Contents
How to Play
How to Set up Your First Village
Firstly, you need to place your Warehouse, we recommend placing it in an open area, preferably in the middle of the map with coal not too far away.
To build your WAREHOUSE press the INDUSTRIES button in the bottom right and select WAREHOUSE.
If this is greyed out, make sure you’re somewhat zoomed in as you cannot build when zoomed out in MAP MODE.
Next you will need to build your VILLAGE, to start, select VILLAGE HALL from your build menu and construct that outside the bounds of your already placed warehouse, we recommend placing it in an open space with water nearby, and coal at a middle point between your VILLAGE and WAREHOUSE.
Selecting your VILLAGE HALL will change your build menu and allow you to construct LABORERS RESIDENCE and DIRT ROADS around your VILLAGE HALL.
Use all your wood to then construct LABORERS RESIDENCE to house your villagers in order to maximise your workforce
The is the foundations of your first town complete.
How to Build Your First Train
To build your first train, you’ll need to start with a TRAIN DEPOT, this depot must be at least the length of the train that you desire to build, we recommend making it as long as you can within the confines of where you’re working to future proof – make sure you’re laying the track into the correct opening of the TRAIN DEPOT.
Once that’s built, select the TRAIN DEPOT and click ADD TRAIN TO QUEUE to open the TRAIN PRESET MENU. Here you can build trains and save them as presets to quickly build them as and when you need them.
On the right you’ll see a number of selections.
LOCOMOTIVES are the engines and power of your trains and are required to make your train move.
TENDERS are a special fuelling wagon for your train that keeps it topped up for longer journeys, this isn’t for moving coal.
PASSENGER WAGONS are for transporting your villagers to and from work and other villages.
Finally, CARGO WAGONS are for transporting goods around your world, and can accommodate many types of goods with visual differences.
Create the train you need for your purposes by customising the selections and then saving the preset using the PLUS button. Once ready, hit BUILD, and your first train is made.
You’ll want to create a train for each purpose you require, for example, one for transporting workers to work from your village, one for transporting goods from a production facility like a coal mine to your warehouse, and a train to take goods to your village.
How to Create a Rail Network and Routes
If you have a number of places that need to be linked, such as a Village, a Warehouse, a Train Depot and a Coal Mine, you’ll need to create a rail network to facilitate transport around your world.
First, Open your Logistics Menu (bottom right when nothing is selected), and you’ll find ‘SMALL STATIONS’. STATIONS are linked to the things they’re next to when you build them, such as COAL MINES or VILLAGES, you can use the blue highlight in the UI to see this, it’s important things such as houses are all highlighted when you place your station, so they are within the catchment area.
Build them, create PLATFORMS and lay RAIL to link your stations together in whichever way you see fit, we recommend using blueprints to create default intersections that can help the efficiency of your rail. We also recommend Platforms have a length of 11 tiles, and should all have bridges with larger loading areas.
Once your STATIONS have platforms and the TRAIN DEPOT, WAREHOUSE, VILLAGE and STATIONS have all been linked with RAIL TRACK, press the route button (that’s the third button at the top left) or Ctrl+R to open the route menu.
Here, you can create routes for your trains, and pressing ‘SELECT A DESTINATION’ will allow you to select any of the aforementioned STATIONS you’ve built. Select the STATION closest to your VILLAGE HALL and then press ‘SELECT A DESTINATION’ once again to add your other STATION.
You can customise your objective, wait conditions and filters to specify the cargo and conditions upon the trains arrival to the STATIONS. For beginners, we would recommend using the default “Until Done” command, but you can gain better granular control of your conditions by using one of many more custom attributes available.
Finally once the route has been created, assign it to your train you previously built by selecting the train, and selecting the drop down route menu, and enjoy the foundations of your automated train world.
How to Setup Your Coal Deposit
Zoom out to Map Mode to find a COAL DEPOSIT nearby
Once you’ve found it, navigate to your ‘INDUSTRIES’ tab (bottom right) and select COAL MINE.
Build this ontop of the COAL DEPOSIT.
Add COAL STORAGE around the COAL MINE
To transport COAL from your COAL MINE to your WAREHOUSE or VILLAGE you will require TRAINS and ROUTES to achieve this. You’ll want COAL MINES to have ample rotating supplies of workers, and trains carrying COAL to your VILLAGE and WAREHOUSE.
Please check out our other videos on HOW TO BUILD YOUR FIRST TRAIN and HOW TO BUILD A ROUTE to help you achieve this.
Once you’ve built relevant TRAINs and ROUTEs for your COAL MINE your goods will start transporting to your target destination.
And that’s how you set up COAL PRODUCTION
What is a Train Signal?
A train signal in Sweet Transit is a way to break your rail network into ‘Signal Blocks’. The reason for doing this is simple, to allow multiple trains to occupy a single track. Placing signals is integral to having an efficient rail network, and we encourage you to experiment and learn.
When placing a signal you will see an arrow on the inside of the track that indicates what direction you’re wanting the trains to move on that piece of track – changing the side you’re placing the signal on the track will change the direction of the arrow. Clicking and dragging while placing will allow you to lay many Signals at once, partitioning the track at many more intervals, meaning more trains can run your track.
When looking at a signal, it will be green if the signal block ahead is free of trains meaning the approaching train can move forward into the next signal block worry-free, otherwise the signal will be red and the approaching train will stop.
What is a Chain Signal?
A chain signal is generally used to resolve intersections. A chain signal will check and prevent trains from coming to a stop in the middle of an intersection and blocking the junction. It does this by checking if the signal block ahead of the exit of an intersection is occupied, if so, the train will not move into the intersection until the signal block after the intersection is also clear. These should ‘generally’ only be used going into an intersection.
General Starting Advice / Beginner’s Guide
When generating a map, try having around 0.25 water and mountains in order to ensure an easier experience for yourself when expanding
Use the Blueprint system to help you in copying and pasting rails, signals, rail bridges and stations all in one – these codes can be shared with friends and communities for efficient collaboration!
Building more villages usually solves a lot of problems that you can run into regarding expansion and population growth
Try and keep distance when building, especially between your village hall, your warehouse and your farms, this is to ensure smoother transition when expanding your settlements.
When expanding, don’t build too fast, too quickly, as a lot of things have resource upkeep costs, and you can need to ensure you avoid upkeep creep.
When building trains and creating routes, try locking passengers/goods to specific trains to allow even more granular control over your rail network.
Have you got a stuck train? Then try the following:
- Firstly, check your route, and your track to make sure the train can move cleanly to the selected location, that your track is connected to stations, your signals are the right way round, your depots and more, as this is a common cause.
- If there is no train in front and the train is refusing to move despite having a clear route built, try building more signals.
- Make sure that your path is not made of only chain signals, because a train will not move unless it can reserve the entire path ahead.
- If trains are stopped one behind another, then it’s likely you do not have enough chain signals on your network.
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