This FAQ covers questions about regular gameplay.

Main transport branches management

Water transport

• Building a dock

Air transport

• Building an airport, purchasing aircraft and managing airlines

Road transport

• Building a road vehicle route

Railway transport

• Building a railway route
• Signalling a track

Other transport structures

• Stations
• Bridges
• Tunnels

FAQ by sss

Q: How do I get these monorails and maglevs? I tried clicking on convert rail and then click on the rail but it doesn't do anything!!!! HELP!!!!
A: This is a problem I had too, what you have to do is click and HOLD on the rail button to select other rails. ALSO: the convert rail type is for converting the rail (lets say normal rail for eg.) To a Maglev lets say, so you select maglev track and then hit convert rail and then drag over your old rail.
Q: New trains aren't showing up!!!!
A: Use an other type of rail such as electric or maglev or monorail.
Q: The depot won't give me any electric rail trains!!!!
A: Make sure that you've selected the depot under the electric rail selection.

RV'S

Q: An RV? Like a camper?
A: No RV stands for Road Vehicles.
Q: I have EGRVT'S and my horses are going one mph!!!!
A: go under advanced setting>Vehicles and set RV Accel. to original.
AIRPLANES
Q: WHAT THE???? my slow train going 140 mph is going faster than my plane going 300 MPH????
A: Set in advanced setting>Vehicles airplane speed factor to 1/1

Important actions

• Giving out orders

How to make (good) profits

• Observe 'Cargo payment rates' (under chart icon ) to see what will give you good profit
• Search for large cities (in Town directory ), and industries that have the greatest production (in Industry directory )
• Build long routes, try to keep them flat and without many turns (to maximize speed)
• Use 'Full load' in vehicle orders
• The optimum distance to deliver cargos is approximately 70 days' travel for cargos with a late delivery penalty (passengers, mail, perishable goods), and ~130 days for those without (oil, coal, wood, etc.) The precise distance varies slightly from cargo to cargo but 70 and 130 are reasonable base values.

• In 70 days, a vehicle will move a distance equal to its average speed x 2.5 tiles, and in 130 days, its average speed x 4.5. So if a vehicle has a speed of 60 kph, its optimum delivery distance is about 150 tiles for perishables, and 270 tiles for non-perishables.
• Vehicle speeds in mph would give multipliers of x4 and x7; so a 45 mph vehicle should travel 180 or 315 tiles.
• It's easy not to ship cargos far enough, and sending them too far is a much rarer mistake.

There is no cargo at my stations!

By default, cargo from industries is not delivered to stations until a demand exists. In other words, until you send a vehicle to the station for getting the cargo, none will appear. The reason for this behaviour is that it prevents you from getting bad ratings due to perishing of cargoes you don't want to transport at all.

In the advanced settings, you can switch between this behaviour and the case where all cargoes are always delivered to stations.

Why does cargo at my stations disappear?

That happens when you are not providing a sufficiently good service to the stations. The worse your station rating, the less cargo will be allocated to the station in the first place, and where the rating is below 50%, even the cargo that is there will gradually disappear.

To fix this problem, increase the rating. See also the answer to the next question.

How to maximize 'Local rating of transport service'

Read about station rating and town rating.

How to disable opening and closing of industries

Manual Industries

A newer version for OpenTTD, 1.1.x (currently, nightlies only) is available as Manual Industries in bananas, the online content system.

Is it possible to use the operating system cursor instead of the sluggish OpenTTD cursor?

It is possible, with a few minor changes to the code, but at the moment there is no option for it. Alternatively, you might code a NewGRF to do it.

How do I relocate the main toolbar and statusbar, since it's 'centred' on a dual-display?

In Interface there are options to set the position of the main toolbar and the statusbar to left, centre or right.

How to get expired vehicles back?

After 2050 vehicles expire, which means they are no longer available for you. That is really bad if you want to open a new service!

See the page Never expire vehicles on how to avoid that.

How long is a game day in real time?

One game day takes 2220ms (2.22 seconds) real time. A game year thus takes 810.3 seconds, or 13.505 minutes.

Why are my vehicles not serviced?

Make sure that:

• breakdowns are on,
• servicing when breakdowns are off is off,
• the depot is within 20 squares of the path your vehicle is following.

Note that the '20 squares' to the depot must have suitable roads or tracks for the vehicle to use. Road crossings, signals, bridges and other obstacles all count towards the limit.

How to get computer opponents (AIs) in my game?

Starting with version 0.7.0, the default computer opponent has been removed. As a replacement, you can now download opponents from the online content system, or even develop your own AI opponent! See

• The AI settings page describes how to download and activate opponents.
• The Comparison of AIs page describes the available opponents.
• The Script describes how to program your own opponents, in case you want to make a better one.

How to disable trains reversing at signals?

See Disable Train Reversing

My train is going in the wrong direction!! Why?

The path finder is quite clever in routing the trains. If they head off in the 'wrong' direction, it normally means there really is no shorter path. Some simple things to check:

• Missing track piece (maglev makes seeing that hard)
• Wrong track type/no electrification; one track tile that you forgot to electrify can cause all your new electric trains to be unable to reach their destination
• Your trains are not allowed to go round 90 degree curves, but the only way contains them
• Difficulty options forbid reversing at stations
• There really is no way (check for detours due to servicing).
• Signals of wrong type and/or direction

Why are my aircraft disappearing?

Big planes have a high chance to crash while landing at small or commuter airports. See also Aircraft#accidents.

Why are my road vehicles disappearing?

If you have very fast trains and level crossings, vehicles may not be able to get out of the way before the train arrives. The vehicle will be crushed and destroyed, and the train will just continue on its way. There is also a 'small UFO' disaster which will destroy road vehicles occasionally.