Transport Fever 3: Beginner Guide to Get Started

Here's a beginner guide to get started in Transport Fever 3.

The first hour of Transport Fever 3 covers a lot of ground. You set up a company, take a loan, connect a town to its industries, and run your first ships and trains. This guide follows the in-game tutorial in order so you know what to do at each step.

Camera Controls and Pausing

Hold the right mouse button and drag to move the camera. Use the middle wheel to zoom in and out. Hold the middle wheel down to rotate the camera around the center of the screen. Press the spacebar at any time to pause the game while you plan.

Building Your Headquarters in Transport Fever 3

Build your Headquarters first. You can place it in the region of any town, and it gives that town a small growth bonus. Open the trophy tab, pick your first building, and place it.

Each time your company ranks up, you can add more buildings to it. When you move up from Junior to Mechanic, you get a medium building to add.

Taking Your First Loan

You need a loan before you can build anything. Open the finance tab and pick the loans tab. Each loan shows an amount, a repayment period, and an interest rate. Unlike Transport Fever 2, loans in Transport Fever 3 make you pay back the capital as well as the interest, so your lines need to cover both.

Plan how you will earn money before you borrow. Compare the amount, the repayment period, and the interest rate on each offer. A short period means a high yearly payment. In the tutorial, you can take a $3 million loan for 1 year, which means you pay back $3,120,000 at the end of the year, so your lines have to earn that much within 12 months.

A $7 million loan over 5 years at 6% interest spreads the payments out. Outside the tutorial, offers can change with your game settings.

Town Growth and Districts

Click on a town to open its window. The Supplies tab shows how many passengers and what cargo the town needs, and whether your supply is good, medium, or insufficient. In the starting town of Earley, the Supplies tab lists 256 passengers, 62 fish, and 61 planks.

Every town has three district types. Green is residential, blue is commercial, and yellow is industrial. Residents travel to industrial districts for work and to commercial districts for shopping. Commercial and industrial districts need cargo.

Placing Road Stops

In Transport Fever 3, one road stop handles both passengers and cargo. Pick a single-sided or double-sided stop from the road menu. A faint line around the stop shows its catchment area, and buildings inside it get a highlight on their plot.

Move the stop around until it covers the district you want. If a stop misses a building, add another one. A basic road stop can only unload cargo. To pick cargo up, you need a Cargo Station.

Setting Up a Road Depot

A Road Depot is where you buy trucks, buses, and other road vehicles. It also maintains vehicles inside its maintenance radius, which is new in Transport Fever 3. Place it close to the route your vehicles use, so they spend time in its radius. The depot does not need to cover the whole route.

Use the filter bar to pick the vehicle type. Click the yellow person icon to see passenger vehicles. The game starts in 1900, so your first options are the Droshky and the Stage Coach. The Stage Coach is a little faster and carries more.

Creating Your First Line

Press L to open the Line Manager. The top panel lists your lines, the middle panel shows the vehicles on the selected line, and the bottom panel shows the stops in order.

Click a stop in the world to create a new line, then click your other stops to build the route. Open the depot, find your vehicle, and send it to the line. You can also buy vehicles from the Line Manager. The game uses the nearest depot to send them out.

Connecting Industries With Roads

The tutorial asks you to supply Earley with planks. The forest produces logs, the sawmill turns logs into planks, and Earley needs the planks. Connect them with roads first.

You get three road types. Town Streets let towns grow but have the lowest speed limit. Country Roads connect towns and industries. Highways are for long trips and have higher speed limits. At the start, you can only build the Country Road, which has a top speed of 60 km/h. It costs $60,000 per km to build and $10,000 per km each year to maintain.

Click once to start a road and click again to finish it. Right-click to undo. For a curve, click three times: once to start, once to set the center of the curve, and once to finish. Follow the contour lines to keep the road flat. When you cross a river, pick a low point and press M to raise the bridge. A green square under the bridge means vehicles can use it.

Next, create a line from the forest to the sawmill by clicking each one. Create a second line from the sawmill to a stop in Earley. You can use a passenger stop to drop the planks off. Buy horse carriages with the cargo filter on and send them to each line. The logging camp is an industry, so vehicles load logs there without a separate stop.

Reading Line Statistics in Transport Fever 3

Open line statistics to see which lines make money and which lose it. You get the line name, the current load, the capacity, the utilization, the satisfaction, the frequency, the rate, and the balance.

