I’m glad to welcome you to the first week of SLC28, where I will teach you how to play the wonderful game OpenTTD. Both old and new participants can join these competitions. Those who took part only in the first week of SLC27 may start over and continue getting acquainted with the game. And for experienced players, there will be separate homework tasks.

With this course, I want to teach as many users as possible to play this game, so recommend this wonderful game to your friends and acquaintances.

So, the lessons from previous weeks — you can read all of them, but the first two are enough to begin with:
1. Install game
2. Roads
3. Ships, transfer
4. Aircraft
5. Multiplayer game
6. Trains

I advise everyone to review once more the first two lessons and the fifth one, which describes multiplayer gameplay.

In the first year we will look at the topic of

SUBSIDIES

On the one hand, subsidies are a chance to earn your starting capital faster — that’s the first benefit. The second benefit is that they help beginners figure out what exactly they should build. In this case a subsidy directly suggests an action: for example, transporting mail from Greenwood to Smallville, or hauling wood from the outskirts of Shoster to the Browntown Sawmill. Beginners will find this easier since they are given a clear task.

Subsidies are the seventh button on the panel, located between the Town List and Station List buttons.

Right now, as you can see, the list of available subsidies is empty — you just have to wait for one to appear.
But the subsidy will be assigned to the first company that begins fulfilling it. You also have to manage to activate it in time.

I waited a bit, and after a few years of gameplay a subsidy appeared, here it is —

You must transport mail from Flarnpool to Duningwell Ridge — the subsidy offer is active for 13 minutes of real time. Depending on the game settings, this may instead display an in-game date such as September 1954.
This means that within 13 minutes (or before September 1954) you need to deliver mail from Flarnpool to Duningwell Ridge, and back. Then the subsidy will be assigned.

A newspaper notification also appears at the bottom of the screen announcing the subsidy.

If you click on the subsidy line, the screen will show the town from which you need to transport the cargo; another click shows where to deliver it. This means you don’t even have to search for the towns or industries on the map. Clicking the offered subsidy cycles between showing the source and the destination.

As you can see, the subsidy does not suggest transporting over a long distance — everything is nearby.

So, I quickly connect the towns with a road, build freight stations for mail, and place a depot somewhere.

I open the depot and buy a vehicle for transporting mail.

The vehicle is now in the depot; I place one freight station in each town, within the area covered by the houses.

I place another station — you should pay attention to how many houses the station covers. The more houses, the better.

I should have bought the vehicle earlier)) so I pressed Buy Vehicle.

The vehicle appeared in the depot, and its control window opened.
The vehicle needs orders, so I click the orange arrow and sequentially select the freight stations.

This is how the list of orders is created.
I send the vehicle to run according to this list. You can either click the red cross in front of the vehicle number or click the red word Stopped, and the vehicle will start moving.
I keep an eye on when the subsidy becomes active.

You can see that this subsidy has disappeared from the “offered” list, but has appeared in the “awarded” list.
A newspaper notification also appeared announcing that the subsidy has been granted.
This subsidy will remain active for 12 minutes (or until the specified date).
The profit from a subsidy is several times higher. The multiplier and duration are set in the game (or server) settings.

Thus, using subsidies should help you quickly develop your company.

Homework

For any questions, feel free to ask — whether about the game itself or the process of completing the homework. I know that not everyone is in a hurry to do the homework, so practice locally, and connect to the server starting Tuesday.

HW1 for beginers This homework is for those who are joining the game for the first time, or who took part only once in the previous season. It’s preferable to join the server as explained in Lesson №5, but for this lesson you may create a game on your own computer as described in Lesson №1.

🚂Task 0. Install and launch the game (or join the server). You do not need to describe the process — it is enough that the game is installed and running.
🚂Task 1.(1p) Create your company, give it and its owner a name. Choose a town and place your headquarters nearby.
**🚂Task 2. ** (3p) Build freight stations (for mail) in two towns and a depot.
**🚂Task 3. ** (3p) Buy a mail truck and send it between the stations.
**🚂Task 4. ** (3p) Watch the offered subsidies, wait for one that suits you, and manage to secure it for yourself. (That is, build the required freight and bus stations in the towns or industries listed in the subsidy, and transport the specified cargo.)
(See Lesson №5 for how to join the server.)
If you wish, you may complete this assignment on the server — practice, because the rest of the tasks will mostly be on the server.

HW2 For participants of the previous season (except the first lesson):
✈️Task 1 (2p) Activate as many subsidies as possible during the game — either at the same time or consecutively. Since subsidies are short-term, take screenshots of both offered and awarded subsidies.
**✈️Task 2 **(4p) Organize cargo transportation with a double production chain, for example:
Oil → Goods → Town,
Wood → Goods → Town.
✈️Task 3. (4p) And organize transportation with a triple production chain:
Iron Ore → Steel → Goods → Town.

✨Rules for Participation

🚌 Title of your work: SLC S28 Week1 - SteemitTTD - Subsidies

🚌 You can publish your work in any language, in any community, or simply in your own blog. Add the link to your work below as a comment.

🚌 To help me quickly find, review, and evaluate your work, leave the link in the comment under this text, and in your work, use the tag #steemit-ttd-w1, your country tag, and your club status tag

🚌 Plagiarism and the use of AI are prohibited.

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🚌All images used must belong to the author or be free of copyright. (Don’t forget to credit the source.)

🚌 Participants must not use any bot services for voting or engage in vote buying.

🚌 Recommend your 4 friends to participate.

🚌 Submission Period: From Monday (17 Nov 2025), to Sunday (23 Nov 2025).

🚌 Promote on social networks like X.

Rewards:

✈️ SC01/SC02 will evaluate posts across all participating teaching teams. Upvotes are not guaranteed for all articles.

✈️ Your work will be reviewed, commented on, and evaluated by me. Six best works will be selected. Participants who won last week will have a lower chance of being selected again, while those who did not win previously will have a higher chance if their work is well executed.