TOPIC:

About time we start this up again, I think this would be nice to get new players up to speed faster, I wish I knew some of this stuff sooner! I will revisit this to expand



Very useful stuff to know if you are new to multiplayer:

Always take stuff further and faster for more money

Hold control when levelling land to level diagonally

Hold control when cloning vehicles/trains to use shared orders

Plant trees to increase your rating if a town wont let you build a station

Grow a town fast by having 5 bus stops with regular buses, (less than 20 days between a bus)

For faster building get to know the short-cut keys: for building rail try 'A' or '1' '2' '3' '4' For levelling land: 'q' 'w' 'e' Signals are 's', and 'd' is for demolition!

Hiding scenery is useful for building rails, especially in temperate when there are lots of trees, to hide buildings, bridges, trees and anything blocking your view press 'x' ('x' again to unhide). To just hide trees press 'ctrl+2'




Best industries for making money

Temperate: coal for fast easy start, farms/goods for major money (farms are effectively 2 industries in one, not much money made in transporting but lots made from goods from factories) Passengers/mail can also be good.

Desert: Water is good for quick start, oil wells/goods or fruit/goods can generate good income, passengers/mail also ok. Max money made from buying sawmills (later in game)




General train network building tips

Plan your network without having sharp turns, these will slow your trains and cost you money, see : Corners on Openttd wiki

Start without electric rails and trains, better to build a longer route with diesel trains until money come in to upgrade.

Single tracks with passing places are a good cheap way of building a large effective network in early game, upgrade to double track/double stations later.

If you have a large complex network, force trains to service before picking up, this stops them from wandering all over the place trying to find a depot when they should be delivering stuff, and keeps breakdowns to a minimum.

Use longer trains if congestion is becoming a problem with your networks, but short trains (7 tiles or under) are generaly more effective for picking up from industries.




Train Signals

These can be tricky to get the hang of but there are some good tutorials out there , be aware there is a legacy set of signals in OTTD, and some tutorials teach things with these, but the only signals you really need to use are the newer path signals which are easier and more effective (the two on the bottom right of the selection box)

Hold control then click and drag a signal to copy the signal down whole line until it reaches a break or a junction.

You can set the gap between signals, a gap of 2-4 is generally recommended, setting a gap of 1 has no practical benefit but will cost twice as much (as a gap of 2)


(work in progress, comments welcome on this if you disagree with anything let me know



*Useful links*

www.tt-forums.net (do a search before asking anything or they get grumpy)
www.openttdcoop.org/ (dont go on their servers and ask why the hell anybody would ever need such a big junction , its just their thing )
n-ice.org/openttd/ (friends of BTPro)

Well here's a 3-screenshot-tutorial.




1. Build a station accepting some raw material. Build a depot and a train (use the 'Full load' order at the pick-up station). Connect it to a station next to an appropriate industry, as far away as you can afford to build because the longer distance you transport the goods the more money you earn per trainload.



2. Expand your track by making parts of it (and eventually all of it) double tracked so trains can meet in regular intervals (use one way signals!). Clone more trains into your system until they have to wait at the raw material station, and remember to keep cloning more trains if needed when you have finished step 3 below.



3. Add another line with a train (could be a smaller train) by expanding your first station and then build a new station at a close by raw material industry of the same type as you started with. Order your feeder train to 'Transfer and leave empty' at your original station since this will unload the goods there for your long distance trains to transport. If there are more of the same raw material industries close by connect them in the same way!



Eventually these three steps should land you with 5-10 trains, a pretty good income and make you ready for more advanced stuff

how strange i post a thread called tips and tricks on the forums when they where running the backup and now it is gone of course. but here was the thing i posted, you can put on auto renewal for vehicles. so they don't 'get old and need replacement'. very handy for when you have a lot of buses. here is a screenshot, imgur.com/kqQiV:

I belive the autorenewal is overruled by the server configuration

some options are but not this one

Tip #1: Avoid Farm land to safe money. (very important for early game).

Screenshot #1 of prices when buying rails:

Farmland: 661 pounds, normal land 132 pounds. This means purchasing rails on farm land is 5 times more expensive then on normal land.


Tip #2: An example of a good station setup. An important thing to get this setup working is putting signs after the station on EACH rail so the trains can arrive on every part (see circles around signs near station). I use a sign ever 2 squares so you can connect other rails to your main track and it is less risky then 1 on every square. Another thing I noticed in this screenshot is forcing your trains to enter the depot. This is VERY usefull when you change from normal to electric trains with the automatic replace function. The trains will (if you have the money) change directly to the new trains after you forced them to enter the depot. Trains will only replace in depots and sometimes trains completely ignore depots.

Screenshot #2:


Tip #3: for short range filling of your main station, a 4 square length station and train can be enough. I also purchase one of the cheapest trains to spare a bit of monet. There are 2 reasons why I use smaller trains. 1: It's a bit cheaper (can be helpful in very early game). 2: resources lose value over time so having shorter trains make them fill the station faster because it loads faster.

Screenshot #3: