The rival railroads fight back
Two weeks after reopening, this is what changed because of what you told us. Most of it came straight from your reports, and one of them was a complaint we deserved.
The computer railroads upgrade their engines
You told us the computer-run railroads bought a slow engine for a line and then ran it forever. You were right. They chose the cheapest engine that made money and never looked at it again.
Now they re-engine their best trains when a faster engine pays for itself. A railroad looks when it next weighs buying trains, swaps any one train at most once a year, and only onto an engine that is at least as fast and at least as strong as the one it had. Expect quicker rivals on the lines you share with them, and expect them to keep getting quicker as new engines arrive.
Getting this right took longer than writing it. A railroad decides whether a line needs another train by how full its trains run, and a train that has just moved from a 65-ton engine to a 344-ton one suddenly looks almost empty. The first version made the computer railroads stop buying trains altogether. They now judge an upgraded train by the engine it was bought for, and in our test seasons they run faster fleets on every era we tried and earn more on most of them.
Changing a train's engine also now follows the same rules as buying one, for everybody: no engine before its year, and no electric engine on a line without wire.
Run your trains over other railroads' track
You can route a train over any railroad's line and pay that railroad its posted rate for each ton you carry over its track. Plenty of you stop at other railroads' stations and never run a train over their track, and the designer admits to being one of them.
The stop list now marks every stretch that runs on someone else's rails, such as "over Erie track", with the rate you pay. If a rival's line is the short way between two of your towns, use it.
See the freight that is about to spoil
Freight handed from one railroad to another sometimes waits at a junction until it spoils. Until now you only found out afterwards, if at all.
The Partners tab has a new view, "Waiting now". It lists freight waiting at your junctions that may spoil before anyone moves it, about how much is collected there each day, and which trains that call there could carry it on. Where no train can, it says so. A second list shows your own freight waiting at other railroads' junctions, which is theirs to move but yours to worry about.
Freight left at a town with nobody living in it now spoils like freight anywhere else, instead of piling up forever.
Takeovers work more like the real thing
Buying a large block of a railroad's shares now pushes its price up as you buy, and that pressure fades over about a month. A railroad that is earning well defends itself: it buys shares back to keep control. A railroad that is struggling does not, and is fair game.
So a healthy railroad cannot simply be bought out from under itself. You can still make it poorer on purpose, by competing for its freight, and buy it once it is in trouble.
What is next
- The computer railroads' planning, more broadly: they still sometimes buy a train for a line that cannot fill it.
- A way to reorder a train's stops, still on the list from the first week.
Tell us
Most of this post exists because someone told us what was wrong. Keep doing it. A sentence is enough: what you were trying to do, and what happened instead.
Post it in the Facebook group, talk to us on the Discord, or email support@waybillgame.com.