Essential Tips for Transport Fever Beginners

[LTChance]

So I had big plans for a recent four-day weekend, but I ended up buying Transport Tycoon and playing it for something like 40 hours. It is now firmly planted on my top five games of all-time list. It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed up until 3 o’clock in the morning only to roll out of the rack at 8 to get back to gaming! If you’re still on the fence about buying it, allow me a quick plug. If you liked any of the following games, you MUST play Transport Fever: Railroad Tycoon (duh), Simcity (one of the good ones), Rollercoaster Tycoon, Factorio, Civilization, or any other game that required you to manage a set of systems with limited resources to achieve a desired outcome. Just get it already!

Now, just playing the game doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet. Unlike most recent entries in this genre, you can’t just build a road/track/farm/city and wait for the cash to start pouring in for you to play with while experiencing zero challenge or frustration (sorry, millennials!). I have faced dozens of bewildering behaviors in my supply chains. Like most games, I expended a few minutes trying to puzzle out these problems before visiting the font of all human knowledge (google) to see if anyone else had the same problem and already figured it out. This is where I found the teeming masses of people who have tried the game, called for help, and seemingly threw their PC out the window (or maybe just gave up on Transport Tycoon). There are two very unfortunate consequences of this phenomenon. First, it is very difficult to wade through the dozens of teeth-gnashing, bug-claiming, snowflake-whining posts to find any helpful discussion. And second, I fear all of that feedback may convince the developer to dumb their game down like everyone else does these days. So here is my effort to ease you, the eager virtual manager, into the world of Transport Tycoon.

1) The game is not wrong, YOU ARE! - Of all the dozens of problems that have brought my transport empires to their knees, I was able to discover the root cause of the problem in self-inflicted ‘mistake’ in my line - EVERY time. All of the bug-claiming posts I’ve waded through remind me of building Lego sets with my kids. They spend a minute or two looking for a piece and then claim the Lego Company must have forgotten to put it in the box. Sometimes, I spend several minutes looking for it… until I start to think, “Has it actually happened? Did Lego screw it up this one time?!” Inevitably, we find the piece on the floor, or across the room, or days later as the cat plays with it on the stairs. Over dozens of sets we have built, Lego has NEVER actually forgotten to put a piece in the box, such that if someone claims they did now, I don’t believe them. Same thing here. It’s not a bug. There’s a problem with the way you built your supply chain, or perhaps I should say, DEMAND chain, which leads me to…

2) The game’s economy is DEMAND driven (just like real ones) – Because of how other games have trained me, this took a long time for me to fully understand. In other games, if you supply it, someone’ll buy it – at least up to some limit. In this game, you are not selling materials and goods. Some nameless seller is paying you to move their materials or goods to a nameless buyer, to whom they must be able to sell their goods for more than they paid you to move them. If they can’t sell their crap on the other end of your railroad for a profit, they aren’t going to pay you to move it! Which leads me to…

3) You must build an entire chain all at once – If there is no place to sell the tools, then the tool factory doesn’t want to buy iron, which means the iron mine won’t pay you to take their iron to the tool factory. So you need to add a truck depot by the tool factory and set up a truck line to take the tools from the truck depot by the tool factory to the commercial district of a nearby town. You can either put another truck depot in that area of town or, helpful hint: use a bus stop. The problem with using a truck depot is you have to pay for any buildings you destroy. (No helpful politicians to claim imminent domain apparently.) Sometimes, though, you think you have set up the whole chain and the iron just won’t start flowing! Which leads me to…

4) If your chain is broken, SIMPLIFY it – By broken, I mean you’ve connected an apparent supply facility to an apparent demand facility, but the gosh darned materials won’t get on the dang ol’ train! For example, after working my way through the whole Europe campaign, I got stuck on the first mission of the US campaign when I couldn’t get the iron to flow to the tools factory. I had built my freight station where its catchment range didn’t include the tools factory, but added a truck depot between them, thinking the station would off-load the iron to the depot, and the factory would take it out of the depot. I started over, moved the freight station closer to the factory (simplifying the line) and wah-lah, the iron flowed like water – heavy, solid water. Another example – on the Chunnel mission, after my machines were shipped to the English side, they disappeared from the platform and my trucks started taking them to my coal mine and my lumber yard. “What the heck?! This game is broken!” Nope. Eventually, I figured out there were a few industrial buildings in Dover within the catchment range of the truck depot by the port. These industrial buildings ate some of my machines and created a demand for machines on the truck depot, which caused my trucks to take the machines that weren’t getting eaten to the other depots to get taken back to that one to get eaten. At least I think that’s what was going on. I simplified my chain by moving by truck depot away from those industrial buildings and… problem solved. I have seen some players recommend that you don’t use a depot to transfer more than one type of good either way. That is extreme and not cost effective, but it is the ultimate simplification and will work every time. Better is to learn how demand drives the economy and manipulate the system to meet your needs. Which leads me to…

