Seven plugins for OpenRCT2 that handle the routine parts of running a park: hiring the right number of staff, keeping paths clean, tuning ride wait times, and a few jobs the game leaves entirely to you.
Every decision is based on what's actually happening in your park, not on a fixed ratio. If the park is clean with 20 handymen, the plugin won't hire 40 because a formula says so.
Headless test runs: Six Flags Magic Mountain, over Texas, Great Adventure, Holland and
Belgium, 3 perturbed replicates each, 90 days, with the plugins off, on with their defaults, and with every
feature on. Each plugin's chart below shows its own measure with all the plugins running, so a shared
measure like queuing reflects more than one plugin. Regenerate with node tools/showcase-charts.mjs (#140).
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| Six Flags Holland, 90 days, plugins off | Same spot, same 90 days, plugins on: new stalls by the exit, TVs along the El Condor queue, benches and bins |
90 days in one corner of Six Flags Holland with the plugins on, one frame every 5 days: nothing here was placed by hand. Made with tools/showcase-gif.mjs.
Download the latest release · What's new · User guide · MIT license
| Plugin | In one line | Spends money by default? |
|---|---|---|
| Trash Manager | Keeps paths clean | Yes: handyman wages |
| Auto-Builder | Builds benches, bins and stalls where guests need them | Yes: benches, bins and stalls where needed (#51) |
| Mechanic Manager | Keeps rides running | No |
| Wait Time Optimizer | Keeps queues from getting out of hand | No |
| Staff Extras | Puts entertainers where queues need them, and staffs up for the Best Staff award | Yes: entertainer and guard wages (#51) |
| Marketing Manager | Shows which campaigns are worth the money, and warns about prices guests refuse | No (off until you turn it on) |
| Path Connector (experimental) | Draws a footpath between two tiles | Only for paths you choose to build |
Each one adds an entry to the map menu in the top toolbar, which opens its window.
Park news. The plugins post a short, slightly odd line to the news ticker about what they did the day before ("Auto-Builder: Opened Burger Bar 1. Nobody asked how it knew. It just knew."). At most 2 a day across all plugins, the most important first; each plugin has a "News summaries" checkbox to turn its own off (#124).
From the ticker (Six Flags Holland, one 90-day run)
- Auto-Builder: Built Hot Chocolate Stall 1 (and 1 more stall) right where guests were milling about looking wistful.
- Wait Time Optimizer: Goliath's queue was swelling like a soufflé, so the trains now leave sooner.
- Staff Extras: Deployed 1 entertainer to the queues. It is surprisingly hard to stay cross at a panda.
- Trash Manager: Hired 1 handyman. HR notes that one of them has already named the litter.
- Auto-Builder: Lemonade Stall 2 appeared overnight. The guests act as if it was always there.
- Wait Time Optimizer: Told Robin Hood to stop dawdling at the station. The queue has been informed.
Handles handymen and litter.
- Handyman staffing. It starts from the usual guests-and-paths estimate, then works down while the park stays clean and hires back quickly once litter starts to hurt the rating. On the test park the usual formula asked for 42 handymen; the park stayed at top rating with 36.
- Vomit tracking. On most parks nearly all litter is vomit, not dropped rubbish. The plugin works out which ride is making guests sick and whether that ride needs benches near its exit. Guests sitting on a bench recover from nausea, so benches prevent most of that mess before it happens. (Auto-Builder does this; see below.)
Places benches and bins and builds guest facilities. Split out of Trash Manager in 1.5 (#84); a save keeps the choices it had in Trash Manager.
- Benches and bins (on by default, can be switched off). Places benches at nauseating ride exits and vomit hotspots, bins near food stalls, and a light spread of both across the rest of the path network.
- Toilets, first aid and food stalls (on by default, can be switched off). Builds a facility only when guests in one area have kept going without one across five full passes over the park, so a crowd that happens to be passing through doesn't trigger a build.
- Starter builds (on by default, can be switched off). What a good player puts down by hand. Once the park has 3 rides: information kiosks by the entrance, at the far end of the paths, at the east and west sides and where guests say they're lost; a restroom by the entrance and at the back; a drinks stall and a food stall by the entrance; an umbrella stall for rainy days; and, once guests start running out of cash, ATMs at the entrance, the back and where they're short (1 per 250 path tiles, up to 6). Skips any spot that already has one within 12 tiles, including yours (#81, #82, #105, #130).
