Train Fever

[Robbedem]

Well, considering stations have no displayed catchment area, I can only guess how close the bus/tram stops have to be to each other. Another flaw of the game...

There are no catchment area's, so the game can't show them.
People and cargo will just take the fastest route to it's destination.
So even a house or industry 1km away, might be in the "catchment area" of your stop, while another house only 200m away, might not be in the "catchment area". It all depends on speed, starting point and destination.

In general:
Faster vehicles => stops should be further apart. This counts for everything (from horse carriages all the way to the high-speed trains)
Also, when you know how the game works, making money is easy (at least on the easy setting).

The game works like this:
PASSENGERS:
People live in a house (green). They go from their house to their work (blue), shopping (red) and leisure (yellow) buildings.
They always go back and forth from their house (f.e. no industrial -> commerce traffic)
If you click a person, you can see where he/she lives, works, shops and goes for leisure activities.
All these trips, need to be within 20 min.
The more area's can be reached from a certain area (within those 20 min), the higher the land value and the bigger the buildings that will appear there (bigger building => more people, shops, jobs or leisure).
Keep in mind that the 20 minutes is the total travel time. This time includes: walking to stations, waiting at stations and traveling on vehicles.
The frequency time that you see in the line manager, determines the waiting time at stations.
People can use multiple lines without problem as long as the total travel time will not exceed 20 min.

CARGO:
A towns industrial buildings (blue) demand goods. Those goods can be delivered by 3 buildings: refinery, steel mill and sawmill. (there are mods that add more factory types)
When a town that demands goods has one of these buildings within 20 min, it will check if there is raw material present withng 20 min. If the material is available, the materials will be transported to the factory, and the goods will be transported to the town.
Frequency is not very important for cargo.
You can see if a factory is using your line when you click it. (it will say line usage: yes or no)

[SkeedR]

Maybe this just isn't the game for you Purno...

[Ameecher]

Not played this yet but it does seem a bit odd calling a game train fever when you seemingly can't play with trains for quite a while!

[Robbedem]

You can build trains from the start if you know what you are doing. If it's your first game and you start like you would with OpenTTD, it might indeed bankrupt you.

One of the main things to look out for is the rail construction. The game will try to make your routes as fast and level as possible, but that will cost a huge amount of money on hilly terrain. It is very usefull (even needed) in the later game when you want to build high-speed lines, but in the early game it is better to have the track follow the land more. The latter can be achieved by building in smaller segments.
Also: don't build rails in hills at the beginning. (logical when you think about it, but most people seem to think you can just build rails straight over a mountain... I guess they are confused with rollercoaster tycoon. )

[Purno]

Purno: Go to vehicles folder, open the 'trains' and 'wagons' folders.

There are files there, afair with *.mdl extension.

Open them in notepad, search for

Code: Select all

Runningcost="xxxxxx"

where Xes are a number.

Change this to whatever value you wish. I reduced train running cost by a factor of 10. Now the game plays like early versions of TTD but with lots of cool features.

Thanks. I'll try that.

Well, considering stations have no displayed catchment area, I can only guess how close the bus/tram stops have to be to each other. Another flaw of the game...

There are no catchment area's, so the game can't show them.
People and cargo will just take the fastest route to it's destination.
So even a house or industry 1km away, might be in the "catchment area" of your stop, while another house only 200m away, might not be in the "catchment area". It all depends on speed, starting point and destination.

In general:
Faster vehicles => stops should be further apart. This counts for everything (from horse carriages all the way to the high-speed trains)
Also, when you know how the game works, making money is easy (at least on the easy setting).

The game works like this:
PASSENGERS:
People live in a house (green). They go from their house to their work (blue), shopping (red) and leisure (yellow) buildings.
They always go back and forth from their house (f.e. no industrial -> commerce traffic)
If you click a person, you can see where he/she lives, works, shops and goes for leisure activities.
All these trips, need to be within 20 min.
The more area's can be reached from a certain area (within those 20 min), the higher the land value and the bigger the buildings that will appear there (bigger building => more people, shops, jobs or leisure).
Keep in mind that the 20 minutes is the total travel time. This time includes: walking to stations, waiting at stations and traveling on vehicles.
The frequency time that you see in the line manager, determines the waiting time at stations.
People can use multiple lines without problem as long as the total travel time will not exceed 20 min.

CARGO:
A towns industrial buildings (blue) demand goods. Those goods can be delivered by 3 buildings: refinery, steel mill and sawmill. (there are mods that add more factory types)
When a town that demands goods has one of these buildings within 20 min, it will check if there is raw material present withng 20 min. If the material is available, the materials will be transported to the factory, and the goods will be transported to the town.
Frequency is not very important for cargo.
You can see if a factory is using your line when you click it. (it will say line usage: yes or no)

20 minute sounds like an awefully short max travel time, especially in early years. How's a 40km/h steamer supposed to travel from one town to another one in such a short time?

Maybe this just isn't the game for you Purno...

If the Train Fever devs want to alienate a part of their potiential playerbase, it's their choice of course. And even though I'm no expert, I get the feeling it's commercially just stupid to do so, especially if all that needs to be done is making an easier difficulty setting.

Not played this yet but it does seem a bit odd calling a game train fever when you seemingly can't play with trains for quite a while!