5) If in doubt, watch and learn – One of the best ways to do this is to click on a depot to open its window and then click on the ‘details’ tab. This will open a window that shows you which of the goods at the depot are attached to which supply lines heading out of it. In one mission, I had a bunch of coal at a train station and my trains kept leaving it behind. I was like, “Take the damn coal you dumb train! This game is broken!!!” Nope. Once I learned to look at the station’s manifest I could see that all of that coal was assigned to another line. None was being assigned to the line I needed it for because there was a problem further down the chain that prevented the demand signal. In another case, I thought my trucks weren’t stopping at the right section of their depot because of some way I set up the line, or that the depot wasn’t smart enough to get the food from one platform to the other. Nope. Just wasn’t demand for that line. Once I fixed the demand side, everything started moving again. In the meantime, of course, the whole rest of supply chain collapsed, which leads me to… (but before I go there, one other useful hint to learn is to check out the ‘potential’ values of your factories and watch how they change over time).

6) Make small changes and give them a while to settle out - Just like in real life, the demand signal requirement makes the entire economy one vast network where a single small change can cause waves through the whole system. It requires you to constantly fiddle with and optimize the chain to make it work, improve it, and then keep it working. At first, I confused this ‘fiddliness’ for poor game design, then as I came to understand the mechanics, I discovered the fiddling is the game, and is very much what is required to keep an actual logistic chain in motion. For example, I rarely add or subtract a whole train at once (until money is rolling in so much that I don’t care). I’ll add a car or two and see what happens. Your goal is to build a stable system in which the amplitude of the oscillations decline over time (definition of stable system), but you’ll often end up with an unstable system where the oscillations blow up until something runs out. Find the sweet spot and nurture it with loving tenderness… kind of creeped myself out there.

The game isn’t perfect. It could be better documented. I’d like to be able to add cars to a train without paying to swap out the whole train using the replace function or having to micromanage the train going back to the depot. Um… well, I guess that’s it. Otherwise, it’s perfect! I’ll end with a list of quick tips I’ve learned so far which I’ll add to as I learn more. If anyone wants to chip in, explain your tip (in complete English thoughts please) in the comments and I’ll add it.

1) Managing tracks for multiple trains is a bit complex. While I typically don’t like to watch a half hour video for a couple of gameplay tips, it makes sense in this case. (By the way, you-tubers, if you’re video starts with you starting a brand new game, auto-skip. Get to the damned point!) Here’s the relatively complete and concise one I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knrVZ-i0nVk.

2) Start small. A line with just one truck makes the demand. (actually, I’m not sure you even need a truck.) Add capacity as volume grows. Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle…

3) It most missions, it is difficult to meet all the medal requirements in one go. For example, it is quite challenging to beat the time limit and to avoid loans in the same go. If you're on your first play-through, don’t break your economy trying.

4) I’ve found the best bus routes to be 2-4 routes of 8-10 stops each all going through a station that feeds a train or cross country bus route. Open to challengers. I’ve heard trams work better than busses.

5) Watch for traffic problems and fix them. If your trucks and busses can’t get through town, more people will get in their cars, meaning more traffic, meaning your economy will fall apart. Upgrade your roads (you’ll have to buy off some building owners) and install bus lanes. Inspect intersections for inefficiencies. Long intersections = bad.

6) Intercity passenger lines (train or bus) are simple to build and make decent money. This makes them good to start with, but they can’t compete with industry money once you get it going. Also, I originally thought multiple transport methods would cannibalize each other but I learned that wasn’t true in the Chunnel mission. I had trains, planes, and automobiles (and ferries) going, and each time I added one (thinking I would need to remove the old method), more passengers showed up!

[Silky Rough]

Great write up. Only one thing I want to nitpick though because there is a lot of misunderstanding about the "economy" in TF that causes grief - as you say.

