the guideFreight & Fire freightandfire.com

the guide

Freight & Fire

The guide to Freight & Fire: how to play, and the game's numbers, kept up to date from its own data. For what the game is, see freightandfire.com.

How a first hour goes#

  1. Choose where to start: one of the start cities, or any town on Earth. Your company begins with $600,000.
  2. Buy land. Over farmland, woods or open country, open Build → Land: the parcels for sale are drawn on the ground. Buy one, and draw a field on it for what it yields: grain, logs, stone…
  3. Build storage beside it: a silo for grain, a yard for stone. You can only sell from storage.
  4. Run a truck line from the field to the storage, $45,000 a truck, and watch it drive the real roads.
  5. Sell from the storage to the computer, or offer it on the players' market.
  6. Grow: more land and fields, a train between rail yards, then a factory that turns your grain into flour and bread, to sell to the town.

The first hour, step by step has the details and the numbers.

The guide#

Getting startedThe launcher, the tutorial, choosing where to start, the camera and the hotbar: your first five minutes.The mapThe whole Earth from OpenStreetMap: the globe, the regional map, streets in 3D, and places mapped on your first visit.Making moneyThe first hour, step by step: raw land, storage, a truck line, selling. Then trains, factories and towns.FarmsFields that grow and are harvested, pastures, orchards and wood lots, fences, and farm buildings that help your fields.The marketThe rules of trade: the computer's raw market, the players' order book, towns and their levels, and why you sell only from storage.TransportFreight lines of trucks and trains: routes, loads, speeds, rail yards, blocks and signals.FactoriesFactories on real floor plans: power and substations, machines, recipes, and turning raw goods into goods worth far more.WarArmies, the lobby and its stakes, deployment zones, defences, and real-time battles on the tropical war island.Controls & settingsEvery key and mouse button, in the city and in battle, and what the settings do.FAQShort answers to the questions new players ask most.Credits & licencesWhere the world comes from: OpenStreetMap and Natural Earth; and the fonts.

The reference#

Every number in the reference comes from the game's own data, rebuilt with every update: 74 goods, 17 machines, 56 recipes, 18 kinds of storage, 5 kinds of unit, 9 defences and 12 battlefields.

GoodsAll 74 goods: raw, intermediate and finished, with what each is worth.MachinesThe 17 factory machines and the other pieces of a factory floor: size, power, price and recipes.RecipesAll 56 recipes, machine by machine: what each takes, makes, and how fast.Production chainsEvery made good as a tree, from the raw goods on the land to the finished thing, along its cheapest recipes.StorageThe 18 storage types: what each keeps, how much, its price and running cost, road or rail.Vehicles & linesTrucks and trains on freight lines: price, running cost, load, reach and speed.TownsEvery town on Earth buys finished goods: what each level wants, how much, what it pays, and what it takes to grow.Army unitsThe five kinds of unit a company can buy: price, upkeep, speed, weapons, sight, and who beats what.DefencesWhat a side can build into its ground before a battle: sandbags, bunkers, tank traps, wire, towers and gun pits.BattlefieldsThe war island's 12 battlefields: players, bases and the objectives to hold.

In development#

Working now#

  • The whole Earth, from the globe to streets mapped on the first visit, in one shared, persistent world
  • Land from the map, four-corner fields that grow from ploughing to harvest, farm buildings and storage
  • Truck and train freight lines, with signals and crossings
  • Factories on real floor plans; the computer's market, the players' order book, and towns that level up
  • Property: letting houses, running offices and shops
  • The tutorial island
  • Armies, the battle lobby and its stakes, deployment, defences and real-time battles