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I want a train network game where switching and yards are things. Intellectually, I know how difficult that would be and how little it would probably add. But at the same time, I want it.
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Mar 4, 2021 16:38
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zedprime posted:Unrelated sidebar on signalling. I love the shared signalling language we have in all train games now but I'm still waiting for something like a dispatch mode in a game where you build the network (so discounting some of the sim dispatchers here). I want to feel the need for a new siding or hate myself for the time table I set and yell at trucks stuck on level crossings. Hey Train Valley fan! I loved that game! I could never get into the second one though, how about you?
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Mar 4, 2021 16:55
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I haven't technically gotten into either of them, just watched some youtube's and eternally wishlisted lol. For kind of the same reason for the dream game in fishing for, worried what I really want is a sandbox like Transport Fever but I personally make the trains run to a time table by clearing and rerouting trains due to expected and unexpected events. I hate that I've become the management sandbox obsessee when I've traditionally been very open to scenario based games.
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Mar 4, 2021 17:11
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Log082 posted:I want a train network game where switching and yards are things. Intellectually, I know how difficult that would be and how little it would probably add. But at the same time, I want it. Yeah I want a REAL good modern OpenTTD. Nothing current that I've played scratches the same itch. I just want to get really intricate and over the top about my switching and signalling because that's the kind of person I am.
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Mar 4, 2021 17:20
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NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN posted:Yeah I want a REAL good modern OpenTTD. Nothing current that I've played scratches the same itch. I just want to get really intricate and over the top about my switching and signalling because that's the kind of person I am. Transport Fever 2 is close to this but I played it again recently and there's just so much about it that frustrates me. Some things can be fixed with mods but it's not the same.
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Mar 4, 2021 17:27
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barnold posted:That save game is now totally hosed because I found out the hard way that there is no train pathfinding AI whatsoever. There is no programming to account for lines that converge at a station and then split again at all. Trains just enter junctions and stop and block stations and that's it for your train system. I get that it's programmed by a single dude but like not having even a rudimentary "don't enter a junction unless the track ahead is clear" is a pretty massive oversight for a game that's exclusively built around trains and advertised as being a way to test realistic fantasy rail networks. Signals need to be made priority #1 imo I saw that this was causing problems for people watching on YouTube and I basically cheesed my way around it by running parallel tracks everywhere. Most of my suburban services are running at around a 5 minute frequency and I knew that squeezing too many services onto single platforms or stretches of track was going to be problematic. It's easy enough to make money in this game so the extra cost doesn't really factor in except for maybe at the start. Makes for some gruesome looking stations though.
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Mar 4, 2021 18:49
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explosivo posted:Transport Fever 2 is close to this but I played it again recently and there's just so much about it that frustrates me. Some things can be fixed with mods but it's not the same. TF2's signals are really really basic and I constantly have to clear jams and these stupid loving trains won't take the giant passing lane I made for them, and for whatever reason they don't have signals for both directions so I have to double up on them which I'm sure makes it even harder to diagnose what's going wrong. Also cities get big mad about the one plane going overhead, but I can't define waypoints for them or the flight path. Planes 100% use waypoints in real life, including specifically for noise abatement, so idk why I can't stick any down or define anything about their departure or arrival patterns. Even just being able to tell a plane to turn right on takeoff, which is also an extremely common thing for air traffic, would be helpful.
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Mar 4, 2021 18:55
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I'm hyped about EG2 but I hope people remember what EG1 was and don't expect more than that. I love EG1 but I don't hold any illusions that it's more than something like Two Point Hospital with a different theme. It's strength was that feeling of building a base and luring "heroes" into their death in ways that were visually appealing but not complicated. The gameplay video's I've seen so far seem to show this is going to be the case with EG2 and so long as they don't try to do much more with it then they've got a winning formula that's looking on track with what we've seen. I just know nostalgia can kick people in the rear end and make you feel like the game is worse off for being what it should be expected to be rather than what you think it should be on vague memories.
