I am! Can’t wait!
This is probably going to be a ridiculous question, but because of how shitty the economic pushback, traffic simulation, and forced puzzle type experiences SimCity Societies, SimCity 2013, City Skylines, and certain modern theme park simulators are, I feel like it’s a question worth asking. Is this series more of an economic & logistics SIMULATION, or it is just a glorified lego set with puzzle maps that require specific solutions? I’m very much looking for the former and am willing to buy into this if it’ll provide.
@kerzain - there are a number of YouTubers playing this in advance of the release, I’m thinking if you watch 15 or so minutes of a video your questions will be answered. But I will take a stab:
There’s definitely a campaign you can play through, which sounds like the puzzle type of map you don’t want. But keep reading! There is definitely a sandbox mode with 3 difficulties, where you start out with a pre-generated map with a map generation key (sort of like Rimworld) where you have free reign to do whatever you want in terms of transportation. The only constraint is that I believe you start with 10 million in loans and if you can’t make money you will eventually go bankrupt.
Here’s a couple of people I’m familiar with so you can judge for yourself as to the gameplay of sandbox mode.
A good suggestion, but if only it were that simple. Core issues with SC2013 and Cities Skyline aren’t apparent until you’ve played a map for a while and dig into them more than average Youtubers will do.
Thanks for the followup info.
After just 5 minutes I am in love with this game. Everything seems o much more refined than last revision. Hopefully the feeling holds up.
Anyone else getting this… do NOT install on a mechanical hard drive! Even with an SSD some of the loads are long. Also, this really needs a good cpu and graphics card. For some bizarre reason the in-game FSAA only goes to 4x. Also the rotate cam tied to the mouse is backwards from normal and there’s no way to switch it.
I look forward to hearing more about this one. I loved Train Fever but haven’t gotten into any of the successors.
Katherine of Sky has almost a dozen videos up:
Glad to hear you like it @jpinard
Regarding performance - I saw a YouTuber who started a let’s play of a small map - 3 long by 1 wide, with only 4 cities and a bunch of industries. He said he was doing it that way to show people with lower spec machines that they could play on a small map and still have a challenge and a good time. I was a bit surprised since I hadn’t seen any other videos showing performance issues.
That’s weird but in all building games I almost never rotate the view - I get used to a certain orientation and if I change it then I can never find my buildings.
Thank you! I’m glad it’s not just me. I understand different people wanting a y-axis to work different ways. But how is it we don’t all agree on how an x-axis works?
-Tom
Yea I know. Also another weird quirk that bothers me cause I’m a dork. For the truck lots in the 1800’s (horse and wagon) they used modern street lights, but gas light for towns. Of course electricity didn’t exist at this time (in tutorial) so annoying to see non-compatible illumination across the map.
So far the game is at least as good as the first. The map generator is great. I’m happy just to have a decent map generator now.
One annoying interface thing: the contour overlay. They decided to make everything white a la Cities: Skylines. The problem is the roads and tracks are also all white! That makes it hard to see what you are building, which defeats the purpose of the overlay.
Ok, I knuckled under and purchased/installed TF2 this morning (got the 28% off deal from Greenmangaming). Have not had a chance to fire it up yet, but I will do that when I get home today.
That looks pretty nice. Is there a strong game aspect to it, something that provides challenges to the player? Does the economy make logical sense in how things grow and expand?
I’ve only done the first two campaign scenarios so I can’t answer that.
But I do have a question for TF experts.
I have a map with 2 producers that produce Red and Green. And a city that desires Red and Green. I built the Green RR railroad connecting the Green producer with the city - and as expected, it hauls stuff to the city.
My next idea was this: build a truck route to haul Red from the producer to the depot at Green Producer - call it Red Trucking. I built it but the producer never put anything in the truck area and the trucks never hauled anything. In order to get Red to the city I had to build the Pink RR as shown below.
I vaguely know this has something to do with demand but I don’t quite understand the model. Is the only way to transport goods from producers to consumers to do it directly? Or I guess I could have made the Red line a railroad connecting to green, then the trains I guess would have hauled Red from its origin through green to the city, right? Could I set up the RR to pick up goods at Red, stop at green and pick up more and then go to the city?
I don’t play the game, but I want to commend you for making your issue clearer by drawing pictures.
Seems like it should work as it isn’t too different from a boat route. Did you have the right truck and RR car type for the good?
I… guess I did? I only had one truck that hauled the Red resource so I used a couple of them. But I guess my question is “can you haul something to an arbitrary location?” — because it appears to me you can’t (not saying it’s bad or anything, it just IS). It appears to me you can only haul something to a destination that desires the item, and in my case, since the Green producer didn’t want Red, there is no way to haul items between them.
I’m pretty sure you cannot haul stuff to an arbitrary location because the game is demand based not supply based. ie. you must have demand before anything will get moved (which is the opposite of games like Railroad Tycoon 3).
So is it trying to model a more’realistic’ transportation system where you build the transportation infrastructure, and then independent companies hire you to haul their goods? Or is it a more typical setup where you build the lines and then say this train will haul 3 wood and oranges to this city, etc…?