Line #36 VideoGame/TransportTycoon


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TTD12_7709.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:"Drontburg Coal Mine increases production!"]]
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4	''Transport Tycoon'' is a pair of [[SpaceManagementGame business management]] [[SimulationGame simulation games]] created by legendary Scottish game developer [[http://www.chrissawyergames.com/ Chris Sawyer]] (of ''VideoGame/RollerCoasterTycoon'' and Creator/MicroProse fame). The apparent object of the games is to end up with a monopoly of transport services for a usually randomly generated map. Transport is provided in all four major modes; air, rail, road and water, though the most profit tends to come from rail and then air.
5
6	The two games in the series are ''Transport Tycoon'' (released in 1994 and now referred to as Original) and ''Transport Tycoon Deluxe'' (released in 1995). An expansion pack for the original game, named ''Transport Tycoon World Editor'', was also released in 1995, which featured a scenario editor (which was eventually included in ''Deluxe'') and a "Martian" set of graphics.
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8	''Transport Tycoon Deluxe'' is an [[UpdatedRerelease updated version]]. It contains numerous bugfixes and gameplay improvements, including new transport modes and UI. The primary difference between the games is how signals operate. The original Transport Tycoon allows only bi-directional signals, which allow trains to pass in either direction. The Deluxe version introduced uni-directional signals, that only allow a train to pass in a single direction.
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10	The FanRemake, ''[[http://openttd.org OpenTTD]]'', is derived from ''Transport Tycoon Deluxe''. Originally a set of patches called ''[=TTDPatch=]'', it was created to allow enthusiasts to include other vehicles, especially historical trains and the like, and eventually grew to add all sorts of features. It supported a plug-in architecture, so users could download add-ons they were interested in. Eventually ''[=TTDPatch=]'' grew much larger than the original game, so some developers decided to replace the remaining bits, allowing the now much-more-elaborate game to be played by anyone. The replacement code was completed in 2004, and an effort begun to replace the art and music, which finished in 2010. ''[=OpenTTD=]'' is [[MediaNotes/FreeLibreOpenSourceSoftware free/open source]], and works on a wide variety of operating systems. ''[=TTDPatch=]'' was maintained in parallel for some time, however ''[=OpenTTD=]'' eventually surpassed it in nearly every way, and the majority of the huge library of plugins and add-ons only works with ''[=OpenTTD=]''.
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12	There is also a FanSequel of sorts, called ''Simutrans'', but it's an indie game only InspiredBy and not related or legally connected to the ''Transport Tycoon'' series.
13
14	''Train Fever'' was an attempt at a modernised SpiritualSequel by Urban Game, however it had a myriad of limitations and bugs. Most of them were fortunately fixed in ''Transport Fever'', a SurprisinglyImprovedSequel launched in 2016 with backwards compatibility for most ''Train Fever'' mods (either natively or using a mod that autotranslates the code so it to be usable with ''Transport Fever'').
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16	The original game was superseded officially by its 2004 SpiritualSuccessor, ''VideoGame/{{Locomotion}}''.
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18	''Transport Tycoon'', [=TTDPatch=] and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' have a very long, complex history. Sites that were once useful such as [[http://www.transporttycoon.net/ Owen's Transport Tycoon Site]] and the (now-defunct) Transport Tycoon Semi-FAQ ([[http://web.archive.org/web/20150415090002/http://i-want-a-website.com/about-tt/ Archive link]]) were very informative fansites around the TurnOfTheMillennium, but are almost useless now. The most valuable information can still be found at [[https://www.tt-forums.net/index.php TT-Forums]], with only the [[http://forums.ttdrussia.net TTDRussia Forums]] showing any other activity to this day.
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20	''[=OpenTTD=]'' is still being regularly updated, and was released on [[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1536610/OpenTTD/ Steam]] on April 1st, 2021.
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22	----
23	!!The ''Transport Tycoon'' series contains examples of:
24	* AcceptableBreakFromReality: Even the most sprawling metropolises will only house about 30,000 people.
25	** The effects of events like UsefulNotes/WorldWarII or the 1970s oil crisis on the economy are completely absent.
26	* AIGeneratedEconomy:
27	** The towns will automatically develop over time, without your assistance. This includes the building of roads, but you can assist in doing so if you want to coerce the development of a town in a specific way. You can accelerate, but not control, the growth of town buildings by dealing in Passengers there. This is necessary in some cases because towns will only pay for Goods once they build enough high-rise buildings, which only happens once they reach a certain size.
28	** The alternate climates in the ''Deluxe'' version have additional restrictions. Arctic towns above a certain elevation have to have Food delivered before they grow. Tropical towns in the desert require Food and Water.
29	* AnEntrepreneurIsYou: The series is considered one of the classics of the "tycoon" genre of business sims.
30	* ArtificialStupidity:
31	** The stupid things the AI tries to pass as traffic routes [[http://nylon.net/ttd/stupid.htm has to be seen]] to be believed. According to Chris Sawyer, this is due to the AI building their tracks dynamically (analyzing possible routes each time a section is built) instead of planning ahead (which could cause problems if the environment changed as the route was built) and the building algorithms using a very low recursion level (an higher level of recursion would allow the AI to build more efficient routes, but would slow it down considerably).
32	** Instead of upgrading an existing line to increase capacity, the AI will just build a new line right next to the old one.
33	** The AI is also rather inapt at doing air lines. Planes servicing two large airports right next to each other aren't unheard of. Said airports are often placed far enough in the town's outskirts that it won't even accept mail and the planes are always ordered to wait for a full load, which can take forever. The AI will also use jet planes on small airports despite the increased chance of crashing.
34	** The road-building AI of both the towns (building roads as they grow) and the computer players often results in a lot of redundant roads that waste space that could be used for buildings.
35	** The custom [=AI=]s available for ''[=OpenTTD=]'' are much less insane, even the one that tries to emulate the "classic" AI.
36	** It's quite possible for a bus/lorry driver to see the vehicle in front be hit by a train and go up in flames, and decide to take its place - with predictable results.
37	* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Trains can go around extremely tight corners at 300mph, but immediately slow down to a crawl when encountering a tiny hill. Only the ''[=OpenTTD=]'' implementation finally added a (more) realistic acceleration model.
38	* AwesomeButImpractical: Aircraft. There is no doubt that they are [[CoolPlane awesomely cool]] and fast (despite their actual speed being a ¼ of their advertised speed), but their low cargo capacity and need for expensive airport infrastructure makes them, well...[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin impractical]].
39	** Averted in ''[=OpenTTD=]'', where vast maps (up to 4096x4096 in the stock game; custom builds can go even higher) can make Planes a game-breaking tool. The fact that the speed handicap can be adjusted or removed entirely doesn't help either.
40	* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: Some of the [[TwentyMinutesintotheFuture post-1990s]] futuristic buildings and vehicles are really odd looking.
41	* {{Bookends}}: A subtle example with the Soundtrack: The first song is titled ''Easy Driver,'' and the last song, ''Hard Drivin'.''
42	* BoringButPractical: Road vehicles. They don't have the allure of trains or the inherent coolness of aircraft, but they can use existing city roads (and roads laid by your competitors!) and are much less affected by gradients. ''[=OpenTTD=]'' has a large number of add-on packs that increase their usability, especially since ''VideoGame/TrafficGiant''[=/=]''Simutrans''-style individual destinations for passengers and cargo have been introduced which for example make town buses as feeder lines to a train station or an airport possible.
43	* {{Cap}}: ''Original'' and ''Deluxe'' have a lot of arbitrary caps which were either increased, made configurable or eliminated entirely in ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'':
44	** Up to 250 stations can be built in a single map. Buoys are technically stations and count towards the limit, as do the helipad/port attached to oil rigs. The limit was increased to 65,000 in ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]''.
45	** Stations are automatically named after the town they're built in; usually, the first one will be named exactly like the town and subsequent ones will add a prefix or suffix like "North [town]" or "[town] Woods". If the game runs out of possible names for a given town, it will not allow further stations to be built within the town, though this can be worked around by renaming one of the preexisting stations. ''[=OpenTTD=]'' will instead assign numbers to stations in a town after running out of names.
46	** Towns have a limit of two airports per town. ''[=OpenTTD=]'' introduced an alternate option where airports have a given noise level and towns have a noise limit which increases the further they grow.
47	** ''Deluxe'' limits the spread of stations to seven tiles away from the sign. ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' allow this limit to be changed, which defaults to 12 tiles for the latter and can be increased up to 64.
48	** Each company can have up to 80 trains, 80 road vehicles, 50 boats and 40 planes. ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' also allow these limits to be changed, but with a hard limit of 5,000 vehicles of each type and 65,000 vehicle parts (each locomotive and wagon in a train counts as a part).
49	** ''Original'' and ''Deluxe'' have a money cap of around £2 billion, which leads to bugs like the "tunnel cheat" in ''Original'' or the money at hand eventually flipping into the negative billions.