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Mar 4, 2021 18:59
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skooma512 posted:TF2's signals are really really basic and I constantly have to clear jams and these stupid loving trains won't take the giant passing lane I made for them, and for whatever reason they don't have signals for both directions so I have to double up on them which I'm sure makes it even harder to diagnose what's going wrong. Yeah these are all things that I think Railway Empire handled pretty well, it was always very clear what type of signal you were putting down and which direction that section of track would flow in. I prefer the look of TF2 but really wished they would have improved the signaling in the game post launch. I'm also always bummed there's no way to do a "Take the first available spot in a depot" type thing which I'm pretty sure OpenTTD can handle. gently caress I might just go play OpenTTD again. 
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Mar 4, 2021 19:16
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skooma512 posted:TF2's signals are really really basic and I constantly have to clear jams and these stupid loving trains won't take the giant passing lane I made for them, and for whatever reason they don't have signals for both directions so I have to double up on them which I'm sure makes it even harder to diagnose what's going wrong. There are some tricks like using waypoints so a slow train always takes a slow siding allowing faster trains to pass but these are kind of annoying to do. So the general rule of thumb is trains only have one top speed and acceleration in the network or else be ready to live with the minimum of these.
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Mar 4, 2021 19:18
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371750/TMinus_30/ e: wait poo poo that isn't the tweet I thought it was. Anyways new city builder coming out this year, fast-paced.
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Mar 4, 2021 19:27
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StrixNebulosa posted:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1371750/TMinus_30/ I'm always up for new games that I can play for 30 minutes and then walk away from.
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Mar 4, 2021 19:33
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nessin posted:I'm hyped about EG2 but I hope people remember what EG1 was and don't expect more than that. I love EG1 but I don't hold any illusions that it's more than something like Two Point Hospital with a different theme. It's strength was that feeling of building a base and luring "heroes" into their death in ways that were visually appealing but not complicated. The gameplay video's I've seen so far seem to show this is going to be the case with EG2 and so long as they don't try to do much more with it then they've got a winning formula that's looking on track with what we've seen. I just know nostalgia can kick people in the rear end and make you feel like the game is worse off for being what it should be expected to be rather than what you think it should be on vague memories. i read a preview which complained that EG2 had a lot of waiting around for minions to complete tasks on the world map and i'm like... cool, sounds good to me. i like a slower paced game where i can really savor my ant farm. two point hospital went above and beyond to modernize without straying from the formula, and i got a couple hundred hours out of that game before the shine wore off. even if EG2 is a hard clone of the original, as long as it maintains that same feel then i'll be happy the problem i had with the startopia remake is that it felt slow and busy at the same time, somehow. all EG2 needs to do is nail the pacing without adding any stupid extra features or retaining any stupid features from the original
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Mar 4, 2021 19:42
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Been falling back into Factory Town hard and I really enjoy the game but I'm quickly starting to feel overwhelmed with the amount of stuff to do. I just unlocked Steam Trains and have messed around with transporting stuff long distances, those are really nice to have and seem like pretty crucial since the resources are spread out fairly sparsely. Last time I tried the game I petered out just before getting into the blue coins, really going to try and push through.
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Mar 4, 2021 20:32
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explosivo posted:Been falling back into Factory Town hard and I really enjoy the game but I'm quickly starting to feel overwhelmed with the amount of stuff to do. I just unlocked Steam Trains and have messed around with transporting stuff long distances, those are really nice to have and seem like pretty crucial since the resources are spread out fairly sparsely. Last time I tried the game I petered out just before getting into the blue coins, really going to try and push through. Keep in mind packagers exist😀
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Mar 4, 2021 22:08
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Mayveena posted:Keep in mind packagers exist😀 I, uh, did not know packagers exist. I should look into that. Presumably it condenses a lot of materials into an easily transportable item? This would help because I noticed the trains take forever to fill up if I'm just loading from a Silo full of stuff.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:11
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explosivo posted:I, uh, did not know packagers exist. I should look into that. Presumably it condenses a lot of materials into an easily transportable item? This would help because I noticed the trains take forever to fill up if I'm just loading from a Silo full of stuff. Yup!
