Been watching the Gaming Leaks And Rumors subreddit and Paradox's presence at Gamescom is coming up a lot. With them handling the marketing of TpF3, its reasonable to say we should be excited for the end of the month.
What do you think?
Living in a watery place I really hope ferries will be a moddable thing in TF3. Arguably they are very niche, so I understand it not being a vanilla feature (although so are helicopters...)
Given the "miniature size" of the games, I don't really mean realistic ferries that need to wait to fill up and only then ship vehicles. What would fit the game-scale much better is ferries as a type of road:
Invisible in view, but logically no different to other roads. Thus private vehicles, trucks and busses can use it just fine, without much logical mumbojumbo. Visually, I imagine special ferry vehicles that need to be assigned on-top of such a "road", and depending on the length and number of ferries, that determines the speed of the "road". The ferries are the thing you visually see, just like other boats.
Granted, to make sense in terms of gameplay they would also need to fix a gripe I had with TF2: Bridges and Tunnels need to be much more expensive! It should always be the cheapest option to work with the landscape, by several multipliers, as it is irl. Then ferries become useful as a slow slow link for places where we just can't yet afford a bridge or tunnel.
Today I learned that the Schneider PB2 bus wasn't actually exported to the US, the tidbit ingame about it being used in US cities postwar was made up apparently. Does anyone think they'll properly expand the North American vehicle roster so that they don't need to make up lore?
So what I always wanted in the vanilla game in TF1 and TF2 was custom logos, that you could place on your vehicles. Is it confirmed to be in TF3? Or will mods make it happen? Would be so cool to be able to place your own logos on your vehicles, like om the wing on a plane, infront of an old locomotive, on the side of your bus and boats etc!
Train Fever and Transport Fever 1 did some very good things:
1- The vehicles had a useful life, as they got older, the maintenance costs also went up, so it was the player's decision when to change them.
| Useful life | Maintenance |
|---|---|
| 0% | 100% |
| 25% | 111% |
| 50% | 122% |
| 75% | 135% |
| 100% | 150% |
2- Automatic replacement of vehicles on each line, when they reach the end of their useful life or the percentage of their useful life.
By the end of a vehicle's useful life you had ended up paying an average of 24% more in maintenance due to aging.
The problem is that it did not leave the player the option of not paying this extra maintenance and letting the vehicle deteriorate.
In Transport Fever 2 they implemented the issue of emissions and therefore this option was implemented.
1- Vehicle maintenance was stable, but they degraded. If you decided to invest an extra 25% in maintenance they degraded less, and if you invested an extra 50% in maintenance they did not degrade. The degradation was shown in the form of emissions.
2- Vehicle replacement could also be done, but it did not have to be done at the end of a vehicle's life, simply if you wanted to change it for a better one.
3- From my point of view the idea was a good idea to make up for the lack of TF1 but it was very poorly implemented, since it was not logical that by putting in the extra 50% of maintenance for a few minutes the vehicle would become like new. That is, let's put 10 years of deterioration (100% maintenance), then, in 6 months of maintenance an extra 50% (150% maintenance), the vehicle is like new. This means that you had ended up paying on average only 2.4% more in maintenance due to aging and you already had it like new. It doesn't make much sense.
This meant that a vehicle could be 200 years old, and continue to be profitable, you never need to change it.
4- In addition, this became something quite manual, having to control what the current emissions of the vehicle are and apply maintenance to them
Transport Fever 3: we need the best of the 3 games!
1- So far it has been confirmed: "Transport Fever 3 - First Look: Infrastructure" minute 3:18 - 4:15
- The deterioration will now also affect speed, power, comfort, noise and pollution, which is great
- The vehicle depots, and the maintenance buildings, will be responsible for keeping the vehicles in good condition while they are circulating.
Things I think:
1- The age of the vehicle must be taken into account, a vehicle that is 2 years old and has not received maintenance yet is not the same as a 20-year-old vehicle that has not received maintenance for 2 years. Maintenance will not have the same cost, as it happened in TF1, the cost must be incremental so that at some point it will be worth replacing it.
2- To repair vehicles, they should enter the maintenance building every so often (maybe every 5 years)
Therefore, my proposal is that the player has 2 options:
A) It does not receive additional maintenance from maintenance buildings (maintenance: 100%), this causes deterioration, if at any time it is wanted to deal with this deterioration, the vehicle will have to be sent inside the maintenance building, it will be out of service for 6 months, and the equivalent of all the additional maintenance that has not been paid during the years will have to be paid (if the vehicle is very old it may be cheaper to replace it).
B) It receives additional maintenance from maintenance buildings (maintenance: the one in the table), this does not cause any deterioration, but in return the vehicle every 5 years, is automatically diverted from the route and ends up inside the maintenance building and will be out of service for 1 month. Likewise, we can see in the table that when it reaches the end of its useful life, maintenance is so expensive (150%) that it is also cheaper to replace it.
To do all this, it is obviously necessary to recover the automatic replacement tool at x% of its useful life, and other automatic tools.