An illustrated guide to proper building

To help our new members and for reference we have written a number of guides that will help you to understand how our games work. It is recommended that you read them in the order listed below.

Part 1: Basic Stations

First, we will start building a simple station. Before we start we want to make clear that our construction style is expandable in the future. Therefore, we construct huge mainlines and connect sidelines to this mainlines. Stations are ALWAYS connected to sidelines.

Guides:Basic Stations

Part 2: Basic Junctions

In this part we build the first junction (in #openttdcoop we always call it "hub"). Since we always build multi-track-junctions, a junction is a bit more complicated than it seems on the first look. Since we want to build efficient and fast railways we need efficient and fast junctions as well. For the start we will analyse a so-called "Side Line Hub" (or "SLH" for short).

Guides:Basic Junctions

Part 3: Mainline Junctions

After building the first hubs in part 2 you will probably notice that our mainlines may sometimes cross each other. Since we always build a comprehensive network and always avoid dead-end lines there is a point in the game where a so-called "Backbone Hub" is needed.

Guides:Mainline Junctions

Part 4: Networking

After being able to build all this nice little hubs we return to some basics. Actually we demand you to do something very important before you start to build: just think about what you are doing. In the ruleset you probably read about our intention to build a comprehensive network. In a typical 512*512 game we have developed a certain networking-style.

Guides:Networking

Part 5: Trains

Trains are a sensible part of OTTD. On this page, we just intend to make some short statements that help you building them for large networks like #openttdcoop's.

Guides:Trains

A guide for newbies, about presignals. But not only for beginners, there is a lot complex things to do with presignals. I you know how the presignals working, you should skip the "basics" Part.

Part 1: Basics

The Presignal Basics is explained here: how they work, how they behave, and how does work a terminal station, and whats the use of the combo presignal.

Guides:Basics

Part 2: Oneway or twoway Presignals

Signals have two sides. In the basics part, the other side wasn`t important, since trains can`t turn back, etc. etc... But in more complex things, a badly placed twoway Combo Presignal can make errors in your network.

Guides:Oneway or twoway

Part 3: Priorities

When you have to connect two tracks into one, the most used track should have more priority than the lesser-used track. In this Part, junctions with priority is showed.

Guides:Priorities

Part 4: Level Balancers

How to make presignals on a Level Balancer.

Guides:Level Balancers

Part 5: Complex Junctions

Guides:Complex Junctions

A Guide to Cooperation

How to coordinate the work of many players in one company.

Guides:Cooperation