TOPIC:

These servers are cool, thanx for maintaining them.

I find it a bit easy to make a fortune: there are many industries, tracking costs nothing just as teraforming. I suggest to rise a bit the costs of teraforming.

Other point: the settings for trains are way too easy: no weigth multiplier and a little 3% for hills steepness. This settings make it very easy to build a line without taking care of the geography. A weight multiplier set to something like 5 + a hills steepness set to 7/8 would make things more interesting. This way the player would have to make strategical decisions about what engine to choose and what line to build according to geography, instead of just lying a long track without pain.

Last settting I would like to be improved: please do not allow the 90° turns!

The difficulty in goal servers lie in playing against others (or improving your own finish time), not simply earning money.

Changing those settings around simply serves to make the game slower.

Edit: I'm all for testing it though, but it's just that making the servers harder loses BTPro players pretty often.

And there's really no reason to remove 90 degree turns, you rarely see them from anyone with a clue anyway.

Firstly I'd like to say that many people find it difficult to reach goal and I've seen many many players struggle to even make £1 million a year. The goal values make it very important to make many millions per year, especially on long goal servers. This is where the game becomes interesting, for example: Trying to beat other players when you start 10+ years after the start of the game and still try to win. Or just trying to get the record for the fastest time, be that personal or overall for that server. (Note: The amount of points awarded to a win reflects how well you did in that game)

Could you be more specific in which servers you think have too many industries? You'll tend to find especially on the on Quick Goal Servers that there isn't simply enough when there are 6+ people playing at one time. Competition becomes tough, making the gameplay much more challenging. On desert there is never enough useable industry if two or more people go for oil.

A weight multiplier and hill steepness could be a possibility. It would need to be thoroughly tested before implemented to ensure that it doesn't ruin the experience of the game for everyone. As this may just cause more problems that it is worth if i'm honest. Then again experienced players take hills into account when planning the layout of the line before construction of it rather than just building straight over them, since the uphill climbs will reduce speed if the train doesn't have enough power.

Terraforming is always an issue that should be taken into consideration. However large scale terraforming is just a waste of money in my honest opinion and is currently met by our terraforming limit. Perhaps inoccuring a higher financial cost could be a possibility BUT this will not stop people from doing it. The reason is because once you have your line(s) setup you'll always have enough money to do anything you desire.

I don't know what you have against these sorts of turns if i'm honest. 90 degree turns have a high speed penatly with its duration linked directly to train length. So any player knowing how to build wouldn't use 90 degree turns. Sometimes it can be useful in special cases where space may be very tight at a station for an example. Also two 45 degree bits of track isn't the same as a 90 degree turn. (I just want to make that clear since I had to explain this to someone last night!)

Of course finding the right settings that suit the community as a whole is always a challenging and demanding experience. Since everyone has their preferred way to play. We have and always are testing settings in response to the communities needs. We recently turned inflation off on all our servers in order to make sure starting late wouldn't cause a player to be heavily disadvantaged. Variation of the loan size was also done some time ago, to try and make the start of the game more interesting. However this was met with wide scale rejection hence values were changed to more suitable levels.

Thank you for your message, I look forward to your reply about the industry issues.

cxc

About 90° turns: I don't like them because of some station designs I do, forcing the trains to go a certain way or to enter a depot. I found that 90° turns can mess up these kinds of design, specially when the station gets more complex.

About teraforming: I don't really care, its just that making it more expensive could prevent some players from a massive use.

About industries: I usualy play on quick goal servers, and I find it quite easy to stick to a large group of industries on one side of the map and then lay a track to the other side to deliver them. I mean that industries of the same kind may be too close to one another. By the way this reinforces the "first comes first served" implicit rule, as there are no large usable groups of industries for everyone.

My main point is about bringing a more strategical aproach to the game. I'll try to explain it differently:

# Engine choice: actually I always take the fastest engine in all cases: runing costs are so low, very little power is needed to move cargo, and hills doesn't even matter.
Lets check the parameters that have an influence on strategical choices:

- Reliability (actually used)

- Needed power (actually pointless): a higher weight multiplier would make the decision tougher as more power is needed: sometimes it could be better to choose a slower but more powerfull engine, or decide to make smaller trains with a faster engine.

- Runing costs (actually pointless): higher runing costs would make the player think before systematically buying the best engine. Actually the difference is so low between an engine and the other that it does not influence the choice.

# Route choice and design (actually pointless): with a significant hills steepness the choice of what road to open will be greatly influenced by the geography, making the game less simple than the usual "grab a bunch of industries and lay a super long track". The mountainous tracks would have to be more realistic, with turns.

I suggest you to test with x5 and 5% or 6%.

You are absolutly right about the competition which makes the game intersting. Its just that more tactical options would make it less mechanical.

By the way another request: using a newgrf train set would be awesome: 2cc, nars or ukrs...

But engines DO matter. You don't start with the 241 electrical trains on temperate unless you're a complete idiot, you use the 201 Diesel ones. You don't upgrade from the 112 single-engine train to the 160 double-engine Turner Turbo INSTANTLY when it becomes available in QUICK Desert #6, you upgrade when you have money to spare from connecting additional industries.

I often use the very slowest train on #6 to connect up feeders, too. It costs ~25k as opposed to ~50k for the 112 that you use for the money-maker line.

All of these are tactical decisions. You're making it sound WAY more clear cut than it really is.

And hills DO matter - it may not matter late-game or AS MUCH on temperate, but it makes quite a difference on Tropical and I often build around the few large hills that are there (mostly because it costs extra too).

Ok, engines might matter in the first 10 minutes of the game. You start with a 500k loan: with it you can build a long single line that will get you around 100k for each delivery. A 150k engine will be paid in one and a half trip: things are cheap because you can make big money from the start with the loan. It does not make a big difference to buy a better engine, as you can pay for another one within 10 minutes only with your first line. I used to play on servers with a 200k loan where you have to be much more carefull as you don't get big money from the start.

The runing costs does not make any difference: 12k or 15k a year, who cares? Good trains can make around 400/500k a year.

The question of power can really affect decisions. Example: I can get a Floss for around 80k - power 2600hp / speed 160 - or I can choose a more expensive SH30 electrical with the same speed and 1000hp more. Actually I would always choose the Floss because it has enough power to move long trains with the actual weight multiplier setting. The choice of SH30 would be justified if more power would be needed to move long trains: the Floss could not handle all the wagons at optimal speed.

For hills just try to play with a higher multiplier ( 5 to 8 ) and see the difference by yourself.