[OTTD] Two5Kid's Screenshots

[Quast65]

An interesting thing to note, despite having two raw materials producing industries next to each other with both accepting engineering supplies, only one of them will receive it. Despite having enough engineering supplies to reach Gung-Ho levels for both industries. Or maybe I'm setting it up wrongly.

Set up a separate station to transfer your engineering supplies, then run a truck from the station to each industry.

As addition, make sure that the catchment of those truckstops near the industries only cover ONE industry and not both!!

[Two5Kid]

An interesting thing to note, despite having two raw materials producing industries next to each other with both accepting engineering supplies, only one of them will receive it. Despite having enough engineering supplies to reach Gung-Ho levels for both industries. Or maybe I'm setting it up wrongly.

Set up a separate station to transfer your engineering supplies, then run a truck from the station to each industry.

Alright. I never thought of this. Thanks for the info.

[Two5Kid]

As addition, make sure that the catchment of those truckstops near the industries only cover ONE industry and not both!!

Lucky for this reminder, I was picturing only one truck stop in my mind.

[Two5Kid]

Well, I am back, yet again. Probably the 3rd restart after the failed project back in 2021. I am quite impressed by how far OpenTTD has come. Version 14? I am currently playing JGRPP, which was only at version 20+ back then, and is now at 65+. Not to mention all the massive GRFs.

I am now finally attempting to complete the Steeltown version of FIRS, which is now at version 5. Some of the game's background:

I am playing FIRS 5 with Iron Horse. 1024 x 512. The only hack I did to the game was to increase Enhanced and Gung Ho output to 200% and 300%, respectively. I also gave myself a subsidy of 10 million and access to diesel engines. Zero breakdowns and zero competitors. At the same time I will probably share what I find challenging with this process, which was also what I faced back in 2021. Probably due to inexperience and what not.

[Two5Kid]

Coal Mine A1 and Coke Oven B1

Screen Shot 2025-06-12 at 10.32.34 AM.png (247.69 KiB) Viewed 1364 times

As always, I went for the tried and tested method of connecting Coal Mines to the Coke Oven. But this time, I tried something different. Imagine A as coal mines, and B as coke ovens. The usual method is to connect A to B. But in this game, I connected A1 to B2, which was followed by A2 to B1, in a loop method. Hence, shortening the period in which the train travels empty. This also increases the profits as the coal travels further, instead of from A1 to B1. Although it did come with two caveats, the production rates must be almost similar; if not, there will be a backlog of trains at one station and an overflow of coal at the other. The other one being that now the Coke, Coal Tar and Sulphur production is halved.

Coal Mine A2 and Coke Oven B2

Screen Shot 2025-06-12 at 10.33.19 AM.png (337.5 KiB) Viewed 1364 times

[Two5Kid]

After a year in-game, I have managed to connect two coal mines. My suggestion would probably be to start with Limestone, Sand, or Iron Ore Mines. They are much easier in terms of output, and their byproducts are a lot. Despite having two coal mines, my sulphur production is at a meagre 20-25 tons, whereas coal tar is also negligible. However, coke with iron ore and limestone produces a lot more pig iron, cast iron, and slag.

Just worth a mention, there is only one Blast Furnace on this map.

This is how the network look like after a year.

Screen Shot 2025-06-12 at 10.34.21 AM.png (245.56 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

Next up, I am not sure if this is going to bite me in the ass later but I find that using road transport for the small amounts of slag, cement, and engineering supplies, could be the way to go. Even for the coal tar, I connected all of these with some long, winding roads.

Spaghetti roads

Screen Shot 2025-06-12 at 10.35.19 AM.png (344.59 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

PS: You might have noticed some towns are in English and some are in Japanese, I intend to use Japanese names, but silly me didn't load the appropriate settings. So I am manually changing the names whenever I start a transport service in a new town.

[Two5Kid]

From what I heard, the best industry is the Port/Wharf industry, as they provide endless supplies without having to require any cargo. Especially at the start, it is useful for you to earn some quick money without having to worry about making sure the industrial chain is connected. But once you manage to send cargo to the Port or Wharf, be sure to be able to handle the sudden increase in cargo.

This wharf doubled all its output when I only supplied it with potash and food.

Screen Shot 2025-06-12 at 10.36.59 AM.png (387.71 KiB) Viewed 1231 times

However, not all industries are the same. Shown here are a Machine Factory (left) and an Engine Plant (right). Although the Machine Factory is accepting vehicle engines as one of its requirements, I thought it would be able to produce at least some engineering supplies, but it did nothing. Luckily, I tried it out with road vehicles, so it wasn't that big of a problem for now.

