OpenTTD vs Simutrans | The Linux Transport Simulation Showdown

OpenTTD is a bit awkward to install. While Simutrans comes with a complete set of graphics and icons of its own, OpenTTD, remaining faithful to Transport Tycoon Deluxe on which it is based, requires the graphic and sound files from that game. This means that to install it, a copy of Transport Tycoon Deluxe is needed.

If you already have a TTD CD, you can just copy the files from that. If you do not, then there is another method.

Tycoon Transport Deluxe can be acquired for free from abandonia.com as it is considered an abandoned game, but the legality of this is quite grey. The GRF files can be extracted from the zip file from there.

You now can install OpenTTD. In Ubuntu - "sudo apt-get install openttd". You will be prompted to read a readme file for details on which files and where to copy them.
The files then need to be copied from that to certain directories on the OpenTTD installation. There is no script or handy installer to automate this. Don't forget the permissions. Once OpenTTD has a base graphics installed, you may be able to use the GFX-downloader to get another - but it is a catch 22 as without the base graphics, there are no fonts, so it cannot be started, so you cannot use the downloader. You must go through the hard way initially with either the Closed Source graphics or OpenGFX first.

Newer versions of OpenTTD (not currently on their site) may include a method where the non-free 3rd party files are not required. At the time of writing this is not currently available. What would be great is if future versions included at least the OpenGFX base graphics so it could be GUI all the way, or system base fonts are used for initial dialogues.

On installation, Simutrans gets an easy win.

Simutrans is fairly easy to install with just the defaults. Where it is in a distribution, it will install and run simply through the built in package manager, and will work straight away.

In ubuntu "sudo apt-get install simutrans". For Windows or Mac, you should download simutrans complete, which comes with everything you need to start playing. Download it here.

To get nice graphics, you can go onto the simutrans website and install additional pak files. This is not required, but optional, but the pak128 looks very good. Pak64 is the default, it has the most features and has had the most time put in so far. This is for good reason - the lead developers of Simutrans personally contributed to it.

I strongly recommend reading the Simutrans Starter Guide before getting stuck in - it may save you making newbie mistakes and get over things that take days to learn.



Simutrans is also available as an iPhone App.

Simutrans and OpenTTD each have a slightly different method to laying ways.

In OpenTTD a way is laid almost square by square. When you have a long line that may need to route around hills and forest, this can be painstaking. Especially when you can only issue those building orders while the game is running (unless you enable building while paused). It has autorail which at least saves having to select which orientation a track is and allows you to drag a line.

In Simutrans, you can click a starting point, an end point, and the game will auto route the road or rail. It will even look for existing infrastructure to use like village road systems. This is much quicker and less painstaking. You can click, hold and drag the end point to see the route it would choose. Of course, this means that if you want to optimize the route, you may have to dig up some after. There is no need to set the orientation.

The Simutrans method has a shortcoming in that laying dual tracks too close will cause them to join up in a way you did not intend. You can not route diagonal tracks as tightly in Simutrans as in OpenTTD. Use the drag functionality and control key to prevent this happening.

The dragging in Simutrans and OpenTTD are very different. OpenTTD requires you to drag like brush strokes - you cover every square exactly. SImutrans, you click a start point, then click and hold near the end point, and can drag the whole route around like a rubber band, releasing to settle the line. SImutrans also has an undo button if you let go when you didn't intend to.

Overall, the Simutrans pro's do outweight its cons, and after using Simutrans, going back to the OpenTTD way of laying roads and tracks is very painful.

OpenTTD has a network play mode. Multiple players can connect from machines on a LAN or the Internet and go head to head building their empires. There is no building while paused - indeed no pause mode in fact.

The game takes a while to unfold in any mode, so you need plenty of time to play a Multiplayer game. You can join and leave games at any time - taking over a company not being played or starting a new company. each player gets vehicles with a very clear livery too.

Simutrans currently has no such feature, but one is being planned and developed currently.

One big differentiator in the games is the complexity of their industry chains.
What is an industry chain?
In a transport game, moving freight is a very important part of the game and can become one of the main sources of income. This means moving coal to a power plant or similar.

In OpenTTD, there are some shallow chains, and one or two with 2 layers - farm to food processing factory to a city. The number of industry types is fairly limited.

In Simutrans, this is much richer - with chemical industry chains, food canning chains, car manufacturing chains.

Take the last example. You need a coal mine and an Iron Ore mine. These are used to supply a steel mill. You need to be moving both coal and iron ore to the steel mill to get steel. You then can move the steel to a car manufacturing plant. This will then be able to manufacture cars. You can then move the cars to a car showroom where they are sold. At each step, if you get the transportation right, there is a chance to make a profit. If you control the whole chain well, then you get great profit.

Each step is an enabler - if there is no steel to the car plant, there are no cars to transport, if there is no coal or ore to the steel mill, then there is no steel to transport. This means you need to start feeding industries and then you can move their output once you have their inputs sorted.

Now watch out here for what can only be called "back pressure". You may suddenly find stops that have previously been a "good little earner" give you know goods to transport. Check the destination - if it has a lot (over capacity) of this particular kind of good, but not enough of another to function, then there will no longer be a demand, and the good will no longer be being produced. It is really, really important that you have pickup based transport either serving more than one good type (unlikely) or set to 100% at the source station.

One handy aspect of Simutrans is that an industry will show those others that are its suppliers and consumers on its dialog. This make it easy to find the routes. It comes with a price though - industries that do not list each other will not accept or supply goods on routes between them. These operate like contracts.

One handy thing OpenTTD has that Simutrans is missing are messages to inform you of rises or decreases in production. The author is not aware if this is because the messages are not there, or the model does not behave that way in Simutrans.