50	** The limit of orders that can be assigned to one vehicle is 15 in ''Original'' and ''Deluxe'' and 254 in ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' (with a limit of 65,000 orders for all vehicles combined), but to be fair there aren't many situations that would require more than 15 orders for a single route, let alone 254.
51	** Like stations, if the game runs out of possible names for towns it will stop generating new ones when creating a map. The number of names varies widely with each town name set due to each one having its own algorithm for generating them (some have a simple "pick one from the list" call, others have elaborate routines to pick segments, prefixes and suffixes), going from well in the tens of thousands for both English sets down to a measly 70 for the French set. While this was never an issue in the original games and ''[=TTDPatch=]'', once ''[=OpenTTD=]'' introduced maps larger than 256 x 256 it became problematic as very large maps will be very sparse in towns when using the more limited town name sets.
52	* ClownCarBase: The depots can hold hundreds of vehicles despite being only big enough for one of them. The train depots are especially ridiculous; a 100-car train can enter a depot barely big enough for the engine just fine!
53	* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The AI in pre-''[=OpenTTD=]'' versions gets a lot of help from the game to compensate for their ArtificialStupidity:
54	** The "Intelligence of rivals" difficulty setting actually regulates the bonus the AI receives for their station ratings, which is none for "Low", 12% for "Medium" and 24% for "High".
55	** AI companies never get affected by disasters. [=UFOs=] and zeppelins never target them and their infrastructure doesn't get destroyed by coal mine subsidences or UFO bombers.
56	** NotPlayingFairWithResources: AI can completely destroy their environments around towns, free of charge, with no ill effect; the local authority will hate you and you will hate it if you bulldoze one tree.
57	** In ''Original'', industries serviced by the player have an annoying tendency to randomly announce imminent closure. Curiously, industries serviced by AI companies never seem to close.
58	** Averted in ''[=OpenTTD=]'': the landscaping handicap was removed, which means the custom AIs must be programmed to survive without that advantage (and they're able to do so rather well).
59	* [[ColourCodedArmies Colour Coded Companies]]: All companies have a single, associated colour. ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' allow you to violate this, letting you choose different colours for different vehicles (e. g. different colours for steam, diesel, and electric locomotives).
60	* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: Vehicle lists use colour-coding as a quick way of displaying a vehicle's status. If the vehicle's number is blue, it's parked in a depot, if it's red, it reached or is about to reach its maximum age. ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' (the latter if using the original TTD graphics; [=OpenGFX=] uses symbols instead) show a second colour code to show the profit status, with red for a loss, yellow for a profit under £10K (or equivalent), green for a profit over £10K and no colour if the vehicle is less than 2 years old. ''[=TTDPatch=]'' puts that colour on the profit number while ''[=OpenTTD=]'' displays it in a circle under the vehicle's number.
61	* CoolPlane: Several, from early propeller driven craft to the supersonic Concorde (a.k.a. [[LawyerFriendlyCameo Yate Haugan]]). Custom packs like the av8 set and the Planeset can give you even more of these.
62	* CoolTrain: Of course. Classic steam engines, diesel and electric locomotives of various sizes. And, from the 1990s onward, monorails and even maglevs! Lots and ''lots'' of custom train packs exist for about every major railroad nation.
63	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Acting like one is optional for the player. You can [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney bribe local governments]] for [[{{Nepotism}} transport monopolies]], [[PropagandaMachine city-wide advertising campaigns]], and [[VehicularSabotage "essential" reconstruction of a town's roads (in a competitor's town, of course)]].
64	* CrapsackWorld: Intercity transport is controlled solely by [[CorruptCorporateExecutive private companies]] who tear up the landscape, dominate small towns with massive transport complexes, and compete with each other to the point of bribery and [[SuicideMission sabotage]]. Also, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking there are UFOs]].
65	** Gets doubly crapsack when you realise who the [[VideoGame/XCom UFO's belong to...]]
66	* CreatorProvincialism:
67	** The buildings in Original and the "Temperate" climate in ''Deluxe'' are of a British style: several were [[http://www.chrissawyergames.com/feature1a.htm explicitly based]] on real buildings in Glasgow. A few houses in Original which had a more American design were moved to the "Artic" climate in ''Deluxe''.
