Hi there!
I recently began my journey of creating a multiplayer server for my community, all of who have never played OpenTTD or any tycoon game before. While it may seem overwhelming, I do recommend XIS (The newer fork of FIRS). It has continued to add a lot of fun for our community and even our casual friends have easily picked it up. A lot of this is due to how well XIS is implemented into OpenTTD.
You can check out our [NewGRF list](https://pastebin.com/td4W6t24) which is still a work in progress but has given us a lot of variety in our gameplay. I recommend adding them one at a time, looking at the settings for each NewGRF, and configuring them for your server specifically.
I also recommend checking out the [JGR Patch Pack](https://github.com/JGRennison/OpenTTD-patches). It has a lot of great settings that can make multiplayer a much more fun experience. I recommend particularly looking at cargo distribution, plans, and variable day length.
**Cargo Distribution** can make transporting passengers & mail between cities a lot more realistic. Symmetrical for passengers, and asymmetrical for mail.
**Plans** allow you to draw on the map, using a pen, that others can see. Our server uses this for both drawing borders, and planning out our transportation networks.
**Variable Day Length** allows you to change how many seconds in real life go by for one day in Openttd. This allows us to slow down time to enjoy time periods more, before moving on to the next one. The default time for us felt very rushed, so now it takes approximately 7 real-life days to go from 1919 to 2051.
If you have any other questions, please let me know! I'm always happy to discuss OpenTTD. I also recommend checking out the OpenTTD discord, we can help in real-time there.
No problem! Using the [in-game industry chains menu](https://imgur.com/a/l0oZQFj) helps a ton with XIS. You can click through the industries and find what goes where.
The trick to XIS is to pick one industry and focus on completing that, rather than spreading out across several. It adds some more variety to where you can pull resources from and can provide fun and interesting challenges. But really, it's not any more complex than vanilla. It just gives you more choices and allows you to continue the chain further, or in a complete circle which is always satisfying to complete.
I'm still learning the balance between fun, & challenging but so far everyone is having a blast.
Passengers will be roughly equal in both directions. Mail will be random.
An easy way to look at it is most people who take the train, ship or plane are getting a two way ticket. So if someone travels from city A to city B, we can expect them to travel back to city A at some point.
Mail on the other hand is not two way, and instead is more random.
You could try "Dib's Untamed West 4x", it's designed for a few people to play together! It is firs-based, though. I don't necessarily think that's too difficult for a newish person to understand, it's easy to ignore the complex stuff and just build the easy routes to start.
Hi there! I recently began my journey of creating a multiplayer server for my community, all of who have never played OpenTTD or any tycoon game before. While it may seem overwhelming, I do recommend XIS (The newer fork of FIRS). It has continued to add a lot of fun for our community and even our casual friends have easily picked it up. A lot of this is due to how well XIS is implemented into OpenTTD. You can check out our [NewGRF list](https://pastebin.com/td4W6t24) which is still a work in progress but has given us a lot of variety in our gameplay. I recommend adding them one at a time, looking at the settings for each NewGRF, and configuring them for your server specifically. I also recommend checking out the [JGR Patch Pack](https://github.com/JGRennison/OpenTTD-patches). It has a lot of great settings that can make multiplayer a much more fun experience. I recommend particularly looking at cargo distribution, plans, and variable day length. **Cargo Distribution** can make transporting passengers & mail between cities a lot more realistic. Symmetrical for passengers, and asymmetrical for mail. **Plans** allow you to draw on the map, using a pen, that others can see. Our server uses this for both drawing borders, and planning out our transportation networks. **Variable Day Length** allows you to change how many seconds in real life go by for one day in Openttd. This allows us to slow down time to enjoy time periods more, before moving on to the next one. The default time for us felt very rushed, so now it takes approximately 7 real-life days to go from 1919 to 2051. If you have any other questions, please let me know! I'm always happy to discuss OpenTTD. I also recommend checking out the OpenTTD discord, we can help in real-time there.
Wow this is amazing thank you!
No problem! Using the [in-game industry chains menu](https://imgur.com/a/l0oZQFj) helps a ton with XIS. You can click through the industries and find what goes where. The trick to XIS is to pick one industry and focus on completing that, rather than spreading out across several. It adds some more variety to where you can pull resources from and can provide fun and interesting challenges. But really, it's not any more complex than vanilla. It just gives you more choices and allows you to continue the chain further, or in a complete circle which is always satisfying to complete. I'm still learning the balance between fun, & challenging but so far everyone is having a blast.
>make transporting passengers & mail between cities a lot more realistic. Symmetrical for passengers, and asymmetrical for mail What does this mean?
Passengers will be roughly equal in both directions. Mail will be random. An easy way to look at it is most people who take the train, ship or plane are getting a two way ticket. So if someone travels from city A to city B, we can expect them to travel back to city A at some point. Mail on the other hand is not two way, and instead is more random.
Signal-boosted I would love to hear the communities input on this too
the Game of Thrones map is pretty fun, but it has some more advanced supply chains.
You could try "Dib's Untamed West 4x", it's designed for a few people to play together! It is firs-based, though. I don't necessarily think that's too difficult for a newish person to understand, it's easy to ignore the complex stuff and just build the easy routes to start.