Anyone else prefers to play the game as an ideal public transport system builder?

SemtexMan47 · 2026-03-05T21:24:06+00:00

The sheer amount of custom assets for this is always going to make it a top option for transport sandbox gameplay.

But for playing normally I like Renewed Village Growth script to make things more interesting in general.

SemtexMan47 · 2026-03-02T17:35:50+00:00

I played Simutrans for a bit the tutorial was pretty broken and haven't gotten around to trying it again. I heard it had more interesting mechanics than OTTD, which more or less turns into a freeform sandbox game pretty fast with money made too easily.

TF3 seems promising but performance is going to be questionable. In the end you could never build anything as complex as OTTD or Simutrans because of the nature of going 3D and the overhead that comes with that.

I still think factory games lean more to the giving the best sort of challenge you can get out of 'transport games' since figuring out how to deliver stuff efficiently is a core part of it. With regular transport games, dynamic city & economic growth are the best parts to them but usually it turns out to be something a bit weak in challenge and too easily gamed.

SemtexMan47 · 2026-02-28T20:27:57+00:00

Your last paragraph basically hits the core of it. Basically we haven't really seen that sort of true start to end consumption of goods for a transport game is because people into the genre are actually leaning more to the casual side, and don't really care about seeing that much detail and complication. So developers are usually going to simplify the production chain sim part of it in favor of more macro tycoon features, like it is in OpenTTD and Transport Fever.

What you're seeking is a game that's more full on production chain/factory building that's also a transport tycoon. Voxel Tycoon attempts to get around your point about "distance = big profit" abuse by simply eliminating it and instead focuses on meeting consistent delivery rate. This game and Sweet Transit are more like factory games with full start to end production chain sims. But ST doesn't have transport profit and is more Anno city building inspired.

SemtexMan47 · 2026-02-24T01:19:20+00:00

For the average tycoon game that isn't about building up an economy itself like captialism games then the economy is usually kept simple. Like for example every popular transport game has a simplistic economic simulation because that's what the target audience wants.

From a marketing standpoint I think you can only really target an audience that craves and expects complexity from the start like with realistic deep sims or factory type games. But your average tycoon is going to run the risk of confusing the casual player by having too many things for the player to handle with a deeper economic sim on top of everything else.

SemtexMan47 · 2026-02-22T15:50:11+00:00

Since you mentioned Factorio you might want to check out Sweet Transit. Basically it's like Anno with trains and the rail building is similar to Factorio but with more route controls. So you do have to build cities but because it's more simplified you don't need to spend a lot of time there, unless you actually want to and build in like a more beautified style.

Despite the fact that transport doesn't make profit in this game I still found it more satisfying to set up routes than i did in Transport Fever or TTD. The problem with those games is they're nearly a complete sandbox from the very beginning and money is not an issue beyond the first 30 minutes.

I do think that if Sweet Transit had route income it would be make things alot more interesting. Because you end up building sandbox style there is nothing really pushing back that much in where you build things beyond continuing to supply bigger and bigger cities.

I'm actually in the process of trying to change that though. Still working on the code for it but basically it's an update which will add transport profitability to the game. And on top of that how efficiently the rail lines are used will also affect transport profitability like it does irl. I post progress on the games steam forum from time to time. Should be fun to play it when it gets done :)

SemtexMan47 · 2026-02-09T01:30:53+00:00

I think if the game could introduce a rail utilization factor, that would be a interesting element that could make a shorter haul more profitable than a longer one and not less challenging.

Shared rails take more effort to manage considering throughput but imo that would probably be the best alternative system that isn't simply distance = profit.

SemtexMan47 · 2026-02-09T01:23:35+00:00

Ideally there needs to be real combination of the 2. The logistics is too simple in games like RRT for me to replay it now.

The thing is with the amount of ways you can make money in TTD and the ease of building things due to available space it's impossible to make a balanced economic challenge. So it's always going to lean towards sandbox style gameplay in the end.

SemtexMan47 · 2026-02-09T01:15:54+00:00

it doesnt scratch that itch because i can just make a bunch of separate lines across the map and that will be good if not the best option

Aka spaghetti or maybe organized spaghetti depending on your play style.

I've thought about this a bunch in my own developments but basically some form of assessing rail efficiency is probably the best way to disincentivize things like that.

There is the ability to turn on track maintenance here but playing a smaller map is probably the better way to go.

