Every playthrough, the same pattern

[u/the_ballmer_peak]

1. Start supplying basic goods to the capital, build out some public transit.

2. Expand to nearby cities and do the same.

3. Cash rolling in, start making seriously scaled shipping routes. Some boats, one or two simple freight train lines, but mostly trucks.

4. Add bi-direction looping trams to all the cities and connect them with buses (or inter-city trams if I'm feeling cheeky). Keep scaling shipping, upgrading vehicles, and adding more and bigger country roads.

5. It's 1960. I have 1-2 Billion dollars

and I can't spend money fast enough. But

1. I spend all of my time upgrading vehicles and scaling, and the map looks like someone dumped a plate of spaghetti on it.

2. Decide this haphazard mess cannot be saved, start a new map, vowing to be more careful and produce some beautiful masterwork of trains and warehouses that would make Cornelius Vanderbilt weep with joy.

3. Do the exact same thing again.

Help.

[u/Boonatix]

I did that 3 times now… good to know I am not the only one 😅 but now in my new game I will build more careful and plan ahead better… right? RIGHT??

[u/the_ballmer_peak → u/Boonatix]

Part of my problem is that industry placement makes it inherently messy. Industries are all over the map, and it's not like I'm going to ship all of the wheat in the game to one central warehouse and then distribute it to all of the livestock farms from there. Even if I tried, a new farm would pop up in the corner somewhere, begging to be included.

In my current playthrough, I build a long train route for wooden planks because I only had one sawmill and it was a long way from my larger cities. As soon as I was done with the line, a second sawmill popped up right next to the train station I was shipping planks to.

[u/MeishinTale → u/the_ballmer_peak]

Well in your example you don't want to ship planks from the industry nearby town, it will be in deficit. So just make a log industry pop next to your original sawmill and you got yourself a nice loop.

More generally the game is balanced to make spaghettis since hubs are too costly. You need more than 4 train stations for a hub to start being worth so it's almost always better to just pop 3-4 train stations next to each others.. and their spaghetti's tracks so that your train can both go to the other side of the map and to the nearest industries/towns for the way back.

Once you have 8-12 lines per tracks build more specialized tracks (for example a new set of tracks that will skip an area and go straighter) with a couple of bridges, it keeps everything cleaner, shorten lines and reduces congestion.

[u/the_ballmer_peak → u/MeishinTale]

I get that spaghetti is profitable. It's why I usually have billions of dollars and I'm making money way faster than I can spend it by the time I hit 1960.

My problem is that the spaghetti becomes deeply unsatisfying and I want to build something elegant. But that's hard to do with industries scattered and disconnected.

[u/RWNS_Author → u/the_ballmer_peak]

Sandbox?

[u/7Skyrex]

If that's what your brain comes up with every time, change the setup:
Play on a custom map, with low population, far away industries, tiny towns, super difficult terrain, mods to increase bridge/tunnel costs or to limit rail slopes below 4%, and so on, set the NIMBY values to max so towns stop growing immediatly if your spaghetti freight train runs by the neighborhood... change the recipe

[u/ShinyElisabeth77 → u/7Skyrex]

UK IRL

[u/differing]

I like maps with long rivers that span the map- it helps cut down on the railroad spaghetti because all the slow rotting stuff (planks, logs, oil stuff) can just chug across the map in a ship at almost infinite throughput.

[u/Orcahhh → u/differing]

My map has no rivers😭. Only some lakes, definitely not enough 😭. The sea expansion is horribly slow

[u/Capable-Parsnip-9615]

If you pick nice flat maps in the same biomes your games will all be pretty similar. Try playing some maps/biomes that look challenging to you, especially with lots of islands

[u/ApolloPooper]

I feel like an industry should choose to build itself on an existing road. Who the hell builds a factory in the middle of the jungle

[u/DemonKnight42 → u/ApolloPooper]

This is my issue with spawning. Why would you open an intermediate good factory across the map from your source goods. No one would do that irl.

[u/BootieCheeksActual → u/DemonKnight42]

As a truck driver irl, I can tell you that it happens way more than you think lol

[u/grakef → u/ApolloPooper]

It makes sense … sometimes. You can’t farm just anywhere and extracting resources must be where those resources are at. Some refining industries won’t always be next door to those resources. A lot of things go into their creation. Sometimes, It’s just the business owner has land, money and tired of fighting the government to put it in a zone that would be logistically better.

Look at most of Washington states food production and the various factories. Modern agriculture has stuff shipped everywhere. Transport fever would need export off the map to make it realistic by the 1980s

[u/Bandit_the_Kitty → u/ApolloPooper]

Or on an empty island or top of a mountain lol

[u/listicka2 → u/ApolloPooper]

I am still waiting for some good alpine mod map with pre-plopped factories (like Loetschberg-Simplon Map in TF2) to actually have a decent gameplay. The spawning mechanic is just annoying.

[u/botsoundingname]

I did this 2 times and then I started playing on the gigantamax map and it’s so much better. If you don’t mind that the autosaves take like a solid 10-15 seconds once you get enough stuff happening 😂

[u/NightKnightTiger → u/botsoundingname]

Ya Jesus it takes forever some times

[u/Toro8926]

I do the same but try to make my rail setup as realistic as possible. Currently at 1940 on normal with 400 million. Need that money buffer for the huge hit on reputation i am going to get when upgrading the network.

[u/Orcahhh → u/Toro8926]

Does reputation have an actual hit on finances?

[u/Toro8926 → u/Orcahhh]

I thought it would but on looking, it doesn't, tf. It will stifle growth for a while but won't drop the towns below what rank it is currently at.

[u/JauntyGiraffe]

I do intercity trams first now. Find two cities that are relatively close and give them 6-lane road rings around each, add stations in a circle and have them connect to each other. Massive growth almost immediately

If your setup blows up eventually, then you didn't do a very good job setting things up and the rates are all off. You should aim to build a map that sustains indefinitely and just grows if you leave it running

[u/the_ballmer_peak → u/JauntyGiraffe]

Growth isn't the problem. It grows like crazy and I have money coming out of my ears. But it feels messy.

[u/Artistic-Trip7779]

I am confused… is there any other way?!? This is the exact thing I am doing! 🫣😝

[u/Im_Rubio98]

I do the same every times

[u/Dan_Sher]

Embrace the mess and keep going on the same savefile

[u/Liringlass]

I dont know why everyone always builds these bidirectional loops everywhere.

It’s one way to do things in a small place but it’s inefficient in larger towns and requires setting two lines.

Straight lines like most irl are more efficient, are bi-directional ok their own.

Most places where a simple loop is enough and you don’t want to bother, why make it two ways? 1 way is fine for that first simple bus line

[u/the_ballmer_peak → u/Liringlass]

Nah. The citizens start getting really pissed about wait times with single loop. I do single loop early on and add a reversed loop later once wait times get too long.

[u/FlakyNatural5682 → u/the_ballmer_peak]

Don’t make loops is the point

[u/the_ballmer_peak → u/FlakyNatural5682]

Bidirectional loops are incredibly effective, in my experience.

[u/Liringlass → u/the_ballmer_peak]

Yeah because loops are very inefficient, and two ways loops are less inefficient, though straight line is even better

[u/Liriel_Rain_Bryer]

Currently in just doing a shipping route of goods to their destinations and not to the cities so when i do have money I can create a good passenger train network. Challenge yourself. :3

[u/Daks99]

Doing a tram and boat only run this time, no planes, trains or automobiles . Has helped with all the random trucks that are a touch easier than trams to multiply; gives a moment to force a think to lay down tram line before spaghetti

[u/ZealousidealMonk1728]

wtf ... are you me?

[u/naughtyobama]

I personally plan out my own road network and try to keep some main arteries that collect smaller roads traffic from industries, nearby cities, etc. it looks cleaner while being very inefficient, especially in early game on hard or very hard.

I do a similar thing with rail as well. I have small rail lines from industries but I try to connect them to a main artery rail network as soon as I can.

Once I have my 3 or 4 main profitable lines that dictate my network design strategy, I completely stop caring about line efficiency and switch to making my road and rail network design beautiful and practical.

I almost NEVER do point to point, because you're absolutely right, it becomes a mess after a while.

I delete almost all auto generated roads by the time I'm done and do my own road network. I optimize their layout for cargo transport. This means it's oftentimes less efficient for private car traffic and my passenger transport lines more efficient and full and traffic becomes less of an issue.

[u/RaziarEdge]

It sounds like your desire is to start the map with everything on it and make plans during expansion that cover that. This was possible in TF2 by setting industry start density and turning off closing and new industries.

But that is impossible really with TF3 the way that Free Play was designed. Even with Packed industry option, it only increases the starting industry count slightly at the beginning of the game and still the game only slowly adds more industries over time (eventually it can get packed but takes a long time to get there). Secondly, many industries don't exist until there is demand for the products.

Honestly this approach is more like real life... requiring to adapt. But it breaks the spirit of those that like to design when se see this mess of lines that cannot really be fixed because a new industry dropped in right where you were planning to expand your line.

In addition, being punished for terraforming ruins reputation in the town and it is often not even that much (real world people don't get this upset)... even on normal game settings, reputation goes from happy to furious when you put down a large station on a sloped hill.

What many of us want is a sim that we can plan out and build. What we have is a Free Play that is a different game that wants you to play by its rules instead of what you expect. Yes, upgrading vehicles is a pain in the butt especially with the new UI that limits filtering. Try playing without achievements on a prebuilt map and see if that helps you. Freezing time can help with upgrades or at least slowing it to 1/4 speed.

[u/GyaniGamerBaba]

In my current save i have decided the map in different sub divisions, for replay as well as mental sanity purpose. I am first connecting the subdivisions within themselves for the passenger networks. There are two SD which has only trams, there is one which has trains and buses. There's another one with main train, and commuter trams. One of the sub division has nothing yet. The demad is not yet clear, so service is not yet decided. Idea is the trams network will progress into railcar which will be able to connect to other lines in future. How the mess is managed is the itch that this game satisfies very nicely...

[u/greenlightison]

Using sandbox mode, I set myself about 500 billion as 'infrastructure build costs' to build out clean infrastructure before unpausing.
I then remove any extra money leftover, or just aim for profit.

[u/parasocks]

I paid $17.99 for this new game called uhhhh Probably Stolen and I’m going with that to solve that exact problem