Hard mode for OpenTTD

So, you want to make earning money a bit harder, huh?

Making openTTD harder?? woooooooah

Hey, so to make it harder, you need to go into the crypt known as the options menu. It's that 'settings' option that can be found under the drop down that appears when you click the cog that should appear at the top of your screen, when you're playing on an existing or new game.

Now, the options menu can be a bit of a mystery, since depending on what sort of category you select at the top of the window, you may or may not actually be able to see all of the options. To change this, select the 'EXPERT' category.

Alternatively, you can just search up the option that you want to see, and it should show up regardless.

Infrastructure Maintenance

So, the biggest issue that most people have when they play this game, is that once you find a nice little loop to earn a ton of money from transporting goods and such, you might as well be done with the game. With the default settings, you will from this point on effectively never run out of money, let alone face any real meaningful difficulties.

Notably, there's the common situation of people just building airports, and almost immediately rolling in the cash.

How do you change this? HOW DO YOU MAKE IT HARDER?

Well, now that you should have your options menu open, you're going to want to turn on INFRASTRUCTURE MAINTENANCE.

What does this do?

To put it simply, it turns on maintenance fees for whatever existing constructions that you might have built - Train tracks, stations, airports, etc - they all need to be maintained.

Right, so this is already sounding promising for making things more difficult - but, you might ask: how does it make it difficult?

Turning on infrastructure maintenance makes the game harder, because whenever you build a new loop for your train network, you're going to need to pay for that section as well as the rest of the existing train network. In a manner of speaking, the costs scale to your existing infrastructure. If you think you can get away from this by just escaping to the airplane industry, you won't be running that company for much longer.

You want to just run off with your network of airports, and mountain of planes? With maintenance fees turned on, you better have an existing infrastructure to support your initial endeavors, as it will otherwise completely drain your coffers. It doesn't matter if you have billions of dollars; the expenses will eat you alive in no time at all. On the flipside however, the earnings potential is still quite nice if you can otherwise crest that peak.

The difference is that now, you're going to need to first work up to that point to be able to even try to do so.

Disasters

If you don't think that's enough to make things harder, you can always turn on the Disasters option. Granted it adds in the problem of randomly suffering because of circumstances beyond your control, and sometimes that's too much for those who are already a few chromies short, or for those who just don't want to put up with BS.

Thanks to my patrons

thanks for the reddit gold wow thanks for the thumbs up on the reddit gold, big chungus keyanoo reaves amogus gyatt skibede doilette


Lastly before I combust into flames, I have just one thing that I'd like to ask of anyone reading this:

We don't like cancer in our bodies, right? We don't like it in our bodies, and we also shouldn't like it online either. if you see anyone who posts cancer in an effort to be "funny" (repeating 'memes' on the web incessantly, like a bunch of bots... like in that image), tell them what you think. This has been a public service announcement, ideally ribbed for your pleasure.

Also, give me a thumbs up before you go.

[Crisp]

@Cum channel 5.7.1 Doubtful, ye

[FrAm channel 5.7.1]

are vegans healthy

[Flytrap]

Ehh, you got me!

[Crisp]

why not lmao

[Flytrap]

Why tom scott

[Crisp]

@Edward_Shooter thanks, man.

[Edward_shooter]

@Sold1567 actually you can enable "recession" and "inflation" to make it even harder :)

[o,..,0]

it's easy anyway, maybe there is something else???

[Edward_shooter]

Quite funny to read XD