In Simutrans Power stations serve a purpose more than just to sink coal/oil cargo - they produce electricity, and by creating a network of transformers and powerlines, this can increase production in other connected industries.

One tip that holds for both games - if you are starting out, aim for the connections between power stations as these are quickly profitable, and do not depend on other industry chain links. In Simutrans, having only half an industry chain will eventually stop when there is too much of one product and no demand somewhere down the line.

OpenTTD and Simutrans have a different tack in building stations.
The basics are the same, you have bus stops, road loading bays and train platforms to name a few common types. Placing stations adjacent to each other is in effect extending the first station, and allowing transport interconnects.

In OpenTTD, you can click and drag out a station. You have to preselect the orientation. This means you can quickly place a station and you do not need to have the rail in place before hand. In fact - you must not lay out the rail, but just add the station.


In Simutrans, you need to pre-lay the road or rail before being able to place a station. This also goes for depots. You then place a station square by square. This first appears a bit of a pain, but without needing to preselect the orientation, and being able to better plan station layouts, as well as extend them with buildings and warehouses, it turns out to be more versatile.

Simutrans also allows you to build underground stations. More on that below.

One thing unique to Simutrans is the underground mode. OpenTTD allows tunnel building point to point, but Simutrans has something much richer.
You start by placing a similar point to point tunnel, but then pressing Shift+U takes you to an underground view. Here you can create tunnelways, placing stations, signals, depots and so on in this view. Once you have stations on them and trains running, you can disconnect the point to point tunnels, and end up with a pure underground rail system.

It is very expensive, but means you can route trains through the heart of built up areas. Frustratingly, you can only go a few layers deep before you hit water. However, you can build network at each layer, independant of ones below it. It can get a bit too confusing if you have too many layers. You can then link up the networks via their stations, although allowing trains or cars to move between those networks requires surface exits and ramps.

Also in the underground mode, it is not easy to construct anything but the simplest junctions without major surface excavations somewhere.

Simutrans Underground Mode- a Wiki tutorial

There is also a way that this can be used to cheat - building water tunnels that are mysteriously above the water level, but considered underwater.

This is another place where Simutrans shines.
In OpenTTD, you can clone a vehicle when creating a new one from a depot, or clone its orders, better still you can share orders between vehicles so when you update one, they are all changed. Shared orders means only one vehicles orders are updated, and other vehicle sharing those orders get the changes. The cloning in OpenTTD allows you to select a vehicle, a clone it and its order so they are either a copy or shared. Cloning in Simutrans is a bit more clumsy in that the vehicle chain you wish to clone must be in a garage to clone it in this way, however, the lines system, which I will go into below, makes the order much easier.

You can also group vehicles so you can select them, repair them or view their finances together. However, orders do not make groupings, that is an additional step. Being able to set up repair and upgrades on groups is very handy, and the upgrades are a feature that Simutrans could do with.

In Simutrans, you can create single schedules, or "lines". You can promote schedules to lines. A line is a bunch of orders, and a number of vehicles can operate on a line. These lines can be named (and seasoned players will always name their lines) and updated across the board. vehicles can be built in a depot, have a line applied to them, and they are automatically grouped with other vehicles on the line.

There is a lines report, which allows you to update lines, and also see how profitable they are, how much goods they are carrying and if there are crowded or empty stations on their route.

Lines in Simutrans give it an edge over OpenTTD bar one thing, in OpenTTD, groups of vehicles can be scheduled for upgrades, and as yet, the writer has not found equivalent functionality in Simutrans.

On repairs, Simutrans trains do not break down or require maintenance in the same way as OpenTTD. Perhaps this is a bit of depth to the simulation that could be added.

One huge blow for Simutrans, at least versions 101 and 102 is that it is still a little buggy and crashes. If you have spent hours on a game since a last save, that will be very frustrating. However, it is under active development and there are good channels to report any problems.

OpenTTD gives a much more polished experience in this regard, it may not have quite as many nice features but it is very solid on stability.

Simutrans also exhibits occasional screen update glitches, which moving away and back can sort out. There are also times when it can pull a lot of CPU - generally when there is a lot happening on screen - like a busy city area, and you hit the fast forward button.

In Simutrans, when building trains, you are given a heads up on how many station tiles it require - this does not exist in OpenTTD.
Simutrans and OpenTTD both have tool tips, although Simutrans ones are a bit easier to activate.

While the Simutrans line system is nice, the OpenTTD orders list is more comprehensive allowing you to control the loading/unloading behaviour a little more.

The train/truck dialogs on simutrans show you a picture-in-picture of its location, its current destination, cargo, running costs and profit/loss. In OpenTTD, there is a window for its location, and you need to open a number of sub-dialogs to see those details.

In OpenTTD if you click on a square with a station and a train, you will get the details for both which is quite handy. On Simutrans, you have to click multiple times to see each items info pop up.

• Simutrans has more graphical variety and can look better.


• Simutrans has more handy tools for tracks.


• Simutrans is more expandable.


• OpenTTD has a network game feature.


• Simutrans has an underground mode.


• Simutrans has a richer industry chain and passenger model.


• Both are under active development.


• Both have lively and supportive communities.


• Both are Open Source. That means you can contribute to the one you like!


• Both install on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX


• Simutrans is a bit buggy and can crash.


• OpenTTD has an awkward install process which depends on non-free software.

Overall - Simutrans looks over and above a better looking prospect, but it has a little bit of polish required to round off those bugs. It is solid enough to play well and saving often helps. OpenTTD's network multiplayer mode will keep me playing it though, at least until one arrives in Simutrans.

Since both are Open source, there should perhaps be a bit more cross polination, not least in aspects like the graphics for OpenTTD (thus decoupling it from non-free resources).