- Food courts (on by default, can be switched off). Where 2+ food or drink stalls stand together, fills the nearby paths with benches and bins and adds a toilet if none is close, from the same monthly budget as queue TVs (#83).
- Award top-up (on by default, can be switched off). When the park is 1 to 3 toilets or food stalls short of the Best Toilets or Best Food award and has £5,000, builds one every 5 days. Each award held means 25% more new guests (#162).
- Queue TVs (on by default, can be switched off). Once the TV is researched, puts a TV on every 2nd empty tile of a queue where a guest is thinking "I've been queuing for ages", from the front to that guest: long-waiting guests only stop losing happiness on a tile with a TV. Quiet queues get none (#141). Paid from a monthly extras budget (5% of the cash above £1,000, set at the start of each month) (#104, #116).
- Repairs (on by default, can be switched off). Vandals break benches, bins and lamps and nothing in the game repairs them. Each day re-places about a fifth of the broken ones (a quarter on the first day), nearest the entrance first, from the same monthly budget. Only items already there (#115).
Everything here was placed by the plugin: the toilet, the benches and the bins along the path below the Woodchip coaster.
A food stall the plugin built on a raised walkway. It is placed at the height of the path it serves.
Needs thoughts drop by about half. The "lost" count (53 -> 73 with the plugins on) is almost all guests who can't find a ride they want (about 98%); almost none are actually lost (1 or fewer per park), and the Most Confusing Layout award never switches on. More guests and more places to go means more "where is it?" thoughts.
Handles mechanics, inspections and breakdowns.
- Mechanic staffing. Works the same way as the handyman controller. The main signal is a ride that has been broken for two days or more: one that breaks and gets fixed the same day means the current mechanics are coping. A mechanic is let go only when fewer than half the fleet has done a job in the last 14 days, and the one idle longest goes first.
- Inspection intervals. Re-applies the inspection interval every day. Opening a ride's construction window quietly resets it, and most players never notice.
- Patrol zones. Clears mechanic patrol zones so any mechanic can reach any ride.
- Emergency repair (on by default, and a cheat). Clears the breakdown on a ride that has been broken for three days or more. It's there for rides the game's pathfinding can't get a mechanic to. It restores no reliability, and the three-day wait keeps it from replacing mechanics altogether.
Handles ride wait settings and queue length.
- Wait times. Sets each ride's minimum and maximum wait from its cycle length and number of trains, and applies them daily.
- Capacity warnings. If a ride's queue stays long even with good settings, the ride needs more trains or cars rather than more tuning, and the plugin tells you which rides those are.
- Queue override. Guests give up and leave a queue after a while. When a queue is approaching that point, or has been growing for two days running, the plugin lets trains leave sooner so the line moves.
- Ride operation tuning (optional). Shortens the cycle (laps, rotations, time limit) on rides with long queues and lengthens it on quiet ones. Each change resets the ride's ratings until it runs again, so it changes things one step at a time.
Handles entertainers and security guards. On by default since #51; each has a switch in the window if you'd rather not pay the wages.
Hires entertainers and places them at queues that are close to the point where guests walk out, because that's where an entertainer makes the most difference, plus one at the park entrance and one at each food court (#68). It only ever fires entertainers it hired itself, so the ones you placed by a themed ride stay put.
Once the park has 20 or more staff and no security guard, it also hires one guard. The Best Staff award (+25% new guests while held) needs every staff type on the roster (#92). It also needs 20 staff and one per 32 guests, so when the park is 1 to 5 short of that line it hires a few more guards to close the gap, and lets its own extras go when they stop being needed (#163). The window shows where the park stands ("Best Staff: 19/20, hiring guards"), and says so when the award is held.
Handles advertising and voucher campaigns.
Ranks every campaign by what each extra guest it brings in is likely to cost, based on your park's current prices and capacity. Some campaigns are much worse value than they look. Free-entry vouchers, for example, do very little if your entry fee is already low. You can start campaigns from the list yourself, or let it run them within a spending limit. It won't advertise while the park is already full, unless your scenario objective needs more guests.
