Transport Fever 3 Map Seeds: How They Work & Shared Seeds

Every random Transport Fever 3 map comes from a seed, and the official manual defines exactly what that means: "Seed is a value used as a key for randomization. With the same seed and the same settings, a map will be created identical each time." That one sentence is the whole seed economy — it tells you which shared seeds are useful, why seed lists without settings are noise, and how to reproduce someone else's map perfectly. This page covers the official mechanics, the four climates your seed will generate in, and the seed strings players shared in October 2026.

The mechanics, per the official Wiki

Three facts from the free-game manual do all the work:

1. Same seed + same settings = identical map, every time. The generator is deterministic; there is no hidden drift between runs on the same build.
2. Each climate has its own map generator with individual properties in the Terrain section. A Temperate seed and a Subarctic seed are not interchangeable — the climate is part of the generator, not a coat of paint.
3. Sliders are part of the key. Terrain sliders (hills, water and company) shift the output, which is why a copied seed can still produce "the wrong" map: your sliders moved, not the seed.

Map Size and Map Format are separate world settings chosen at creation, with their own official documentation — the full size table and the experimental-size switch have a section below. They are part of the reproduction key, which is why seed-sharing etiquette requires reporting them alongside the seed string.

The four climate generators

Climate	Character (official manual)	Operational tendency
Temperate	Green grasslands and forests, rivers, lakes, higher mountains	Balanced road/rail country; rivers enable early shipping
Subarctic	Large fjords, swamp lands, massive mountains	Fjords reward ship lines; mountains demand expensive crossings
Dry	(Canyon-and-distance character per community reports)	Long hauls; water placement matters more
Tropical	(Jungle-and-water character per community reports)	Water networks with dense vegetation

The manual's own words describe Temperate and Subarctic directly; the terrain shapes which transport modes are useful, while the simulation itself is climate-neutral. Industry availability adds the economic layer — check the cargo types table before committing a company to a climate, because the 32 industries are not evenly distributed across the four generators.

Choosing a climate before you reroll

Because the generator is climate-specific, every "best seed" question collapses into a climate decision first. The practical route from the traits above: Temperate for a balanced first map — rivers enable early shipping and the terrain rarely forces expensive crossings; Subarctic when you want fjord shipping and accept that massive mountains make crossings pricier; Dry and Tropical when the industry mix attracts you, with the caveat that their terrain character is documented by community reports rather than the manual. Creator guidance for a Temperate start converges on medium settings across the board and rerolling until a farm, a processing plant and a city sit in a short triangle (creator video, October 2026). Once the climate is picked, reroll seeds and sliders inside it — a seed from another climate is not comparable with yours.

Map sizes: the official table

Map Size and Map Format are picked when the world is created — in free games and in the map editor alike. Every size can be combined with five ratios, and the ratio is calculated between the lengths of the map edges. Normally four sizes are available: Small, Medium, Large and Very Large. The four rows marked * below — Tiny, Huge, Megalomaniac and Gigantomaniac — exist in the game but stay locked until the experimental flag is enabled (next section). Two more official limits: the Console Edition only offers Small, Medium and Large due to memory, and the in-game numbers are rounded — exact values differ by up to 250 metres.

Size	1:1	1:2	1:3	1:4	1:5
Tiny*	4.096 × 4.096 km	2.560 × 5.120 km	2.048 × 6.144 km	2.048 × 6.144 km	1.536 × 7.680 km
Small	8.192 × 8.192 km	5.632 × 11.264 km	4.608 × 13.824 km	4.096 × 16.384 km	3.584 × 17.920 km
Medium	11.264 × 11.264 km	8.192 × 16.384 km	6.656 × 19.968 km	5.632 × 22.528 km	5.120 × 25.600 km
Large	14.336 × 14.336 km	10.240 × 20.480 km	8.192 × 24.576 km	7.168 × 28.672 km	6.144 × 32.256 km
Very Large	16.384 × 16.384 km	11.264 × 22.528 km	9.216 × 27.648 km	8.192 × 32.768 km	7.168 × 35.840 km
Huge*	20.480 × 20.480 km	14.336 × 28.672 km	11.776 × 35.328 km	10.240 × 40.960 km	8.704 × 43.520 km
Megalomaniac*	24.576 × 24.576 km	16.896 × 33.792 km	13.824 × 41.472 km	12.288 × 49.152 km	10.752 × 53.760 km
Gigantomaniac*	28.672 × 28.672 km	20.480 × 40.960 km	16.384 × 49.152 km	14.336 × 57.344 km	12.800 × 64.000 km

* Requires experimental map features; transcribed from the official Wiki on October 10, 2026.

