Create a route manager.

[Matheus Mendes [Q.R.A BI-TREM]]

A game similar to train world is transport fever 2. and the simulator is exceptional in this regard. An improvement that exists in TF2 is the fact that it can manage routes instead of individual trains. example: train 1, train 2, etc.

Creating a route would be better as we would put several trains on the same route just like in TF2

[Dmytro]

Hi, thank you for your feedback and your interest in the game.

Routes were available on the game release and you can check it out by playing version 1.12.40 in the beta section. Over time I realised that it was a mistake and was guiding players toward gameplay that was not intended.

TF2 and other games use multiple trains per route for a number of reasons. The first one is the map. With a small map having long trains is not an option, a player is quickly going to reach a point when the locomotive is already at the destination station and the last wagon hasn't left the starting stations. So the developers came up with various tricks like limiting the number of wagons and/or adding wagons automatically based on the cargo type (Railway Empire). So in order to increase the flow of cargo a player had to use more trains.

As for TF2, there was another reason. In that game, there are other transportation means available like buses and tracks. With routes/lines, it is common thing to have multiple vehicles. So to be consistent they kept for all means of transportation. Even though it was interesting to see that the planes could not reach maximum speed since the map was so small.

In Train World, if you need to increase the flow of cargo you can just increase the size of your train. Rail track occupation is more important now, so increasing the number of trains will only bring more problems. Even cargo and passenger generation are set up in a way not to force a player to use multiple trains but rather to work on optimizing the effectiveness of trains.

[Jasper T. Reynoldois]

Matheus: as someone who's played a few hundred hours now I can maybe comment on this. As Dmytro says there used to be routes and the capability to put multiple trains on a route, but for gameplay reasons he went back to the more basic setup of trains as the fundamental unit.

You can make a route fairly easily if you need to, by fine-tuning the details of the route for train number 1, and then just cloning trains as needed until you have as many as you wanted. If you need to adjust the route, it's easiest just to sell all trains but one, edit the route for that one train, and then re-clone as needed. You don't lose a lot of money by doing this: selling trains gives you a fair price given the remaining years of service on the train.

And I do indeed use this method for high-traffic passenger routes fairly often. Typically I end up with three or four trains on the route. Rarely as many as five or six, but your mileage may vary. By using the cloning method it's not much hassle at all to effectively create these routes.

But for freight traffic you almost never need routes. As the dev suggests, it's much more efficient to use one long train with a sufficiently powerful locomotive. Even in very high throughput freight routes, I never end up duplicating a train exactly but instead run two parallel trains, each with dedicated platforms (and sometimes even rail lines) to avoid congestion.

Hope this helps.

[Stealthy]

I agree. No need for route management in this game, it is not needed as the focus is on maximising your efficiency with as few trains, but looooooong ones, as possible.

[MrSkinny]

Over time I realised that it was a mistake and was guiding players toward gameplay that was not intended.

Purely out of interest, I'm curious if there was any other reasoning behind the removal? I find that a fascinating note to remove a working feature when players were gravitating towards it. This is not intended as a criticism, just a curiosity! It's clear you put a lot of passion and intensive work into this game and have a specific vision for it.

[Dmytro]

I would say that people were gravitating towards it as there were no other options. There were multiple reasons to remove lines. Putting multiple small trains on one line instead of one large train reduced profits and made the game more complicated. It also pushed the players towards doubling all tracks as early as possible for easier traffic management in places where that was not necessary. Obviously, removing lines was better for code management and support as one sub-system was removed and UI was simplified. From the learning and expectations point of view, it was better as players were trying to understand what the game was about instead of trying to play it as something similar to what they played before.

[Jimmy C]

Originally posted by Dmytro:

From the learning and expectations point of view, it was better as players were trying to understand what the game was about instead of trying to play it as something similar to what they played before.

That is one of the things I love about this game. Its uniqueness. I also appreciate Dmytro's steadfastness in sticking to his vision of the game.