I'm kinda running out of idea of which license to unlock or which railroads to expand, mind if anyone shares the strategy? Thanks....
Don't over think it. Just make sure you have plenty of gold and bux because you will probably need a new train line and a train with enough capacity and fuel to make transferring the really pricy cargo around the world. I went from EU to NA and blew through 180K gold and all my bux really quick (license, Lisbon to NY path, a new train line, a few cities) and stupidly didn't have a train capable of making the trek from Lisbon to NY. I didn't realize at the time a fuel car on a basic steamer would have been enough. Still, transporting 8 cargo is not very profitable for NA so if you don't have the train capable of moving enough freight (and I think you need more than even a 12 cargo train) then maybe consider Asia as a good alternative. Me, I took the hard path... but now I'm poised to expand again and I'm aiming at Africa as it looks pretty straight forward and easy to manage.
I'm a bit curious of how higher level strategies will be for PT. With NA, Europe and Asia not fully covered, I already have 70 opened stations and 20 railroad lines! A few facts point to long term micro management hell: - you have to press each station even for long distance trips. - if you want to transfer cargo from SF to Tokyo, it has to go through at least 4 or 5 railroad lines, being layovered each time at a hub station. And of course you can't just keep the "end of the line" stations. So even with a few straight lines, you still will have dozens and dozens of stations. Micromanagement hell/heaven depending of how you like it In Pocket Planes, past level 30/40, there was very little incentive to keep smaller airports opened (class 1 and 2) as your bigger planes couldn't land there. So many players shrank their airport base, keeping 10/20 class 3 airports open to cover the world. The global events were the opportunity to use the smaller planes at a different location each time, but event airports were mostly closed after they ended. Maybe we will also shrink our operations later in PT and reorganize with only a few straight lines with high capacity trains? But with layovers all over the place and railroad lines everywhere, downsizing will be difficult to execute anyway. Or some will have all roads/stations opened and 40 lines? My head hurts already Thoughts welcomed
I think exactly opposite, the game seems to let up on the micromanagement over time. Having expanding 100% to all stations and paths in the US & EU and just today purchased Africa and have around 1/3 of those stations... I see no reason ever to close a city or path. Every city is important. Any city is capable of having expensive cargo. Instead what I see as the end game is ultimately to have every city and path unlocked and maybe 2 to 5 trains per territory. In EU already I've moved one of my trains to Africa and another I could do without and am probably going to move it to Asia. The bigger trains, the more engines... the higher the capacity the less need to micromanage. Already I pass up any job that's less than $2000 gold (I'm talking the face value not any separate gold coin multiplier) between countries unless it's to a city VERY close to NY or Lisbon or I just have the extra space. I have 2 trains in NA that pretty much do nothing but go to NY and drop off any big dollar EU cargo as well as pick up any of the new big dollar cargo and get it to it's destination. On the way I'll have each train pick up enough smaller cargo to get the train to capacity. In the end, my NA operation is taking very little management. My EU side is getting more trimmed down and efficient since I put in some better trains... and my Africa side is going to start out one train but I see no reason to go past 2 with it. In the end, focusing in on big cargo is easier to manage as each continent has it's "port" cities to act as the major hub for the local trains... and all the trips take longer rather than are all arriving before all the trains can be sent on their way.
I think the best end game would essentially be every single railroad bought and every single train is paired to a single railroad. Then every non-end city would have huge layover capacity (well, technically double your max capacity train should do) and just shuttle cargo from one city to another. Or at the least, have no set of railroads longer than your longest single railroad - but that's more about efficiency. But of course it could be a nightmare to do.
