Transport Fever 3 beginner guide: your first town and route

What makes a good starting town?

• Short distance to a partner. A second town or a supplier within easy reach means more round trips per month from each vehicle.
• Flat, open ground. Terraforming is possible but affects public approval, so less reshaping keeps towns happier.
• Room to grow. Towns grow from simulated inhabitants and dislike traffic, noise and pollution, so keep depots and heavy lines at the edge.
• An industry nearby. Cargo now waits at its origin until you collect it, so an unserved industry next to town is an easy first freight line.

Choose your first line

1. Find a pair. Two nearby towns for buses, or an industry and the business that uses its cargo.
2. Match the vehicle to the cargo category. Liquid needs tankers, bulk needs open wagons or trucks, flatbed needs flat vehicles and goods need closed vehicles. See cargo types.
3. Start small. Two or three vehicles are enough to see real trip times in your line's statistics.
4. Measure, then size. Put the observed load per trip and round trips per month into the cargo line planner to see how many vehicles the target needs.

Common early mistakes

• Adding vehicles to a line whose loading point is the bottleneck; a slow integrated dock stays slow.
• Building a long first line: fewer round trips mean more vehicles for the same cargo.
• Letting old vehicles run for decades: the game adds wear and maintenance costs.
• Ignoring delivery deadlines: some cargo types must arrive in time.

Beginner-friendly map settings

Start in tycoon mode on a temperate map, with medium industry and city density and an early start decade so vehicles and systems unlock gradually. If you would rather learn step by step, the campaign's first mission works as a tutorial. See maps and climate zones.