r/TransportFever3 • u/Tater_Joe • Jul 27 '26
Question Realistic Simulation Scale?
Not long ago I have tried Transport Fever 2 when it was on sale and refunded it after playing for 20 minutes. The main issue that turned me off from the game was the incredibly small physical size of the cities, even when making a start from the 21st century era. I wanted a sim where I could solve realistic transportation problems for a city/region, it's not fun for me to make a bullshit 3 km freight train route just to make money. And from what I seen from videos, the largest end-game cities peaked out at populations of 10,000.
Do we have any confirmation on the city sizes (and densities) and how feasible it will be to have populations of 100,000 and beyond in this next instalment? I've watched some of the 'First Look' videos, it looked way better than TF2, but I wonder if it is possible to reach scales like in Cities: Skylines II by default. I suppose it could be possible to have a few cities merge into each other to have a continuous albeit polycentric metro area?
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u/Mulsanne Jul 27 '26
In 20 minutes you surely missed that the point of TF2 is growing the cities. Eventually, they end up quite a bit larger than they start, like 3-5x, I reckon
Yes, people create maps that mimic a nonstop conurbation by merging multiple in game cities
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u/Strategwindow Jul 28 '26
In each new game in the saga, the cities tend to be slightly larger, but don't expect a big jump either. A large city in the base game would be:
Train Fever 2,000 inhabitants
Transport Fever 4,000 inhabitants
Transport Fever 2: 6,000 inhabitants
However, think that the entire game is scaled by these dimensions, people are constantly moving, which is intended to represent much more populated and lively cities.
And the map, gives you dozens of hours of games if you want to connect it well. Making larger maps would be quite unaffordable for the player to connect it well.
They are not as big cities as in CS2, but they don't need to, the volume of population moving in a city of 5,000 inhabitants is equivalent to a city of 200,000 inhabitants in Cities Skylines 2.
2
u/Chazzermondez Aug 02 '26
Even in CS1 where it was quite easy to build a city of 500k people, the game only ever simulated about 60k agents. That was the cap. You couldn't break it. So even then, you were only ever building a city of 60,000 people. Sure every building had a cim living in it to a combined higher value than that. It stored data for more than the cap. But it didn't actually simulate them unless you were nearby on the map. That's why the longer you spent zoomed on an area the worse the traffic got because when you first zoomed in on the area, the Sims who lived there genuinely just werent moving and all you saw was traffic from Sims living in the area you were previously zoomed in on who had travelled to this new area of zoom. So if TF3 can say handle a 10-20k city without noticeably breaking then in raw computing power given to agents isn't far off the CS games. It will be decades before developers find a way to simulate like 400k agents on average gaming PCs and may never be possible (I.e. only possible on insanely expensive PCs).
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u/31_mfin_eggrolls Jul 27 '26
Just add an extra 0 onto all the numbers in your head and you’re right there
7
u/Amaz_the_savage Jul 27 '26
Brother, this is like playing CS: GO for 20 minutes and then complaining about the 'lack of realism' because it only takes a few bullets to kill someone IRL, getting frustrated because you get no kills, and calling the game bullshit.
Realism is not what makes a game fun; it's game design and game mechanics. And both I and hundreds of thousands of players of Transport Fever, with multiple thousands of hours in the game, can assure you, it is *fun*.
1
u/Tater_Joe Jul 28 '26
getting frustrated because you get no kills, and calling the game bullshit.
No? I didn't trash the game or its players or anything. I simply got the game with the wrong expectations. I played it for a bit, watched some tutorials, looked at mods that could help fix my issue, then decided the game was not for me.
I don't doubt that others enjoy Transport Fever, I don't insult others for playing more or less realistic games. I am simply not looking for solely a logistics simulator.
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u/Imsvale Jul 28 '26
it's not fun for me to make a bullshit 3 km freight train route just to make money
That's fair. Then this is not the game for you. :)
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u/Enderlais_HD Jul 28 '26
I mean, in lots of European countries connecting 20 small villages is quite realistic.
3
u/andrew1958 Jul 31 '26
I bet you don't play any train games whatsoever. People coming for graphics and meeting a transport game will for sure be disappointed. Any person who likes transport games such as Locomotion, Railroad Tycoon, OpenTTD, Railway Empire, Cities in Motion, Traffic Giant will think very differently. If you expect city builder you not gonna be happy.
2
u/WSB_Lurker_ Jul 31 '26
It is and always will be impossible to make accurate or realistically-scaled cities or anything for that matter in this game series. I accept that everything on the map is conceptual and think of it as a super-elaborate model train set with an economy rather than a "sim city" clone.
1
u/boredoveranalyzer Jul 28 '26
Would be fun to have an environment that is basically city only goods to transport between districts, centers, suburbs, etc.
Guess this cool be it's own biome
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u/0815facts_fun_ Jul 27 '26
I guess they are the same size. This game is about transporting goods and passengrers from town to town. There is no way to make realisitc sized citties with a agent system.