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Mar 4, 2021 22:30
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Thanks for the tip! The trains really do make expansion easier and the packager is a really handy way to move a whole lot. I also wasn't using the train stations for loading, I'm really going now. I think my biggest issue at this point is the increasing amount of spaghetti piling up around my houses and markets and stuff. Kind of a leftover consequence of not spreading out enough early game. Now I'm wondering if I can just move the whole drat town and ferry the goods over in train cars..
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Mar 5, 2021 03:46
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explosivo posted:Thanks for the tip! The trains really do make expansion easier and the packager is a really handy way to move a whole lot. I also wasn't using the train stations for loading, I'm really going now. I think my biggest issue at this point is the increasing amount of spaghetti piling up around my houses and markets and stuff. Kind of a leftover consequence of not spreading out enough early game. Now I'm wondering if I can just move the whole drat town and ferry the goods over in train cars.. I think it's one of the best train implementations outside of a dedicated train game. Note that you can use all the compute logic with them as well.
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Mar 5, 2021 05:48
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zedprime posted:TF2 bakes in it's paths during route generation. It will not automatically path find sidings or parallel lines like OTTD I've seen trains use passing lanes on their own but yeah that makes sense. Think I might shelf it for now then. It's fun but if I can't multiplex my tracks or define waypoints for aircrafts (and get punished by the game over noise), then I'll wait until devs/mods make that happen. OpenTTD lets me make giant hellmazes if I want.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:24
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big ostriv patch dropped, if you were waiting on this one now might be the time. it's a chill banished-like slavic village builder
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Mar 5, 2021 22:55
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:big ostriv patch dropped, if you were waiting on this one now might be the time. it's a chill banished-like slavic village builder Yeah I saw this, I've had it wishlisted for ages. Kinda thinking about checking it out now, seems like there's been some significant changes since the last time I peeked at the page for it.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:59
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I really just want another transport game that uses the old Railroad Tycoon mechanic of goods distribution and pricing. It's so much more satisfying and organic than "city wants steel, bring steel to point x, here is $5000". If anyone never played those, every single point on the map had a price for every single good, and you were paid the difference in price between the two points. So if steel was produced in one place it was cheap - high supply lowered the price to $20/unit, while a city that uses steel will have high demand, and might price it at $100 per unit. You'd make $80/unit for shipping them at the start - but you'd make less money as you flooded the market with steel, forcing you to bring it to other places or build industry that increased demand there.
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Mar 5, 2021 23:10
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ostriv is good if a bit feature-light already, i haven't dug into this patch yet but it looks pretty neat. one of the unique things about the game is the development of a private economy, your people earn wages and buy things on the market with those wages two tips: first, go for a town hall asap. this lets you control wages and prices, and until you get the export economy set up you want to cut wages and prices to restrict the amount of money flowing around your town. you can hit a soft lock if you run out of funds in your treasury without anything to sell to raise more funds. money circulates around your economy in a constant drain to worker savings, and the main ways to bring money in or move money out is through export/import. apparently now property taxes are implemented which should help bring some money back from citizens to the government. citizens wont mind if their wages are cut so long as the cost of living is reasonable, so if you cut wages by 90% cut prices and rents to match, just until you get your economy established and start trading second, there are two tiers of jobs - permanent, and seasonal. anyone assigned to a work building has a permanent job, anyone else without a permanent job can still be hired as needed as temporary seasonal labor. work buildings like the farm benefit greatly from seasonal labor. the town hall also controls the seasonality of labor assignment. for things like fishing docks, you'll want to set workers to 0 in the winter because there's no fishing when the rivers are frozen. likewise, you can cut labor at other buildings during planting/harvest time to make sure people are working at farms - it isn't necessary to have people making trade goods when the harvest needs to be brought in the new patch adds the ability of citizens to grow their own food in their yards for consumption and sale, so that's neat
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Mar 5, 2021 23:24
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JosefStalinator posted:I really just want another transport game that uses the old Railroad Tycoon mechanic of goods distribution and pricing. It's so much more satisfying and organic than "city wants steel, bring steel to point x, here is $5000". Which Railroad Tycoon game had those mechanics? The two I've played (Railroad Tycoon Deluxe, and Railroad Tycoon 2) don't have any supply/demand logic like that. However Railroad Tycoon 2 does have the stock market and player being a distinct entity from the company, so you as a player can own stock in multiple companies, and control many, or even none. In OpenTTD, you can get NewGRF industries that alter the mechanics to use stockpiling and limited consumption. Take a look at BSPI for example, it's the original industries altered such that you need to supply coal to power stations, which then affects the production capacity of other industries. If you keep delivering raw materials to a secondary industry, faster than it can consume it, it will eventually fill up its stockpile and be unable to accept any more. You can also look at the A-Train series. Passengers are passengers there, but goods is not just cargo you transport under an abstract contract. You actually buy the cargo when you pick it up, and you deliver it to a cargo depot you own and only when a consumer nearby needs the cargo does it get sold again, giving you (hopefully) some income. Cities also need construction materials to develop, and it's up to you to ensure those materials get delivered.
