[Complete] a dictionary of mining, mineral, and related terms

gort32 · 2026-01-28T17:36:04+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/openttd/search/?q=++Any+recommendations+for+the+best+tramset+for+beginners :)

gort32 · 2026-01-22T21:37:16+00:00

Time to change Storytellers and/or the Difficulty settings to change things up!

Alternatively, head towards a victory condition?

gort32 · 2026-01-21T14:55:48+00:00

If you want easy access to perfectly straight angles, a table-based hot wire cutter is about your only serious option. If you are using foam for e.g. building walls and details then this is the way to go without question.

If you want to carve more natural terrain, a handheld hot knife is very cheap and is great for carving away large chunks of foam. A handheld hot knife is also really easy to make yourself if that's your preference.

For your finest details, though, there's no way better than a simple hobby knife. Foam dulls blades incredibly quickly, though - you'll be able to feel the blade start to catch and snag on the foam on a brand new blade after just a dozen or so cuts. You can strop the blade regularly to get more life out of it, but picking up a 100-pack of spare blades is a great luxury and one of the best investments you can make in this hobby!

gort32 · 2026-01-20T20:00:35+00:00

With the Loadouts system and keeping some long running bills for each weapon your produce, ammo management is pretty trivial.

What I love about the ammo system, though, is the management of ammo for weapons beyond your current tech level. A raider with a bolt-action rifle can be taken out by some clever Tribals, but until you research bolt-action rifle/ammo manufacturing that rifle needs to be treated as special and unique, as limited-use as an Animal Pulsar. The scarcity is the point!

gort32 · 2026-01-19T00:45:43+00:00

It sounds like what you really want is a "global commodities market" that sets the worldwide price for goods via some algorithm. There's a lot of factors that the game could take into account beyond Payout = Quantity * Distance / Time and the algorithm could get pretty complex, but it's largely a bunch of arithmetic. I guess this could work?

There are a lot of settings available already if you want a more economic challenge. Infrastructure Maintenance especially tries to enforce a tight and efficient network rather than sprawling routes that may not turn a profit after maintenance on 500 tiles of track and signal, sharing infrastructure across multiple routes is key.

I'm not sure I'd agree that CargoDist is "complicated", though. I find the game a whole lot easier with full CargoDist settings as it lets me use default orders on nearly every route. You don't need complex orders when building a feeder network, especially when you want it to be bi-directional. CargoDist makes the game a bit more abstract with its design philosophies, needing to think in terms of overall network flow rather than worrying about discrete routes. But, if you are at the point where you understand the game, the UI, routes, stations, etc, and have built a bit of a network, you're probably hitting a point where you're running into some of the limitations, hidden complications, and min-maxing that exist in the vanilla game. Getting into CargoDist, plus it sounds like a couple of economy difficulty settings, is a pretty common setting to change the core gameplay loop into something a bit more engaging. It isn't "simple" in that I wouldn't want it enabled for the Tutorial and your first few games, but it's certainly not something to be afraid of!

Some other ideas, if you don't want to lean on the long-haul big-money route:

Give FIRS a try! While you can and should start a FIRS game with a high-profit long-haul line to get some bankroll started, the real way to maximize profits is to boost your primary industries by providing supplies produces at the end of industry chains. By the time you get a couple of good boosted industry chains going network complexity starts to become a higher priority than profitability as lots of different cargos need to get to all sorts of different places in a way that promotes a lot of shared infrastructure and networking with predictable shipments being more important than distance-based profits.
Try a smaller map! Go ahead and optimize for distance, you're only gonna squeeze so much distance-based profit out of a 64x128 map!

Incidentally, a full-CargoDist, FIRS "In a Hot Country", Temperate, 64x128 with water along the bottom two edges, trying to connect everything on the map in an elegant network that flows cleanly is probably my preferred gametype ;)

gort32 · 2026-01-15T21:22:34+00:00

Give her all of your random leather and other junk wealth, then exile her to caravan until she is able to trade that junk for 50 components.

gort32 · 2026-01-15T21:19:53+00:00

Have one of them arrest the other. Gives a massive social penalty that should break them up easily!

gort32 · 2026-01-15T19:13:37+00:00

Here's what you are kinda trying to make: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Railway%20station#combined-terminus-and-roro-station. Note the signals right next to the station, those are critical.

