#openttdcoop

There is another big game on Alanin’s server – large scale europe map.

It’s a new game type we want to try with our community. Goals are – realistic functionality and eyecandy looks. Where possible – based on historical/geographical data and very minor landscaping (aside of breaking long bridges). The end result should not look exactly as current europe railway map, but it should feel close to that, being combined cargo and pax game.

Major rules:

• Deliver to closest. No, your wheat from Warsaw is not needed in Portugal, they can get it from Spain!
• No visible walking of primaries, put stations somewhere close
• Longer trains, suggested train length 11 or more tiles (2 engines 20 cars)
• Steam/Diesel only for primaries, Electro locos for secondaries and pax, wagon speedlimits
• Preferably one kind of cargo per primary station
• Use of trucks for collecting goods from few local primaries into railway transfer terminals
• Restrictions on amount of trains per source station – worry less about industry/cargo ratings. Total capacity of all trains – around five times monthly cargo output (i.e 2 industries produce 100 and 400 cargo units per month, station handling these insudtries, with train capacity of 600 units, should have no more than 5 trains
• Towns/Cities have one station per 10k of population, preferably in current suburbs, trams for shuttles

Few notes on network style: due to geographical and landscape limitations we might start with few relatively large but not very connected cargo networks. Deliver-to-closest means no map wide drops but several regional (country?) drops. Wagon speed limits implies that trains will be moving at different speeds and some precautions need to be taken for splitting fast and slow moving traffic. Here is the suggestion that keeps layout simple, but coping with speed segregation (like it is done in real life): I recommend using 2 lane Mainlines with unhubbed express lane. This greatly simplifies SLH design and lets trains pick faster moving lane, although it still will be affected by same set of issue but in less limiting form.

Since there will be regional visual separation of cargonetwork we donâ??t have to make them all alike, in some places simple L_R might do just fine and in other LL_RR might be used. However keep it as less bulky as possible.

Also this X-ML concept should only apply to cargo network, later in game wi will get to point of having to deal with large quantity of passengers and most likely will move into cross-country fast passengers lanes, similar to TGV. These will be based on separate network and have most likely be maglev, emulating realworld solution for same problem.

Close destination, expensive trains, wagon speedlimits, station train quantity regulation and other perks are bound to make this game challenging and in most cases company situation will be strugling. Which means we should closely observe efficiency of existing network and expand gradually, pick most lucrative and least expensive solutions. Some unprofitable lanes/solution might have to be modified, optimized and perhaps even abandoned or removed.

Be prepared for having to watch your train income closely just to be able to survive…