68	** The vehicles play it straight or avert it on a case-by-case basis. The initial UK release of ''Original'' used real names for the vehicles, which were changed in later releases (see LawyerFriendlyCameo below for details):
69	*** The temperate locomotives all play it straight: they're named and modeled after famous British models such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Class_A4 Class A4]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterCity_125 InterCity 125]]. The artic/tropical locomotives avert it, being based on American models such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_DDA40X EMD DDA40X]] (introduced in 1969 for the 100th anniversary of Union Pacific Railroad, hence the game calling it the "Centennial") and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAC_TurboTrain UAC TurboTrain]] (called the "Turner Turbo" in-game).
70	*** The starter road vehicles use British makes (Leyland, Bedford, Scammell, AEC, Dennis), but the 1970's-era vehicles use European (Renault, Volvo, Peugot, Fiat) or American (Ford) brands.
71	*** The boats are all generic (they didn't have brands in Original), but the hovercraft is clearly modeled on the classic British [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR.N4 Saunders-Roe SR.N4 "Mountbatten class"]].
72	*** Only a few of the aircraft are British (such as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Viscount Vickers Viscount]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_1-11 BAC 1-11]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAe_146 BAe 146]] and the British/French [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde Concorde]]); the starter airplane in Original is the ''[[ItMakesSenseInContext German]]'' [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ju_52 Junkers Ju 52]].
73	* CurbStompBattle: If an AI competitor is using road vehicles, it's possible to set up a rail line across the road and order a locomotive to "dispose" of AI vehicles. This leaves your reputation and the locomotive completely unharmed...
74	** ...[[SchmuckBait just be aware]] this can happen to ''[[HoistByTheirOwnPetard your]]'' road vehicles if they happen to meet a train at a crossing at the same time as well, like before the train continues undamaged.
75	* DiagonalSpeedBoost: Sort of. At least ''[=OpenTTD=]'' does not provide a literal diagonal speed boost; however, the payments are tied to the number of grid lines you have to cross between the stations. If you go 50 squares diagonally, you can be faster than 100 squares parallel to one axis and still receive the same payment for your cargo.
76	* DifficultButAwesome: Trains. The most complicated transport method to set up initially (especially if you're trying to network all your lines together), but overall the most efficient way to ship non-passenger goods (planes are best for passengers).
77	** Ro-ro stations are significantly more complicated to build than terminus stations, as they not only require tracks to be built from both ends of the station, but that trains can only go one way. This limits the coverage stations can get from each end, and forces players to get creative in how to connect the ro-ro lines with the main track. However, a well-designed ro-ro station can easily outmatch a terminus station in efficiency, as the one-way tracks are less susceptible to congestion than if trains were entering and exiting the same points.
78	* DifficultyLevels: ''Original'' and ''Deluxe'' have a difficulty settings menu with three preset levels (Easy, Medium, Hard) and a custom setting. The settings deal with AI competitors, financial costs, land generation and so on. Early ''[=OpenTTD=]'' versions kept the menu, but in 1.3 most of the options were merged into the advanced settings menu and the rest were moved to the "New Game" dialog.
79	* DownloadableContent: ''[=OpenTTD=]'' has this in ''spades,'' specifically with the "Check Online Content" option. There are ''hundreds'' of [=NewGRFs=], scenarios, [=AIs=], and game scripts available.
80	* EasyLogistics: Averted in that vehicles need to be maintained, otherwise they break down (unless you disable breakdowns). Played straight with passenger and cargo; they will go wherever you ship them.
81	* FanRemake: ''[=OpenTTD=]'' is basically ''Deluxe'' reverse-engineered and converted from assembler to C, with new features added on top of it.
82	* FictionalCurrency: ''[=OpenTTD=]'' offers the option to set a custom currency with its own exchange rate relative to the British Pound (the "base" currency that other currencies are multiplied from, e.g. £1 equals $2, €2 or ¥220) and an optional "switch to Euro" year (the default European currencies which switched to Euro in real life do so in ''[=OpenTTD=]''). This is ostensibly to allow the player to program in a real currency which is not included among the presets, but nobody's stopping you from using [[VideoGame/SimCity simoleons]] or [[Franchise/FinalFantasy gil]] to pay for your trains!
83	* FlawedPrototype: The player occasionally receives offers to test out a new vehicle for a year before it's made available to every company. While this allows early access to the latest and shiniest, the catch is that the maximum reliability will be low at first, which will result in more frequent breakdowns that can potentially cancel out the added benefits of higher speed or capacity. The offer can be accepted or refused, but if you accept and then don't use it, you'll get blacklisted from further prototype offers for a while.
84	* GameBreakingBug: A lot of them have been fixed by ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'':
85	** Once the game reaches December 31, 2070, the calendar loops back to January 1, 2070. This was done intentionally to prevent vehicles from going obsolete, but it introduced another problem: if a vehicle is scheduled for servicing in 2071, it will never get serviced and its reliability will steadily drop to 0%.
