Concept suggestion: Sponsorship of monuments for city beautification

[luftfisch]

TF is different to other city sims like Cities Skylines, because in TF you only get paid for transports while in CS you get taxes for every city service. The player in TF cannot be responsible for zoning and city building, because it is not part of the business of a transport company.

This is a pity, as almost every player wants to create a beautiful map and get more influence on city building.

The solution could be sponsorship. A private transport company could maybe sponsor a local football team and build a stadium, which later generates the need of transportation for its visitors. Or the company could sponsor a nature park, a monument or anything else, that makes a city more attractive, increases city groth and passengers.

[genemead]

Your thinking is flawed.
TPF is NOT a "city sim", nor is it anything like CS. Two totally different games with completely different focuses.

You want to "increase city growth and passengers"? Ship more goods to the cities.

[Svip]

I think you should think of it the other way around. Towns in TF are completely dead, as they don't act in any regard besides expanding. In OpenTTD, they have an opinion of you, and if it gets too low, they won't allow you to build within their limits. In addition, they would sometimes offer 'missions', where connecting two locations with one another would warrant a bonus.

More sophisticated towns in TF2 would be very interesting. The fact that if I have enough money, I can simply bulldoze a town is a bit ridiculous, and takes the fun out of the challenge of fixing an early train station, that is now stuck in the middle of a growing city.

[CunkFeatures]

I want to be a transportation tycoon. Not a mayor, I'll leave that to the local authorities.

Cities in Motion had central transport generate/points. I guess in TpF you make your own, by linking to another town/city.
Sure you could mod a few things to act like football stadiums?

[luftfisch]

Messaggio originale di genemead:

Your thinking is flawed.
TPF is NOT a "city sim", nor is it anything like CS. Two totally different games with completely different focuses.

No, it's not that different. There are already options to bulldoze houses and build new streets which is usually done by the city government and not by any transport companies. Many players use mods for beautification.
Sponsorship is just a practical way to explain and improve, what players already do.

[MarkyT]

Messaggio originale di luftfisch:

Messaggio originale di genemead:

Your thinking is flawed.
TPF is NOT a "city sim", nor is it anything like CS. Two totally different games with completely different focuses.

No, it's not that different. There are already options to bulldoze houses and build new streets which is usually done by the city government and not by any transport companies. Many players use mods for beautification.
Sponsorship is just a practical way to explain and improve, what players already do.

Railways, airports, etc, whether state sponsored or private, etc get special powers from governments to acquire property as necessary to build their routes and facilities. Often they also get involved with commercial and residential developments around their stations helping to stimulate demand for their transport services, sometimes by selling or leasing the land required to developers. I like the way that mods allow additional properties to be erected anywhere at a cost, and see no reason why some similar functionality couldn't be added to the new base game. Land development has always been part of the real life game of transport, and railways often sell or lease surplus land in busy urban districts which creates pressure to relocate yards, vehicle maintenance facilities, and freight handling facilties further out of town, replacing surface routes with tunnels to exploit land above or building 'air rights' developments on stilts over existing tracks.

[luftfisch]

Even if the main focus of TF is transportion business, it starts with map editing and allows terrain modifications and building of roads and city streets. The game has always been both, a management strategy game and a sandbox for city/landscape architects. Whenever I take place in the cockpit of a train, I see the towns and landscape. Of course, creative players like to edit what they see. So why not give them some possibilities?

Every game has a kind of achievements for motivation. Why not give TF a corporate headquarter building, that grows with the success of the company? Why not invest part of the money in sponsored landmarks or other PR objects? Let us celebrate the thousands passenger with a golden statue! Every transport company does these kind of things...

[Bowelas]

I like this idea.

You can place industries in TpF1, why not a little bit the same for passengers?

[Svip]

How do you place industries in TpF1? I thought that was only available with mods.

[Bowelas]

It's just an entry in a config file, but does this make any difference?
I'm pretty sure, it's well common for many players. At least when you play on an empty workshop-map.

And in TpF2 you can place them (and cities) while editing the map.

