Posts by Locomotius Prime

Yeah I've been noticing last couple of months sitting has become hell,

and now even getting in my regular account is getting hard, often the user interface wont load and I'm refreshing and refreshing,

and when things finally work i can do like 5 things and then something like changing a schedule wont work, refreshing refreshing refreshing... ok now that worked etc.

The phone app wont let me buy any wagons no matter how many times I close the app or remove the cache or whatever, I'm lucky if I can spend the RP before it freezes completely.

The webpage itself often forces me to first log in, pick a world, now it has forgotten my login so i have to log in again, I click on the world again, it opens a page, but the clicking thing for flash wont work so I have to reload that page, now it has forgotten iw as logged in again so back to mainpage and logging in again, the then opening the world i want to play again, and oh finally it loads in.

All in all I'm spending more time refreshing and loading, re-deleting caches on phone and desktop etc, and that's why the upcoming lochness EG will be my last before I quit for now.

and before I get any comments about potentially having a bad phone or computer, nope, my phone is brand new and works great with everything else,

my computer does well with the latest games and highest quality videos etc.

think pax-only is mostly a convenient choice, it's also the best cash-choice as mentioned above.

If it also became the best PP-choice, thereby being best in every category, nobody would play cargo, and the game would come to a halt as nothing gets done.

Then all cities will be level 5, and the only metric of the game would be "who changes schedules most often"

Hear Me Roar wrote:

Can you describe in more detail the problem you see?

Let me compared 2 of my experiences, roughly equal career engines, 20+ wagons, era 6 good-capable;

Both consisted of my running 5x olympuses and respnding to well over 30 goods on the ON-calls.

We were the winning region on both.

1st experience;

Big ben finished like 2 weeks ago. I had the following bonus engines;

red kite, bull, ice-breaker, isis, zeus, sphinx, valkyrie,

I wont count the PAXers, ebcause they dont matter much.

My asso was 3rd/4th hauling asso on all goods in the city.

What happens is that on every call when i was present I got the top-hauler spot in my association, and I managed to go from rank 15 to 7 on the server. On average I got about 1500 PP/good

2nd experience;

The second experience on Tower bridge I had red kite, no other bonus engines.

I went from rank 16 to rank 12.

I was in the top association where many players had 4+ bonus cargo engines.

The result is I was often the #10-15 hauler in my asso, only got 50-500 PP/good and couldn't advance my position. On many calls I was sending my trains directly seconds after it had been posted, and still got like 52 measly PP with boosted olys and mechanics.

The main difference; bonus engines. They are an absolute MUST-have for even a decent EG. If a player doesn't have at least 3 of the top 4 bonus-cargo engines, screw the EG, it's useless.

I'm gonna blame Hear Me Roar for the theft of approx 3500 diamonds, coz reasons

naike wrote:

The possibility to park trains by sort, (cargo or pax) is a very good suggestion.

I want to add something else, now you can't change association during the endgame, that is ok but I would like to see the option that a person during the endgame can be fired from an association, only done by the Chairperson.

Oh yeah this, because it's in the EG you see who the most destructive members are.

I already have 1 member on que up for instant kick when Big Ben starts again because I couldn't during the EG.

I think all assos should be bidding in the same auctions, this shit where weaker assos don't compete against the strong assos gives them an advantage compared to the strong that has nothing to do with their skill in or time spent. It just means that the "best of the worst" is in a much better position than the "worst of the best" which is a horrible way of designing anything.

I think the formula for waiting times could be adjusted. Right now a small amount of hauling, like 1 player for example can ruin the WT for everyone, putting it over a minute for the next hour, meanwhile if 60 players hit the same industry the WT will go to 10+ minutes the next hour.

I think it would make sense if let's say an amount corresponding to the first 2-3% of active players in an EG city did not count towards the WT, this way the EG-spoilers can't effect as much anymore, yet WTs still apply for normal end gaming.

Another change I'd like to see is that all engines of all types should be parked in the next city/stop they reach in the shift between era 6 and the endgame, which get's rid of all the people that forget their trains on routes before EGs. These have nothing to do with the "skill" or planning of the people who actually play the endgame but often lead to great disturbances.

Like players who can't or don't read, and drone on back and forth to a warehouse or a harbor for era 2-6, never realizing that it's a game with a finite goal or anything and just don't understand the concept of endgames or prestige or anything. There is no reaching these players, and there is no offensive measures to kill them off to be able to have a working endgame.

Hi

So Just played another Endgame actively with all that entails and I spoke to a bunch of other active players and we all agreed that actions like "parking multiple engines" or take in/out of museum, etc that can effect both passenger engines and cargo engines should have some quick way of selecting passenger OR all cargo engines, not all of them combined for this action.