86	** The newest model of helicopter in the default vehicle set becomes obsolete after 2020, making it impossible to build new helicopter routes or maintain existing ones to acceptable levels of service (what with the 0% reliability helicopters breaking down constantly). ''[=OpenTTD=]'' hasn't fixed that, although disabling vehicle obsolescence or using [=NewGRFs=] can solve that problem.
87	** Buying out a competitor while a news item about them is showing can cause a crash, especially with the "[company] starts construction near [town]" message. Also, buying out a competitor with active subsidies will screw up those subsidies: they won't pay as they should, the information in the "Subsidies" box will be corrupted and opening said box will sometimes cause a crash.
88	** Multiplayer gameplay in the pre-''[=OpenTTD=]'' days was notoriously unstable: the game would start to go out of synchronization by the 1990's, slow down and eventually become unplayable.
89	* GameMod: ''[=TTDPatch=]'' alters the executed binary code at runtime while leaving the original executable intact. This method of introducing modifications to the game made a lot of potential features near-impossible, which is why the ''[=OpenTTD=]'' project was started. ''[=OpenTTD=]'' itself has loads of patches and several ready-to-compile or pre-compiled patch packs.
90	* GenteelInterbellumSetting: The original starts in 1930. ''Deluxe'' has [[TheFifties 1950]] as the earliest date. ''[=OpenTTD=]'' can start even earlier -- given [[https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Community/NewGRF/Extended%20Generic%20Road%20Vehicle%20and%20Tram%20Set the right [=NewGRFs=]]], you can even start in ''[[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfPiracy 1700]]'', complete with horse-drawn cargo carriages and sailing ships.
91	** By extension, the game features TheFifties, TheSixties, TheSeventies, TheEighties, TheNineties, and TurnOfTheMillennium.
92	* GroundhogDayLoop: After December 31, 2070, the date loops back to January 1, 2070, rather than proceeding to 2071. A GameBreakingBug if you have vehicles scheduled for maintenance in 2071... Thankfully, this is one of the bugs ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' fixes.
93	* GuideDangIt: After the large airport is introduced in 1955, almost every aircraft model introduced from then on will have a noticeably higher chance of crashing at small airports (which can't be built after 1959). Only a few models (3 in ''Original'', 6 in ''Deluxe'') introduced after 1955 can land safely on small airports, but the only way of knowing which ones is to either check on vehicle databases online or, in ''[=OpenTTD=]'', set "Small Airplanes" in the livery scheme to a different colour from the standard one.
94	* IWantMyJetpack: The game overestimates the prominence of monorail and maglev technology in what is now the modern day. While both exist (and have already existed for decades), few governments or transportation companies are using either as a first option, with monorails being [[AwesomeButImpractical highly situational]][[note]]As a mode of transit; they see [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman more efficient use]] in material handling.[[/note]] and maglevs being much too costly to build. They certainly aren't rendering conventional rail obsolete, as seen in the game's dwindling selection of rail engines.
95	* JustTrainWrong: The default train sets have a lot of simplifications for gameplay purposes:
96	** Just like in ''VideoGame/RailroadTycoon'', steam locomotives that should have a tender don't have one. This seems to be a deliberate simplification on Chris Sawyer's part as custom train packs almost always include them.
97	** Just like in ''VideoGame/RailroadTycoon'', electric vehicles don't need catenary. ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and ''[=OpenTTD=]'' do include electrified railways with catenary which are required to run electric trains.
98	** ''Unlike'' in ''VideoGame/RailroadTycoon'', there is no distinction whatsoever between passenger and freight locomotives. They just keep getting faster and more powerful. Trains like the Gresley [=A4=], the IC 125, the TGV and the Eurostar pretty much become your all-purpose engines for heavy freight and passengers alike when they're introduced despite the fact that they were all designed for passenger lines in real life. The sole exceptions are the two [=DMUs=] (Metro-Cammell and Sprinter), which are slower and less powerful but cheaper to operate than their contemporaries, making them ideal for small passenger lines.
99	** Most tender locomotives are identical-looking 2-6-0s, which looks especially ridiculous in ''Original'' with its larger assortment of steam locomotives. The Gresley [=A4=] is the same 2-6-0, but streamlined. Even the only two electric locomotives look identical. As proven by countless third-party vehicles from the ''[=TTDPatch=]''/''[=OpenTTD=]'' user community, this could have been avoided even with such small sprites.