I've already reached level 20 and began downsizing.. I have 5 legendary railroads. Fully upgraded San Juan that runs Honolulu to Denver Fully upgraded Gila that runs Denver to Madrid. Fully upgraded terabyte zephyr that runs Madrid to Kiev. Fully upgraded Pecos that run Kiev to Beijing And a Rio Grand with 2 engines and 2 fuel cars running Beijing to Melbourne. Each hub is upgraded to hold around 50 cars. Trains pick up jobs along the route they go and other high priced jobs and bux jobs get taken to the hubs and dropped off to be picked up by the next train. I get them going and then 2-3 hours later I send them again. Each trains trip is around 16-24 minute... (The terabyte is a little quicker, but runs out of fuel sooner so it works out)... Each run yields about 16,000 coins and I've got as much as 90 bux at times when I had a bux job from Melbourne to New York. I make about 5-7 of these runs per day. That's about the extent of my setup. Events get accomplished 90% of the time.
Thks guys, interesting to see so radically different answers Nightc1 would have all cities and lines opened but only a few trains per continent. Itschris dreams (has nightmares?) of hundreds of micro railroads connecting the world And penguin already downsized to a long line of 5 trains that effectively solves most of the layover problems I guess. So thoughts about how you see your endgame in PT, keep'em coming
Does anybody have any freighter parts yet? What's the highest level people have reached? I'm building my railroad as if it was a real railroad, with reasonable runs per train and lots of connections. I mostly only move goods that are on their destination line, but will do some transfers when they look worth it. I'm running 13 trains in Europe, Africa, and Asia at the moment, but have figured out the routes I want to use to cover the entire Eastern hemisphere with 16 trains. I posted a screencap a while back; I'll post again when I finish setting up those 16 trains.
I closed silly short branches like Dublin, Rome, Athens. Having them open means that they dilute the spawn outcome to somewhere not as hassling.
I'm only level 15 but I think I know what my strategy is going to be, 4 feeder loops- 2 in east Asia, one in west NA, and 1 in south america (not sure if there's a nice loop I can use in SA) Then I'll have two lines going from my hub city at chengdu to Budapest where the two lines will diverge, one from lisbon to NY and the other to South America and the two lines will meet up with their feeder loops. I haven't seen a map of South America, but ideally this is what I'd do. Although, I am fairly early in the game and this might be a little ambitious, but I can dream
I'm on iPhone. Without taking a bunch of pictures then copying them to my PC and the enduring them all together the best I can do is a general pic to show the divide. Missing from the pic is Alaska and Hawaii. P
Dekotora, but I'll be replacing that with an upgraded standard soon since the Delorora is 20 cargo but all the 3 car standards go up beyond that and can have more fuel. On the north part of my map is Rio Grande Standard and the lower half is a Gila Standard. ______ As of tonight I've retired all of my regular 8 cargo steamers. They served me well but now I have 12 car options (including about 5 or 6 express trains with second engine) to be much more effient. Also 80% done buying all of Africa. I may throw a second train down there.. Or may just save them for Asia since licenses are now over 36,000 gold! Ended up using my Terabyte Zephyr for Africa though and it's doing a fine job. I'll want to upgrade to a full standard eventually. ________ Not to derail, but anyone have a train game recommendation? Maybe something similar moving cargo or people around?
I have a similar strategy to Penguin. The core network would basically be 3-4 fully upgraded standard trains that run from NY <-> Paris <-> Tehran <-> Chengdu. Depending on the destination of the cargo, a 4th train may take it from Chengdu <-> Australia. All cargo would mostly be between NA and EA/Oceania, with bux jobs for stopover points being the only exception. I'm not sure if that single line will have enough capacity, so in the future I may open up a parallel route that runs from South America <-> Africa <-> Chengdu, and it will service mostly cities in the south of NA (Mexico/Miami/San Juan). If it's still not enough I may end up opening a 3rd line that runs from NY <-> Paris (via greenland) <-> Chengdu (via Europe). I think there's 2 key points to reducing the amount of micromanagement required. 1) Maximize the use of cities with multiple connections as hubs even if it means making your train travel a further distance. This allows you to reduce the number of transfers required. 2) Only make hub-to-hub railways. Meaning that your trains either start at a hub and end at a hub, or start at a hub and terminate at some end point. There should be no hubs in the middle of the railway. This makes it easier because every time your train picks cargo up, there's only one direction it can go. And you don't need to check the interchanges along the way.