What the ratios mean for the way you play

The five ratios reshape the same area into different shapes, and the shape drives the economics. A 1:1 map keeps every haul short and makes a dense national grid viable. A 1:5 map stretches the map into a corridor where towns sit far apart along one axis: intercity runs get long, a single mainline can anchor the whole map, and branch lines feeding that spine become the natural structure. The official table makes the trade explicit — Large at 1:1 is 14.336 × 14.336 km, while Large at 1:5 is 6.144 × 32.256 km: the same size class, behaving like a region versus a long-haul lane. Pick 1:1 for junction-heavy network building, and elongated ratios when you want line haul to matter more than switching.

Picking a size your machine can hold

The manual draws one hard hardware line — the experimental sizes need at least 16 GB RAM — and adds that size correlates with RAM and usually CPU, so smaller maps run more fluently on most computers. Read together with the console limit, that gives a short decision table:

Your setup	Sensible choice
PlayStation 5 / Xbox Series X|S	Small, Medium or Large — the only sizes the Console Edition offers
8 GB RAM PC	Standard sizes up to Large; the experimental sizes are below the documented 16 GB floor
16 GB+ RAM PC	The experimental flag unlocks Tiny, Huge, Megalomaniac and Gigantomaniac
Smooth-first, any machine	Small or Medium generate and run fastest; grow once the early game feels stable

How to enable the experimental map sizes

The four locked sizes come from one configuration key, per the official Map Sizes documentation:

1. Close the game — the file is read at startup.
2. Open settings.lua in your userdata folder (the official game-file-locations page lists the path per platform).
3. Find the experimentalMapFeatures key and set it to true.
4. Save and restart the game.

Two documented consequences belong next to that switch. The same flag also enables changing the economy of an existing savegame, which the manual warns "might lead to unstable situations". And size is a hardware contract: map size correlates with RAM and usually CPU, the manual says running the experimental sizes needs at least 16 GB RAM, and smaller maps remain the smoother choice on most computers.

How to share a seed properly

A reproducible seed report has four fields: seed string, climate, size, and slider positions (plus build number, since generators can change in patches — Steam stable was 40420 on October 8, 2026). Missing any one, the map regenerates differently and the report misleads. When you test someone's seed, change nothing else; when it looks wrong, the manual's logic says your settings drifted, not the seed.

Seeds players shared in October 2026

Every entry below follows the four-field standard this page defines — and where a field was not reported, it says so, because a seed without settings is noise. Player-community reports, not re-verified by this site (we cannot regenerate maps; you can, in seconds):

Seed	Climate	Size / ratio	Notes	Reported by
dxrbt pure	Subarctic	creator's public start	snow start; oil, cement and paper chains nearby — reproduce with Squirrel's public settings	Creator video, Oct 2026
LL69kaugNp	not stated	Large, 1:2	water density: very large, mountains: medium, town density: scattered — a huge central lake with big landmasses west and south, small islands, and a village on an island; built for ships and airplanes	Steam thread "Favorite map seeds", Oct 2026
rRQaOSkNhC	Subarctic	Very Large, 1:3	mountain-heavy terrain; the sharer clusters towns into the mountains in the map editor to justify mountain railways	Steam thread "Favorite map seeds", Oct 2026
Honeybadger MCD	not stated	not stated	the creator's extreme-hard-mode let's play map	Creator video (Honeybadger), Oct 2026
IceRoadTruckers	not stated	not stated	word seed; "I only use words"	Steam thread, Oct 2026
dictionarywordsmakebadseeds	not stated	not stated	word seed, self-aware joke entry	Steam thread, Oct 2026

An honest note on scarcity: Transport Fever 3 launched on September 29, 2026, and as of October 10 the community's entire shared supply is these six entries — two Steam threads and two creator videos, none of them re-generated by this site. Shared pre-made maps also circulate on the Workshop side of the community (one thread example had its mod and DLC dependencies stripped after feedback), which is a different mechanism from seeds. This table grows as reports arrive with their settings attached — if you regenerate a good map, post the seed with climate, size and sliders and it earns a row above.