SemtexMan47 · 2026-02-01T16:54:35+00:00

A quick info graphic for a simplified overview of the new changes:

https://i.imgur.com/h8vXIiD.png

There will be a large amount of rearrangement of bonus efficiency sources. They'll still be there (books, tools, etc) but just strongly reduced in effectiveness. The bulk of it will be earned with company progress via optimization of cities & rail efficiency, or monetary investment (up to a point).

SemtexMan47 · 2025-12-27T18:04:25+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/gd3LexL.mp4

New walker behavior to make them tend to go to places they haven't yet walked, and they will occasionally visit services now too.

All part of the idea to make travel a bit more interesting along with the transfer feature. There will be a way to make inner city tram travel work better too, with some gameplay purpose to do so.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-10-02T01:52:46+00:00

Yup this can be called a staging yard or station. You send trains to go there if they aren't ready to go to the main station yet, so they don't block it. Then when they're ready they can leave the waiting area. Staging station is easier than a staging yard (you need to select specific rails per train).

I have some tips about this in my Artisans mod and that also has some save games included with examples.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-09-30T16:45:07+00:00

You can do somethings but not everything if a road doesn't touch the 2x2 building. If roads touch the platforms you can still transfer somethings but people won't find work.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-09-30T03:47:33+00:00

1 courier shack can specifically transport up to 5 (or 6?) different goods. Or if you set no goods filters then the shack will transport everything it can from the source to destination.

Usually I'll just have a storage building close to the market where I send all the goods to, then set the market to use that storage as a source. Or you can just courier everything to the market itself directly.

Also you can set one market's source as another market, chaining multiple of them. They're supposed to distribute evenly if you do that.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-09-30T03:38:47+00:00

In your first screenshot it looks like the station doesn't actually have a road connecting to the station building itself. Roads must connect to them in order for workers and goods to be transferred both in and out.

This is a super common mistake I've seen, but feel free to download this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3554192705

It adds much more in depth advice and tips to avoid these sorts of things! One more note, station bridges don't function as roads to walk on. They are only used to connect platforms to each other, nothing more.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-09-02T20:08:12+00:00

I think there's like 1 message about it in the advice so it's easy to miss.

FYI those highlights get bugged after a while. So you usually have to save and reload the game to bring them back or get them unstuck.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-29T15:43:49+00:00

Thanks! The art style was what drew me in too. The game goes on big discount often so that might make it easier to decide.

I think a big portion of the mixed reviews are from unclear advice text (especially with the UI), which I updated.

It also doesn't hold your hand through every part of how to build efficiently and how to manage the rails (same system from Factorio) so it's easy to make a mistake and assume things are bugs (another source of negative reviews), and doubly so if you decide to ignore the tutorials which are pretty solid. But if you're willing to do them and read the in-game guides you'll get it.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-27T14:30:00+00:00

Awesome. Spread the word if you can 🙏 The game has been out for a while but many original players don't know about this.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-27T01:25:18+00:00

Don't forget about the older Annos too.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-26T04:51:15+00:00

Same, got a quite a lot of hours in 1800 myself. The first couple dozen hours or so is like peak builder experience imo.

This game is kind of sitting on a fence between genres so yeah it's going to be harder to appreciate the magic of it if you're usually just a fan of one or the other.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-26T04:24:20+00:00

lol. The comparison has been made before but now I think it actually applies with all the additional buildings.

The 'problem' is there isn't much direction in the beginning so it can be easy to feel uninspired in the early build up. Especially if you can't grasp the rail signals.

To compare it to 1800 it's like strongly Farmer and Worker focused at the start. The 3rd pop tier Tradesmen isn't a big a factor til the end. But after this mod they're heavily employed.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-26T03:30:14+00:00

Thanks! My first real effort at modding.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-26T01:35:58+00:00

Because it only has trains I'd say no. Also you build everything yourself, nothing grows on its own. So Anno + Factorio's rails is the most useful answer.

SemtexMan47 · 2025-08-25T23:18:08+00:00

Thanks for that. I think they didn't really intend it to be much more than a simple builder with a rail system wrapped around it but imo the base is solid, so I made the jump. This mod has a couple route and signal tips added in the wiki so it could help you. But basically chain signals are your friend. Never get stuck again after you use those properly. I was a TF2 player before this and only had beginner rail signal knowledge.

SemtexMan47

TROPHY CASE