Alternative Railroad Balance (American trains)
Alternative Vehicle Balance Mod v1
American Vehicles
NOTE: This is a reupload with just EU vehicles due to a bug
with a combined US/EU mod
NOTE: Activate this mod only if you intend with european
trains. if you choose american, use the US version of this mod.
Due to a bug in the game vehicle set such as this is active
regardless of theme (US/EU) choices.
Vanilla TpF is quite a fun game, however, it suffers a bit from
a rushed development and, let’s face it, sometimes wonky balance.
Since I am one of those people who tend to whine about such
things relentlessly, I decided to do the deed and rebalance the
game to fit my vision.
My approach to this is as follows:
1. Make a game as close as I think developers intended
2. Don’t add or remove anything, just shift numbers around
3. Create as many niches for vehicles to occupy
4. Make the automatic balancing work
5. Fix the XIX century balance somewhat
6. When necessary, try to be true to prototypical vehicles,
but have balance on my mind first and foremost
Current problems with the rail balance, as I see them, are as follows
1. There is very little differentiation between passanger
services. Which pigeonholes us to use the same locomotives
over and over again
2. Some locomotives are capable to run at certain speed, but cars
that can run at such speed are not for quite a while.
New freight car balance.
It is unheard of, that freight trains are run at a speed
of 160km/h. This is quite odd and robs the game of an
important mechanic – that is trying to fit both slow
freight trains and fast passanger trains on the same line.
Freight car speeds were brought down by a significant factor.
By the pattern:
Gondolas are the slowest – because they carry bulk raw materials
as iron ore.
Tank and stake cars are faster because their cargo is more valuable
Boxcars are fastest, because they carry high value goods
Beware: trains may actually stall now, especially if
they get stopped while going uphill.
Freight cars having lower speed has a side effect of them
being much cheaper then in vanilla game, which provides
smoother expansion, especially in the XIX century.
