Train Tycoon: Railroad Empire

A CIRCULAR FROM THE RAILWAY BOARD Tycoons! This one is repairs, end to end: we ran an audit of the whole railway — from the cash desk to the job board — and closed everything we found. • The books for your absence are kept properly. Costs for all the missed days used to be taken at once, before the first ruble of takings — a sound railway could return to an empty treasury and a scattered staff. Now takings first, then the bills, day by day, just as when you are here • The treasury never goes below zero — not when you decline a job, not when you pay off a loan. The gifted train No. 444 can no longer be sold for four million • The mechanic leaves the crew with the man, rather than servicing the train from beyond the grave. Hiring counts three required places and adds a mechanic when it can, and a full crew in a city with a depot has an "Add a mechanic" button • Honest building. The menu and the build itself finally agree on one price: the first building of a kind in a city needs no materials, each next one costs a tenth more, and the depot costs the advertised three hundred thousand. A demolished station can be built again — a city used to be left without one for good • Electricians work on site: no bus carries them, and no "not getting to work" alert is raised over them • The diamond mine: unpaid, it stands until you pay; fix the city's troubles and it starts at once • The job board no longer freezes: untaken offers expire, and a "three-day" deadline lasts exactly three days. The bank grows to level five, as do its rates — the "Upgrade the bank" job is doable again. At the market a lot can be bought in parts, as long as you can afford a single unit • Words now match deeds: leisure houses bring 7,200 per level, which is what it says; an empty cinema raises an alert; an unpowered building says "unpowered"; the workshop descriptions quote the real norms • The clock. The notification shade and the app switcher no longer count your seconds twice, and turning the system clock forward no longer gifts a month of mining • Small things: a leaderboard name with an underscore is no longer reported as taken; the tutorial can be restarted right from the map; the store opens over any window; a bus with a dry tank draws its lines gray Steam is up. Your move, tycoon.

A CIRCULAR FROM THE RAILWAY BOARD Gentlemen tycoons! This issue is repairs from end to end: one fault was pointed out by a player, three more turned up while we were tracing it. • The railway works again while you are away. Returning after a long absence, you could find your stores untouched: no raw material at all, though wages and upkeep had been charged for every day. The order of business was to blame — the buses spent their whole range before the office counted who had come to work, and by those dry machines it appeared that nobody had. Now the shift is counted before the buses set out, and the workshops are credited with exactly the time the buses could cover • The power station is now within a city's means. Last issue we made power compulsory and misjudged the measure: a station fed one building per level, while a city holds a dozen and a half. Where stations stood without an electrician, the city stopped altogether. Now one station feeds five buildings per level, and in older games the capacity is recalculated by itself • The ghosts are gone. In long-running games, places at your buildings were held by people long departed: the office could not find the building's record and never freed the place. Those ghosts counted towards city power, police and medical coverage and the takings of your leisure houses — in your favour, but untrue. Places are now recounted against the living when you enter the game • Retirement no longer takes you unawares. A shift hired all at once used to retire all at once, and a city would crumble in a couple of days without a word of warning. Now notice comes a week ahead, and the city panel holds a line reading «Retiring soon» until you hire a replacement The engines are under steam. Your move, tycoon.

Gentlemen tycoons! This time we did not rebuild the road — we went after everything on it that creaked. • A guide for newcomers: it walks you from your first station to your first contract, notices what you have done by itself, and never stands in your way • Hiring is finally a decision. A worker's experience always showed in his price but did nothing for output — now it does. A master produces more and asks four times as much: cheap hands pay off at the mines, masters earn their keep in the workshops • Trains now wear by time on the line, not by number of trips. A fast engine on a short run used to eat itself in repairs and operate at a loss; now every machine returns the same share of its price on any route, and a dearer train is honestly the stronger one • Fleet upkeep more than halved • The power station works. Its electrician had nowhere to travel to — no route could be laid to the station, yet the journey was still required of him. City capacity therefore always read as zero, ratings could never climb past half, and the diamond mine would not open however hard you tried. Now it does • Workshops and factory now balance exactly: a day's output from the shops is a day's work for the factory. A first-level factory used to produce a third of what it should, leaving stock piling up dead • Coming back after a long absence no longer hangs • The game no longer closes itself if a save fails Your move, tycoon.

- улучшен баланс