Transport Fever

Still interested in other folks impressions. Particularly sandbox mode. Sounds like it maybe a little thin for Tom (TBD) any other folks playing it?

Fourthed!

I must be thick or my brain is broken, because I’m stuck on the second tutorial!!! At the point wher you’ve laid tracks the game instructs you to place a switch by click-dragging the track. Try as I might, nothing happens. I also tried it in track-laying mode, but then I get nothing but error messages telling me the angle is too extreme.

What am I doing wrong?

I just got the game myself, tgb, so when I get to that point, I’ll watch out for that issue.

I enjoyed Train Fever, flaws and all, and I’m looking forward to this iteration.

@tgb123, I’ve finished the tutorial, and I think I understand where you are. All you have to do is connect your depot to the railroad track at an angle that’s not too sharp. The track-building system will automatically create the switch (intersection) for you.

In my case, I just built the depot in the indicated yellow circle, with the depot “door” roughly facing the train track. Then I chose the track-laying menu, chose standard track, and connected the depot door to the track by curving the track so it almost paralleled my target. Once I found an acceptable path, I just clicked the little green check mark to confirm my choice.

I hope this helps. If not, I could re-run the tutorial and post a screenshot.

That’s it. Thanks

I’ve been having a good time with this. I skipped the campaigns and just went straight to free play. On the one hand I think there are several pretty significant improvements over Train Fever.

The fact that it’s easier to build tracks in tight situations and that you get fewer “can’t build here” type messages is a huge win. The freight production chains were totally borked and weird in TF and I’m pretty happy with them in TPF.

Having said that, I am a little surprised at how little it feels like they added. I don’t really see this as being much more than a version 1.5. I like it a lot and I do feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth already having played 50+ hours but I’m still a little disappointed that some of the quirky interface issues just seem to be either as bad or worse. It always takes too many clicks to do things, and some of the UI choices are just baffling or unfriendly.

For instance:

  • Why is it so hard to find out how old individual cars in a train are in the Depot UI?
  • Why is there still no undo button?!
  • Why in the world is the add catenary tool the same as the remove catenary tool?! Instead of spamming clicks you have to carefully, carefully hover over a track section and wait for it to light up green to make sure you’re not inadvertently removing the catenary you literally just built a moment ago.
  • Why do the little mini-depot UI windows jump around as you’re selling things? I get that they’re docked to the edge of the screen unless you sort of “pop” them out as the full depot window, but it really makes it hard to sell multiple things.
  • And why isn’t there a sell all?
  • Why isn’t there more warning when two trains are deadlocked on a poorly designed section of track?

It really just goes on and on. They just didn’t manage to improve the UI more than a little bit in this iteration.

Moreover, I really consider the ships and airplanes to be irrelevant at least in free play. There just seems to be no reason for them. The game just isn’t optimized to make them useful. They absolutely need a better map generator tool that would actually make varied maps with lots of water that would require boats and planes.

I also added a mod that lets you build industries because honestly it just ruins free play when there’s one farm on your map and it’s all the way across the entire map from the one food factory. That’s just silly frankly. The rule I have is that I don’t build natural resources (iron, coal, oil) only value add industries because it makes sense that an industrialist would build a factory to process the materials they can transport.

TL;DR version: This game is a lot of fun if you’re a fan of the genre but it’s just not as deep or complex as Railroad Tycoon 2 for instance. There’s much more attention paid to animations and graphics than to realism or sensible gameplay mechanics. Just like TF, TPF is more of a train set simulator than a serious Transport Tycoon style game.

So far my reaction has been similar, but I haven’t given it as much time as you have. Fun, but if you played the first game, you’ve had the core experience already. I keep finding other things to do. :\f

This is pretty much what caused me to uninstall. Ridiculous.

-Tom

Transport Fever has a performance patch out today.

Is there an undo button?

OK I undid my wonderful because I’m seeing no change. bah!

Build 18381 (December 18, 2018)

  • Added train backward driving feature
  • Added train backward driving lights
  • Added train backward driving driver switching
  • Added modding feature to attach mission scripts to free games
  • Added Dutch translation
  • Improved track construction tools snapping behavior
  • Improved track construction tools slope precision (use Shift)
  • Improved construction tools elevation control (use PgUp and PgDown)
  • Improved track signal building: added one-way signal parameter
  • Improved line manager underground line rendering
  • Improved vehicle replacement: passengers or cargo stay on train
  • Improved vehicle replacement: better color suggestion heuristic
  • Improved construction tools: added Shift modifier to avoid menu closing
  • Improved main menu: save mod list and menu parameters immediately
  • Improved camera tool: added shortcuts and separate main menu setting to enable
  • Improved traffic sim: better car behavior at crossings with short adjacent streets
  • Improved debug mode: allow non-player-owned industries to be bulldozed (shift)
  • Improved modding: added feature to build free streets or tracks
  • Improved modding: added vehicle metadata to define camera position(s)
  • Improved modding: added filename and name filters for getEntities() function
  • Improved modding: added getTerrainPos() function to get mouse terrain position
  • Improved modding: better cargo item grouping in industry window
  • Improved modding: added geometry quality options to base config
  • Improved French/German/Spanish/Russian/Czech/Polish/Italian/Ukrainian transl.
  • Fixed tram track flickering on street crossings and improved rendering
  • Fixed trains jump to lower or zero speed on low frame rates bug
  • Fixed town builds buildings on bridges
  • Fixed train signal building left/right bug in tunnels
  • Fixed no line path to waypoint bug (when connecting two close stations)
  • Fixed track construction collision when building parallel to cargo terminal
  • Fixed tunnel walls turn black bug when building a bus stop underground
  • Fixed flickering tree textures issue on certain Nvidia 2xx, 3xx and 4xx hardware
  • Fixed trucks no wheel animation bug
  • Fixed incorrect car owner display bug in person window
  • Fixed rare crash when bulldozing streets with bus stops
  • Fixed player-owned industry level up costs money bug
  • Fixed crash on load when seats are in use that have been removed from a vehicle
  • Fixed rare issue where line stop list was non-editable
  • Fixed street builder inappropriate drag direction
  • Fixed people walking non-vertically
  • Fixed campaign bug: loan buttons no longer enabled in campaign missions
  • Fixed campaign bug: accessing AI lines and vehicles via popups no longer possible

How is this compared to Railway Empire?

Complicated and user unfriendly, but rewarding. No competition, just you.

I don’t need AI competition if the scenarios / campaign are set up to be challenging. The AI competition in Railway Empire was a little annoying.

Currently on sale for 70% off on Steam, and possibly elsewhere too, to coincide with the announcement of Transport Fever 2.

I bought this in the recent sale with no prior expectations. I played OpenTTD back in the day a little, but never really got into it. I’ve really been enjoying Transport Fever. I see it as a cool kind of simulator toy that fun to mess with, and the economy actually works in the game, albeit not intuitively.
There are two things to understand with the economy, you need both distance and demand. The factories only make things when they have demand, and so won’t make anything until you’ve connected them to the next step in the chain. Factories will also not produce more if a city is fully satisfied, so you have to make the city bigger or ship to other cities.
The other odd thing is that distance and speed are king. The farther away the delivery is, the more money you get paid. It also favors smaller trains that are faster rather then one big train that is slower.

Looking good. I especially like the Map preview, I am forever restarting as I don’t have enough water (I love my ships!)

7 bucks on Steam for a day.