this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Most transportation games are super shallow:

  • trains simply turn around on the platform
  • there is not enough road traffic to actually necessitate advanced traffic planning, or then the driver AI is too stupid to make use of more complicated traffic solutions
  • airplanes simply clip through each other
  • pedestrians are just decoration that is randomly generated when the player is looking
  • people are not individual agents

In factorio, trains are done quite well, except that the trains can drive curves with arbitrary small radii at arbitrary high speeds.

In cities skylines, road traffic is done relatively well, but vehicles are not simulated at any depth, and behave dumber than human drivers.

In workers and resources soviet republic, there seems to be a nice people simulation, but the traffic and train simulation is super basic.

In transport fever, laying rail tracks at low curvature and inclination and creating roads with low inclination is interesting, but the rest of the simulation is super basic.

Is there any game that simulates the different modes of transportation and their interaction well?

  • pedestrians should halt traffic when crossing a crosswalk
  • road traffic should be smart about choosing lanes
  • trains should be forward only, unless there is locomotives or drivers stands at both ends
  • planes should follow reasonable holding patterns over airports and have vertical separation on routes

And many many more things. Designing a good transportation network is challenging in the real world. Why can't we bring that real challenge into games?

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[–] philipsdirk@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 hour ago

There is a game in development that does some of this stuff. It's called Junxtions I think. Looked interesting

[–] RollForInitiative@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

Rail Route does not tick all the boxes and is higher level, but the signalling and shared track mechanisms are done quite well.

[–] Toneswirly@beehaw.org 1 points 1 hour ago

I liked factory town; the trains need to stop and stations to unload and refuel, and they only go one direction. Its somewhat simplified but satisfying.

[–] MalMen@monero.town 1 points 3 hours ago

Probably not you are searching, but I love openttd

[–] Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Satisfactory has quite the satisfactory railway mechanics: in addition to what you say what you want with them, you also have to place proper semaphores in order not to have them crashing each other.

Efficient networks require roundabouts and double one-way tracks, but sometimes it's much more convenient to either have maze-like single one-way tracks (makes paths longer) or two-way tracks (blocks traffic, and gets worse the longer it is).

... there is no "intellgence" with vehicle paths, though: trucks and trains always pick the shortest path, and if they've gotta wait, they're gonna wait (unless you screw up the semaphores, in which case kaboom).

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Satisfactory is a model train simulator, prove me wrong.

Also plug for !satisfactory@lemmy.world

[–] Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 19 hours ago

My favorite part of the game by far - with the least favorite part being my friends demanding silly things like "making pretty railway pillars" and "bringing everything to a single place and processing everything locally"...

[–] Kruulos@sopuli.xyz 4 points 21 hours ago

I love engineering games like that but I don't believe any game will check all the boxes you want.

Like others here I vouch for Satisfactory Trucks and especially the Railways. You can go quite deep there if you want. Drones do the clipping and are bit too easy so skip them.

While not what you exactly wished I'd say give Transport Tycoon or rather OpenTTD a go. While not as pedantic with traffic as you hope you will have a blast of a time doing beautifully orchestrated trains, airports, ferries and trucks/busses and optimizing the routes from resources to consumers.

And to reiterate. I don't believe a game exists that matches most of your wishes. I hope it will eventually!

[–] bad1080@piefed.social 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

maybe open ttd which was free before but has now been rolled into transport tycoon (of which it was basically a clone/fork but with many more years of development by now, so not meant derogatory):

https://www.openttd.org/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3766810/Transport_Tycoon_Deluxe/ (also on gog)

[–] viking@beehaw.org 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Looks like it's still free. You just can't download it on steam anymore.

[–] bad1080@piefed.social 2 points 18 hours ago

ah ok, good to know!

[–] SincerityIsCool@lemmy.ca 3 points 22 hours ago

This isn't helpful, but I was actually really disappointed by the people aspect of workers and resources. There's no agent model with people picking routes to their workplace or needs. They're just another type of resource you shunt around with limited models of searching from transit stops.

But yeah as far as trains are concerned factorio does seem to be the best available.

[–] Micromot@piefed.social 1 points 22 hours ago

Transport Fever 3 might do some of this stuff. The pedestrians and traffic were quite good in Transport Fever 2 but that one had the train issue you talked about