Boats

this guide is not yet complete.

Welcome to the Boats guide for OpenTTD! In this guide, you'll learn how to create a passenger boat route and maximize its profits.

Picking a town
In order to create a profitable boat route, we want to place two docks in different cities, with a sizeable distance between them, which are of course on the edge of the map.

Look for two cities which match those criteria. Make sure the cities are no more than 100 tiles apart.

Buying buses
Before we can start a bus route, we need to actually buy the buses first.

Building a depot

 * 1) Press the Build roads button on the top bar. It's the icon with a picture of a road.
 * 2) Press the Build road vehicle depot button on the menu which just opened.
 * 3) Select the orientation, then build it outside of the town. See the example to the right for an example on where to build your depot Bus depot build location example.png
 * 4) You'll notice that a road is automatically connected between your depot and the street. This is great!
 * 5) Close out of the Road Depot Orientation menu.

Building the stations

 * 1) Click the Build bus station button on the Build roads menu.
 * 2) Select an orientation, then build one in the center of the city.
 * 3) Select an orientation, then build one at the edge of the city.
 * 4) The further you can get the two stations, the better.
 * 5) Make sure the station's orientation matches the road you place the station on!
 * 6) Close out of the Bus Station Orientation menu.

Buying the buses

 * 1) Click on the depot you just built.
 * 2) Click New Vehicles.
 * 3) Select the MPS Regal Bus.
 * 4) Click Buy Vehicle.

Setting up the route
Okay, great job! We just built the bus stations and the depot, and bought the bus. Now we need to give the bus Orders.

Orders are instructions which tell the bus where to go. Later in the game, this can get complicated, but for now, a simple set of orders will do.


 * 1) Click the orange arrow on the window which just opened.
 * 2) Click Go To.
 * 3) Select the station closest to the depot.
 * 4) Click Go To.
 * 5) Select the other station you built.
 * 6) Close the orders menu.
 * 7) Click Stopped to start the bus.

Next steps
Congratulations. You just started a bus route! This will be enough to make a stable profit, but not enough to totally bring us into the green.

Next, we'll learn how to build Boats. Click on the Boats link below to learn how!

Basic Tutorials

Buses << >> Trains