Bigger maps.Or the same ones?

What is Transport Fever 3?

Transport Fever 3 is a transport and business simulation from the Swiss studio Urban Games, published by Paradox Interactive. You build rail, road, sea and air networks across a generated map, run the fleets that use them, and watch towns grow or stall depending on how well you serve them.

It is the fourth game in the series after Train Fever (2014), Transport Fever (2016) and Transport Fever 2 (2019). It is not a city builder. You never zone land or place individual houses. The city is something that reacts to you.

The single most important thing to know

There is no multiplayer. Urban Games has said it is not planned for release or for afterwards. If you were hoping to run a network with a friend, that will not happen in this game. Everything else on this page is further down the list of what matters.

What is actually confirmed right now

What changed from Transport Fever 2

The engine is the same family and the map ceiling has not moved, which makes the changes that did happen easier to list. The economy was rebuilt around delivery deadlines. Towns now level up on experience points collected from every passenger and cargo item you deliver to them. Stations and road junctions became modular, and junctions can now cross at any angle.

The mod platform changed most of all. Transport Fever 2 lived on the Steam Workshop. Transport Fever 3 replaces that with an in-game mod hub that works on consoles and on GOG and Epic copies, and Urban Games has arranged over 50 curated mods for launch day.

• Cargo has expected delivery times, and late deliveries cost you town growth
• Rail has three track types rated by speed, each with its own pollution and maintenance cost
• Cargo has expected delivery times, and late deliveries cost you town growth
• Trams can run underground or switch to light rail independent of roads
• Buildings can be locked to a historical style, so a city can keep its old face
• Traffic lights can be configured to skip a phase when nothing is waiting

Maps and environments

The largest map is the same size as the largest in Transport Fever 2. Urban Games is testing an additional experimental size but has refused to promise it. The reasoning is arithmetic: doubling a 2x2 map to 4x4 takes the area from 4 to 16, and the processing cost climbs far faster than the area because every resident, vehicle and pedestrian is simulated individually.

What did change is the terrain. Maps are generated from several regions with distinct biomes that blend into each other, and the reworked temperate zone replaces the old easy river-bank routes with lakes and tributaries. There is a new subarctic environment, tropical maps got island-hopping and dormant volcanoes, and the dry environment leans harder into canyons and mesas.

Day and night cycles appear in the series for the first time, with physical skies and cloud cover that changes the lighting. Weather and time can be adjusted or switched off entirely.

Vehicles and maintenance

More than 300 vehicles ship at launch across rail, road, water and air. They never break down. What happens instead is quieter: a poorly maintained vehicle loses top speed, power and comfort rating, and puts out more noise and pollution.

Depots handle a few vehicles at a time. Dedicated maintenance buildings cover a far larger catchment, and the waypointing system was upgraded so you can send surface routes past one on purpose. Aircraft flight paths can be edited per flight to keep planes over industrial land rather than housing.

Modding on every platform

Transport Fever 3 does not use the Steam Workshop. It has its own mod hub inside the game, and the reason is fairness: a GOG or Epic buyer has no Workshop, and a console player never did. The hub puts every platform on the same list.

Urban Games spent months working with experienced modders and pays them for a curated selection with a quality seal. More than 50 curated mods are prepared for launch day. Transport Fever 2 mods carry over with rework, mostly for lighting and other technical elements, and the studio says the work is much lighter than the Transport Fever 1 to 2 transition was.

Answers before you begin

• Is it a city builder? No. You run a transport company. Cities grow in response to your network, but you do not zone land. Full comparison
• Should I buy Transport Fever 2 or wait? Transport Fever 2 is finished and has years of Workshop mods. Transport Fever 3 has the new hub, delivery deadlines and better road tools, but its mod library starts empty. Side by side
• Will my machine run it? GTX 1060 and 8 GB of RAM is the floor. Urban Games also started the game on a GTX 960 during testing. Full requirements
• Is there a demo? No demo and no beta programme. Release details
• How do I get mods on console? Through the in-game hub, the same list PC players see. Mods explained

How this site handles uncertainty

The game is not out yet. Some facts are confirmed by Urban Games, Paradox or a store page. A lot of what circulates elsewhere is extrapolation from trailers. We label the difference instead of smoothing it over, and every page names its sources at the bottom.

If a detail is not sourced, the page says so. Three months from now that is still worth more than a confident guess.

Where to go next

Every page below answers one question players ask before launch. The wiki page also carries a history of the series, which is useful if you are deciding whether to start with Transport Fever 2 or go straight to 3.