Monorails and Maglevs

[Netist]

I've been working on setting up my perfect game of OpenTTD (which I'm sure you all know is a task always in progress), but I'm having trouble finding good NewGRFs for Monorails and Maglevs.

There are absolute tons of newgrfs for trains from 1800~2000, but very little after that. I think this is the biggest problem with maglevs.

I'm currently playing with:
2cc in NML
Monolev Replacement Set
Japanese Maglev Set
Monorail Infrastructure Conversion Set
Metro Track Set
Vactrains

The metro trains from 2cc, of course, get shifted to the metro tracks from Metro Track set. The Monolev Replacement set is okay, I suppose, but I absolutely HATE the way it has prebuilt trains. The Japanese Maglev Set is also really nice, but it only adds like, what? 3 real trains?

Monorail Infra blah blah blah attempts to convert monorails to a more realistic "urban monorail", which looks nice. Except the only newgrf I have that adds monorails is Monolev. Which, again, is less than perfect since it's got all these gross prebuilt trains. What I could do, obviously, is remove MICS and just let 2cc shove its metro trains onto the urban monorail, but that feels wrong. Though, it'll probably be what I wind up doing if I can't satisfy myself.

Basically, I have all this wonderful variety and all these awesome options, and I can start a game as early as 1700! But once I get into the 2000s, everything starts to feel very empty and bland, with very little variety or room for expansion.

Any wisdom?

[planetmaker]

Any wisdom?

Honestly: not really, and your perception mostly is right when it comes to monorail and maglev. There's a number of trainsets which extends normal trains past 2000 quite well, till maybe 2050 or so, e.g. NUTS or PineAppleTrains.

The reason also seems easily found: most NewGRFs try to model some kind of reality, thus most vehicles you find modeled by NewGRFs have some foundation in real life. Those are very hard to find for vehicles which are supposed to exist in the future - and it needs courage and skill to invent something which looks nice, is self-consistent and fits well into the game and possibly match up somewhat with the choice of vehicles up to the date where these to-be-invented vehicles are introduced.

[kamnet]

Honestly a lot of "traditional" TTD and OpenTTD players dislike maglev and monorail because either the vehicles and rails are too expensive, or once you have enough money they're too easy to buy and too overpowered, thus making it too easy to make even more money. So most users don't get excited about it and most NewGRF creators pay no attention to it.

You can either make your voice known in hopes that NewGRF creators show more interest, or start developing a NewGRF yourself. There's now some easy-to-use online tools from Zepherys to build vehicles, and NML's template system makes it easier to understand how to develop code.

[Netist]

I may just have to start working on something of my own. I have absolutely NO idea how newgrfs work, but I've done my share of assembly hacking, so NFO (?) shouldn't be too hard, and if NML (?) is as pythonic as some people have said, that'll be even easier.

I can see your point, though, kamnet. It's certainly true that once you can get a maglev system up and running at capacity, it's instant money, and the infrastructure cost doesn't REALLY outweigh it.

However, this is a balance issue. Those are tricky, but technically possible to fix. I'm certainly no artist, but I'm sure there are resources out there I could use and modify.

There is also the issue of the game's core design. The reason people dislike getting these huge amounts of money is because, well, it's useless. OpenTTD, once you get to that endgame, doesn't really have any content that's enjoyable on it's own, in my opinion. There's really not much to do with that kind of money except... make more money. I'm not sure that can be fixed with a newgrf, unfortunately, and I'd have to wrack my brain to come up with some solutions.

Oh, and for the record, Pineapple Trains is an awesome set, but I don't like 32bpp, and I don't believe it has an 8bpp version. I'll also mention that I initially dismissed NUTS based on the whole "unrealistic" tag thinking it was more along the lines of Toyland unrealistic. But now that I'm actually looking at it, it might be pretty neat.