Introductory Guide to Transport Fever 2 (recovered)

[AirToob]

This guide has been unavailable for a long time, due to the server it was hosted on being withdrawn from service. I have recovered it, reformatted it and rehosted it on my own web site. It is available again here from Steam for those interested:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2100906320

Contents:

Main Game Features ~ Getting Started ~ Financial Strategy (Basics) ~ Line Management (Basics) ~ Towns, Sims & Bus Lines ~ What About Trams?~ Tram Line Mechanics ~ Streets vs Country Roads ~ Dealing with Congestion ~ Vehicle Emissions & Maintenance ~ Industries ~ Managing Production Chains ~ Date & Time, Frequency & Rate ~ Railways ~ Terminals & Platforms ~ Railway Signals & Switches ~ TF2 vs Real World Train Operation ~ Map Editor ~ What's the Point of Your Headquarters? ~ Performance ~ To Mod or Not to Mod? ~ Useful Links

Although it has not been updated for a long time (apart from a few things while recovering it), it should still be a useful and fairly comprehensive intro guide to the game. Many of the external links, being Google searches, will provide current information.

It's a big guide - I wrote it while learning, for my own benefit, and after more than a year published it when I thought it would help other people.

I hope to return to playing TF2 again in 2004, and will do my best to update it when I do.

If any experts should look at it at notice anything which is now wrong or could usefully be updated, I would appreciate any input.

[DirkSchwa]

Thanks for sharing your guide again! It was of great help to me when starting out with TpF2

[AirToob]

The recovery process missed some sections, which I have had to recreate from memory.
Having done this, the contents list now looks like this:

Main Game Features ~ Getting Started ~ Financial Strategy (Basics) (*) ~ Line Management (Basics) ~ Towns, Sims & Bus Lines ~ What About Trams?~ Tram Line Mechanics ~ Streets vs Country Roads ~ Dealing with Road Congestion ~ Vehicle Emissions & Maintenance (*) ~ Industries ~ Managing Production Chains ~ Date & Time, Frequency & Rate ~ Railways ~ Terminals & Platforms ~ Railway Signals & Switches ~ Dealing with Rail Congestion (*) ~ TF2 vs Real World Train Operation ~ Dealing with Air Traffic Congestion (*) ~ Map Editor ~ What's the Point of Your Headquarters? ~ Performance (*) ~ To Mod or Not to Mod? ~ Useful Links
(*) = latest updates (2024)

[AirToob]

Originally posted by DirkSchwa:

Thanks for sharing your guide again! It was of great help to me when starting out with TpF2

YVW!

[Metacritical]

Originally posted by AirToob:

I hope to return to playing TF2 again in 2004, and will do my best to update it when I do.

i look forward to your time travelling updates

[AirToob]

The references in my guide to the excellent *TF2 Game Manual* were lost in the recovery process. I have now updated the guide so that each relevant section contains a linked pointer to the corresponding section(s) in the Game Manual.

This has made my guide much more useful to myself (the guide was written for my own benefit), especially in catching up with the changes to TF2 since I first played.

In the process of doing this I found in the Manual a performance tip to do with town placement that I had never come across before. I have reproduced that tip in the Performance section of my guide.

There turns out to be very little overlap between my guide and the manual. Hopefully they complement each other, and the guide will be useful to others as a way into the many complexities of the game.

[AirToob]

Just to say that the guide should now reflect the game as it stands in January 2024 (Build 35732 Windows 64-bit).

As far as the guide is concerned, the only game change that has affected it (so far as I can tell) is the way in which wait times at terminals is handled. Wait time used to refer to the time between successive arrivals, not to the overall waiting time - but now it does indeed seem to control the overall wait time.

I notice other beneficial changes to the game and to its performance, but those don't affect the guide.

Playing the game identified a number of sections of the guide that the recovery process missed - these are now reinstated.

I have now completed adding links to relevant parts of the official TF2 Game Manual from relevant sections in the guide (which personally I find very useful). One of the links from the mod section was broken - now fixed.

And if you visited and noticed some strangely-rendered characters (depends on your browser) these should all now be fixed.

I won't mention further updates here unless they are something really major - thank you for your patience.