[OTTD] The path to riches. A daylength server AAR

[Korenn]

Right after the flight popup, Forest finally allows building a new cargo stop, allowing service for goods and food to be brought in.

And this is the state of our network by 1912. The long passenger line south connects up with the local production network at Heidelberg.

growth!

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[Purno]

Nice story and shots (though I'd love to see more trains in the shots )

Keep it up!

[jacke]

hi jacke! good to see you're still around here. There will be plenty more. Until I'm bored and the next shiny is on the horizon.

Good to see you're still around too! I remember when you introduced your Challenge Spinoff many years ago!

Very interesting game you have running here. OTTD certainly gets more interesting with some economic challenges. Something I have tried out a bit recently (except modifying base costs), is to adjust the food requirements for towns, to make it more chanlleging to make them grow. Since the game actually stores accepted food for a town in 16 bits (but is currently used only as a flag), I made som small modifications to the source code to make a town grow only if it has accepted a certain amount of food in relation to its size. Also, since my game is in the arctic climate, I changed the source code to make towns below the snow level require food aswell. This makes the game more challenging, and also has the nice side effect that all towns does not grow like crazy, when you rather like to have some towns stay smaller

[LittleBear]

I love this story! It's fascinating to watch others play. My husband likes to just sit and watch me play for hours and I understand why!

[Korenn]

Intermission

I've played the game until completion of the mission I started out on. I'll post the rest of the story when I get to it.

But in the meantime, a screenshot of the distraction that made me have to stop playing soon after completing the mission:

[XeryusTC]

Congratulations!

[jacke]

Congratulations!

[Pilot]

Congrats.

[D-CHGU]

Congratulations from me too.. looks like I'm not the only newly "elected" father around here... mine is a little older though, came on August 23rd

[Korenn]

Thanks everyone!

looks like I'm not the only newly "elected" father around here... mine is a little older though, came on August 23rd

Congrats too! I can't even imagine how things will be a month from now

[D-CHGU]

If she's anything like ours then by then she might be sleeping 6 to 8 hours straight through the night when well-fed
But I guess no two babies are alike so you'll have to wait and find out...

All I can say is that every day you're likely to discover something new

[Arexander]

Congratulations to both of you!

[Korenn]

Very interesting game you have running here. OTTD certainly gets more interesting with some economic challenges. Something I have tried out a bit recently (except modifying base costs), is to adjust the food requirements for towns, to make it more chanlleging to make them grow. Since the game actually stores accepted food for a town in 16 bits (but is currently used only as a flag), I made som small modifications to the source code to make a town grow only if it has accepted a certain amount of food in relation to its size. Also, since my game is in the arctic climate, I changed the source code to make towns below the snow level require food aswell. This makes the game more challenging, and also has the nice side effect that all towns does not grow like crazy, when you rather like to have some towns stay smaller

Yep, that was the basis of the Challenge Spinoff. In fact, after concluding the current game, and seeing how awesome it was, I've started on a patch that adds a setting to play with the town growth requirements. Well, I say 'started', it's already done. Just working on getting it up to code standard. The cool thing is that it's industry-newgrf compatible, and even works in Toyland! It's the essence of the OCS in a single patch setting.

patch: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=56955

[Korenn]

Nice story and shots (though I'd love to see more trains in the shots )

Keep it up!

Shots of trains isn't really the focus of this report, it's about gameplay decisions and execution. That said, there's no reason not to try and get some trains in view when I take a shot

[Korenn]

Westwood - Forest Lines

We join the game in 1917.

01 start situation.png (11.72 KiB) Viewed 4120 times

We're no longer first! Yellow has caught up with our lack of action last time. We have loads of money - great opportunity to expand!

Westwood has been growing steadily. This is looking good for our overall goal.

big town

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Forest too is finally growing now that its services are set up. When passengers start lining up on both ends of the express line, we'll really be raking in the money!

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[continued next post]

[Korenn]

The subway got stuck - it went in for servicing and tried to return to central, but couldn't figure out how to go around the circle. We help it out, then add in a servicing order in the right spot, so this shouldn't happen in the future.

a one-way, single closed loop is way too complicated.

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There are hundreds of passengers waiting at Westwood station, so we expand our express trains with four more passenger coaches.

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A new train becomes available. It has massive hp, but it's slow. And electric. It would make a great mountain climber, but since we're on a tropical map, we probably won't need to use it.

impressive, yet useless

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[continued next post]

[Korenn]

Our truck feeder system at the farm cluster is nice to look at - there's a heap of trucks coming and going at all times. Paris Depot station is just below this picture, and has several trains loading at all times.

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At about this time I notice a small glitch in the 2cc set - tanker wagons appear to be unfinished in the | view, where they appear as a big capsule.

08 2cc graphical glitch.png (6.99 KiB) Viewed 4110 times

A lot of money allows us to redesign some junctions and terraform to make them easier to pass. Terraforming is incredibly expensive! the small hill removal here near westwood glassworks was half a million dollars. It's probably not really worth the money right now, but this will save a lot of headache later on when this piece of network is sure to become more heavily used. The train you see there is shipping sand from our northern quarry to the glassworks just out of view to the south west.

more betterer!

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[continued next post]

[Korenn]

We get a nice reminder that Forest is doing great. Not many passengers yet, but that will come. Forest Forest is just too funny not to screencap And it's in the middle of a desert!

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Paris depot is very busy, as I said above. This is the total list of trains currently servicing it - Two wood trains, four livestock trains and three plant fibre. Livestock and Plant fibre supply is practically equal, but we need an extra train because of the greater distance to the stockyard.

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The expanded food trains have problems getting up hills from a near standstill due to the weight factor of 5. To alleviate this, some depots are moved so that trains don't hit hills right after servicing, and as a grand plan we set out to upgrade all the main through lines in the network from very slow (50 mph) to slow (75 mph) tracks. Our current locomotives can reach 60 mph, which should make it easier to clear these hills.

it's travelling at 1mph

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[continued next post]

[Korenn]

The track upgrade costs a grand total of 14 million dollars. Yoinks! But all our cargo trains can now reach top speeds of 60 mph, a 20% increase in travel efficiency.

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In 1920 we receive an offer for a new electric train - 90 mph speed and massive horse power. Awesome! but we don't have any electric lines. Time to electrify the express line. it is.... extremely expensive. Even ridiculously more expensive than the very slow to slow upgrade.

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and after we're completely done at a cost of 50 million dollars... medium speed is introduced. *facepalm*
We upgrade the express line until the junction of the Forest and Heidelberg lines. This costs us another 10 million dollars, while being only a small length. Only 16 million remaining out of a starting 110+, so we leave the rest of the upgrading for another time.

This is the new locomotive. It's amazing! The high running costs are no problem for our express lines, where speed matters most. It's so fast that it can only reach its top speed on the short bit of medium track we've built.

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[continued next post]

[Korenn]

The express train is replaced with the new locomotive. Progress!

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halfway through 1920 another junkyard is opened near Paradise. Someone has to deal with all the crap!

17 junkyard paradise.png (7.38 KiB) Viewed 4092 times

And a shot of our new train finally being released to the market. Two of our competitors jump on this occasion and also start upgrading some lines to medium speed. We're already set for this session because we got our prototype.

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[continued next post]