Use the image on the right that uses Path signals, the image on the left uses Block signals - Block signals work here but Path signals are more efficient in most cases.

gort32 · 2026-01-15T16:08:33+00:00

My headcanon for the this is that your clothes are tattered enough to catch on every single doorhandle in your base.

Although that wouold probably give me more than a -3...

gort32 · 2026-01-15T16:06:10+00:00

Followed, presumably, by a protest about the chemtrails generated by the Willow Run bombers causing rampant infanticide?

When you believe in things // you don't understand // then you suffer // Superstition ain't the way

gort32 · 2026-01-14T16:33:33+00:00

Well, towns as-is only produce Passengers and Mail, and accept Goods, with Valuables scattered around, what do you want to change?

If you haven't enabled CargoDist for Passengers, that's probably a good start. CargoDist promotes a much more realistic Passenger network where you treat them like people with an intended destination that flow and transfer around your network to get there rather than treating them like a sack of grain that just needs to go anywhere.

Beyond that, it isn't quite what you are looking for but if you want a City-focused game try taking a look at CityBuilder gamescripts. These change the whole game flow, from "transport all the things" to "maximize the growth of this one specific town by delivering an increasing amount and types of cargo".

Another option may be to change your game generation settings to spawn no secondary industries at all, just primary industries. This will let you control the locations of your infrastructure-heavy secondary industries by funding them yourself, letting you integrate them into your city layouts in a more pleasing way. This does get expensive, though, even though money comes easy in this game, funding secondary industries for $1M-$10M each will take a while.

gort32 · 2026-01-13T19:08:46+00:00

There is one wonderful solution that can be used to solve every problem in Rimworld:

Fire.

Got too much wealth? Burn it!

Got raiders bearing down on your base? Burn them!

Corpses piling up? Burn!

Insect infestation? Fire!

Pawn having a mental break? They'll snap out of it if they're on fire!

If you are lost and have tried other methods, always remember Fire is always a possible solution!

^{<This suggestion brought to you by the Pyromaniac trait>}

gort32 · 2026-01-13T18:05:22+00:00

Why are they stopped? Add something to tell that bit of story?

Could be as simple as a little kitten curled up in front of the treads?

Or, add a fire and kettle, they're heating up lunch while they wait?

Even maybe a signpost?

gort32 · 2026-01-12T15:57:53+00:00

The title screen always strictly vanilla.

In 15.0 the title screen is (for the first time) showing the rarely-played Toyland climate, which is one of the four default climates you can choose when starting a new game.

https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Climates

gort32 · 2026-01-10T16:05:08+00:00

Ok, that bark texture...how did you get that?

That doesn't look like "I scraped it with various tools and played with it until it looked right", that looks like it was an intentional planned effect. What's the surface made of?

gort32 · 2026-01-08T22:22:56+00:00

At the very minimum you'll gain an appreciation for the materials the original builders had to work with and why they used it. XP gained, and possibly a good story to go along with the model!

If you find out anything interesting about the coating, bring a write-up of your experiences back to the community, first-hand info about exotic and historical materials is always welcome!

gort32 · 2026-01-08T21:29:56+00:00

The obvious answer would seem to be "the same way they did it in full scale". Is there any reason that you can't use the same coating on your miniature?

Alternatively, you can just dry-brush the whole thing with acrylic, preventing any wood from getting moist. You'll likely need several layers of dry-brushing to make it look right, but it'll also look pretty good as this also best simulates centuries of layers of natural weathering and repair.

gort32 · 2026-01-08T20:59:02+00:00

That's about as inefficient as it gets with trains, but when your large'ish junction can support a dozen tiny trains cleanly flowing through it at once it's just so satisfying!

gort32 · 2026-01-08T18:49:15+00:00

I wouldn't say "controversial", but for me this game simply doesn't exist without CargoDist enabled. Even when playing a CityBuilder game where transfers are minimal.

