Match the mode to your goal
| Goal | Start with | Check first |
|---|---|---|
| Learn through objectives | Campaign | Eight announced missions; the opening introduces mechanics |
| Grow a transport company | Tycoon | Difficulty, active mechanics and financial constraints |
| Design towns and transport scenery | Sandbox | World controls, costs, starting rank and growth settings |
What to do
- Decide whether you want guidance, progression or direct world design. Use the table above. The campaign is a sensible first choice for an introduction; a mission’s objective is different from developing an unrestricted map.
- For management, inspect the difficulty settings. TF3 offers presets and individual mechanics that can be adjusted or disabled. Read the settings actually selected for your world before judging a route or copying an opening strategy.
- For free building, separate money from world controls. The developer says costs can be switched off and players can start at Tycoon rank with rewards. Sandbox additionally allows founding towns, placing industries and moving time forward or backward. Having no costs alone does not describe all those tools.
- Decide how towns should behave. Sandbox can change cargo needs and town size, freeze growth and adjust the distribution of building levels. Check growth settings if your goal is a fixed diorama; leave appropriate growth behavior active if you want to observe transport-driven development.
- Start with a small task and check the result. In Campaign, follow the current objective. In Tycoon, complete a passenger journey or required-goods delivery. In Sandbox, try the chosen world-editing control on a test world. This confirms the mode matches your purpose before investing in a large network.
Official pre-release overview. Use the written checks for this task; older videos may describe plans that later changed.
How to tell it worked
Your world offers the constraints or creative controls you wanted: mission objectives for Campaign, management choices for Tycoon, or direct world editing for Sandbox. You can explain the selected cost, starting-rank and city-growth settings before comparing the save with another player’s.
If you are still stuck
- You only wanted unlimited building money: Check the cost setting; the developer describes it separately from additional Sandbox editing tools.
- A town refuses to grow in Sandbox: Check for frozen growth or a manually changed size before following the ordinary growth diagnosis.
- You want a mission walkthrough: Use the actual mission name and objectives. This page chooses a mode; it does not invent steps for unreleased campaign tasks.