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I play my own scenarios and usually build up a "nation" with a reasonable amount of cities located with some distances between them. As for industries I prefer to have a few "larger" areas where several industries, mines and so on are located - basically for a better realism but also to be able to build up a good network with constant supplies of goods.

However, while playing I came to realize that I may have been overdoing my scenarios a bit, and here's why;

On one of the mountain tops I have an industrial area consisting of 4 iron ore mines, 4 coal mines, and 3 forests.


Trains are transporting the raw material to a processing area in another part of the "nation", where some of it are turned either into yet another material that needs to be processed further in other factories or either into finished goods.


From this location goods that are ready to be delivered to the cities, are transported using specific trains that takes all goods to a large station that has no direct connection to a nearby city. It works as an unload/loading station from which all transported goods are collected by trains that takes the goods to the cities in the "nation".


As shown in the close-up below I've built up the station by using the the two lowest platforms in the station to only receive goods transported from factories everywhere. For this purpose I use the "unload" option when setting the train routes. The other 8 platforms are used only by trains that collects the incoming goods which are supposed to be transported to cities across the "nation".

All in all I use 16 trains for this purpose and 8 platforms aren't enough. Therefor I've built a "stop" south of the station where incoming trains awaits available platforms at the station. All in all that makes up for 14 available slots, if I can call it that. But it's enough and I don't have any problems!


Now, to the question;

I'm quite happy with the structures as far as the raw material producing industrial areas concerns, since it gives me a fair amount of raw material on an almost constant basis. However, as noted I deliver all the raw material to industries that turns all the raw material into goods. As shown in the second image from the top I have an almost equal number of specific industries, (i.e. factories, sawmills and so on), located in these industrial areas.

Now, if I only would have 1 sawmill and 1 steel mill in this particular location, would I still be receiving the same amount of goods/steel for my trains as what I'm receiving now with 5 sawmills and 5 steel mills - (with the same amount of raw material delivered)

I haven't been considering this before, but if it doesn't make any difference I could use some of the current factories and turn them into raw material producers instead! I don't want to start messing around with the scenario until I'm sure about this!

Anyone that knows, please help!

SAC wrote:Now, if I only would have 1 sawmill and 1 steel mill in this particular location, would I still be receiving the same amount of goods/steel for my trains as what I'm receiving now with 5 sawmills and 5 steel mills - (with the same amount of raw material delivered)

That's correct. These industries don't produce anything themselves.

Okey! Thanks Purno! With this in mind I can decrease the number of sawmills, oil ref, steel mills, factories, printing works, paper mills, and so on and increase the number of mines, oil wells, forests and so on, resulting in an increase of the amount of goods produced in the end.

Would that be a correct assumption?

yes.

Ahh, thank you both! Now, of to the scenario editor for some major re-constructions

Post it in the scenarios eventually, i wanna play this!

Me too! Pleease!

ConductorBob wrote:Post it in the scenarios eventually, i wanna play this!

You mean the original scenario I did? The one I'm playing right now have been altered many times during game play due to congestion and bottle necks regarding my train network.

The original one have a layout already from the beginning with pre-arranged paths for the railroads and railroad stations to be placed once playing the scenario. Not sure if this could be interesting for anyone else but me!

Then post the savegame, anything will be appreciated! Thx!

Okey, but I should notify you that it's a scenario that doesn't consist of too many cities, but with plenty of forests.

In fact, there are only 14 cities;

The capitol, Vasa, is situated fairly in the center of the map although more to the south below the city of Hallsberg. Most passenger trains passes the station, with a few exceptions.



In my country, Sweden, the city of Hallsberg is a place where many main railroads meet/connect, and I've therefor included it also in my scenario by placing it in the exact center of the map. The large freight station is located south of the city.



Apart from the city of Vasa there are two other major cities in the scenario. The first one, Onsala, is situated in the north eastern part, close to the mountains.



The second one, Uleåborg, is on the other hand situated in the north west, also close to huge mountains. I have an ICE train connecting all these three cities with each other.



Between these cities are smaller ones - which basically are connected with other passenger trains that runs either in the western part or the eastern part, sort of a circle route where all of them have the capitol city of Vasa as a central station along the routes.

