Transport Fever officially announced!

[lobsang]

I must say, most of these are minor  (Half of them could be improvements for the sequel, or a personal preference)- the criticism about this being an alpha release it a bit harsh

I would think these items  should be rated in a category of game breaker/minor annoyance/wishlist

Its all a tribute to Transport Tycoon: Useful as they are, I wonder if those old Windows 3.1 style windows with tiny text are alien to some. It makes me think of a long lost style, others might disagree.

As I’ve said elsewhere , the joy of this style of game, and its greatest weakness, is trying new things and discovering how the world works.
So the lack of introduction works in its favour as well as against it.

Having said that, they key message of number 2 is pretty important info:

2. The “20 minute
   rule” is not messaged anywhere in the game.

 

A few I’ll add

–  Minor: There is one steam train that shows the wheel coupling rods going in reverse when viewed from the left hand side (Looks right on the other side)

– Medium: Performance: Later years with a complex network can be very demanding
Although I do wonder how they can improve on performance without cheating/faking on the actual resident/goods flow simulation like Simcity did

– Medium: When you send a train to the depot, it needs to stay connected to the line it was on until you either sell the train or change line.
At the moment, if you send a train to the depot when it is halfway to the station, it will instantaneously disconnect from the line and make goods use a different route, usually when if you were upgrading the train on the same line.
This can adversely affect supply your chain when you were trying to improve it. (Especially if the train gets lost and stuck going to the wrong depot on a different line)

The workaround it not to hit the “go to depot” button until the train is very close to the home depot

 

 

• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by lobsang.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by lobsang.

[lobsang]

Interesting the difference another long session makes.

All this time I’d toggled on the cargo overlay, I never actually saw what it was doing as I was always zoomed out when looking at overlays. (I thought it was only showing the resources, not the route of goods taken)

I happened to click on it when zoomed in and my freight line made a lot more sense.
It still took 40 years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses to get it to work on a profitable scale, but it made more sense what was happening. (Up until that today I was all passenger and my freight lines were abandoned)

It bugged me that I had to send empty coal/goods trains up and down the line to “race” the the natural flow. (Or try and cripple the road system so the natural flow was slower)
It meant I could never let a train wait for a full load, or it would be slower than the natural route and cripple the line upstream, making a noose for its own neck. (When a full load should be the most economical way to haul freight)
Its a cute enough mechanism , but surely bulk freight is about capacity to haul big loads, and not about speed.
Its not as if everyone in town could turn up to the mine and each take a handful of coal home, you need to haul it in bulk or not at all. (Maybe goods could transport by the truckload, but raw materials need to be in bulk)
And it means you cant really bother using the slow economical  freight locos, you need the fastest loco to get the freight demand artery pumping.

I hadn’t before then thought that where my road connection to a freight station joined mattered, but some routes were taking long enough to get to my station (Because it was on the other site), that they were doomed from the start.
And it was amazing how much time it could be add if the materials have to travel up a little joining road.

It might make a bit more sense if  the pace of the natural route is half the speed it is now, so its not on the same speed as the 20 minute pedestrian trip.

 

The other revalation I had today – Oh you can actually start/stop a train and reverse it to get out of jams – it sure isn’t obvious they are buttons until accidentally clicked on. 28 hours playing and only found out that one today.

 

But I suppose that goes back to my point in the first post, the key to the game , and also it’s greatest weakness, is the lack of help. its a joy to finally figure out how the world works for yourself and try new things, but it can be frustrating when you haven’t stumbled onto the solution yet

 

 

 

 

• This reply was modified 9 years, 4 months ago by lobsang.

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