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I love the idea of long thin, or larger more thinly populated maps, that by their nature would require longer distance transits of both freight and passengers.
To enable this the existing 20min rule would need to be radically re-thought! It already causes severe limitations with the existing maps and would make the long thin map unworkable.
…another monthly-ish bump for suggesting that what Train Fever really needs above all else is some map variety.
I’m thoroughly enjoying Cities Skylines, but I would much sooner be playing Train Fever… I’m more interested in engineering train lines than I am planning out cities… but well, having built a few train networks over generic rolling hills, I feel like I’ve essentially built them all. Skylines is proving to have rather more replayability at this point tinkering with traffic networks over endlessly customisable and varied maps. But I still find myself checking back here every couple of days for news of any big new features.
What we need are coastlines, options for long, thin maps, variable topology, variable number of towns/industries, etc, etc… basically, what OpenTTD has had for years.
Any word at all on this sort of thing? It feels a little like things are stalling since the release of the USA DLC, and even the DLC pack didn’t really give me any incentive to get back into the game, as the one and only thing that wasn’t touched upon was the map generation.
Ever increasing volumes of trains, cars, buildings, etc, all played out over the same generic maps really isn’t going to do anything to make the game more interesting.
It’s really frustrating me at this point, as at least some of these suggestions seem like almost absurdly simple things to implement. 64 x 4 km wouldn’t require any more memory than a 16 x 16… lower numbers of towns would come down to exposing a single number in the map generation options.
Come on… let’s at least have those two things.
As I mentioned in my thread…you can still use a random seed generator “and” have a map editor. Look at Earth 2140 and 2150 Moon Project. The map editor can generate a seed right inside the editor, then with several brushes you can edit the landscape further.
I would prefer grey-scale maps to generate landscapes or world-machine, but if they can’t go that far, at least look at Earth 2150’s editor and implement that.
Of course, the ideal would be to have a vastly fleshed out random map generator *and* a full map editor with height-map importer.
At this point, I’m just trying to push for the simplest suggestions I can think of that would expand the map variety. Given just a couple of tweaks now, I’d enjoy playing the game for a good few months, and hope that more extensive options like those might come along later down the line.
Overall, I’d just like to see the game maintain some popularity, and not fade into obscurity and prove unfeasible for Urban Games to continue supporting… considering what a fantastic job I personally think they’ve already made with this game. All it really needs is a good bit of fleshing-out to keep it interesting.
They need to do something and do it quick. People now days move-on fast from game to game. Sid’s RailRoads was more complex and ran better, although too cartoonish. The industry system is no where close to Trainz or Train Simulator.
All the seed maps look the same, every new map is just a repeat of the last.
If I could import Microdem satellite height maps I could make scenarios, using special industry chains, place the railroad names and engines used in said scenario’s to match the railroads of the maps.
Reply To: I really hope dev focus shifts to map generation Options ——–> at meantime i have the feeling that the devs do nothing anymore. The comunity is keeping this game alive with mods. For the Devs this game seems to be dead.
The problem isn’t just the current map generator, it is the way it generates things in general. Industry for example is a complete mess. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to industry whatsoever. I would much rather see a resource for industry set to a specific area then have the need to actually transport it to where it is needed.
Example: a steel mill needs coal and iron (often found in the mountains) a large city would have the mill, while the smaller towns would have the resource which would need to be transported to the city where the mill is. Right now industry is all over the place and most of it is just never used.
Goods for cities is also a mess. I would rather see a system in place where a city needs all manufactured resources to really hit peak growth. Lumber is an obvious early on which would make town with lumber and saw mills important for the growth overall of every town. As the date increases steel would also be required for the larger structures, as well as oil for gasoline for city life.
The changes to cities needing goods also makes the game far more interesting for rail transportation of goods and other resources. The way things are now I really transport most of my industry via road since it makes more money and trips are short, there is almost no need to transport things by rail as the game is now.
Let us use the seeding to generate terrain, but then let is place resources, cities, and industry. Let us build custom maps where we can really enjoy the game, the trains, the trucks, trams, etc.
@OIFEVT I really appreciate your post and this is one of the best ideas I read on the forum. Yet, I have no high hopes that developers actually implement this as it would probably require some important changes in their simulation code. I do however hope that developers at least implement the possibility to place industries in a smarter way and give us the possibility to have a map editor to have more map variety.
Yes, I agree too, great ideas there @OIFEVT101
I’ve thought the same for a while now, but I’ve struggled to think of an alternative that would potentially make a more interesting system to the one there is currently.
Your suggestions actually sound like a great system that I’d really like to play with. Having industries tied to certain locations is an obvious enough idea, but I like the extension to that where certain secondary industries are tied to specific population sizes/types, so there’s some distinction and necessary interrelation between larger and smaller towns.
Having particular manufactured goods have different effects as the years progress is also a brilliant extension of the idea. That would really give a feeling of progression, and the NEED to progress, rather than just the current continuous expansion, for the sole reason of getting more money, to expand more, to get more money. It loses its novelty quickly. Your way would give the game a much better sense of flow over time I think. You’d end up needing to retire lines to old industries as the world modernised.
In addition to that, passenger requirements could shift a similar way – tourism could increase over time, and I’ve seen someone suggest before that an international airport could spring up at a certain point through the game, or maybe expand from a small airstrip over the game, to the point where it became a massively-high-traffic passenger hub later on.
I love the game still however, I think it has a ton of potential to become one of the greatest train game on the market of they implement some great changes. As time goes on they could even add more freight types to the mix and consequently more cars. Give us a port town for incoming imports from automobiles to electronics.
1. well cars for shipping containers full of goods from port.
2. Automobile carrier’s
3. Livestock cars. Not used much today because trucks can move them but widely used in the U.S. for years at great profit margins.
4. Pipe
5. Hopper cars to replace gondolas.
There are so many possibilities for this game. Passengers would have a need to travel to smaller towns (like a lumber or mining town) for work.
Cities would always have a demand for some product so rail lines would always be busy. I have no idea how difficult these changes would be to make but they would make the game so fantastic. Slow down time a little bit as well, change the 20 minute rule. You could even have a military base pop up with a job to move military cargo to port for deployment overseas. The name of the game is Train Fever not transport by wagon and truck fever so please provide us with the tools to use trains more effectively.
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