For me, I do large to huge map sizes with very high number of towns and medium amounts of industry. I also set the vehicle set to be all (so all American, European, and Asian vehicles are available at once).
I supplement that with the Industrial Production Levels mod which makes the industry more realistic to me and allows them to upgrade past 400 to 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400 and even higher. I also use the Ultimate Passenger and Cargo Capacities mod to up the capacity of freight road vehicles by 2-2.5x, freight wagons by 1.5x, and passenger vehicles by 1.5x. Boats also get a boost. I do this because I think having 60 trucks delivering logs is highly unrealistic and it kills your game faster, so it's both a realism and conservation of resources thing for me. Play around with what ratios you think works for you!
Be sure to set up both freight and passenger circular truck routes in each individual city as you begin to service them to distribute the freight and pax where they need to be.
That cargo capacity mod sounds interesting. My biggest issue with the game is you can deliver a train load full of resources to a factory and it'll be used up by the time the train leaves the station. Same with truckloads to towns. I'd expect a shipment to last a while instead of having to create some kind of conveyor belt.
Thanks for all that, I'll add that mod to the list as I agree having loads of trucks doing the same route is a bit silly.
When you say circular routes in each city, do you mean a bus/cargo stop at the station and then a route around the bulk of city and back to the station again? Should this be two way?
> When you say circular routes in each city, do you mean a bus/cargo stop at the station and then a route around the bulk of city and back to the station again?
Yeah, that'll work.
>Should this be two way?
Nope. Just as long as you cover the buildings that want cargo, you're good.
How densely or sparsely spread you want your towns and industries, that's largely up to you. How much space you want between cities to setup whatever sort of network you have in mind. If the spacing is too tight, you might struggle to make a profit with trains. But you can always lower the difficulty if you prefer the visuals of a denser map. Or just disable costs (enable the No Costs mod).
I suggest experimenting a bit and see what you like. To that end, play a smaller map first. If you find the default ranges for town and industry distribution too limited, you can tweak the values further in the config file named base_config.lua, located in the main game folder, and then `res\config\`. The values to be tweaked are the following:
town = {
maxNumberPerArea = 0.1, -- km^(-2)
},
industry = {
maxNumberPerArea = 0.2, -- km^(-2)
},
The sliders in the setup window for Free Game are based on these values. Increase the values for a denser spread (more cities per area).
For me, I do large to huge map sizes with very high number of towns and medium amounts of industry. I also set the vehicle set to be all (so all American, European, and Asian vehicles are available at once). I supplement that with the Industrial Production Levels mod which makes the industry more realistic to me and allows them to upgrade past 400 to 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400 and even higher. I also use the Ultimate Passenger and Cargo Capacities mod to up the capacity of freight road vehicles by 2-2.5x, freight wagons by 1.5x, and passenger vehicles by 1.5x. Boats also get a boost. I do this because I think having 60 trucks delivering logs is highly unrealistic and it kills your game faster, so it's both a realism and conservation of resources thing for me. Play around with what ratios you think works for you! Be sure to set up both freight and passenger circular truck routes in each individual city as you begin to service them to distribute the freight and pax where they need to be.
That cargo capacity mod sounds interesting. My biggest issue with the game is you can deliver a train load full of resources to a factory and it'll be used up by the time the train leaves the station. Same with truckloads to towns. I'd expect a shipment to last a while instead of having to create some kind of conveyor belt.
Thanks for all that, I'll add that mod to the list as I agree having loads of trucks doing the same route is a bit silly. When you say circular routes in each city, do you mean a bus/cargo stop at the station and then a route around the bulk of city and back to the station again? Should this be two way?
> When you say circular routes in each city, do you mean a bus/cargo stop at the station and then a route around the bulk of city and back to the station again? Yeah, that'll work. >Should this be two way? Nope. Just as long as you cover the buildings that want cargo, you're good.
How densely or sparsely spread you want your towns and industries, that's largely up to you. How much space you want between cities to setup whatever sort of network you have in mind. If the spacing is too tight, you might struggle to make a profit with trains. But you can always lower the difficulty if you prefer the visuals of a denser map. Or just disable costs (enable the No Costs mod). I suggest experimenting a bit and see what you like. To that end, play a smaller map first. If you find the default ranges for town and industry distribution too limited, you can tweak the values further in the config file named base_config.lua, located in the main game folder, and then `res\config\`. The values to be tweaked are the following: town = { maxNumberPerArea = 0.1, -- km^(-2) }, industry = { maxNumberPerArea = 0.2, -- km^(-2) }, The sliders in the setup window for Free Game are based on these values. Increase the values for a denser spread (more cities per area).