100	** The length of every locomotive and wagon is exactly half a tile, and the wagons are the exact same models from the 1930s to the 1990s. Custom train packs do offer more variety in wagons and vehicle length, albeit at the expense of making train upgrading slightly more complicated.
101	** Monorails are depicted as a futuristic upgrade on railroads that can be constructed the exact same way, and haul just about everything over just about any distance. In RealLife, monorails are substantially different in how they're constructed and how they operate, due to their distinct track design: switches are more difficult to implement, grade crossings are impossible, and tracks have to be elevated above the ground. This is why most real-life monorails have simple layouts (i.e. a loop, shuttle), and are constructed above-grade. For these reasons, they've historically only ever been used for theme parks, fancy urban transit, and [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman material handling]]. Realistic custom train packs do reflect their limited real life use, though the fact that converting an entire railroad network to monorail then to maglev is a ''huge'' pain in the ass probably helps too.
102	** Also, grade crossing for monorails and maglevs. This is the only point on the list that ''[=TTDPatch=]'' and even ''[=OpenTTD=]'' haven't fixed yet because the engine has yet to allow for ''VideoGame/{{Locomotion}}''-style elevated rail, though it can be faked through judicious usage of bridges and elevated terrain. In any case, many players avoid using grade crossings even with railroads due to the hazard they present for road vehicles.
103	* KarmaMeter: Crash accidents make your company rating go down. This can be used cleverly to cause trouble for your opposition, however.
104	* LateCharacterSyndrome: The SH '8P' is superior to all steam engines before it, but isn't available until right before the earliest diesel engines appear, which can deliver a similar performance at better running costs. The main incentive for using the SH '8P' - apart from [[RailEnthusiast sentiment]] - is as a layover until these more cost-efficient diesel engines become available.
105	* LawyerFriendlyCameo: The initial UK release of Original used real company names for the vehicles and several were explicitly modeled after real models. To avoid potential lawsuits, the names were changed to fictional ones starting from the US release of Original: examples include the T.G.V. becoming the "T.I.M.", the Airbus brand becoming the "Airtaxi" brand and, most notably, the Lockheed Tristar and the Concorde becoming the "Guru Galaxy" and the "[[InherentlyFunnyWord Yate Haugan]]" respectively. Those changes were carried over to the ''Deluxe'' version and remain in ''[=OpenTTD=]'' to this day.
106	** Several of these vehicles new names are {{Shout Out}}s to the QA testers' last names, including Bakewell, Luckett, Sampson, Kirby, Witcombe, Uhl, and Dinger.
107	** ''Deluxe'' includes the ability to rename the vehicles, allowing one to change the names back to the real ones if desired, and [=NewGRFs=] which do exactly that (and sometimes include new "real" names for ''Deluxe''-exclusive vehicles) exist.
108	* LevelAte: The "Toyland" climate, where the trees are lollipops and you transport such cargoes as candyfloss, sugar, toffee and fizzy drinks (which are made by combining "flat" cola and bubbles, and yes, you get to transport ''bubbles''). All those cargoes are treated as natural resources, that is, they're "extracted" from the land.
109	* MadeOfExplodium: When two vehicles or convoys collide (except the train in a road/train collision), the vehicles will explode into a fireball. This occurs even if the vehicles aren't carrying flammables of any type, such as an electric passenger train.
110	* MagikarpPower:
111	** Trams, specifically the Generic Trams Set, when starting at the earliest date. Tram networks are expensive and difficult to build, unlike bus networks which can use the roads provided by cities. The earliest trams are not much better than buses, and still lose out on trains in capacity and cost-effectiveness. Over the course of the century, trams improve to the point where they substantially outpace buses and even trains in the aforementioned areas, losing out only in speed and (still) flexibility. Furthermore, the game environment changes increasingly in their favor, as metropolitan areas grow and require transit options that can reach city centers. By the time the final trams are available, they'll become the best option for local passenger transit.
112	** Planes serve a similar purpose for long-distance passenger travel. The first planes that are available have abysmal capacity, and can only fly a few passengers at a time; while they can still be profitable, they won't be able to assuage crowded stations as well as trains. Over time, their speed and capacity will improve to the point where they can surpass trains for longer distances, all the while having the intrinsic advantages of {{flight}}: no infrastructure except for the airports themselves, and the ability to bypass difficult terrain.
113	* MightyGlacier: The trains available in the "Desert" and "Arctic" climates are generally stronger but slower than their "Temperate" climate counterparts. Presumably, this is because they were built to handle harsh climate conditions, which is also why they aren't available until 1945, twenty years after the first "Temperate" engine would be.
