For me, balancing trains and how the amount of money you get from them would be a good start. It doesn't make sense to just use trains wherever you want or that people will always use trains for movement.
A few comments and some additional suggestions. Seasons that would be nice, also day and night cycle. one way of doing this would be to have a 1 day is 1 season set up, and every year is 4 days/seasons. Also to slow the game down a bit, i think it sort of rushes forward in time. Weather i kind of doubt it ad something to the game, like seasons would. Of cause, making the seasons look nice would ad quite a bit of work for the developers. I´m not really against the idéa, i mostly think they payoff will be less then the work needed for the devs. Upgradable trains... here is one segment of the game i think would need a huge overhaul. In stead of building a train, the line should set up the train automatically from the depot depending on the demands and station length. Cities in Motion 2 sort of had a nice system. Where every line starts and ends in a depot and the line take what ever locos is available to put on the line. Then you could set what kind of line it should be. Freight, mixed, express, local. This would also force people to plan more and not make dedicated networks. Also you don´t want a unlimited amount of depots, because every depot have a set amount of locos in them you have to buy and maintain. This also match up well with how time table would work. If you for some reason want a specific loco running a specific line, you simply buy that loco into a special category. I´m kind of doubtful with a road access to a other region. Aircraft and ships make sense. Simply have a of screen harbour or airport name, and the airport or harbour is simply a number of km of screen calculating the turnaround time. For a road connection it makes less sense. In a sense. All Transport game settings is in effect on islands. For the problem with roads. Say you have a road going to the edge of the screen. Who pay for the road to the next city, and how far over is it? Is it really close? Then it would have made more sense if it was on the map, so it have to be pretty far away. That ends my comments on this video and here is my own suggestion. 1: Better terrain set up. 2: Better economics. 3: Better freight handling 4: More logical industry 5: Planing and building 1: The graphics detail is really nice looking, but the set up is sort of non logical. There is a farm, but no fields. There is a a wood collection area, but no managed forests. And the mines look anorectic.. well in the sandbox game, in the campaign they sort of made a effort. Every resource gatherer should set up a resource gathering area... or multiple once. If you build throw it, its simply bifurcated. This is really the main part that make the game look unrealistic. Real landscapes have mostly managed forests and farms. This could also be used in manage Forrest as a tree brush, heavily decreasing the number of fixed objects int he map. That is.. Treas in managed forest could be handle the same way as grass. Mines could have pits and oil could have fields. It would also be nice if those areas was upgraded after time with technology. That is a 2000 field look very diff rent then a 1850 field. For oilfield slant and side drilling could decrease the field size while increasing the output. 2: The economics in TF2 is all wrong. Everything just gets more expensive over time. And its not really like its inflation. It just get more expensive. In reality, the main reason we use electric engine today is that they are waaay cheaper than steam engine. This should be reflected in the game. The way to solve this would be simply to have the transport cost, and there for the income reduced over time to a fixed table, but also decrease the cost of construction with technology and put a bit of inflation on that so the numbers look more uniform. Also.. the intrastate need to be low. Typically the interest rate should be 2-3% and the inflation about half that. This is so rushing to pay of a lone is not a good idea, just like in real life. Also paying of a lone should take 30 years. And when its payed of, the income should have decrease so its really not much profitable then when it was new. Also it should make economic sense to swich out old expensive to use stock with new with lower maintanance. When the 1970 comes around and the quest for speed sort of ended, it kind of ended the point in upgrading the engines. But having the passenger pay ever less, and the new stock costing ever less to run, would force people to keep upgrading the stock. That would also remove the need of a lifespan of stock. That could also give the player more complex options. That is.. should i buy a cheap loco with high maintenance, or a expensive with low.. or should i even consider a mix where the expensive one have higher priority. It would also remove the stupid age limit of the locos. For instance, the Swedish RC loco is currently 54 year old, and as far as i´m aware, every single one of them is still in service in real life. Why.. because it was the first electronic loco, and it age very well. The predecessor had a 42 year full lifespan and a 20 year phase out. 3: Freight are generally not loaded on platforms. Generally freight trains are loaded on load points where the train is advanced slowly, or even come to a full stop for every set of load points. Bulk gods like grain, ore, ballast or what ever could simply have a load pit where the size could be change for differing load speeds. Containers could be loaded in points where you could have one or several loading crains advancing the train one or several waggons at a time. For pre containerization this would be a set of dudes simply filling the waggon (or emptying). This would also totally remove the collection zone for bulk gods. In stead of a collection zone you build a loading dock that would be much shorter than the train, then have a transport belt to it. Making the transport belt fairly expensive (or low capacity) would motivate the player to put the collection zone close to the resource. The only exception would be shops and small industry that could collect things them self from a location. 