Eastern cities;





Western cities;





South East and South West are the location of some smaller cities, none of them connected to any main passenger route, but instead by a so called S-bahn, (for which I would love to have any of the swedish local trains instead of the ones provided by MB); However, this S-bahn connects to the Vasa South Station, (Vasa is the only city with two passenger stations), where a regular express train connects to all other cities in the "nation"!









The only city, also the smallest, is yet to be connected by trains. Buses are currently operating between Otterbäcken and Öckerö, where the nearest main passenger station is located.



Finally, some views of the mountainous area for this particular scenario!

For some reason those cities look amazingly realistic.
Keep up the good work.

RPharazon wrote:For some reason those cities look amazingly realistic.
Keep up the good work.

Except these long-as-the-whole-city-stations.

VPN-User wrote:

RPharazon wrote:For some reason those cities look amazingly realistic.
Keep up the good work.

Except these long-as-the-whole-city-stations.

Got a point there! Well, not much I can do about that since I use a length of 14 tiles for all my stations, (except the ones for the S-Bahn which are 8 tiles), in order to allow for a freight train with two engines and 27 wagons to fit!

As for the cities, I tend to interfere with local authorities and remove silly and stupid layouts. I've found that using the identity of the AI's in the game will prevent my own reputation from going down, and I can therefor get rid of buildings that are misplaced! In the same manor I use an AI identity to improve a train route that has been built to look more realistic, and this ability makes it possible to develop some very interesting junctions

I must say your game looks really nice. And a game like this would be even more nice with bigger maps

Swell game SAC, but i can imagine you gona have transportation problems, I like the idea of industrial areas, but the way you have created them blocks the possibilety to be more creative with station layouts.

jacke wrote:I must say your game looks really nice. And a game like this would be even more nice with bigger maps

Thanks! And I totally agree! Bigger maps would be a blast!

Zimmlock wrote:Swell game SAC, but i can imagine you gona have transportation problems, I like the idea of industrial areas, but the way you have created them blocks the possibilety to be more creative with station layouts

Well, initially when I started to play this scenario, (I always start by laying out the passenger routes), I had no problems at all, but with an increased amount of trains I found that some of my, (what do you call intersections here, is it junctions?), did became a problem. I also found that this particular problem grew due to the fact that the TTD-patch allows for longer trains to operate. Not sure if this is a problem since I don't want to place signals on every tile - as I've seen in some images from other players games - but to follow a more realistic theme.

To overcome this problem I simply had to rebuild most "junctions" in order to avoid crossing rails, and I've also built longer exits from main lines to avoid "bottle necks" or que's (?).

However, not sure what you mean by creative station layouts though! I usually don't want them to expand too much, something which mostly goes for connecting rails as well. I've tried to build up my junctions and/or stations with the most effecient layouts as possible - although I'm sure there are other solutions as well!

Still, I have about 100 trains running and even though it runs smoothly most of the time, I do experience some minor problems with trains waiting for green lights - but that happens in reality as well, doesn't it?

In some cases I've also found trains going on the wrong track, (not sure how they've managed to get away from their route ), and it's a challenge to get them to the correct location again! Could this be a result of trains looking for a depot? I have them at stations only, but should I place some along the routes as well? Anyone with some knowledge to share?

Well Zimmlock, as it turns out I did face some issues eventually - mostly with overcrowded stations.

When I tried to find out the exact problem problem, I noticed that most of them had been laid out during the first initial years when I had less trains running. As a result thereof I often gave many trains a longer route than needed - just to get some action When growing with more trains I forgot to make changes to those earlier trains!

Another issue was related to my industrial areas and particularly located station that had far to little platforms, thus causing trains to stop at main lines waiting for a free and available platform. I have found some solutions to these issues as well. I haven't been able to continue to expand my company these last few days, but have spent most time to fix all these problems - but it turned out to be quite funny to spend some time with other things rather than starting new routes all the time. And why not really; all of this is part of the game

I've attached some images below to explain what I did to solve most of my problems;

Image 1; Billerud Industries



The largest and bussiest industrial area in the "scenario" - and often causing problems with waiting trains. A solution I've found very useful is to build "waiting tracks" before the actual entrances to the station platforms, allowing for incoming trains to avoid blocking main railroads. This station with 10 platforms have 3 "waiting tracks", which the paper trains is now leaving to enter one of the available platforms.

