Here it is: Beer Island!

Right, I know I haven't been blogging in a long while, and that now that I am blogging I should probably tell you about Dublin. Well, so that I don't look like a complete geek (as if I could give you any other impression), Dublin is nice, rainy, has Guinness and lots of people with strange names.

Much nicer of a place however is Beer Island, which I have been telling many of my colleagues about, and who are very eager to see it. (Also, some are skeptical it actually exists). So if you'd like to see proof that Beer Island exists, please read on!

Some facts: The capital of Beer Island is Guinness and has a population of 11,839 (measured in August 2059). The largest city however is Maisel with 15,111 citizens. All railway lines are laid out in rings. There are a total of 11 railway rings with 40 trains in total. Some rings are within one city only, while others go around the entire map and have dozens of stations.

Notice that overall Beer Island isn't very large. I specifically wanted a small map that I could manage by myself, and where I could focus on finding elegant transportation solutions, rather than spending most time managing an enormous amount of vehicles.

Of course, things started out small way back in 1950, and it took some hard work to get Beer Island to what it is today. Here a few tips that I learned along the way:

1. When playing in the grass lands you do not have to worry about things like food or water. It is actually enough to work with passenger industry only. That said, transporting goods to your town certainly helps growth.
2. Grass lands are not too difficult to master, especially if opponents are turned off. It is best to start out by getting some loans from the bank, and building like crazy. Make sure that at the end of the day you do make a profit however. One to two hours into game-play you will probably be broke. This is the toughest time where you will need lots of patience to build your dream projects. However, once you have gotten out of this phase you will see your money grow again, and see the speed of growth increase over time.
3. Avoid railroad crossings. If a road vehicle passes the lights AFTER they start blinking, an oncoming train will gracefully smash into your unsuspecting vehicle. If your city is large enough, this will happen frequently. Instead of crossings, build bridges or underpasses. As these require more space, be sure to build these before the town puts something in your way.
4. Though it may be most simple to start off by building airports (in grass lands), it may make more sense to put railway stations in the town centers. After all, I find trains much more interesting than planes. Furthermore, it may be much more difficult to get rails into your town center at a later stage than building an adjacent airport which covers most of the city anyway.
5. Make sure to have enough roads! Do NOT rely on the city to build the roads. You have to realize that buildings are only built next to roads. Often roads are laid out by the city so that certain squares are not reachable for further construction. Also if your roads get close to rails, be sure to already pre-build some bridges, as it may be more difficult later on. Finally, having lots of systematically laid out roads also helps to build rails as we shall see in the next tip.
6. Often you want to get trains to where you need them: Into the city. Unfortunately, your city is already densely built, and you cannot get to the places you like without significant damage. But don't forget the network of roads that you (hopefully) built mostly yourself. If you have a large network of city blocks, then many roads are usually redundant. Locate these roads and replace them rails. "But wait!" I hear you say "Will that not disrupt my road connections?" Well, there will always be some disruption, due to you tearing up roads left and right, but we can at least do something about intersections which have now become railroad crossings (bad idea, see tip 3). Instead of building your rails on the same level as the road, build them one level beneath ground-level. Then you can replace crossings with bridges. Current OpenTTD versions allow you to lower soil, even if there are neighboring buildings. The following set of images give you an example of how I transformed a road to a railway, so that I could get the tracks close to where the action is:
   
   If you have many town-owned roads, you may want to turn on the patch "Allow demolition of town-owned roads". Of course, some may consider this cheating (for the record: I don't).
7. So now there you are, enjoying your grand metropolis and would now like to add some rails as described above. The question is: Where to put the tracks? Well, Gimp (aka Photoshop) is here to save the day. Take a screenshot of the city and open it in Gimp. Pick a brush that is roughly the size of your station coverage, and mark all stations. You should get an image that looks something like the one below:
   
   Now you are ready to plan your new tracks in the areas with the least coverage. Mark the roads you would like to convert to rails as I have done above, and head back into OpenTTD to make the changes!
8. When building such city railway lines, you may be tempted to build stations every few tiles, as there are enough people there to easily fill a train. However, there is a catch: The worst time of day for your trains is when they are loading and unloading. During this period, all you do is lose money. When a train is traveling you are also paying money for fuel, maintenance and so on, but at the same time you are making money for each passenger-mile traveled. This will be rewarded to you when you reach the next station. Thus, even if your train is always full, constant loading and unloading of passengers will end up costing you much more money than you get. If you really want a high number of stations, have many trains that service different stations. For instance you could have two trains, servicing every other station.
9. Like I stated above, on Beer Island there is not a single end-station. All railways are rings. This not only gives you a great challenge when money is no longer a problem, but also allows you to fine-tune the usage of certain lines. With rings it is easy to add and remove trains without worrying about conflicts. I usually try to go with at least 2 tracks per ring, so that trains go in both directions.
10. Finally, remember that money is not everything. Especially when you are so rich that you can start terraforming the crap out of your map, try to build things so that they please you. You may want to try to make things as realistic as possible, or as crazy as possible. Whatever it is, it will give you a challenge, and something to show off to your geeky friends later on.

I'll be back soon with some more OpenTTD news! Until then you can download the Beer Island savegame here, and be inspired. Happy building!