made of islands, like the South Pacific for example, where each island is its own territory.

There is land ownership of every tile, so the player is free to build in their sector only. This avoids the problem of griefing.

In this mod, a player runs not just his own company, but his own country or state. They can also trade with other players in the game (whether human players in multi, or with AI players in singles).

To trade with another nation, you build a "customs port". This can be a sea port or land railway station or even an airport for really difficult maps. All international trade is handled through these customs ports. Customs train stations are to be built on the border between two territories that join each other, so both players have access. Customs sea ports would be build where other players have access (ocean only, not inland lakes). Customs airports can be built anywhere.

When a player completes a trade using a trade window interface, they agree on a commodity, quantity and price. The seller must have the materials he is selling already stored at a customs port. The buyer can then send trains or trucks or ships or planes to pick it up.

This means customs ports are shared ports that every player in the game has access to. Depending on the layout of the map, not all countries would have a shared border. Two countries who do not share a border would have to trade with each other by sea or air.

Players can trade not just commodities, but also land. If a player finds he doesn't need a portion of land, and would rather have another portion of someone else's land, he can offer to trade land. When agreed upon, the players select the tiles to be handed over, and the land ownership is thus transfered to the other player. The deal can involve simple land swaps, or buying/selling land in exchange for money or commodities.

There could also be an "open hostility" option. This means one player can take land away from another player simply by placing a station or port close to his border, such that its catchment zone overlaps the other player's territory. The player can thus gain control of all tiles within that station's or port's catchment area if he stores enough troops at that station or port. Over time, the opponent's land would be annexed. The player losing land would have to build a station or port in the same area and fill it with his own troops in order to defend his land and hold it. But this "open hostility" function would be an option that can be selected or not.

As a follow-up expansion to this mod, we could implement my "wartime mod" (Mod #2) already posted here a little earlier. But the first version would be focused on international trade.

[kamnet]

This isn't too far from how many players already play.

The trading of cargo can't be done through regular OpenTTD. There is a patch called Infrastructure Sharing which allows players to access each other's stations. This patch, along with many other patches and enhancements, is available in the JGR Patch Pack, which is a fork of OpenTTD.

Included in the patch pack is a feature called "Planning", which allows you to draw lines across the game map and mark it up however you wish. In cooperate multiplayer, this is often done to create artificial boundaries that other players respect (or, occasionally, don't respect). Many use this to create areas of the map they exclusively control and then negotiate with other players to trade cargo, set up passenger lines across areas, or build large map-wide network through cooperative building with each player building a portion of the connected network through the area they control.

If you're interested in exploring this, you should consider joining the official OpenTTD server on Discord. Over there they have two official JGR multiplayer servers and many more players have set up their own independent multiplayer servers.