40 hours in: the pollution system is a dealbreaker for me (+ other feedback)

[u/cpc_niklaos]

Let me start by saying: to me, the fun in Transport Fever is moving stuff around the map. I'm a big fan of the series. I pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition, and this game has been a massive disappointment. Pollution is my biggest issue, but here’s everything.

Pollution

Pollution is by far the worst mechanic in the game.

Industry pollution

• The only real fix you get is industry greenification (a.k.a Pixie Dust /s), limited to 5 uses per map. Second, you get a pollution removal plant that magically erases all pollution in a small area at a truly absurd cost. As it stands, there's zero gameplay in it. There's no way to reduce pollution by transporting something to or from an industry. For instance, air filters in for the steel mill and waste out of farm. Or to invest in an industry to help it reduce its pollution (leveling it up), the steel mill could move to an arc furnace for instance.

• *Pollution is applied per region. * So the strategy is to wait for industries to spawn in sacrificial regions. As long as the factory is just past the border, you're in the clear. Pollution doesn't seem to cross borders, just like IRL. /s

• You can't control where industries spawn. A random spawn can make a city stagnate, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Rail pollution

• Rail passively pollutes, but roads don't?! A high-speed line pollutes just by existing; a highway doesn't. Traffic on both should pollute. IMO, the infrastructure shouldn't passively pollute. A reputation hit when you build something is fine, but that should be it. (Reputation is also a pretty useless mechanic, but at least it doesn't get in the way of having fun.)

• The workaround is tram track. Lay tram track instead of rail everywhere. It's a shame, because light rail is an interesting idea, but in practice there's no reason to use regular rail when tram track doesn't pollute.

Electric vs. diesel/steam pollution

• Electric vehicles pollute as much as diesel. I ran a test where an electric tram line polluted just as much as a comparable diesel truck line. I don't get that, shouldn't all Electric vehicles have close to 0 pollution generated?

• Electricity production should be the gameplay. For example, transporting gas or fuel to a power plant, with pollution concentrated around the plant. Trains could slow to a crawl if there isn't enough power, or buying from the grid could cost more than running your own company's power plant.

Tunnels

• Pollution doesn't escape tunnels, and tunnels are too cheap. So the hack is to put your entire rail network underground. In the late game, a tunnel across the whole map runs a few hundred million. Peanuts.

Revenue

I'm playing on Very Hard, so make of that what you will, but money already feels unlimited once you've figured out the revenue algorithm. Easier difficulties are even more boring.

• Revenue is driven primarily by distance. Short routes cannot be profitable, so the optimal play is to build pointless ultra-long routes. There should be a flat rate for pickup and delivery, plus a smaller distance-based rate.

• Passengers don't care what transport costs. Build two small clusters of towns connected by buses, link the north cluster to the south cluster with a heliport (much cheaper than an airport), and your money problems are solved. Sims are more than happy to take a helicopter to go grocery shopping. Ticket prices should influence demand, and the player should control them.

I could go on, but you get the point: this isn't a logistics simulation.

Other issues

• Industry productivity is static. There's no way to invest in industries to make them pollute less or produce more. Delivering workers and tools only gives fairly negligible bonuses.

• Infrastructure building isn't interesting. Because of bridge speed limits, the right bridge is almost always the same one, and tunnels make bridges unnecessary anyway. Planning a massive bridge should be a fun, interesting, expensive decision you actually have to think about.

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After roughly 40 hours, I can't recommend the game in its current state. Most of these issues I could live with, but pollution is the dealbreaker. It doesn't add challenge; it just pushes you toward exploits (tram track everywhere, everything in tunnels, sacrificial regions). I hope to see changes in the future. I'll check back in a year.

[u/Totino_Montana]

lol this is gunna sound insane but use the tree tool and plant a bunch of shrubs around industry plans and rails and WALLAH! The pollution is gone :)

[u/cpc_niklaos → u/Totino_Montana]

Lol, ok so I didn't think this would actually work but as part of writing this post I did a test where I noticed some weird reduction of pollution around forests. This does seem to work, specially with the "Bushes" which are smaller and can ultra packed. This seems to reduce pollution to 0.... Silly AF. Here are supporting screen shots, the floating blue number top left of the industry indicates pollution.

With mega packed bushes:

[u/cpc_niklaos → u/cpc_niklaos]

With no trees:

[u/Yavianice → u/cpc_niklaos]

Does this even matter? I thought pollution is counter per region and not per area of effect?