Dumb and Dumber

Screen Shot 2025-06-12 at 10.30.25 PM.png (342.42 KiB) Viewed 1231 times

I am slowly moving towards the north part of the map, after having almost everything important connected in the middle. It appears to me that Glass would primarily come from the North, including supplies of salt, which is needed at the Chlor-Alkali plants (only available in the South).

[Two5Kid]

Once the main line and supplies are up and running, I ensure that the relevant industry properly serves them. It is always a must to allow the main industry to have a run of a few months first to gauge their output before you start connecting them to the secondary industries. My pet peeve is that coal tar and sulphur is so low despite high amounts of coal being sent to the Coke Oven. On top of that, you still need to convert the coal tar to carbon black before you can forward the two items (sulphur and carbon black) to the Tyre Plant.

More wriggly lines.

Screen Shot 2025-06-16 at 10.13.07 AM.png (227.67 KiB) Viewed 783 times

The Kashimane Furnace is the only one on the whole map. Luckily, it is supplied with pig iron from a very nearby furnace. The billets and blooms, however, need to be transported far and away. Unseen in this picture is ferroalloy and quicklime being transported by ships.

One and only

Screen Shot 2025-06-16 at 10.13.59 AM.png (287.53 KiB) Viewed 783 times

The northern part of the map is slowly being connected, but most of the industries are the secondaries, involving a lot of factories, which I assume would be left unconnected as they do not provide the goods that I need for vehicle production.

North of the Map

Screen Shot 2025-06-16 at 10.15.01 AM.png (264.27 KiB) Viewed 783 times

[Two5Kid]

Trying my hand at making another coke oven work properly for me, hopefully, this coke oven will be "overdone" when all the primary coal mines are supplied with engineering supplies.

Screen Shot 2025-06-16 at 10.16.37 AM.png (420.71 KiB) Viewed 781 times

Here is another rough picture of the current network and some of the trains running.

Network so far.

Screen Shot 2025-06-16 at 10.17.32 AM.png (255.55 KiB) Viewed 781 times

Trains so far.

Screen Shot 2025-06-16 at 10.18.07 AM.png (96.86 KiB) Viewed 781 times

[Two5Kid]

First step!

Screen Shot 2025-06-18 at 3.04.02 PM.png (270.46 KiB) Viewed 658 times

Finally, I have managed to connect the vehicle engines production plant to the vehicle plant. I intend to have all 5 items supplied before calling it a success, but this is the first step. It wasn't easy, and it is still a 5-part process. Although glass and tyres are getting along fine, I still haven't optimized their supplies yet.

Looong!

Screen Shot 2025-06-18 at 3.04.59 PM.png (82.63 KiB) Viewed 658 times

This was the distance that the vehicle engines needed to travel, from east to west.

Smallest town

Screen Shot 2025-06-18 at 3.06.10 PM.png (335.73 KiB) Viewed 658 times

This is the smallest town, but this inland port is going to be very busy once I have my way with the assigning of orders and transporting of materials across water. Hopefully, as time goes by (when I start to focus on towns), this will be a thriving town.

[Two5Kid]

Things are starting to ramp up and getting a little bit out of control as I start to connect a lot of the industries. You have to monitor each one very closely, because some of the trains share the same lines, and I did not make them all double-tracked. So there might be jams or poor flow if you do not keep an eye on things. Most of my trains also travel a long distance, so there are tons of materials left over that need to be transported. Remember, adding another train will result in doubling of the output at the receiving end, which might need an additional train to handle the load, a very disastrous domino effect if you are not careful.

Salt Bae

Screen Shot 2025-06-18 at 3.07.54 PM.png (507.94 KiB) Viewed 651 times

Starting my salt and acid producing industry with this latest addition to my budding transport company. Hopefully, we will be getting enough acid, chlorine, and sodium hydrochloride to power a few industries down the line.

Chlor-Alkali

Screen Shot 2025-06-18 at 3.08.18 PM.png (323.46 KiB) Viewed 651 times

The Chlor-alkali plant is right in the middle of the map. This area is pretty flat and with a few industries surrounding it. Soon, this will be a hub of road transport instead of rail transport as the industries are very near to each other. This could turn out to be a good idea or not. We shall see.

[Two5Kid]

Screen Shot 2025-06-20 at 7.34.07 PM.png (286.83 KiB) Viewed 559 times

Just as I had mentioned in the previous post, the generously flat land that was around the Chlor-alkali plant has now been filled up with roads, connecting a limestone quarry to a quicklime factory, which was then used to send quicklime, scrap metal and oxygen to give us billet and blooms. This Steeltown FIRS is really a test of your planning expertise.