Edit: Tbh i'm more interested in points of interest, which make cities more individual and creating more competitions for public transportation. The sponsorship-thing would be just a nice way to implement such a feature.

[genemead]

Passengers want fast or cheap transportation. Not monuments. I get that you think providing monument or stadium will increase transportation needs, but I bet providing better transportation would help more. I also get you want to give the player "more influence on city building", but that's not your job- not in this game. Try another one.

[Bowelas]

No. Passengers want to reach a specific destination. Noone buys a train ticket, just to drive with a train for fun and because its fast and cheap.

And again, i dont want more influence on city building. I just think it would be very diversified, if cities have different "people magnets", like a stadium. There are already mods for TpF1, which do exactly this and it feels very natural.

[theSeb]

You want a stadium that people will travel to? There are plenty of stadium assets that you can plop down and then put down a people magnet so that people will travel there. The same with monuments and parks and so forth. Hence why I see this idea as superfluous, especially considering the small team size.

I would rather see them focus on things that are important to the main focus of the game, such as better track building. I want to be able to build tracks using gradients like 0.1% instead of a slightly up arrow that tells me nothing because building realistic tracks and not roller coasters is important to me.

[luftfisch]

Messaggio originale di Bowelas:

No. Passengers want to reach a specific destination. Noone buys a train ticket, just to drive with a train for fun and because its fast and cheap.

I do not agree. Commuters want to travel fast and cheap, but tourists want to have a nice travel. Look at the vanilla ships in TF1! They are mostly taken from Swiss lakes and always when I see them irl, they are full of tourists taking round trips. Not to reach any destination but to enjoy the ride. Same with the vintage steam train, that runs monthly in our region.

TOURISM is one of the most important industries today and it's still missing in TF.

Messaggio originale di Bowelas:

I just think it would be very diversified, if cities have different "people magnets", like a stadium. There are already mods for TpF1, which do exactly this and it feels very natural.

Diversity of cities is exactly what I wanted too. But it feels like cheating when you can just set a people magnet close to any station where you like to increase commuters. If the transport company would sponsor a stadium, it's would be paid by the player and the increase of travellers would be an economically fair result, not a cheat.

Messaggio originale di sebastian.me:

I want to be able to build tracks using gradients like 0.1% instead of a slightly up arrow

This is off topic, but try to press shift while clicking the arrow to fine tune slopes.
However, a project mode for planning of longer mountain tracks was also on my whishlist.

[CunkFeatures]

Messaggio originale di luftfisch:

The game has always been both, a management strategy game and a sandbox for city/landscape architects.

Not at all. You can also build roads and change ground in TTD, but that is far far far from a city builder game. You can also build roads and change ground in Minecraft, but again nothing to do with city building.
You may have the wrong end of the stick here. Transport Fever is a transport game, nothing less.

Messaggio originale di luftfisch:

Of course, creative players like to edit what they see. So why not give them some possibilities?

The creative types in this game tend to be those who build amazing transport networks, rather than interfere with a cities growth.

I agree, things like HQ )TTD) etc would be nice. But getting too involved with the CS side of things takes away from the main game, the transport game.
Id rather worry about building a fast, reliable, eco service than worrying about running hotels and football stadiums in all 20 cities.

The way things work in real life is you pay to knock down what you like then pay to rebuild the roads. )HS2, old cut and cover railways, 3rd runway at Heathrow). Then the local authorities allow people to build there.
Hence why London is no longer a few hamlets dotted around the place.
Sounds like you're suggesting building Bournville.

I'm sure you can just mod a building to produce x number of people per hour and imagine its a tourist attraction or a mall? Takes a bit of learning but you can do it im sure.

[theSeb]

There are such mods already but they don’t generate people. They attract people as either shopping or work locations. Or you can do it yourself with a people magnet mod.

I’ve spent about 600 hours playing this game properly and about 1500 hours building creative stuff, as if it’s a model railway, after being inspired by the screenshots others have posted. I don’t generally interfere with the town’s growth unless it’s trying to grow over my creations or trying to grow in “ugly” ways, like super steep roads and so forth.