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Mar 6, 2021 00:49
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RT3 did.
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Mar 6, 2021 01:38
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The original Railroad Tycoon is still the best. 
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Mar 6, 2021 03:43
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RT3 was a different dev than the previous and it showed. I would second the A Train recommendation but wait for a sale.
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Mar 6, 2021 04:00
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What was the other game of the Ostriv release cycle that had the "paths are placed based on where people walk" mechanic? I really dig that as a concept.
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Mar 6, 2021 04:01
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KirbyKhan posted:What was the other game of the Ostriv release cycle that had the "paths are placed based on where people walk" mechanic? I really dig that as a concept. Foundation?
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Mar 6, 2021 04:02
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Mayveena posted:Foundation? Yes! Thank
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Mar 6, 2021 04:06
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I haven’t played foundation in a year or more now but some caution: it absolutely has a charm to it and I want to like it but the residential district mechanic was something that felt like they tried to make fairly central and innovative, but isn’t good enough to stand on its own with literally any level of efficiency. Worse, you can sort of game it and that becomes very apparent after you play with it a bit, so it becomes a game of painfully coaxing the houses into something close to aesthetically pleasing and/or efficient. After doing this for awhile you’ll say “gently caress, I wish I could just plop houses” and when I got to that point I just quit the game and hoped they’d patch it to be better, because it felt like such a roadblock and it’s one of the few things it does very “different” than other games, but doesn’t work great. Or perhaps more fairly to it, didn’t work great.
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Mar 6, 2021 08:43
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TheCenturion posted:The original Railroad Tycoon is still the best. I played so much of that on our DOS/Win3.1 computer. I probably still have the big thick book that came with it packed away in a box somewhere.
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Mar 6, 2021 09:33
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:ostriv is good if a bit feature-light already, i haven't dug into this patch yet but it looks pretty neat. one of the unique things about the game is the development of a private economy, your people earn wages and buy things on the market with those wages Hey thanks! I picked this up and it seems great so far, I'm definitely getting Banished vibes from it.
