While Urban Games has been hard at work on the second follow-up to its Transport Fever franchise, the studio’s community manager Sam Bennett was kind enough to answer a few of our questions. Subjects we got an answer on range from some of the new features we can expect from Transport Fever 3, to more involved ones, such as how agent-based citizenry affects gameplay and the unique challenges offered by the game’s various environments.
What are some of the big new features that we will see in Transport Fever 3 when compared to its predecessors?
How about day/night cycle, helicopters, warehousing, landmarks, contracts, player reputation…
More than individual features, it makes more sense to think in terms of the overall evolution of the game. In the past the tycoon aspect of the game has been the area most in need of a significant upgrade. We’ve had this great transport building game, but it’s never quite worked as a challenging tycoon. To create a meaningful and fun tycoon experience you need to lean into decision-making: making one choice might benefit your profits, but it’s going to hurt you in other ways.
"We’ve had this great transport building game, but it’s never quite worked as a challenging tycoon."
To that end, from a gameplay perspective we’ve made the tycoon experience our primary objective. That said, we don’t want existing players to miss out on what they love doing, so all the mod-support, customization, creative build options continue in the game, and they’ve all been given attention as well.
The game has never looked better, and we believe with this latest version it’s never played better either.
How will some of the environments offer unique challenges for players in terms of logistics and planning out routes?
Terrain and environment are major areas of focus in the new game. Historically, our map generator did a good job at making different environments, but there were very clear similarities between them.
This came out of the map generator being *engineered*. For Transport Fever 3 we made a philosophical change here – and that’s a recurring theme, changing the way we’ve thought about the systems in the game. Instead of map generation being led by the engineering team, it’s been reworked by our designers.
Environment generation now pays close attention to how geography works in reality. Temperate environments realistically transition from mountain ranges taller than any we’ve previously had, down toward open fields and forests as they get closer to sea-level, with rivers and lakes following rule of topographical reality. In a dry environment the nature of erosion leads to the same fundamental features – mountains and rivers – being handled very differently because erosion works differently in reality.
The upshot is that each environment plays very differently. Navigating lowland swamps is a very different challenge to running a riverside passenger line, is very different to hauling a massive freight train over the top of a canyon.
Furthermore, the way in which each environment is seeded alters the mix of sub-biomes in a natural way making the result less predictable. So, three different sub-arctic maps will have three very different feels to them. All of this really adds to the range of gameplay challenge players will experience.
"The upshot is that each environment plays very differently."
How will the new agent-based citizenry play into overall gameplay in Transport Fever 3?
We’ve always built our worlds with some level of agent technology in the game’s population, but we’ve enhanced this approach to simulate a plausible world in terms of the motivation for a citizen to move from one place to another. If the player does not provide a needed means of transport, the citizen will find one for themselves. While settlements are small this may lead to light traffic that has no impact on the world, but as populations grow traffic volumes increase leading to settlements stagnating in their growth. If a player wants to build megacities, they’re going to have to work very hard to keep those cities’ populations moving effectively.
How will different regions and biomes affect things like transport route maintenance?
Maintenance levels are something we’ve always modelled but only in the sense of how much a vehicle costs to run, and what its outward appearance is like. We’ve increased the impact in the new game by giving performance penalties to vehicles whose maintenance is lacking. This could be a reduction in capacity, pulling power, top speed, loading speed – nothing good! The placement of maintenance facilities then becomes crucial because they’re not inexpensive. On more challenging landscapes the problems come in terms of your logistical planning more than the environment itself. Rather than a particular biome creating the need for more maintenance, what’s more likely is that maintenance is harder to perform effectively in different environments.
What kinds of new industries will we get to see in Transport Fever 3?
We’ve introduced offshore industries for the first time. These not only have a requirement for shipping to transport the products back to land, but to get the best from them you’ll want to carry workers out to those industries – fishing farms, sand excavators, and oil platforms. You then need to consider the effects of time-criticality on the goods you’re bringing in. In the past you’ve been able to allow mountains of goods to build up at transit interchanges, but not any more. Warehousing will help to some degree, but you’ll need to fundamentally change your thinking in order to move products to their final destination in a timely fashion.
We’ve also added many more industries to the game that settlements will demand as they grow larger, and that too will be dictated by the different environmental settings. You’ll have different industries depending on your map, and many won’t be founded until demand for them exists.
The result of this is that there is a significant need to evolve your plans as the world changes, it very much changes the way you’ll think about the game over the long term.
"We’ve introduced offshore industries for the first time."
How have the tools to put down routes like routes or rail lines evolved over the course of the franchise?
Very much so. Our major driving thought is to reduce friction in gameplay. Our goal is for players to understand an objective, then plan and tackle that objective without the tools ever getting in the way. You might want to build a passenger express train service between two cities, for example. You know you’ll need stations at both ends, track linking them together, capacity for as many services as you want, maintenance for all those services… the challenge should come from the planning aspect of pulling all this together, not in fighting tracklaying or signalling, or creating junctions, parallel lines, or creating space for later expansion. The tools should always be an extension of your thought process as a player, not a hindrance. We were successful in creating a suite of tools to allow all this functionality with the original game in the series, so since then we’ve worked to make them more flexible and, for those who want it, simpler to use. We’ve added continuous tracklaying in the new game, making two click routes possible, but that isn’t for everyone, so we’ve introduced it alongside the options and granularity that existing players are familiar with.
We’ve also extended what is possible when working with roads. Far more choice now exists that should greatly aid traffic management – a must in the later game – and light rail has been extended further to provide a greater selection options for how to tackle those planning objectives.
What resolution and fps will the game run on PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series S and X?
We’re still in alpha at present and as such we can’t give finalised numbers, but we’re launching on console and PC simultaneously, so optimisation is definitely on our schedule before launch.