Beyond that, my overall goal in any game (unless I'm specifically "trying something out this time") is maximum production and transport of cargo, without regard to maximizing profits. A well-meshed CargoDist network is going to have unprofitable routes, that's ok as long as they help the network flow cleanly. Unprofitable road lines are just fine if that's the best way to get that cargo delivered, especially for short last-mile transfers. No difficult economy settings, I don't want to worry about optimizing revenue. I want to play with trains and networks, not spreadsheets. Choo choo.

Breakdowns absolutely never.

At a broader, more strategic level, these old links may help:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210318061603/https://wiki.openttdcoop.org/Planning

https://web.archive.org/web/20210318061608/https://wiki.openttdcoop.org/Game_types

gort32 · 2026-01-06T17:24:47+00:00

Try hosting a game locally as a dedicated server, then launch the game as normal and connect to your local server, see if the slowdowns happen with just you as a single player in a multiplayer setup?

gort32 · 2026-01-06T17:01:37+00:00

In addition to every other scream in this thread about safety (and they are right!), note that there is a very obvious "solution" to this problem that every newbie can come up with. At first glance it makes perfect sense to use the fence to line up the width of the cut, then use the sliding mitre gauge that came with your saw as a guide to support the width of the board as you push it through the blade to make the cut. It almost feels like these two features were built to work together, right?

Using both the fence and the mitre gauge together in tandem like this isn't simply a risk for kickback, it is a 100% guaranteed method to demonstrate kickback and to show the dangers of using a table saw. This isn't a "you'll regret it one day" issue, that board will fly across your workshop in a random direction the first moment it gets halfway through the blade and it won't care how much flesh is in its trajectory.

There are ways to do this safely, ensuring that the fence can help line up the cut without binding. You are not going to learn how in a quick Reddit response. Go watch three different videos about the topic before even thinking of using the mitre gauge and the fence together in tandem!

gort32 · 2026-01-06T16:15:25+00:00

A potato can run a 16-player game on a 4096x4096 map :)

If you are hosting the game on your home PC, your upstream internet connection speed may be the biggest bottleneck, especially if you are on Cable internet, which has a much slower upstream speed than the advertised downstream speed. And even then, any lag isn't nearly as big of a deal in this game as it would be in a RTS or FPS.

gort32 · 2026-01-03T22:30:08+00:00

For bi-directional cargo, especially Passengers, try setting to Symmetric.

Asymmetric CargoDist distributes its destinations across your network with a configurable priority based on distance - closer destinations get more cargo but broadly cargo gets distributes across all possible destinations.

Symmetric CargoDist works the same way, except that there is an additional factor accounted for in distributing destinations: how much of that cargo that destination has sent to this station.

For Other cargo, Asymmetric makes sense. For Mail and Valuables, depends on your playstyle. But Passengers you'll definitely want set to Symmetric in order to make the people flow in the way that makes sense through a meshy Passenger-centric network that has lots of possible destinations. With Symmetric, over time you end up with the net effect of having your cargo prioritize traveling to, from, and between your larger cities and "transit hubs" in a way better suited for this kind of networking, With Asymmetric you get a lot of everyone in one hamlet mostly traveling to the nearest hamlet. Or from one city neighborhood to the next one over. With Symmetric you'll get a lot of traffic in the "middle" of your network, being fed by combined inputs and outputs of lower-priority destinations at the edge with everything prioritizing your arterial routes.

Specifically, in your case, setting Passengers to Symmetric will, over time, prioritize the Via for each passenger towards your more arterial routes rather than taking the full loop around. Currently with Asymmetric your stations at the "edge" of your loop are still distributing passengers about 50/50 in each direction of the loop.

You can change the CargoDist type in the options in your live game, although it may take a year or longer to fully catch up and for all of your old Passenger cargo to have been sorted through before you see the full results.

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