Utilization is the load divided by the capacity, shown as a percent. The rate shows how many units a line moves each year, and you use it to balance the number of vehicles on connected lines.

The sawmill takes in 4 logs and gives out 8 planks. The log line had a rate of 20, so the plank line needed a rate of about 40. Duplicating vehicles in the Line Manager brought the plank line up to 37, close enough to keep pace. Check the ratio for each industry you connect.

If a vehicle leaves in the wrong direction without cargo, use the reverse icon to send it back. You can also use the auto rename option to name your lines in one click.

Running Ships and Warehouses

Earley also needs fish. Build a harbor and a ship depot near the fish farm. Ships come in small and large sizes, and large ships can only dock at large harbors, so match the sizes. You can pick a single dock, a centralized terminal, or a double dock.

The ship depot also maintains vehicles, so place it where ships spend time and include the dock in its radius. A harbor has no storage for cargo, so you need a Warehouse inside its catchment area. In Transport Fever 3, Warehouses move cargo between transport types. A universal warehouse is the one to use when several cargo types come in.

You can also pick liquid, bulk, flatbed, or goods warehouses. A specialized warehouse costs twice as much to buy and twice as much to maintain. You don't need a road between the dock and the warehouse. Cargo moves between them on its own. To get cargo out of the warehouse, build a Cargo Station next to it and connect it to a road.

When the two are connected, the warehouse shows up in blue when you click the station. Then create a line from the Cargo Station to a stop in the commercial district, and send trucks to it.

Building Your First Train Line in Transport Fever 3

The tutorial asks you to connect a passenger line from Earley to Yarmouth. Pick a train station from the menu. You can use a template, set the number of tracks and the length, and choose a terminus or a through station.

A through station lets you add more destinations later. Place the station near the industrial and commercial districts, and connect it to a road. Press 6 to open the track tool. You get three track types, and each has its own pollution, top speed, and cost. The standard track has a top speed of 100 km/h and 20 pollution per km.

Click once and drag to lay track. The contour lines and incline show up as you build, and the track speed shows as well. Connect each train station to a bus stop with a small road. Add the bus stop to your bus line in the Line Manager. Swap a single stop for a double stop where it helps passengers get on and off without a long loop.

Build a train depot about halfway along the track, since depots maintain trains in their radius too. Add track from the depot in both directions so you can use it for more lines later. Buy the locomotive first, since early on you only have steam engines available. Match the locomotive speed to the wagon speed. 

The Prussian Class T3 at 50 km/h pairs with the Bavarian Passenger Coach at 50 km/h. As you add wagons, the performance rating drops. Don't go past Mediocre, since the train takes longer to speed up, especially on upgrades. Open the depot or click the train, pick center line, and choose your new line.

Taking Subsidies

Subsidies in Transport Fever 3 give you money for set jobs, like bringing passengers from nearby towns to a fishing ground or workers to a sawmill. Each subsidy shows three amounts: a payment when you accept, a larger payment when you finish, and a fine if you fail.

It also shows a deadline. In one case, the amounts were $2 million, $11 million, and $8 million, with 3 years and 22 days to finish. Your subsidies show their own amounts and deadlines.

Check the deadline and what you need before you accept. If you already have the stops and a line, a subsidy costs you little and can pay a lot. It also gives you money without taking a larger loan.

Next Steps After Your First Lines

Once your first lines run, check line statistics and match your vehicle counts to the rate of each industry. Sell vehicles you don't need. If a line has more capacity than the industry produces, sell the extra vehicles.

Keep an eye out for new subsidy notices, since they give you cash early without a larger loan. Each rank you reach also lets you add to your Headquarters.

To start well in Transport Fever 3, take a loan you can repay, connect your road stops and depots to the districts, and use the Line Manager and line statistics to keep your vehicles balanced with the cargo.

FAQ

Q. Do loans in Transport Fever 3 work like Transport Fever 2?

A. No. You pay back the capital as well as the interest over time, so your lines need to cover both.

Q. Can a road stop pick up cargo?

A. No. A basic road stop can only unload cargo. You need a Cargo Station to pick cargo up.

Q. Do you need a road between a dock and a warehouse?

A. No. Cargo moves between them on its own. You only need a road at the Cargo Station that takes cargo out.

Q. How many wagons can you add to a train in Transport Fever 3?

A. Add wagons until the performance rating reaches Mediocre, and stop there. Past that, the train takes too long to speed up.