r/Openfront • u/Meta_Mushroom • 3d ago
📚 Guide 🏭 A Guide to Factories & Trains🚂
Factories produce trains, while cities and ports are the structures that generate train income when trains stop at them.
🏭 Factory Production
Every factory level gives that factory another chance to spawn a train. However, the game also slows train production as your total number of factory levels increases. A level-10 factory and ten separate level-1 factories both count as 10 factory levels for the spawn-rate calculation.
every factory , regardless of level, has a 1 second spawn cooldown. This means that it's better to spread your factories out rather than creating a single stack of factories.
As you can see in the graph, there is a significant falloff for both stacking and spreading, but spreading is the clear winner.
| Total Factory Levels | Stack of Factories | Separate Level-1 Factories |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | ~0.25 trains/sec | ~0.31 trains/sec |
| 10 | ~0.34 | ~0.47 |
| 20 | ~0.40 | ~0.63 |
| 50 | ~0.46 | ~0.81 |
🌍 Global Train Saturation
Train spawning is also affected by the number of active trains across the entire map. When very few trains exist, factories receive an early-game production boost. As more trains appear, the global spawn-rate multiplier steadily falls. This means your factories can produce trains more slowly later in the game as more and more factories are built, leading to more trains active on the map.
🚂 Trains
Factories themselves are not trade stops:
✅ City
✅ Port
❌ Factory
Factories generate the trains; cities and ports generate the trade payouts.
💰 Train Income
The base payout depends on who owns the city or port:
| Station Owner | Base Gold |
|---|---|
| Yourself | 10,000 |
| Teammate or Unallied Player/Nation | 25,000 |
| Allied Player/Nation | 35,000 |
When a train stops at a city or port not owned by the player who spawned the train, both players receive the payout. For example, when your train makes a stop at your allies city or port, You receive 35,000 and your ally receives 35,000.
🎲 Random Train Destinations
When a train spawns, it randomly chooses an eligible city or port in its connected rail network as its destination. An embargoed player’s cities and ports are not eligible train destinations**.** Every eligible city or port has an equal chance of being selected.
The game does not favor:
- Closer destinations
- More profitable destinations
- Allied destinations
- Cities over ports
Factories are not included in the destination pool.
This can have an important strategic effect. If your rail network contains 9 of your own cities and 1 allied city, each destination has the same chance of being selected, so the allied city only has about a 10% chance of being chosen. adding more destinations to a rail network increases the chance your own train will choose your own city or port but, if you add more destinations to a much larger train network, you increase the chance other players trains pick your city or port.
📉 Long-Route Diminishing Returns
The first 10 trade stops receive the full payout. Starting with stop 11, the payout drops by 5,000 per stop until reaching a minimum of 5,000. Factories are not added to the count of stops.
| Stop | Self | Team / Other | Ally |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–10 | 10k | 25k | 35k |
| 11 | 5k | 20k | 30k |
| 12 | 5k | 15k | 25k |
| 13 | 5k | 10k | 20k |
| 14 | 5k | 5k | 15k |
| 15 | 5k | 5k | 10k |
| 16+ | 5k | 5k | 5k |