114	* {{Nerf}}: The Iron Horse [=NewGRF=] multiplies the expenses of rail transit from its vanilla counterpart, not only by increasing the running costs of engines but adding running costs to individual wagons. While still DifficultButAwesome, rail no longer has a clear advantage in cost-efficiency over other modes of transit, and players using this [=NewGRF=] now have to consider whether the greater capacities of trains are warranted for a given corridor.
115	* NoFairCheating: The cheat menu in ''[=OpenTTD=]'' has the following warning: "You are about to betray your fellow competitors. Keep in mind that such a disgrace will be remembered for eternity." In practice, using a cheat means that your company's performance rating will not be recorded in the "Top companies who reached 2051" chart. The cheat menu is not accessible in multiplayer outside of modifying the source code or loading a single-player game with cheats enabled, both of which are heavily frowned upon.
116	* NoSell: If a train meets a truck/bus/tram at a road crossing at the same time, said vehicle will promptly explode into a fireball while the train will continue undamaged as if nothing has happened.
117	* ObstructiveBureaucrat: City and town councils can become this, for better or for worse. Especially if they don't know your company well yet and you start massively altering their surroundings and tearing down older buildings -- they'll simply ban you from constructing any of your company's structures on their territory, until you regain your reputation (which can often take years).
118	** Conversely, be on good enough terms with a Town Council, and the player can encourage [[CorruptBureaucrat a Council-sponsored]] reconstruction of the town's roads, blocking any [=AI=]-controlled road traffic for months.
119	** A common recommendation is to build the stations ''before'' building the tracks/roads, especially in forested areas. The local authority may block you from building stations, but [[LoopholeAbuse they can't block you from building tracks or roads]]!
120	* PlotDrivenBreakdown: Every single time [[ShoutOut a small UFO]] flies above a bus, they ''both breakdown at the exact same time'' and UFO crashes [[ActionBomb exactly onto the bus]].
121	* PublicDomainSoundtrack: ''[=OpenTTD=]'' has got an entire Scott Joplin soundtrack among its DownloadableContent.
122	* RealityIsUnrealistic: In some custom trainsets, engines will occasionally depart from the train depot backwards. This is not a bug, but a reflection of how this occurs on real life railroads, due to the amount of energy it takes to flip an engine.
123	* RidiculousFutureInflation: The prices eventually rise so high that a piece of road costs more than a skyscraper in real life. While this is no problem for a company that has been around and profitable since 1930 or 1950, rival companies that are established late in the game will often find themselves unable to even afford building a simple bus line since the starting loan is always £100,000 and the maximum loan amount doesn't quite catch up with inflation. ''[=OpenTTD=]'' does allow turning off inflation, however.
124	* SchmuckBait: When a player first learns about station coverage, they may be tempted to clear out a path in the middle of a town to make way for a train station, thereby covering the most buildings in that given area, thus maximizing their passenger load. However, doing this will diminish their ratings with that local town, leading them to be boycotted or forbidden from making any further (potentially necessary) adjustments to the town. Even if the town is able to forgive this, there's still the logistical issue of not being able to expand the station without destroying more town infrastructure, which can become problematic once the town starts growing. A more viable alternative would be using buses, streetcars, or even branch lines as feeder stations, to funnel passengers from other parts of the town to a larger station.
125	* ScoringPoints: Each company has a performance rating which increases with the number of vehicles and stations they have, the revenue they earn and the cash they have in hand. As the rating goes up, the company's owner gains new titles, going from "Engineer" to "Traffic Manager" and so on up to "Tycoon", and their headquarters expand, going from a small shack to a large office building. When your company turns 100 (or you reach 2051 in ''[=OpenTTD=]''), your rating at that point gets recorded in a top 5 high score table; ''Original'' and ''Deluxe'' had one for each difficulty level (Easy, Medium, Hard, Custom), as did ''[=OpenTTD=]'' before the difficulty settings were merged into the advanced settings in 1.3. and the tables were merged into one.
126	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney:
127	** Players can buy exclusive transports rights for a particular town for a year; during that time, cargo and passengers in that town will only use that player's stations and will ignore stations of all other companies, who are not notified when exclusive rights are bought.
128	** In ''[=OpenTTD=]'', players can outright ''bribe'' local authorities to improve their ratings. However, it is very expensive (about £750,000 before inflation is accounted for) and there's the risk of getting caught by a regional investigator, which will result in the company being blocked from interacting with the local authorities they tried to bribe for six months.
