I plan to use the Bullet for my transatlantic line. My current train takes a mighty 23 minutes from Lisbon to NY. So with the Bullet I'm hoping it would cut the trip by 10 minutes or so. I have parts such as Petabyte, San Juan, Gila, Daylight, CL, Dekotora, Mallard.
My Virginia Freighter broke down and it cost around 7500 to repair. I run my trains at max distance and they fill up from the em of a straight line and run to the other end and drop stuff off along the way. At least 1/3 of the time they need repairs. That eats up every bit of the profit from that trip. That being said.. I love the management aspect of this game. It's fun to pick up a 5-car 60 bux job in Nome that is going to Australia, and have to transfer it in Denver, then again on Madrid, then again in volvograd, then again in Beijing, then again in Jakarta, then finally deliver in to Sydney.
Wow, 60 bux? Impressive how you have to travel so far. My highest is only 40 bux, from Moscow to St. Louis.
NimbleBit should market the game to the education bureaus all over the world because this is a great education tool for geography class.
Don't you just hate it when you heavily upgraded a city for hub but then found out it was a bad choice? I am regreting my 100-space Munich.
I know that feeling. I also am contemplating on resetting my game as I thought how much bux I can amass should I play more properly and not upgrading cities here and there. But now I'm lvl 13 and have several nice trains and I've also reset my game once recently so..
I don't think they really punish new players too much. So long as you don't spend all your coins at any given time it's not really a problem. When you have less lines, it happens less often. Later down the line, it doesn't effect you too much I agree - however the amount of coins required for new and longer lines later on, plus licenses is a lot - so it still bumps you down a bit.
I've now got my map finished, later this morning when I have time I'll stitch it together and post it. I'm not sure why people have issues with repairs eating up profits from the trip, I've got more coins than I can spend, even after repairs. (I guess spend them on buying crates?) I have 17 lines total, mostly running expresses but with four standards, three zephyrs (one of which still needs a fuel car to really work - I shouldn't have opened that line so soon but I had the coins and I was impatient), and one freighter. All of the expresses and one standard are fully upgraded, the other 7 trains still need parts. I'm also thinking of starting to phase out lower-fuel expresses as soon as possible. My MO is to transfer crates or large bux jobs, but never coins and usually not small bux jobs. Every station where two lines meet has been upgraded to hold 10 crates, beyond that I upgrade on an as-needed basis. Lines are laid out to be as long as possible to maximize potential rewards without transfers, and subject to that, so that as many cities as possible are served by as many trains as possible.
Updates for lvl 17-19 Sticking with plan of uncrating and new rails/licenses on lvl up... Lvl 17: 11 rr, w/4lic, 13 ev, 343K mi, 19K cars, 406 crates, 5642 bux Lvl 18: 13 rr w/5lic, 15 ev, 410k mi, 22K cars, 464 crates, 6287 bux Lvl 19: 14 rr, w/6lic, 17 ev, 486K mi, 26K cars, 517 crates, 6800 bux At lvl 19 finished all licenses, Operation Asia & NA, started into Japan Opening crates for these levels 17: Dekatora, Dragonbreath, 2 Carbons 3 steamers, 5 express, 1 std (Gila), 4 zephr (petta/zetta) and first freighter parts! 3 VA. I'm short bux, 122 crates unopen 18: Dekatora, 2 Daylight, Dragonbreath, 2 Mallard 7 steamers, 4 express, 4 zephyrs (completing first, a TB) 9 standards (yay! 3 Pecos, 2 Rio, 3 Gila, 1 San Juan) 4 Freighters: 2 VA, first 2 MD 19: Dragonbreath, 2 Mallard, 1 Daylight, 3 Carbon (gah) 6 steamers, 4 Express, 5 Zephyrs 10 standard, finishing fuel cars for Gila and San Juan 6 Freighters: first 2 DE, 3 VA, MD Still feeling very short on bux (over 100 unopen crates) and cash, and especially good full trains. Next lvl I'll try to post a map.
Ah, so that answers my earlier question about the maximum bux job. I had a few 60-bux jobs for much shorter spans than Nome-Sydney (e.g. San Francisco to Beijing), and had thought that 80 or 100 bux jobs might be possible. But oil is in the highest tier for cargo value, and Nome-Sydney is close to the longest possible distance, so it would appear that 60-bux jobs are the maximum.
Here's my layout. I spent a long time gluing a map together and cleaning it up only to a) notice a couple of spots where it's off by a couple pixels and b) end up scaling it down to upload as an attachment, making some of it a little blurry anyway. Couple of additional points: As you can see, there are a lot of shorter lines in Europe. To some extent these are legacy lines (though two legacy lines have been eliminated), but they're also lines where it's hard to get a lot more length without sacrificing too much connectivity (as a result of it being the "starting area" and so very dense with connections). For instance, I'd love to extend the "Raja" (blue line from Tehran to Hong Kong, with a loop around the subcontinent) further west. But Tehran is a four way junction, and I decided I'd rather terminate it there to increase connectivity between all four lines. Some of my American lines may be too long. But they're pretty linear, and a lot of the little side routes that branch off them increase their connectivity nicely. Clearly, upgrading those to freighters with additional fuel and capacity will be a priority. From here on I anticipate playing for 5-10 minutes a few times a day, just loading trains up and sending them as far as they'll go. Here are my stats as of now (I'm about to celebrate level 21 by opening a couple dozen crates: Level 21 Railroads: 17 Miles: 793,492 Cars: 33,888 Crates: 658 Bux: 8,128 Events: 17
I'm nearly done with my map. I already purchased all the continents and have been working on the south east corner of the map. I still have South America to add a train to, I'm thinking I may put my first Freighter there (which I have 1, and have unlocked parts for 2 others). I'm confused about where the line for Oceana begins since I bought it before it yelled at me to buy the continent before expanding but I finished Asia so I know I'm eating into Oceana. I added two trains to Asia for a total of 4 in that part of the world (one of which hits the very right edge of Russia. So now I'm running 14 trains and am level 19. I can see the end game coming since coins are flowing so freely now. It's more of me not wanting to manage more cities until I'm comfortable with it than needing any gold to make it happen. Sadly, I can imagine once I have everything unlocked and operating fully that the only thing left to do will be to unlock trains which I don't know if I care enough to want to do that. My 2 train North America setup is working perfectly since I have my lower train operating with 3 engines (24 capacity) and my upper train at 2 engines. I've nearly cleaned out all of the cargo that was building up at my NA hub in NY. My last Event was in Hawaii which nearly killed me but at least I could take a large amount of cargo each time with that 24 capacity standard. Still, it took nearly the whole day before I finished that event. Today the event is in the upper right part of the map and it was in a city I hadn't opened yet. So that was one of my new trains. Hopefully I'll get it done tonight though I kind of think I may just push through and finish the map so I can take a break from the game. It has been fun for what it is. I kind of wish there was more to it after completing the map.
Have you posted a map or description of your setup? It sounds really efficient and I'm looking for ideas.