A couple of the junctions have also begun to show their overusage and need to extend them into double tracks. One thing for sure, you need to go back and review your previous connected industries as there might be some bottlenecks or tons of undelivered goods. I am trying to make the connection as realistic as possible, although you could go for the straight lines and massive Ro-ro stations.

Screen Shot 2025-06-20 at 7.37.29 PM.png (260.11 KiB) Viewed 559 times

Screen Shot 2025-06-20 at 7.38.52 PM.png (271.56 KiB) Viewed 559 times

A pre and post shot of the same area. Engineering supplies is a really tricky product to supply your industries with. First of all, you need to make sure your network is able to handle the extra trains, usually I try to increase the carrying capacity and the length of the train before I double the amount of trains used. But when you are connecting long distances, usually you would have started off with a couple of short trains, so make sure you know what you are doing before you overwhelm your network like I did. This single transfer of engineering supplies to the limestone and coal mines, immediately doubled the amount of trains running on the same track.

[Two5Kid]

Screen Shot 2025-06-20 at 7.39.24 PM.png (263.08 KiB) Viewed 551 times

Screen Shot 2025-06-20 at 7.40.47 PM.png (392.1 KiB) Viewed 551 times

I have just realized that even vehicle bodies will be needed to be transported from the north part of the map. So that makes, vehicle bodies, vehicle engines and glass; all coming from the current north, central and eastern parts of the map. I haven't even looked at the southern part of the map. Tyres will come from the west, that makes vehicle parts, the last to be connected. I have never come so far in any of the FIRS playthrough before. But one thing for sure, the JGR patch pack is the key to making it work.

Some of the highlights:
1) allowing trains to go into depots to refit their cargo, hence saving the cost of having to buy another train, and also reduce the number of trains running on the network.
2) allowing conditional orders, so that I can mix and match different cargoes, set different load limits, thus cutting down the time needed to fully load any particular cargo.

[Two5Kid]

We take a short break and do some rail-fanning drone shots:

Screen Shot 2025-06-22 at 3.33.10 PM.png (479.47 KiB) Viewed 436 times

I thought trees grow very quickly in the past, now not sure why they don't.

Steam and Diesel

Screen Shot 2025-06-22 at 3.34.14 PM.png (585.25 KiB) Viewed 436 times

Screen Shot 2025-06-22 at 3.35.15 PM.png (430.74 KiB) Viewed 436 times

A redo-ing of this junction might be needed.

[Two5Kid]

Map of the network so far:

The North remembers

Screen Shot 2025-06-23 at 12.27.30 PM.png (124.53 KiB) Viewed 366 times

This is the northern part, not much here, just some farms that still need farm supplies, so that I can feed the towns and cities in the future.

Central

Screen Shot 2025-06-23 at 12.27.59 PM.png (126.54 KiB) Viewed 366 times

This is the main bulk of the network despite not producing any end product required for vehicles. But they do the most heavy load of producing cast iron, pig iron, billets and blooms.

East

Screen Shot 2025-06-23 at 12.28.45 PM.png (109.95 KiB) Viewed 366 times

This is the eastern part of the map, mountainous and lacking of any industries, most likely will be developed for passenger services in the future.

[Two5Kid]

Hashito

Screen Shot 2025-06-24 at 4.59.20 PM.png (261.73 KiB) Viewed 265 times

Hashito is currently the biggest town on the map due to passenger and mail services. Here we have a shot of the coal train passing by Hashito.

Busy wharf

Screen Shot 2025-06-24 at 5.02.44 PM.png (475.44 KiB) Viewed 265 times

Screen Shot 2025-06-24 at 5.53.42 PM.png (386.31 KiB) Viewed 265 times

Finally after 10 years, we managed to supply all the required supplies for the production of vehicles.

[Two5Kid]

Screen Shot 2025-06-29 at 10.25.57 AM.png (858.59 KiB) Viewed 157 times

Hitachiobe is part of a 3-town passenger and mail service, and with the service running for a year, the town is growing nicely to my liking. Hitachiobe will also be part of a ferry service, connecting some lakeside towns, but at the moment, all the towns are at 200-300, and it will take a while.

Screen Shot 2025-06-29 at 10.26.19 AM.png (1019.7 KiB) Viewed 157 times

Sagazu is a hilly town famous for its potash mine. It is the connecting town between Hitachiobe and Ukibe, located at the seaside. I have no idea why, despite the town itself being growing, they haven't filled in the empty patch around the bus depot.

Screen Shot 2025-06-29 at 10.26.37 AM.png (804.1 KiB) Viewed 157 times

Ukibe, the quaint seaside town with its lake. This will be a favourite seaside destination once it is connected to the other towns.