129	* ScunthorpeProblem: The algorithm used to generate the English town names (both the "Original" and "Additional" ones), at least as programmed in ''[=OpenTTD=]'', has an inversion where its profanity filter will sometimes fail to work. Usually, if it detects certain bad words (specifically, "[[CountryMatters cunt]]", "slag", "slut" and "fart") or weird letter combinations within the randomly generated name, it will substitute them with more innocuous strings. However, if the town name has a prefix like "Great", "Little", "New", "Old", "Fort" or "St.", the profanity check won't detect the "bad" string and will leave it intact. The check also does not look for "fart" if the "Original" name set is used as it supposedly never occurs per the comments in the source code, but in practice it does occur. The chance of seeing those "bad" strings increases with the number of cities generated, so on a small map with a few towns they will almost never occur, but on gigantic maps with lots of towns a few questionable names like "New Fartminister" and "Old Cuntstoke" will often show up.
130	* ShoutOut: Every now and then, an ''VideoGame/XCom'' fighter jet or UFO will appear and fly around the map.
131	* SkillGateCharacters: Road vehicles are the most beginner-friendly transit mode in the game, as they are not only cheap in both capital and running costs, but they can use the roads provided by cities, as well as service any industry. However, as players become more experienced in the game, they'll notice that they lose out in many areas to trains. Not only do trucks have lower capacities than rail cars, but they each have their own individual running costs as opposed to one per rail engine, meaning they lose out on cost-effectiveness for more productive industries. Road stations also have a smaller coverage radius than that of rail, and [[DiagonalSpeedBoost roads cannot go diagonally]]. While roads can still be a viable choice for main mode of transit (especially in the Desert and Arctic maps, where train selections are more limited), more experienced players tend to delegate road vehicles to more niche roles such as feeder networks or inner-city transit.
132	* SpiritualSuccessor: To the original ''Videogame/RailroadTycoon''. Chris Sawyer evolved the concept with an isometric view and more modes of transport while dropping most of the financial aspects.
133	* StarterEquipment: The very first vehicle available in the "Temperate" climate is the Kirby Paul Tank, a steam engine that's cheaper but slower and weaker than its successors in the following decade.
134	* SteamNeverDies: {{Averted}}; vehicles that go obsolete become unavailable for purchase, including steam engines. The only way for a player to [[InvokedTrope invoke]] this is to configure settings in [=OpenTTD=] so that all trains are permanently available.
135	* SuicideMission: As detailed below, this is a [[CrapsackWorld perfectly reasonable]] way of dealing with competitors.
136	* TerrainSculpting: Players can reshape the land to suit their needs. Early on, the players tend to avoid terraforming as much as possible to save money but once they're rich enough they'll often dig huge valleys in mountain ranges to build perfectly level tracks, especially in ''[=OpenTTD=]'' with its more convenient landscaping tools.
137	* ToyTime: The "Toyland" climate features toy buildings and vehicles with faces on them.
138	* UnitsNotToScale: Ships are not much bigger than train cars. In reality, cargo ships carry hundreds of containers which are as big as train cars. Additionally, facilities such as train stations and railyards can be as big as or bigger than the cities they serve.
139	* VideoGameCaringPotential: Want to try and nurse mainline steam traction into the 21st century? Now's your chance! Want to give passenger service to every town on the map, even the tiny villages? It may not be as profitable as transporting coal, but the citizens will surely love you for it!
140	* VideoGameCrueltyPotential:
141	** It's possible to cause the deaths of thousands of people in one go by judicious use of the "Ignore signal" button.
142	** It takes a little time to set up, but if you have created cities directly at sea level, only protected by a dike, and then delete the dike, the city will be overrun by the water and destroyed. (There is a map in Transport Tycoon Deluxe called "Damn!" where the ''entire map'' is at sea level and protected by a dike.)
143	** You can [[VehicularSabotage take revenge]] on the [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard computer-favoured]] [[ArtificialStupidity AI opponents' badly built railways]] by building a railway depot at the end of their stations, buying a cheap locomotive and [[SuicideMission sending it running into the opponent's station]]. His train eventually enters the station, your locomotive charges at his train kamikaze-style ''[[StuffBlowingUp and...]]''
144	* VideoGameTime: A day passes every few seconds, so trains take weeks to travel from one town to another. Because of this, we have the oddity that passengers will pay through the nose for the privilege of travelling a couple of miles in "only" ten days.

Context VideoGame / TransportTycoon