For example let's say we've just filled 1 good in the EG and industry recalc is coming up in 2 minutes, I want to park my cargo engines, but I want my passenger engines to keep running.

Then it would be very handy if I could click the "park multiple engines", chose "all cargo engines" and click "park", and still have the passenger engines keep running, without have to scroll through the entire list of engines and manually clicking which ones should and shouldn't park.

This would be a convenient fix to not have to do the same scroll 30+ times through the entire train list in every endgame.

I feel like the earlier era bonustrains are easier to get, like era 1 happens quite freaquently, era 2 as well,

the era 6 one is usually quite hard to get, hundreds of tickets every time and the end-game cargo engine, i've only had 1 time ever.

Samisu wrote:

What if there were other options after the 15 / 30 days are used up? What are the things you need the most from a sitter, if you yourself are unavailable during a workday (8-12 hours)? Could there be coupons for example that mimic the sitter functions, when other players visit your station concourse?

It's not just workdays, I mean an ordinary night out with friends almost always means waking up the morning after with the bank having been over-full for hours on end and research points at a dead halt.

For most lab levels with a +acc it's what 13h until you have to logg on?

Make another level of +acc, let's say "premium", that makes the bank twice as big as +acc and doubles the amount of RP you can store, and cuts the attrition rate of engines in half after they are below 80% or something. It would easily be worth another 100 gold/week or whatever.

Seroslav wrote:

Or make workers available only for associations with for example:

- 1-8 players

- 9-16 players

- 17-25 players

So if You compete, as small association, You have bigger chances, with other small associations, not like now that 5 players association have to compete with 25 players one.

You would think twice if You would go to join member to get from 1-8 players, to 9-16 players not taking everybody who want to join, as some associations does. More strategies on here possible, more diversity.

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This more or less applies already. It's why people keep re-making small assos for cheap workers.

And it's part of the problem.

On any server there is groups of associations on different worker-auctions.

Let's for arguments sake say that a server has 3 groups of 10 associations.

In the current system that means there is for example 3 workers being auctioned at any time currently. The groups are divided by rank. All the rank 1-10 are always stuck bidding against each other, which means HUGE bids every time in the first group. low prices in the 2nd group, and minimal bids in the 3rd group. It also means that the rank 4-10 has no chance what so ever of affording some of the more attractive workers, while the rank 21-22 can get those same workers for a penny, especially since the rank 25+ associations are probably going "what's a worker?"

I'm kinda tired of seeing when I'm subbing someone in a small association, they get great workers all the time, meanwhile my association has to empty the bank against the rank 1 and 3 association every time (we're #2 on that server).

There is also these people who abuse this by constantly re-making small associations to get super-cheap workers.

2 solutions here;

1. Randomising who else is bidding against who completely each time.

2. Being able to chose "bidding-group". So that the stronger associations spread out.

As long as an important good like iron is not directly next to it (hmpf berlin) and it's only 2 tracks rather than 3 from the city (for pax reasons) it basically don't matter much.

Samisu wrote:

Thank you for the feedback!

How useful is that feature by the way? Seeing someone picked a bonus from your station?

I would say they are only useful in very rare cases and in those rare cases the player could go in and put them on.

I always turn them off, it's been a full year since the last time I had an interest in checking them from an association managing standpoint.

Piparkūkas ™ wrote:

A person spends his time getting into the game in the middle of the night, and at this time you are quietly sleeping. Who of you loves the game? And who needs to be limited?

If you take examples from football, instead of trying to learn how to play as Messi or Ronaldo, here they suggest that Messi and Ronaldo cut off their legs. And allow yourself to play with hands. Then maybe your chances on the field will be equal and you will be able to play on an equal footing with the masters.

That's right, let's take active players who are ready to play around the clock and who are interested in playing, with the level of those who enter the game when there is absolutely nothing to do and boring. Should not be so.

Maybe before you make a complaint to the development team, ask yourself, am I doing everything right?

Your analogy halts in that ronaldi and messi are actually good players who try to push towards scoring goals and making points, and winning their respective games.

A troll would be a fat dude running into the field with a shotgun, who couldn't make it into a division 9 team.

So the dude with the shotgun comes in, shooting and decapitating messi or ronaldo without giving a crap about the ball, the game or winning anything. It's not that this fat dude with a shotgun is so good that he is "winning" over ronaldo or messi, it's that in the case of Rail Nation, that fat dude with the shotgun running into the field and shooting people is "not against the rules", and there is no game-mechanic or anything to hit back.

The problem is if our "ronaldo/messi" RN player over-invests the troll, he will have spent precious resources that puts him at a disadvantage against the real competition 5 cities away.

