Let me try again to restate a key point I was trying to make... Yes, the value of the trip is determined, as in PP, by the distance from source to destination. But with no carrying costs, the route you take to get there does not change your profit. That's a complete change from Pocket Planes. If you can play all the time and micromanage well and you have no bottlenecks then of course the straight line is best. My point is that there is a lot more flexibility in our delivery strategy because we're not penalized by taking an indirect route, and with each line owned by one color you can't always take the straight line you would in PP.
Train Part Exchange Just started playing and would like to trade train parts or receive any extras from charitable train tycoons. Git code: 1KJH9 Want: Mallard Steamer parts -> For: Daylight parts (1:1 Trade) Want: National Express parts -> For: Metro and Global Express parts (1:1 Trade) Want: Carbon Steamer Parts -> For: Metro and Global Express parts (2:1 or 3:2 trade)
I'm confused. I have about 10 trains now and they're all in Europe. Currently each track has about 3-5 cities on it (I opted to make each train track a loop as much as possible- for example, I have one going from Amsterdam - Munich - Paris with a leg to London). After reading the last few pages of this thread, however, I'm wondering if I should continue this way or start over and aim for longer railroads. What's an ideal way to get that started? I don't mind restarting my game, haven't been playing that long.
I want to chime in on this convo... The value seems to be determined by the distance from source + the value of the actual cargo. I've had many short distance hauls that were surprisingly rewarding. No, not 3000+ gold for the base price, but certainly 500 to 1000. Transporting gold is worth more than transporting mail. There's a ton of flexibility to develop very different yet profitable cargo delivery style since all that matters is getting the cargo from point A to B without any penalty for the number of steps required to get there or how long it takes. If they implored some kind of expiration date for when cargo needs to get somewhere then the strategy required to do well would be much different. Seems like a straight line approach to delivering cargo would be the least profitable since you'd miss out on some of the big side jobs along the way and end up having a lot of cargo waiting at stockyards and need a lot of micro management to get it all delivered. I've noticed already my stockyards are nearing empty due to the efficiency of my system. But that could just be the game tweaking itself based on how I'm playing. I've had fewer big bux hauls the last day as well. Whenever I send one of my NA trains around I pretty much consider it on a specific mission. For instance I'm taking a specific high value cargo to Mexico City, I'll try to fill out the trip with other stuff along the path and after dropping something off I'll pick up anything that I can drop off along the way as well as any big bux/crates even if they can't be delivered that trip. On the way back from my main mission I may set a whole new mission depending on what I find, or I may head back to NY for the next big haul. Either way the small local jobs are not worth my time if they are out of my way considering the overseas cargo has a base value of 2000+ per set of 4 to 5 cars.
If you just started then you are using lower end trains and thus almost need to stick to the smaller routes with many trains. I had 8 trains in Europe alone before expanding. Keep on what you are doing until you have the cash and trains possible to open another continent. At that point you can repurpose a train by moving it track to track (claiming each one) until you get to it's new home and go from there. I wouldn't bother re-starting. As you replace trains with better ones you can sell them off from your yard.
I just "purchased" the same special crate I already had on layover at a station. 20,000 coins gone. Oof...
Update at lvl 16 I'm treating new levels like Christmas, saving my special and regular crates to open in a group. At lvl 16 (10 railroads, 4th license now in NA, 284K miles, 359 crates, 5121 bux, 12 events), here's what came up... Special crates: Daylight Century Limited x2 Dekotora x2 Dragonbreath x2 (completing first engine) Carbon Steamer (first level just getting one, yay) Regular crates: Steamer: Cherry, Blue x3, Emerald Express: National x4, Metro x3 (completing fourth), Global, Regional x2 Standard: Rio Grande x3, Pecos x3, Gila, San Juan x2 Zephyr: Petabyte, Terabyte x3 (I'm one shy now with Terabyte and Pecos...!) NA is open but I still need to activate Lisbon-NY (soon!)
I'm getting close to opening my 4th license too. I finished unlocking all of Africa. I'm thinking Asia is next. I already have the gold to get the license but need to grind out the jobs looking for bux because I now have a small mountain of crates.
I hope they'll remove it from the special crate list to normal crates. Grinding to get the daily event and finding out the held a carbon steamer part is, like you said, anti-climatic. :/
Pocket Trains hard crashes on launch, cannot play! I have been playing Pocket Planes a lot, without any problems until today. Something happened so that the app will not open at all! I was just a few XP short of level 20, with 17 railroads on 5 continents. I have a cross-country flight on Friday and was looking forward to several hours of play, so I hope the next patch fixes this! Help!
I've been on a business trip the past few days, so I hadn't yet caught up reading all messages in this thread before posting. I see I'm not the only one in this boat. But hopefully the update comes before I check out of my hotel Friday morning!! In the meantime, I have a second game on my Android phone, still a modest level 6 with steamers in Europe, so at least I have that to play with.
Maximum bux job? Before my game quit today I was thinking about the maximum value of a bux job... The value of any job is given by: distance × #cars × cargo value. This hold true for both coins and bux. For example, cargo such as cars or ethanol have a cargo value of 4. This is indicated by the icon of 4 coins or 4 bux. At the other end, cargo of water, paper, etc. have a value of 1. The number of cars varies from 1 to 5. Therefore, the multiplier before the distance variable is considered can range from 1×1=1 to 5×4=20. So what is the maximum "distance value" for bux? Within a short distance, the value is 1. (So you'll recall that early in the game you could find 20 bux jobs just a hop or two away in Europe.) But what is the maximum value? I have had several 60-bux jobs from east Asia to western North America, but I took attention the last time and noticed that the cargo was 5 cars of cement (which has a value of 3 bux), so the distance multiplier must have been 4. This also means that I might someday see an 80-bux job for that route. But what about longer routes? Has anybody opened both ends of the Nome-Wellington run and seen any bux jobs? If the distance multiplier is 5 or 6 for that span, that means a maximum bux job of 100 or 120 might be possible!
