Website Burkhard Jahnen
 

Basic tricks

Some 'classical' tricks simply have to be incorporated into a Transport Tycoon Deluxe site just to make the tricks section complete. This is the place for the famous tricks you've most probably heard of already.
 
For the time being, you'll find tricks on how to

• 'move' a railway/bus/lorry station
• make your computer opponent abandon a railway track
• make the local authorities' rate of approval of your company's transportation strategy grow

Clicking on one the three items above will take you to the corresponding section on this page. Below you'll find several thumbnail pictures highlighting the key aspects mentioned in the text. Just click on any of them to see an enlarged version in the resizable frame below (Look at the scrollbars on the right to see where this frame begins)! You can return to the original layout by clicking on the 'Basic tricks' button.

Suppose there is a nice factory in a temperate climate scenario. Railway tracks run to and from it, providing for a constant supply of resources by train. In addition, trains take the goods to a nearby city. Now, let's say train traffic has become pretty heavy so that the increasing number of products have to be shipped by additional lorries. Building a seperate lorry station is disadvantageous because your trains and lorries would end up in a competition for the goods. You'd be better off if you had just one giant station. However, this would involve building the lorry station right next to the train station. Afraid of removing your complex track layout permanently just to make room for a simple lorry station? Also, access roads have to be built. This is where 'moving' the lorry station comes in handy. For this, you temporarily demolish the railway tracks and interrupt train traffic. Later, when the lorry station is at the desired location, the track layout is restored. Now let's look at this in detail.

Picture 1 shows the factory, a dock, the train station and the railway tracks. Given the supply routes, we can't remove the canal. And we don't want to remove the bypass railway track between the station and the factory. So we're going to build a lorry station at the southwest corner of the factory building. We first remove a single track tile from the bypass track and build a bus station and a lorry station right next to the train station (picture 2). Thus, we still have just one station as can be seen from the four icons on the sign.

Next, we remove the bus station from the current spot and re-build it on the other side of the lorry station, see picture 3.

By repeating this process we finally move the lorry station to the desired location southwest of the factory building and establish a road connection to the nearby city, see picture 4. Remember, in order to preserve the single station, we always place the stations on adjacent tiles.

In the example just given, moving the station was used to circumvent difficulties with the railway track layout. However, you can even make some extra money with this trick. Consider a single track connecting two train stations at, say, a coal mine and a power station. You'd first build the stations in the vicinity of these so that they collect coal and allow delivering it. Then you'd move the stations closer together in the way described above: Lorry stations remain at the coal mine/power station and bus stations are used to move the train stations. So the actual distance trains travel is reduced, but you get payed for the larger distance given by the station signs that remain at the initial locations of the stations (where the lorry stations still are). This way, you get 'superfast trains'. There's one drawback though: You can't move the station indefinitely. After a few tiles, you receive a 'station too spread out' message. In the classic version of Transport Tycoon the distance allowed is much larger.

Well, offer more attractive services! Yes, this is the legal way. Yes, there are other ways. You might be tempted to simply destroy the opponent's vehicles. A rather spectacular way of doing this involves sacrifying a locomotive of your own. First, build a train depot and a railway track running towards the opponent's station. Make sure you haven't established a direct connection yet! Buy the cheapest locomotive and make it leave the depot. This is shown in picture 5.

Once the locomotive has left the depot, make it stop and close the gap in the railway track. Wait for the opponent's train to arrive at the station. Then, drive your locomotive into your opponent's locomotive. Bang! All the running stock is going up in a large tower of flame, see picture 6. Sadly, you lose your locomotive. Even if you chose an inexpensive one, it's a loss for you. And the opponent might buy a new train and start making money on the same route again. So the whole thing was an enormous waste of money (and a deliberate killing of the four train drivers involved).

Well, if you guessed there are better ways you'd guess right. The trick is to make the opponents' trains get trapped in train depots. This can be done in the following way (for simplicity, we'll consider one-track stations first): Similar to what we've done previously, we make a short connection to the rear side of an opponent's train depot, as shown in picture 7. We don't actually have to wait until the train arrives, because the trap works automatically: Next time the train enters the depot it will stay there. It can't leave, since it recognizes a train (our locomotive) outside the depot, even though it's on someone elses track (ours). This way, rather than loosing a train, the opponent will constantly loose money, because of the running costs of the train. Our locomotive instead doesn't cost us a penny as it has been stopped. Once the opponent has sold the train and has abandoned the railway track we can sell our locomotive and our track tiles as well.

Instead of connecting our track to the opponent's depot, we could have chosen his station. The result would be the same.