Oh you can, as long as you make sure your trains make profit. If they're making loss, they're making HEAVY losses.

One of the main things to look out for is the rail construction. The game will try to make your routes as fast and level as possible, but that will cost a huge amount of money on hilly terrain. It is very usefull (even needed) in the later game when you want to build high-speed lines, but in the early game it is better to have the track follow the land more. The latter can be achieved by building in smaller segments.
Also: don't build rails in hills at the beginning. (logical when you think about it, but most people seem to think you can just build rails straight over a mountain... I guess they are confused with rollercoaster tycoon. )

Rail building in hills is one of the most fun things to do, along with seeing your lovely trains driving on those curvy tracks. Track building is expensive, but it's the running costs that are problematic for me. I can afford a expensive railway line as long as my lines make a profit.

The most epic thing in this game is to see your trains drive acros the mountains, considering the max slope of railway line you're forced to build curves, tunnels and bridges. Something that was never necessary in OpenTTD.

I can build this in Train Fever. It looks epic. Unfortunately the whole fun gets killed when the trains aren't making profit at all, because apparently the journey takes too long and the running cost are ridicously high.

[Robbedem]

20 min real time isn't that short and is plenty for connecting neighbouring towns with 40km/h trains. I usually get around 5 to 8 min travel time between neighbouring towns with the slow trains. You shouldn't try to connect towns on opposite sides of the map with slow trains though.

Keep in mind that having only one train on a 10min full trip line (5min between stations), will cause about 5min waiting time for passengers, so adding one extra train reduces the waiting+travel time from 10min to 7,5min. A third train will reduce waiting+travel to about 6,7min.
The effect is even bigger on longer routes. F.e. a 8min route =>
one train: 16min
two trains: 12min
three trains: 10,7min

You can see the full trip travel time if you have one vehicle on the line, or you can multiply the frequency time with the number of vehicles on the line.

[Purno]

Adding more trains will also drastically increase the running cost. It looks like every line you're building is a huge gamble. It'll take a lot of running costs before you can even see how many cargo/passengers will actually be transported.

IMO the game's balance is flawed and the game is much too unforgiving.

[Pyoro]

IMO that's how it should be. I haven't played O/TTD for actually challenge in what feels like 20 years, 'cause no matter what you do, once you get things running you've "won". There's basically no way whatsoever that a company making money will stop making money (unless you play with inflation which we all agree is incredibly flawed).

It's good that Train Fever tries something different (which I think is the main challenge. We've all played loads of TT, so we're used to things working like they do there). Maybe they should've added a sandbox mode or something, but it's a small team, and quite likely they were busy with other things.
(obviously, once you figure TF out by playing a bit you most likely won't bankrupt either. Neither of the games are exactly Dwarf Fortress or something ^^; )

[Purno]

Obviously it's good that a game offers a challenge for those who want one. But not at the cost of an easy game mode for those who just want to have some fun.

Maybe they should've added a sandbox mode or something, but it's a small team, and quite likely they were busy with other things.

I'm not a programmer, but wouldn't adding a sandbox mode, basically only modifying some running cost/purchase cost values, be an incredibly tiny task?

[Pyoro]

But there's probably a million other potential tiny taks, and maybe with the modding ability and cheats they simply considered this to be unnecessary? Perhaps there was no demand during the beta, or more demand for other things.

Obviously, I don't know. Perhaps it's simply an oversight and will be added later. Maybe they'll also change the balancing. No idea. ^^;

[Ne0Que]

ehm it's kinda easy to make millions and millions.. and still be able to build such kind of constructions (the images above). I made 85M in 35 years. And yes i started with laying a train network. It's not really that hard at all once you get the hang of it. But i stopped playing the game because well.. the game isn't near finished at all. When way-points are implemented i might be interested again. They're planning to implement such feature anyway so thats a good thing.

[Purno]

Signals are still confusing me a bit. Could anyone show me how to place signals for a functional 2-track terminus station leading to a double track railway line (one track for each direction)?

[Robbedem]

It's just like OTTD path signals => you only need to put one signal at the entrance. The stations have build-in signals.

For right-driving trains (signal is always on the right side of the track):

------------[switches]----platform1
-----signal-[switches]----platform2

[Thomashlee]

Frequency is not very important for cargo.

I don't know if it's just my imagination, but the higher frequency of my line, the more cargo distributed to my station.

[romazoon]

here is an example for you Purno.

signals are rather simple, just click on it if you want to make a signal one way only, or let it as builded if yuo want to keep the abilitiy for some trains to take the signal in reverse.

[SpoorObjecten]

Just sharing some pictures

[Transportman]

That looks great, although I have the feeling the black around windows looks too thick in most cases.

[SpoorObjecten]

Thanks for the feedback.

The ICM is still a WIP.
The other 2 trains have been released already so I won't change the thick black around the windows anytime soon.

But will definitely have a second look at the ICM and change this

[teccuk]

Agh game is frustrating. Interface is poor. Reminds me so much of 3DTT. Might find some mods that turn it into a sandbox and just build pretty things.

[Purno]

I reduced the running cost by a factor 100 by some simple file editing as uzurpator described.
Works like a charm, I can build pretty things.