Crossing railroads often caused problems, and especially with lots of crossings close to one another. I've solved this by simply looking at the railroads as highways

Since I learned that I could decrease the number of processing plants, and instead increasing the raw material producing industries, thus increasing the goods produced, I've been able to make some major changes to my industrial areas. Basically I've built a lot more raw material producing facilities and put fewer processing plants together, with a much better result. Billerud was earlier a place with lots of factories, printing works and sawmills, but has now turned into a place that also produces iron ore."waiting tracks".

I've also built a new canal for which I plan to use all the ships available thanks to all the custom work that has been put into TTD by many of you! I have therefor extended the station with a dock. The heliport next to the station isn't being used other than for eye candy! I prefer to look at it as a railway control tower

Image 2; LKAB North



One of two industrial areas located on top of the mountains. For obvious reasons both of these only produces raw material so any trains won't have to carry any of these uphills. Both LKAB North and LKAB South were the first stations to be built - and also the ones I laid out the routes heavily at the beginning. All of that have changed, and I've even built a new railroad that connect both these stations with "Uddeholm" that takes care of a lot of the raw material produced.

Image 3; LKAB South



...and the second one! Initially both LKAB North and LKAB South produced iron ore, but due to the changes I located all the iron ore to the south station. Instead I located all the other different raw materials produced at both places, to LKAB North.

Image 4; SCA



The largest forest production in the scenario. Initially here were a mix of forests, oil refinaries and steel mills - something that has changed as I've learned about the production chain a little better.

Image 5; Boliden



One of two food producing areas - along with a paper mill and an oil refinary - something which I had more of before - relating to my previous statement. This station is yet another example of how I'm using different solutions in order to get rid of problems. Due to the industries present here, they tend to increase the number of trains needed, but instead of building a "waiting area" I've separated the platforms. This means that the two upper platforms, the covered ones, are for deliveries only, while the rest are for goods loading trains. Those waypoints sure are useful here!

Image 6; ScanRaff



A completely new area/station - as a result of the new knowledge of production chains. I'm not sure if this is true, but it appears as if those oil rigs produces a lot more oil than any oil wells. Either way I wanted to collect this oil with ordinary trains rather than ships - although I have other rigs out there too. I can't say any of the two operating trains bought for this purpose stays any longer times at this station - and they don't have to get that far to deliver the oil either! The factory is new and takes care of the food that comes from my second food producing area - which is new as well! That particular station earlier had the same industries as Billerud, but I moved or closed most of it, and moved trains to new assignments - or sold them off.

I like to "work" with the terrain in my scenario and uses a lot of canal pieces and stones, and it may not always be very realistic, but I like the appearance a lot

Image 7; Hallsberg



The largest goods station in the scenario! I had to extend the station further to better fit the increament of all the new goods that arrived with all the new changes. As before the two closest platforms are for goods delivery only (unload option), while the above ones are for loading. This station also uses the "waiting tracks" which are very useful! And again, the heliport is used as eye candy only. No helicopters assigned!

Image 8; Mountain tracks



The ability to build higher bridges is truly amazing! The environmental look they contribute with is outstanding! I have two huge mountains located in the center of the map, connected with several of these bridges - one of them even in the middle of a city, (Hallsberg), as shown in an earlier image! But this one is cool enough!

Any comments?

Wow that looks really great. the heliport at the stations looks realistic.(maybe somthing for the new station graphics??)
But why are all the roads near your station?? Do you use them or are they just for sight?

I really would like to see your save game.

Nilo wrote:Wow that looks really great. the heliport at the stations looks realistic.(maybe somthing for the new station graphics??)
But why are all the roads near your station?? Do you use them or are they just for sight?

I really would like to see your save game.

I use the roads as well - although I haven't gotten that far yet. But I often have trucks delivering or collecting goods to other places nearby. Some of the cities don't have a railroad running through, so their only chance of passenger and/or goods are by road vehicles. Pretty much as in real life!

I might also make a saved game of this scenario available as a download soon!

can we get a download please