The situation is a bit more complicated in the case of a station with two or more tracks. Let's look at this in detail:
 

1. We connect to the depot.

   • When the train is about to enter the depot and is currently on a section of track with no signal between the train and the depot, it will get stuck in the depot. Take a look at picture 8.

   • When the train is somewhere else: It is (or soon will be) on a section of track so that there is a signal in between.the train and the depot. This can be one of those bypass sections the computer opponents usually build, or the nearby station. In either case, the train will be stuck in that particular section of track or the station. Picture 9 shows the latter case.
      

     Picture 8		Picture 9
     The train is about to enter the depot, where it will get stuck.		The train cannot leave the station.

2. We connect to the station (i.e. to all the tracks at once).

   • The train then cannot enter the station (but the depot). Take a look at picture 10.
      

     Picture 10

     The train cannot enter the station.

3. We connect to both the depot and the station

   • Depending on what the train does first, it gets stuck either in the depot or in the station. This is shown in picture 11.
      

     Picture 11

     Connecting to both the depot and the station.

What's quite important: When a train is stuck in the depot, the computer opponent can still sell the train (and regain some money). When it's stuck in the station, the train can't be sold!

Thinking a bit further from these considerations, we can easily arrive at the following idea: Why not omit our locomotive when connecting the opponent's depot with the station? This way, the train can enter (and leave) the depot, but not the station. This doesn't have the maximum possible effect, but it's an unbelievably cheap method that comes in handy during the initial stage of your tycoon career when you're short of money.

A final word, if you're too enthusiastic by now: Where you connect to, of course, depends on whether depot, station or both are accessible. They might be obstructed by other buildings, so that not all of the variations are possible.

Well, that's too bad. And it's your fault, too! You didn't care about the local environment when you demolished the municipal mountain, filled up the nice pond and chopped down the forest for a railway line that didn't even connect that town to the world, did you? And now that you, finally, intend to build a railway station for the town you aren't allowed to. Well, in order to avoid such a dilemma you need to follow a certain strategy right from the beginning of your Transport Tycoon career (apart from planting trees like a maniac). Luckily, it's a fairly simple one: Provide basic transportation facilities in those towns that are going to be hassled by major countryside restructuring before you actually start doing one of those activities described above. Once the local authorities get to know your company as the driving force for municipal development (and approve of it), a bright future lies ahead of you. To achieve a high rate of approval early on, you might be forced to accept a poor income from these transportation facilities, or even accept losses. After all, what has a small town of a few hundred inhabitants to offer?

So don't invest too much money into the transportation facilities: Two bus stations and two buses will do in most cases. When you're short of money you might even consider buying just one bus. Don't place the stations too close together as their catchment areas will overlap unnecessarily. Of course, in small towns that's hard to avoid. Take a look at picture 10 for a typcial situation.

'So how do I know whether that strategy actually works?', you might ask. Of course, if you applied the strategy in many towns, it's cumbersome to call up the windows with the local authorities' rate of approval regularly. Since you support the municipal development, however, the towns will grow and this manifests itself in easily detectable changes: They will acquire more space, they will have better roads and higher buildings, and (presumably most important for your company's income) the number of inhabitants will grow. In fact, it's amazing what just two buses can achieve! After as little as 3 years, the rate of approval will be 'excellent' or 'outstanding', provided you leave the town alone during this time.

That's great. Ok. But when you come back to build a railway station or a large airport, the space you had in mind for this is most likely occupied by a couple of buildings and/or roads. Demolishing the houses would make the rate of approval drop dramatically again. Road tiles in between two crossings can't be demolished at all, and you have to drive your buldozer from the outskirts to the town centre, i.e. start from the unprotected ends of the the roads. So it'd be better to have the railway station on the spot right from the beginning. If that's also your conclusion, you're certainly prepared to invest in the railway station at the same time you build the bus stations and buy the buses. That way, you will end up with railway stations in the centre of large cities which are then prepared to accept goods. In the meantime, you can construct railway lines from a nearby factory or sawmill (in the temperate climate) to those cities. Of course, in the case of airports don't forget to occupy the tiles that are equivalent to the difference in size of a small airport (2 x 4 tiles) and a large one (6 x 6 tiles). Don't 'purchase the land for future use' though (resulting in a sign on that particular tile you bought)! That's too expensive. Instead, construct a railway track or, even cheaper, a section of road. To make sure the town can't build roads across the area in question, use railway tracks (pointing away from the area) on the outer tiles. You don't have to occupy any remaining inner tiles. When you're short of money you might want to do without a station at first and just occupy the corresponding tiles. But usually you would build a large station consisting of a railway station and one of the two bus stations so that the increase of the ratings for passengers applies to the railway station as well.