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Mar 6, 2021 20:06
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JosefStalinator posted:I really just want another transport game that uses the old Railroad Tycoon mechanic of goods distribution and pricing. It's so much more satisfying and organic than "city wants steel, bring steel to point x, here is $5000". I could talk everyone's ears off about RRT3's economy! They had an interesting mechanic for the economy. For buildings, you had raw material production, like mines and logging camps, then intermediate sites like sawmills and furniture factories, and then sinks like cities or power plants. The economics of this were purely supply and demand, but each tile region had it's own limited demand and supply price, along with a small capacity for material. This meant that as your plant produced goods, the surrounding tiles would absorb some of it, while you purchased supplies from the surrounding tiles or facilities. The supply and frequency of materials rose, the price would drop, and vice versa. As mentioned by Josef, you made your money by buying low then transporting it somewhere to sell high. This lead to behavior where industries didn't need you to hook them up to logistics directly; the materials would actually slowly "flow" towards their sinks (faster on rivers as well) to simulate ye olde logistics networke of horse and boat. It also meant that when you made or purchased a building, it could actually sell without needing you to put something there to absorb it. This also meant that certain areas became natural resource sources; river deltas where many materials flowed to could have a train depot set up to collect them and sell them later, so you didn't actually need to have your trains stop at the raw material buildings. This leads to delightful scenarios where the most economically rational thing to do is to ignore building a railroad altogether, and open an intermediate plant in an area with massive supply, low demand, and relatively high price for the intermediate good. The Russia scenario has forests in the northwest, and if you beg, borrow, and steal enough money from stock grants and loans your can place a sawmill there, which immediately vomits huge amounts of money to you. The prices eventually stabilize and the sawmill only makes a minor profit or none at all, but by that point you've made an absolute shitload of money and can do an actual railroad. Similar for the Australia scenario, where the only really effective strategy I've been able to do is to immediately build a textile plant at the spot on the very northwest next to the sheep farms and take advantage of the huge disparity in price while you can. The towns originally only want certain things, but as they grow there are individual office buildings that want paper, etc, and since there's a station there already maybe you should just put the meat packing plant there because it can sell to the city which acts as a sink for beef? This leads to behaviors where it actually makes sense to place industries near sinks, because you don't necessarily have to transport the goods yourself (although it can be profitable to do so!). If you had a vertical supply chain for a material to finished product, you're effectively squeezing every dollar of revenue out of that by transporting it and transforming it. The $10 sheath of wool from the country is now a $100 sweater at market and you made $90 by moving it every step of the way. It wasn't perfect and lead to some really strange behaviors, but its something I haven't seen since and it's way too cool to just relegate to the dustbin of game design history. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 22:23
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explosivo posted:Hey thanks! I picked this up and it seems great so far, I'm definitely getting Banished vibes from it. i just fired it up and managed to insta-build a farm after trying to demolish it, so... watch out for a hotfix sometime soon i guess lol ostriv isn't as rough as banished but, definitely put in some diligent care when preparing for winter
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Mar 6, 2021 22:26
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Volmarias posted:It wasn't perfect and lead to some really strange behaviors, but its something I haven't seen since and it's way too cool to just relegate to the dustbin of game design history. I would personally suggest that X4 does something like this, in that all the goods are physically simulated, so by mining ore and refining it into parts, those parts go on to power economic activity with the other factions, shipbuilding, station construction etc, and vertically integrating your supply chain is ideal because each transformational process makes the goods more valuable. It doesn't really need you to ship all the parts out because you can just build your own factories, but if you did ship products to an area with a lot of demand it would help them produce more reliably and probably lower the prices a bit, though oftentimes factories are maxed for output all the time and everything they make will be bought unless they are producing something heavily bottlenecked. What you are describing conceptually does seem a lot like how I look at X4 economically though, each factory is literally just adding value to the product and the more steps you control the more labour time you can convert into value. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 22:44
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Volmarias posted:I could talk everyone's ears off about RRT3's economy! Yeah I remember TT3's economy being pretty fun, especially in that you didn't really HAVE to build a railway network at all. Once I found that out I was absolutely swimming in cash.
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Mar 7, 2021 03:23
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Volmarias posted:I could talk everyone's ears off about RRT3's economy! This guy gets it. Easily one of the most fun and interesting economic systems I've seen in any management games, let alone railroad/transport ones. A remake with that system, with some tweaks to prevent some of the exploity bits, would make for a hell of a game. It was super fun loading up the pre-made scenarios and just looking for places where you could swoop in and buy some unprofitable business for super cheap (like sawmills) and build a paper factory right next to it and make an obscene amount of money. The stock/hostile takeover bits were fun as hell too, and added the extra dimension of just trying to make your dude as absurdly rich as possible.
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Mar 7, 2021 03:35
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I'll have to give RT3 another try. I like RT2s economy and growth system and RT2 is my favorite game in the train space. I never took to any of the 3d games but your effort post makes me think I'm missing something
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Mar 7, 2021 04:02
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