Strategy Tutorials?

[tonyf12]

Is there any sort of strategy tutorial for openTTD? I'm a complete noob at this, and I never seem to get past the stage of just having a few 1 to 1 lines (e.g. Coal to Power or Farm to Factory) as I get stuck making only 10k every 10 (real) minutes. Most of the tutorials I've seen are either "Getting Started" which show getting one or two tracks running or station tutorials on how to build certain station styles.

[Iguanna]

You can probably learn a lot just by joining some multilayer games and just watching what the other people do, and you can ask em questions and stuff too if you like.
You're aware of the manual right? I think there maybe some tutorial type stuff on the OpenTTDCoop wiki too, as well as some guides for making train networks.

As far as strategy goes, the best way to make more money I think is to just carry stuff further away, as the profit is based on distance. Using trains to deliver coal from a good mine to a power station as far away as you can afford is a good way to start, or you can make lots if you use airplanes to transport passengers between large cities which are a long distance apart.

[tonyf12]

The manual was what I was alluding too with the

Most of the tutorials I've seen are either "Getting Started" which show getting one or two tracks running or station tutorials on how to build certain station styles.

.

That other wiki seems useful, thanks.

[planetmaker]

Maybe you also want to join us on one of our servers. Our main server is the public server where we start a new cooperative game every week or so. Currently we're also engaged in playing a lot on our development server where we're testing the head-to-head patch which allows a number of parallel sections which each company has for itself. There, of course, it's very easy to watch people build their network - and even compare the building style of different people Join us onIRC or see our blog for more details how to find that.

[tonyf12]

So after playing for a while after reading some of the advice and lurking in openttdcoop matches, this is my current savegame.

Any advice/criticisms/praise would be appreciated.

[tonyf12]

Updated savegame: I see a few people downloaded the other one, could you please give me some advice? (Saved with r15966 if it makes any difference)

[planetmaker]

Overall it looks quite decent.

Few points though caught my eye when briefl looking at it:
- you use very tight curves at your junctions (up to 2*45°) - that makes them very slow
- you use double-tracked lines to, e.g. a wood where you pickup wood (primary goods). That's overdoing it as one track can fill up to roughtly 6 station tracks - and you'll never need so many trains there and you complicate things for you needlessly. So rule of thumb for a track which leads to one station only: for each 6 station tracks, one track going to that station and one coming from it.
- Your ML junctions do not always allow turning onto the side line from each of the two ML tracks which go in the same direction. That might cause jams later on.

[phil88]

It's a bit weird having the mainline how you've done it. Trains can't always turn onto it from sidelines the way they need to, so have to go around in a massive loop. The reason why trains 15, 16, 1 and 2 are making a loss every year is because they have to travel far more distance than they actually need to. I'd guess that a few other trains are suffering from having to travel for longer than they need to as well because of this.

Also, I've never understood why people build double track mainlines (and sidelines in your case) when they have so few trains. You only have 15 trains in the whole network, the whole thing could be just regular 2 track (1 in each direction) lines. The sidelines could probably even just be a single track for both directions with occasional passing points.

[tonyf12]

Thanks for all the tips everyone. I'm working on redoing the farm/lumber SL as that seems to be the most ****ed part. (It's also where the ML is at it's narrowest so that doesn't help.)