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Hello, ladies and gentlemen!
I want to talk about what, in my opinion, should be included in final patch.
I am from Russia. If my English skills are so bad, that your eyes are falling to the floor – please, excuse me, it was not intentional.
I spent a lot of hours playing in economic simulators of transportation, such as Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3, Locomotion, TTD, Transport Giant, and finally, Train Fever.
So I am concerned about the final patch. Is that all? Is it necessary to stop the development of the game in which there is still something to work? I understand that the new title should bring more revenue than the sales of the old game. But in this case, some revenue may be obtained from paid DLC. Players, seeing that the game is not abandoned, will be more happy to buy a paid add-on. Players, seeing that the previous game of the developers team was left unfinished, may refrain from buying your next game.
That’s your name, guys. Do not spoil it.
I understand that in working with the community of players you are targeting in the German forums. However, the German market is not comparable with the global market size. Listen to others, too. Me, as a player, would like that developers polish the game that they have released.
Thank you for reading. Best regards.
Please consider the following as my personal suggestions for the game.
In my opinion, all of that could greatly enhance the basic game (no mods) – is several serious improvements.
All of the following should be added to “clean” game, it should not be a mod (even official) and should not nullify the achievements! It would be a worthy final patch. Such things should be “out of the box”, not fixed by mod makers. It involves, in some aspects, a little more real life logical behaviour along with some automation of boring routine procedures.
1) Loads are divided into categories.
- Each vehicle has a list of allowable loads (eg for the covered wagon – anything, even logs or barrels oil. For the hopper – only bulk cargo. For tankers – only liquid cargoes).
- For a new vehicle, you can choose a particular cargo as well as “any valid cargo” option. ‘Any valid cargo‘ means the following: computer manager determines what kind of cargo will be loaded at this station. Vehicle can not load different loads in one carriage or one vehicle at a time. Vehicle can add the same load at the next station, if space is available (if the freight wagon contains at least one unit of of cargo, vehicle can add only this particular cargo in the car, and only this).
- If load type was changed at the station, a small fee is charged for cleaning or conversion of the car (this is optionally).
In fact, it is a modified “old” system of cargo transportation with some modifications: 1) It is impossible to load the car beyond its capacity (that glitch with ore and coal). 2) For some specialized vehicles (eg tankers) there is their own list of permitted loads, and nothing else can be loaded into them. 3) At the station a small fee is charged when loading a new type of cargo.
2) Improved automatic replacement of worn-out vehicles. It is in any case should not be a magical transformation, as it is now.
The depot will automatically buy a new vehicle, and sends it to the route. Cargo type is set as in replaced vehicle. Outdated vehicle (after unloading at the next station) is sent to the depot (as if the player clicked “send to the depot and sell it” button).
3) There should be a “wait at least one unit of of cargo, and then depart” function. Like in “Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion, or Railroad Tycoon 3.
The car (or train) stops, takes all the available load. Then, waiting for 5 seconds, tries to load more, if the load is added – waiting for another 5 seconds. If there are no cargo – leaving to the next station. This function allows to to wait for “flying box” if they still arriving, but not wasting time, if the station is still empty.
4) The train must not turn around in a dead end station. It is necessary to build a loop.
But there is another way. Turning may take place in the train depot, selected along the route. If you specify a train depot as destination point – the train enters there, waits for a while and reverses. Maybe it should be required to be empty, without cargo.
A depot is necessary if it is impossible to construct a turning loop, but waiting at the depot should be long enough for the player to use this way only if it is really difficult or impossible to construct a turning loop.
5) No “main connections” in base game. Even without “official mod”.
“Main connection” should be converted into the “last remaining road”, regardless of its length.
If demolition breaks latest road connections with other cities, it can not be demolished. But if the bypass motorway connection is there, any length – it becomes possible to demolish. To put it simply, raise the limit of allowed length of the “main connection” x20 times (if such a limit exists).
6) Obsolete vehicles can be bought as “Used”.
For example, their purchase price is reduced by one third, while operating expenses increased as when worn 25%. After 20 years, their purchase price as new, but operating expenses as at 75% worn. After 50 years, the cost of purchase of the original is tripled and maintenance costs start from 200%.
7) Long parts of the roads and tracks are automatically divided into segments.
This avoids graphical error in which road does not matches the path of the car model. This refers to vehicles “flying” above the road or “sinking” into the road.
I have nothing more to say now.Thanks for reading. Have a nice day.