Take another game like CNC tiberium alliances, when people try to do this type of griefing, a good player just kills that player and shuts him down for 24h. A little while into the game the powerful player gets strong defenses rendering him immune to the griefing players attacks, while he can wipe the griefer in a heartbeat without losing much. it's been like 6 years since I played it, but it's very obvious to me that a similar power-relation and some sort of attack mechanic is needed in RN to be able to deal with these trolls.

Right now a troll can spend 100% of their income on trolling, and make huge damage, but they have nothing to lose and can't be stopped effectively.

I don't see why the strong corps fight each other for the workers while the weak corps get them almost for free. This is a very weird mechanic to me.

Open all simultaneous worker-auctions to all corps and all these problems are gone.

I think the way forward on this is to enable players some way to attack each other.

To damage buildings and engines, forcing the destructive player to spend resources on repairing to regain function.

For example let's say you can spend credits on a saboteur against another players base and pick 1 building. You damage the engine house; maybe a consequence of this is that the player first has to repair the engine house before he can repair his engines.

Or if the restaurant/shopping/hotel is damaged they pause their bonus generation. And so on.

If then for example someone is sabotaging an EG or mucking around with peoples majorities, then whole associations make their attacks on those individuals and rid them of their ability to sabotage.

The stronger the player the more resistant to attacks, and the more effect the attacks have on the victim (this prohibits masses of double accounts to have much effect). Let's say a 100k PP player attacks a 0.8k PP player then it would be reasonable to push down the trains to around 10% of their max speed. If the 0.8k attacks a 100kPP player, then maybe that players trains would lose one percent or something. Maybe equally strong players could take 10~% off from each others engines if attacking.

If this is balanced right, it would mean people have to interact in a much more deliberate manner to keep their contacts and surroundings from hostility, while having appropriate tools to deal with saboteurs.

It would also add a whole new strategic element to the game.

Samisu wrote:

Winter event adjustments

What do you think of the winter event adjustments?

Also, should there be more events in the game like this or do you like the minigames in the Lobby like Clash! or throwing snowballs?

I think making the event ingame was a huge step up.
Clash didn't feel very connected to the game, this does.

I think the adjustments are fair considering they were made after release, good job on that imo.

One critique i have for a thing like this is that you should think about minimizing the amount of thing that pup up.
Right now for example if I'm sitting on 100k coins and try to spend them it takes hours and hours because of all the pops ups of getting like 1 glove back or 1 diamond. Meanwhile I'm arbitrarily buying thousands of gloves at a time for coins, which means the "huge announcement" of getting 1 glove back si pretty "meh" and just consumes a lot of time...

I agree I'd like to reward productive players too. Right now the only stick i have is to kick people, and there is no carrot.

However i feel like clothing vouchers and engines skins would be too little, they're basically nothing for most players who have played more than a couple of rounds and already have the items they want out of the cosmetics.

I'm thinking it has to have some kind of impact on the economics or PP somehow directly or indirectly, otherwise it's just gonna be "meh".

sacroima wrote:

I do agree with Nerisrath.

After all, my team managed to win on Rome (arguably one of the worst megacities) against an experienced Goteborg (arguably one of the best cities).

You have so many factors you have to take into account. To me, the number of total tracks is irrelevant, compared to the time at which you get those sets (which you can definitely influence).

The main point I would consider balancing, for faire EG, is the number of active teams in one region, compared to the rest of the regions. I find that having one megacity with 40 very active and experienced players against cities with 20 at most is much more unbalanced that a random set of goods.

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Well people move and concentrate to places they think can win or have an advantage. For example if I'm in a region that I think wont win, I will usually build tracks to a place i think will win set my home city there and sometimes play my EG there.
It's just very very clear in 19 games out of 20 that rank 3-10 regions essentially never have any chance of being even remotely close to compete for the win anything, not city, not region, nothing. Even on the individual level players are punished beyond belief if they for some reason chose to stay in crappy regions instead of connecting to a good one and playing EG there.
The worst layout city in the #1 region is usually a better bet than the best layout city in the #3 region.
So playing anywhere in a rank 3 or worse region is essentially pointless. Therefore the winning EG cities naturally have players flock to them, even from other regions.
By era 2 you can tell on most SOE servers which 1 or 2 regions will compete for winning EG city 2 months later.

But this thread is not about winning city or the 2 cities competing for the win, it's about the other cities that have to struggle for everything. When the winning and runner up cities are clearing 1 or several goods per hour, the other 15 or so cities take an average of 4-7h to clear a good. Once they have finished their first 3, the other 9 goods are all horribly spoiled to the point most might as well just logg out and give that EG up completely, because they are not going to clear much more, therefore they will not get hardly anymore PP anyway, and neither the region nor the city will evolve anywhere or achieve anything.

The arguments we see against changing the slates are all saying "buh but it doesn't matter much for the good teams", well no exactly, it wont. But it could potentially let the horribly bad teams at least have something to do in the EGs.