The game’s economy is DEMAND driven (just like real ones)

The RL mass economy creates product based on the assumption people will buy (with "pre-order" exceptions of course). ie: Stuff is made without a specific customer. We simply pile it into warehouses and inventories and deliver to wholesalers/retailers.

In TF, and it's an important point (which is why I nitpicked), if the product exists it's been purchased and needs delivery. The buyer owns it. You can't forward and store goods, you can't give it to someone else and you can't take it somewhere else - no matter how hard you try.

You can take the product all the way around the map if you want but without *some* link back to the buyer, it can't be moved. It explains why 90% of the time players that apply a "forward and store" mentality have empty trains. :)

(ED: As an afterthought, this is neither a supply or demand economy. It's a "delivery" economy. If we're truthful, we're no more than a courier - DHL or FedEx if you will. If we deliver timely and efficiently, we're given more to deliver. Supply and demand takes care of itself.)

[larry_roberts]

I've been playing Transport Fever since it's creation (Train Fever for a few months before) but you have just opened my eyes to things in this game I wasn't fully aware of (depot details for example)!. Thankyou very much for the enlightenment!.

[chrisasnyder]

Originally posted by LTChance:

3) It most missions, it is impossible (I think) to meet all the medal requirements in one go. For example, you can beat the time limit or you can avoid loans. Probably not both. Don’t break your economy trying. (Challengers?)

Incorrect. After the April patch all 5 are able to be done in a each mission on a single attempt. Before that patch, the Good Times medal, in the last EU mission, was quite difficult. The rest were fine.

[LTChance]

@Silky Rough - True, true... I'm mainly making the point to differentiate the game's economy from most games - i.e. Railroad Tycoon, where if you build the train someone's going to put goods on it based on the available supply. I think our training from previous games makes it hard to understand the 'pull' mechanic in this game vice the 'push' mechanic of most, and now that I understand it, I think it is more 'realistic'. In real life, a coal mine doesn't pay a train to take their coal somewhere unless there is a buyer on the other end. They don't just hope one will be there. The deal is done before the coal gets on the train. This game doesn't model middle men and market makers, but it's closer than previous simulations.

@larry_roberts - Thanks! I feel like I learn something new every time I play.

@chrisasnyder - I did just finish the Panama Canal mission with all medals fairly easily, and it had both a time limit and a 'no loans' medal, so I guess I was wrong. There were a few, though, that I just don't see how it's possible. I edited my statement. Maybe I'll make another post about claiming the medals in each mission on my second play through.

[daventure2005]

I would add, to make a good money in this game, or simply to survive in hard mode, it is essential to haul full loads of cargo or passengers both ways. How to spot opportunities and design lines to achieve this is the fun part of the game.

[larry_roberts]

I watched the video on signalling but it makes no mention of the fact that you can click on signals to make them one way signals!. Other than preventing trains going the wrong way (eg when you sell all the trains in a line) I'm not sure what purpose that serves!. Did you know you can click on level crossings to change the barrier type, and now (as you probably know) if you click on the center of a diamond crossing you can switch trains to the centre line (but this does strange things to train routes)!.

[electricmonk2k]

Nice post. Glad you had the perserverence to figure out the game's quirks by yourself. I've played this game myself since it came out, (and Train Fever since after 3 months since it came out). Both games have improved considerably since their first versions, although even in Transport Fever, I still find construction can be a bit exasperating at times, but if I learn some "Rules of Thumb", it helps out.

You must build an entire chain all at once

Actually, the factories have a limited storage-space for a small number of resources. This can help start your chain, but the storage-space fills up soon, so to keep the line running, deliver it to the next part of the chain. But yes, you should build the full chain at once, but you are allowed a bit of time to build each part while the industry's output-store fills up. This extra bit of income might be just what you need to build the next part of the chain.

Anyway, here are two tips:

1. If an industry produces two products (eg. tools and machines), in order to upgrade the factory, the demand for both products must be in the 'expanison zone' for an upgrade to be triggered.
   
2. When building track (road or rail), the slope-arrow is the slope at the end of the segment, not the slope of the entire segment. So if the previous segment was rising, then if you set the arrow to 'flat', the altitude of the end-point increases the longer the segment is. Learning this nugget of information helped me figure out why I was getting anomalous slope-results.