My Thoughts On Cts

Blackpool or London would be great. Personally l’d love to see the 40s to 50s era in a tram simulator with a Birmingham City route to the Lickey Hills.

If modern day, then a Sydney tram route would appeal to me.

 

I'd love to see the Manx railway. It would be a bit less intensive than a city tram network, but it would still be very pretty.

 

What is everybody's thoughts on CTS currently ? I see its 30% off at the moment and the recent steam reviews are positive. Has there been some updates since the last post here fixing issues or adding features. Is it now worth getting ?

I own Tramsim Vienna already and to be honest, I dont mind CTS being a fictional city....Its the experience of driving trams I like and setting up routes/timetables etc (which was something Tramsim vienna never had) and seems to borrow that from Bus Sim 21's Tram addon

 

In my area, the latest reviews are simply along the lines of, “I like it.” I also check the CTS page periodically, currently version 0.4.0, after the New Year they want to release 1.0. Will they be able to add anything new by then? I doubt it. I think it's still a “weak” game.

 

Still not enough discount to tempt me at 30% off.

Even with the current sale incentive, Steam DB still only shows 53 players in game.

TSW5 - in excess of 1100.
SimRail over 700.

 

and TSW5 is only the Steam users

 

Flogging a dead horse comes to mind…

 

I doubt it's very dead, it has a lot of issues though

 

Based on my observations, I would like to say that you should not look at the number of players, but at their dynamics over time. In the case of CTS, the peak of online (705 players) was at release, then online was just low, but in the range of [25;100] players.
Of course it's silly to say that "everything is fine", but people play, maybe the interest in trams specifically is not as high as in trains.
As I wrote, I decided for myself that if I see development progress within a year, then I will buy, or if there is a good discount.

I don't want to write anything bad about SimRail, but in my opinion it's a pretty raw product. When I tried to play it, it didn't even have a save function. At the moment there is no news from the developers at all.
In this comparison CTS looks more favourable to me.

 

They released a massive update just a few weeks ago. I doubt they'll be immediately giving out information for future updates.

 

I decided to go for this in the current sale and was pleasantly surprised. Physics, graphics and sounds are quite nice and while I’m still not sold on the fictional city concept I hope the solid bones here can develop into a sim with additional city / tram DLCs like the TSW model.

I’ve never driven a tram IRL but have driven buses for the large vehicle experience and have rode plenty having previously lived in Toronto and it all feels plausible. Side note, Toronto would make a great North American DLC at some point with its extensive network.

 

Doubts about the CTS are not about quality, but about further development. However, your words made me think about buying one, especially in my region the price is more or less loyal.

 

After the post of honourable dr1980 I finally decided to buy the game within the framework of this sale. After spending a whole evening on the game, by pure coincidence I became an early access supported buyer, because Steam probably won't let me refund after ~4 game hours.
Pros:

• The ride feel, sounds and handling are really good;
• The variety of trams, even though I've only opened 2, they differ in features and sounds, I haven't noticed any difference in handling yet;
• Announcer in German adds some authenticity and atmosphere, in my country Russian and English are mostly used, German is a rarity for us;
• The planning and routing, but this is perhaps the point without which the game would turn into an arcade;
• I like the idea of developing a transport company, you can plan your own fleet of vehicles;
• The length of the routes and the city is high enough for early access (I'll write about the city itself below), if you ignore the placeholders at many intersections, there is enough space to ride;
• The presence of real brands, which dtg_jan wrote about on the previous page, is really nice and makes the world more believable.

Cons:

• The graphics are detailed, but in my case it seems somehow grainy, although the graphics preset is set to "high", definitely different from the screenshots;
• HUD is minimalistic, I would add the ability to display traffic lights and restrictions similar to TSW;
• Some quests do not work or are not explained, one of the quests was "stop at the station near the University", but it counted only on the 2nd attempt, now I need to make 15 perfect stops, but what is meant by "perfect" no one informed me;
  
• IBIS setup is unclear, the manual doesn't really tell me how to programme a route, I enter the IBIS code, driver no. but then can't set the route as there are no stop numbers anywhere, I have to skip this before starting a trip;
• The city of Tramau is the cornerstone (in our country it means very controversial) in this game, I will write more details at the end of the post.

In general, I enjoyed the gameplay itself, yesterday I sat at the computer all evening until 10 PM, although I usually go to bed at that time, but yesterday my spouse had to remind me of the time and that I still have to go to work in the morning. I drove the routes I had built and didn't want to finish. However, the minuses are hitting me below the belt. Yes, we have a fictional town, but in fact it consists of a circular road, its intersection and 3 junctions on the edges. Even in Cities: Skylines, I've never built roads and public transport routes so uniform. Why couldn't you recreate at least a small section of some real city? Maybe I don't have the information, but it doesn't require licensing, does it? Be sure to post if anyone is aware of this. We are greeted by a nice setting, the developers were clearly inspired by European cities, a few architectural structures are recognisable. But is it as interesting as a recreated real city? Of course not. We drive through a nice environment, which has no history, iconic events related to it and other things that could add to the involvement, and it's very sad. In TSW, ETS2 and ATS I always like to drive near real objects, cities and architectural monuments, unfortunately in CTS this feeling is not present.
We end up with an engaging simulator in a not very interesting setting. If the developers will bring the project to mind, will fill the "root" city and add real cities with the ability to customise routes, the game will find its buyers and fans. I was forced to put "not recommended" on Steam, but as soon as I see the changes, the review will be reconsidered and become positive.

 

Asked about the post-release roadmap in Discord the other day, but went unanswered. Probably the guys are either on holiday (or ignoring me).