The game doesn't let plugins see which campaigns are running, so this window keeps its own record, saved with the park.
It also warns about two prices that quietly cost you guests, without ever changing them: an entrance fee above your rides' total value (new arrivals drop to a quarter, #94), and a ride priced above what guests will pay for it, which they refuse at the entrance and leave unhappier (#166).
Experimental. Path Connector has not been reviewed and has no automated tests, and picking a tile is known to be unreliable (#30). Save before using it.
A building tool, not automation. Pick two tiles and it plans a footpath between them, routing around rides and scenery, and warns you about problems before you build. Nothing runs in the background.
- Spend money you can't switch off. Benches, bins, stalls and entertainers are on by default because testing showed they pay off in a cleaner park (#51); each has its own toggle. Campaigns and ride operation tuning stay off until you tick them.
- Demolish anything. Facility building only ever adds.
- Remove your things. The bench and bin clean-up only touches items the plugin placed itself. Anything you placed by hand is left alone.
- Slow the game down. Every periodic job has been timed on a 1,000-guest park. Most take 3 ms or less, and the heaviest (a full map scan, at most once every 30 seconds) takes about 14 ms.
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Download the
.jsfiles from the latest release. Take all seven, or only the ones you want. Each plugin works on its own. -
Put them in your OpenRCT2
pluginfolder:System Folder Windows Documents\OpenRCT2\plugin\macOS ~/Library/Application Support/OpenRCT2/plugin/Linux ~/.config/OpenRCT2/plugin/ -
Start OpenRCT2 and load a park. Plugins load when a park loads, so if the game is already running, go back to the title screen and load the park again.
You'll need a recent OpenRCT2 build (plugin API version 87 or later). Settings are saved in each park file, so different parks can use different settings.
The plugins are written in TypeScript and bundled with rollup into one .js file each.
npm install
npm run build:dev # build and copy straight into your OpenRCT2 plugin folder
npm run build # release build into ./dist
npm test # unit tests
npm run typecheckThe decision-making code is kept apart from the code that talks to the game. Files such as
staffing.ts, needs.ts and marketing.ts take plain numbers in and return decisions,
so they can be tested without the game running. The seven plugin files connect those
decisions to the game. Their behaviour in a real park is checked with an optional
diagnostics feed: build with npm run build:debug (every window then shows Diagnostics, ticked), run node tools/log-sink.mjs,
and timings and counters are written to tools/rct-debug.log.
Every push is type-checked, tested and built by GitHub Actions. Pushing a tag such as
v1.0.0 publishes a release with the seven plugin files attached.
Start with NOTES.md for the project layout, build details and a list of API traps found along the way. Deeper material:
- API reference: plugin API behaviour, each point checked against the game source
- Performance: what things cost and the rules that keep plugins fast
- Design records: why each feature works the way it does, including ideas that were measured and dropped
- Research: game mechanics and community strategy
- Project history
These plugins were written with Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding tool, over several sessions of playing and fixing. The models involved were Claude Sonnet 4.6, Opus 5, Sonnet 5 and Opus 5.5, with Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet running smaller research and build tasks alongside them.
It wasn't written from guesswork about how the game works. Two things kept it honest:
- The game's own source code. A local copy of the OpenRCT2 source was the reference for every question about the plugin API: what a value means, what units it's in, and why an action gets refused. Those answers are written up in the API reference, each one cited to a file and line. Several turned out to be different from what the documentation or common sense suggested. For example, money is stored in tenths of a pound, not hundredths, and an in-game day is about 530 ticks, not 8,192.
- Data from real play. Each plugin can stream timings and counters from a running game. While I played, that data was read back and used to set thresholds, find slow code and catch features that were quietly doing nothing. Most design choices in design records point to a measurement, and a few ideas were dropped because the data showed they wouldn't help.
The decision logic is also covered by unit tests (node tests/run.mjs prints the count), several of which exist because they
caught a real bug first.
MIT. Use it, change it, mix it into your own plugins. Just keep the license notice.