One retrieval method did emerge from those threads, corroborated across two of them (player-reported, October 2026): there is no in-game seed display, but the seed is written to disk. Load the map in question, then open the user data folder (main menu → gear icon → Advanced) and search stdout.txt — one report places it under crash_dump/ — for the Map seed text line; one sharer notes the game should be closed again before searching, and another confirmed the method worked.

FAQ

What is the best map seed in Transport Fever 3?

There is no universal best — the official generator is climate-specific and slider-sensitive, so "best" depends on which terrain and industries you want. The verified route to a good map: pick climate for the geography you want, reroll sliders until the preview shows the terrain shape you need, then record seed + settings together. The table above is where players trade full recipes.

Do map seeds still work after a patch?

They work as long as the generator is unchanged — the manual guarantees identity only for the same seed and the same settings, and patches can update generators (each climate has its own). After a patch, regenerate once and compare; the October stability patch (40420) did not list generator changes in its notes.

Seed vs handcrafted maps — which should I use?

Seeds give you infinite free variation of the four climate generators; handcrafted maps trade that variety for deterministic design. If you own the Deluxe Edition, its three handcrafted maps (Redrock Bends, Northern Gates, Emerald Shores) skip the reroll loop entirely — that is the decision, and it is why the Deluxe listing leads with them. For worlds authored beyond those, the map editor is the tool, and it obeys the same seed rule.

Can I find the seed of a map I already generated?

There is no in-game seed display, but the seed is written to disk once a map loads — a route corroborated across two Steam threads (player-reported, October 2026): load the map, open the user data folder via the main menu's gear icon → Advanced, and search stdout.txt (reported under crash_dump/) for the Map seed text line; closing the game before searching was reported to help. If that fails, write the seed down at generation time — the habit costs nothing.

Can I change the map size of a save I already started?

The manual documents no way to resize an existing world: size and format are creation-time settings, and the experimental flag's one documented save-game power is changing the economy, not the geography. Treat size as permanent and decide it before the first line is built.

Does the seed decide where industries and towns spawn?

Jointly with the settings. The manual's definition reproduces the whole world from seed plus settings, and town density, industry density and start year are settings too — so the same seed under a different industry density will not place the same industries. The manual also notes the initial industry count depends on the population size and that more industries appear over time, which is why industry reports need the full recipe, not just the string.

Which climate should a beginner pick?

Temperate is the defensible default: the manual describes grasslands, forests, rivers and lakes, which supports road, rail and early ship lines without forcing expensive mountain crossings. Subarctic rewards ship-minded players but pairs fjords with massive mountains. Dry and Tropical are documented more thinly in the manual — their terrain character comes from community reports — so they make better second playthroughs than first ones.

Related guides

After regenerating, the cargo types table tells you which chains your new map can actually run; the tips and tricks page collects the mechanics that matter once the world exists; the warehouse guide covers the storage you will place near your first port; and the map editor is where a regenerated world becomes an authored one.

Version and evidence notes

• Seed definition, per-climate generators, slider behaviour, Map Size/Format: official Wiki free-game manual, checked October 10, 2026.
• Map sizes table and the experimental switch (experimentalMapFeatures, 16 GB RAM note, console limits): official Wiki Map Sizes page, checked October 10, 2026.
• Seed-retrieval route via stdout.txt ("Map seed text" line): two Steam threads, October 2026 — player-community reports, corroborated across threads, not re-verified in-game by this site.
• Climate descriptions: official manual (Temperate, Subarctic verbatim traits); Dry/Tropical operational notes from community reports, October 2026.
• Shared seeds table: Steam threads ("Give us your best map seeds!", "Favorite map seeds") and creator videos (Squirrel, Honeybadger), October 2026 — player-community reports, not re-generated by this site.
• Temperate reroll-until-triangle guidance: creator video, October 2026 — single-source community tip.
• Checked against Steam stable build 40420 (October 8, 2026).

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