4: In real life until cars become sufficiently cheap for everyone to own, people walked to work. If there was any train transport it was generally owned by the workplace. There for industries was generally located very central in the cities. In the exceptions there was usually worker housing built just next to the industries, usually the case with mines that could not be moved. That is, workers would never travle by train to the work place.. or rather, they would not do that prior to about the 1950-tys. So the industries should be located close to the center for every industry built until 1950. (fun fact, my previews workplace was built in 1946, and it was a huge 5 story complex 5 minute walk outside of the absolute center of town.. Why 5 stories? Because that was how they fitted a maximum amount of work area on a smallish plot. Still to this day the largest building downtown). What happened later during the late 1900eds was that people start commuting between the cities. The huge increase in traffic in the 1970 until current day have nothing to do with population increase, but simply due to people commuting longer distances. Also the small industries should do stuff. Introducing something like intermediate gods type 1-10 and finished gods 1-10 and just transport them in bulk together would solve that problem. Making it logical to transport gods from one factory to a other. Large industries should have a gods accespoint where you have to built a connection directly to. Even having trucks go directly into the industry. Or having i miniature truck route to just get the gods out to the railway or harbor. This would also sense with small slow but cheap to maintain trucks or even trains just transporting the goods 100 meter or so from the factory output to the harbor or trainstation, or even airport. 5: A Plan and build phase, similar to rail empire. That is.. in steed of the track just magically appears, it have to be built. This is specially important for bridges and tunnels that take time to build. This could also be change with technology. This is sort of a added difficulty because you have to pay first, wait for it to be built then start using it after a time. The thing is, a short tunnel may only take month to make. But a long one may take years. This will make it in effect impossible for players to make long tunnels in the early, or even the mid game. Forcing people to go around mountings making long tunnels genearly a non option until late game. This would also make upgrade a section of a railway more important. If you built over or around a mountain, you can later ad a tunnel throw it benefiting from higher speed and shorter distances from a already existing railway. The same is true for bridgess to a lesser degree. That is. It would not be reasonable to build a bridge over a large expanse of sea.
It's a good idea with the prioritization of trains! Ans I guess it would even be simple to develop. Personally I mostly wish more development in better graphics. Especially mountains and cities look awful in my eyes!
For me, balancing trains and how the amount of money you get from them would be a good start. It doesn't make sense to just use trains wherever you want or that people will always use trains for movement.
Good to have you back!
Good to have you back! It's been too long now!
I realy like your videos, keep up your good work. Have a great day man! BEst regards from GER
Can I know what mods were you using for Los Hermanos? Thanks 🙏🥰
it has been so long, good to see you back
Thank you! Fun to be back
A few comments and some additional suggestions.
Seasons that would be nice, also day and night cycle. one way of doing this would be to have a 1 day is 1 season set up, and every year is 4 days/seasons. Also to slow the game down a bit, i think it sort of rushes forward in time.
Weather i kind of doubt it ad something to the game, like seasons would. Of cause, making the seasons look nice would ad quite a bit of work for the developers. I´m not really against the idéa, i mostly think they payoff will be less then the work needed for the devs.
Upgradable trains... here is one segment of the game i think would need a huge overhaul. In stead of building a train, the line should set up the train automatically from the depot depending on the demands and station length. Cities in Motion 2 sort of had a nice system. Where every line starts and ends in a depot and the line take what ever locos is available to put on the line. Then you could set what kind of line it should be. Freight, mixed, express, local.
This would also force people to plan more and not make dedicated networks. Also you don´t want a unlimited amount of depots, because every depot have a set amount of locos in them you have to buy and maintain. This also match up well with how time table would work.
If you for some reason want a specific loco running a specific line, you simply buy that loco into a special category.
I´m kind of doubtful with a road access to a other region. Aircraft and ships make sense. Simply have a of screen harbour or airport name, and the airport or harbour is simply a number of km of screen calculating the turnaround time. For a road connection it makes less sense. In a sense. All Transport game settings is in effect on islands.
For the problem with roads. Say you have a road going to the edge of the screen. Who pay for the road to the next city, and how far over is it? Is it really close? Then it would have made more sense if it was on the map, so it have to be pretty far away.
That ends my comments on this video and here is my own suggestion.
1: Better terrain set up.
2: Better economics.
3: Better freight handling
4: More logical industry
5: Planing and building
1: The graphics detail is really nice looking, but the set up is sort of non logical. There is a farm, but no fields. There is a a wood collection area, but no managed forests. And the mines look anorectic.. well in the sandbox game, in the campaign they sort of made a effort.
Every resource gatherer should set up a resource gathering area... or multiple once. If you build throw it, its simply bifurcated. This is really the main part that make the game look unrealistic. Real landscapes have mostly managed forests and farms. This could also be used in manage Forrest as a tree brush, heavily decreasing the number of fixed objects int he map. That is.. Treas in managed forest could be handle the same way as grass.