I agree on your premise ! I also hope the developers “clean” they game and reverse some horrible decisions such as the new cargo truck system and the main connection feature. However, I still feel that they shown some dedication to the game and am positively inclined to buy their next one (if it is still in this gendre).
I also like your #3 suggestion.
On the other hand, I don’t really like your #4 and 2 suggestions. There is already much micro-management that it is not worth to add more, in my opinion.
Yes, devs shown some dedication, but for me, their enthusiasm has dried long before they finished the game. So instead of fixing capacity check, they just thrown in mandatory cargo selection, and then jumped away. Since the main goal of any company is to make money, they can rise their enthusiasm with revenue from paid DLC.
About suggestions, let me explain. A huge amount of micromanagement would disappear, if my #1 suggestion is implemented (about modified old cargo system). #2, actually, don’t add any micromanagement for player, as it have to occur automatically. And #4 is a small step to realism, because in reality train just can’t reverse in dead-end, it just can move backwards. And it adds such a little thing as adding 1 additional station to the route, or building a small loop, what is not that hard. A player already is busy with lines, tunnels, bridges, lights, stations and junctions, and it just adds a one point – turning loops.
#4: Could this at least be optional? While reversing trains may not be realistic, it saves us from having to build a turning-loop in the game.
#5: If the game-settings are divided into Easy/Medium/Hard/Custom where all but custom use pre-defined settings for the individual difficulty settings, ‘main-connection’ should not be active in ‘easy’, but active in ‘hard’ (not sure about ‘medium’).
#7: If this is added, it should be optional. Sometimes, we may later want to add a switch, and if the switch straddles a segment-boundary, this would make it impossible to add. Perhaps we could just have the ability to divide a large segment into X smaller segments (but there should still be a mimimum segment length in this case).
I think turning loops are something as train fuelling with water towers and maintenance depots – really not needed, but adds some immersion. It is my personal wiew, I am not trying to force it to anybody.
Why there are main connection in game at all? Because people start driving cars from town to town. If you delete a road, the only way to reach their destination (without motorway connection) is your railroad. That’s no fair play. But if there is any road, may be even small country road, and very long, it makes an alternative way for citizen to reach another town.
In reality, there is no town, where you can reach only with railroad, because CEO of railroad company destroyed the only road to town to force people to use his trains. Yes, there are places difficult to reach. But there is always a small road or a path (free of charge, for pedestrians and some others). If you, as CEO, bribe the city major and destroy this road, local people make another road. I am not talking about places that can be reached only with helicopter. So, if ANY another road is exist – you could delete another one, but only if other way is exist.
About segments of long parts – it is just my wiev to flying/digging vehicles. It is not gamebreaker at all, but it can make visuals looks a little more satisfyingly. And yes, you are right: a minimum segment lenght should be checked.
I think turning loops are something as train fuelling with water towers and maintenance depots – really not needed, but adds some immersion. It is my personal wiew, I am not trying to force it to anybody.
And likewise, I’m not forcing my view on anyone. In OpenTTD, there is an option to choose whether to allow the train to self-reverse at platforms. I personally choose to have this enabled, but I still think those who want to have it disabled should have the option to do so. Of course, if TF enabled de-coupling, shunting etc, I’d be more inclined to play with self-reversible trains disabled. As well as turning loops (balloon loops) and depots (which would be more realistic if the depot was as long as the longest train it could handle), the trains could make use of triangular junctions (wyes) and escape tracks (Headshunts), turntables and even marshalling yards (classification yards).
#7: If this is added, it should be optional. Sometimes, we may later want to add a switch, and if the switch straddles a segment-boundary, this would make it impossible to add. Perhaps we could just have the ability to divide a large segment into X smaller segments (but there should still be a mimimum segment length in this case).
Actually, if segment-joining/merging was implemented, this would no longer be such a problem.
Thank you for introducing a new English terms (such as “baloon loop”) to me. It would be very satisfying, if a game named “Train Fever” use so many railroad-related elements. May be even borrow things like train water and maintenance in very simplistic way from Railroad Tycoon 3.
A problem of floating vehicles can be “fixed”, if you add many intersections or crossings along “flying” or “sinking” autobahn, but that’s not actually a fix, just a far-fetched workaround in-game (if I understand you right, though I am not sure).
If TF enabled decoupling, it would ruin an official “20-minute” rule 🙂 And I think an automatic station manager would became even much more needed, with cargo category classification instead of cargo type. (At least, may be simple like in Simutrans).
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