Mines could have pits and oil could have fields. It would also be nice if those areas was upgraded after time with technology. That is a 2000 field look very diff rent then a 1850 field. For oilfield slant and side drilling could decrease the field size while increasing the output.
2: The economics in TF2 is all wrong. Everything just gets more expensive over time. And its not really like its inflation. It just get more expensive. In reality, the main reason we use electric engine today is that they are waaay cheaper than steam engine. This should be reflected in the game. The way to solve this would be simply to have the transport cost, and there for the income reduced over time to a fixed table, but also decrease the cost of construction with technology and put a bit of inflation on that so the numbers look more uniform.
Also.. the intrastate need to be low. Typically the interest rate should be 2-3% and the inflation about half that. This is so rushing to pay of a lone is not a good idea, just like in real life. Also paying of a lone should take 30 years. And when its payed of, the income should have decrease so its really not much profitable then when it was new. Also it should make economic sense to swich out old expensive to use stock with new with lower maintanance.
When the 1970 comes around and the quest for speed sort of ended, it kind of ended the point in upgrading the engines. But having the passenger pay ever less, and the new stock costing ever less to run, would force people to keep upgrading the stock. That would also remove the need of a lifespan of stock. That could also give the player more complex options. That is.. should i buy a cheap loco with high maintenance, or a expensive with low.. or should i even consider a mix where the expensive one have higher priority.
It would also remove the stupid age limit of the locos. For instance, the Swedish RC loco is currently 54 year old, and as far as i´m aware, every single one of them is still in service in real life. Why.. because it was the first electronic loco, and it age very well. The predecessor had a 42 year full lifespan and a 20 year phase out.
3: Freight are generally not loaded on platforms. Generally freight trains are loaded on load points where the train is advanced slowly, or even come to a full stop for every set of load points. Bulk gods like grain, ore, ballast or what ever could simply have a load pit where the size could be change for differing load speeds. Containers could be loaded in points where you could have one or several loading crains advancing the train one or several waggons at a time. For pre containerization this would be a set of dudes simply filling the waggon (or emptying).
This would also totally remove the collection zone for bulk gods. In stead of a collection zone you build a loading dock that would be much shorter than the train, then have a transport belt to it. Making the transport belt fairly expensive (or low capacity) would motivate the player to put the collection zone close to the resource. The only exception would be shops and small industry that could collect things them self from a location.
4: In real life until cars become sufficiently cheap for everyone to own, people walked to work. If there was any train transport it was generally owned by the workplace. There for industries was generally located very central in the cities. In the exceptions there was usually worker housing built just next to the industries, usually the case with mines that could not be moved. That is, workers would never travle by train to the work place.. or rather, they would not do that prior to about the 1950-tys.
So the industries should be located close to the center for every industry built until 1950. (fun fact, my previews workplace was built in 1946, and it was a huge 5 story complex 5 minute walk outside of the absolute center of town.. Why 5 stories? Because that was how they fitted a maximum amount of work area on a smallish plot. Still to this day the largest building downtown).
What happened later during the late 1900eds was that people start commuting between the cities. The huge increase in traffic in the 1970 until current day have nothing to do with population increase, but simply due to people commuting longer distances.
Also the small industries should do stuff. Introducing something like intermediate gods type 1-10 and finished gods 1-10 and just transport them in bulk together would solve that problem. Making it logical to transport gods from one factory to a other.
Large industries should have a gods accespoint where you have to built a connection directly to. Even having trucks go directly into the industry. Or having i miniature truck route to just get the gods out to the railway or harbor. This would also sense with small slow but cheap to maintain trucks or even trains just transporting the goods 100 meter or so from the factory output to the harbor or trainstation, or even airport.
5: A Plan and build phase, similar to rail empire. That is.. in steed of the track just magically appears, it have to be built. This is specially important for bridges and tunnels that take time to build. This could also be change with technology. This is sort of a added difficulty because you have to pay first, wait for it to be built then start using it after a time.
The thing is, a short tunnel may only take month to make. But a long one may take years. This will make it in effect impossible for players to make long tunnels in the early, or even the mid game. Forcing people to go around mountings making long tunnels genearly a non option until late game. This would also make upgrade a section of a railway more important. If you built over or around a mountain, you can later ad a tunnel throw it benefiting from higher speed and shorter distances from a already existing railway.
The same is true for bridgess to a lesser degree. That is. It would not be reasonable to build a bridge over a large expanse of sea.
It's been to good to see you back man
Thanks!
Welcome back :D
It's a good idea with the prioritization of trains! Ans I guess it would even be simple to develop. Personally I mostly wish more development in better graphics. Especially mountains and cities look awful in my eyes!
Much of what you wish for can be found on Cities Skylines.
Welcome back
Thanks!