Rail Route - Design, Construct, Upgrade, Automate and Run Your Railway Network

[jztemple2]

So we were talking about this game over on the Randomness thread (see this post and the subsequent ones). Just to make sure it gets mentioned, there is a free trial version of the game which is just the tutorial, you can check out if you like the game before purchasing. Your progress does get carried over to the full game.



The full game is on sale till March 4th.



I put in 101 minutes on the tutorial on the trial version and I then bought the full game and have continued the tutorial map. This is one of those games which is pretty simple in concept but can be as easy or complex as you want. Here's a look at my map earlier on. There are four stations (Dejvice, Bubny, Docks and Holesovice). Trains run on these tracks according to schedules, but there is a limit to how many can be handled due to platform and track limits.



This is what it looks like now. I've added additional platforms, tracks and switches to handle more traffic. There are three trains on the map right now.



Here's a closer look at two trains passing each other in opposite directions



Here's a look at my current contracts, the trains I need to handle. The secret is to accept as many contracts as you can handle, but not so many that you cause trains to arrive late. Arriving on times gives you rewards.



Here is a look at some of the green system upgrades. Upgrades provide more automation, lessening the work you need to do per train which allows you to handle more trains. However, you need to unlock those upgrades by receiving rewards for trains arriving on time.



Finally, here are the red system upgrades. The points needed to unlock these upgrades are not simply to have trains arrive on time, but to have a certain number of trains operating per cycle. On my current map, a cycle is one hour. Basically, green points accumulate from successful train arrivals, red points by having a set number of successful arrivals per cycle.



I'm enjoying the game and am glad I waited till full release. Please post any questions or comments.

[jztemple2]

I played enough of the Tutorial Prague map to get a handle on what I'm doing (maybe ) and I decided to switch to a very simple map so I can just use what I've learned. I'm playing the Manchester map that comes with the game.



By the way, when you start a new map, you have three options to make it easier if you wish:



Infinite Money is rather obvious . Unlock All Upgrades allows access to the items that allow more automation as well as allowing the purchasing of more stations, etc. Unlock All Tiers allows even more fancy stuff and more train types like regional trains and freights. These options are good if you just want to play with trains but I suggest at least a couple of playthroughs without using those options so it is easier to understand how they work.

[Hrdina]

I randomly noticed this game Saturday on the GOG store page. Looks neat, but I didn't have time to do much more than wish list it for now. No one on GOG had rated it yet. It seems to be the same price on GOG as on Steam.

From your posting in the other thread, I guess I'll have a look at Rail Route: The Story of Jozic. AFAICT, that's on Steam but not GOG.

[jztemple2]

From your posting in the other thread, I guess I'll have a look at Rail Route: The Story of Jozic. AFAICT, that's on Steam but not GOG.

Yup, Jozic is free and it is a pretty thorough look at the game. It's a pretty decent tutorial as well and your saved games get carried over to the full game if you get it.

[Hrdina]

From your posting in the other thread, I guess I'll have a look at Rail Route: The Story of Jozic. AFAICT, that's on Steam but not GOG.

Yup, Jozic is free and it is a pretty thorough look at the game. It's a pretty decent tutorial as well and your saved games get carried over to the full game if you get it.

Played through a lot of the tutorial.

Bought the game.

[jztemple2]

I've got 17 hours in the game and I'm getting frustrated. I played a lot of the Prague tutorial map, then switched over to the Manchester map and ran there for quite a while, building up a lot of points and money. And I even managed to automate a small part of my trains. But I wanted to explore the automation aspects more so I switched to the Berlin map and used the option to give me unlimited money and all green and red upgrades are unlocked. I have only two routes running and I thought I'd be able to automate that, right?

No. As soon as I did and then added a new track my automation started screwing up. I added sensors to fix one problem and it cause another. I went to the Discord channel and got help to address the new problem and that was fixed, but now something else doesn't work. Obviously it's me and not the game since a lot of people are doing full up automation, but it is so frustrating when I can't seem to get what is almost the simplest setup running smoothly

[Hrdina]

I've only played 4.1 hours so far, all on the Prague map except for that little bit that Jozic has you do on another map.

I have only barely touched automation, beyond the Auto Signals, and I don't think I'm using those very effectively yet. I'm still enjoying playing around with the tracks and (mostly) performing the switching manually, but I think I'm just at the limit of how many trains and stations I can control that way. I think Jozic is getting mad at me for not taking enough contracts.

Also, I've apparently earned three trading cards: Glasgow, Glasgow, and Glasgow. Three-of-a-kind is a decent hand, right?

[Kraken]

I'd like a new Railroad Tycoon-type of game, but this one looks too abstract for me.

[gbasden]

I'd like a new Railroad Tycoon-type of game, but this one looks too abstract for me.

I would so love something that gives me old-school RRT vibes. I still play RRT2 multiplayer with friends.

[Hrdina]

No. As soon as I did and then added a new track my automation started screwing up. I added sensors to fix one problem and it cause another. I went to the Discord channel and got help to address the new problem and that was fixed, but now something else doesn't work. Obviously it's me and not the game since a lot of people are doing full up automation, but it is so frustrating when I can't seem to get what is almost the simplest setup running smoothly

I've got a little over 10 hours in the game now, and have started to try to get my head around some of the automation things.

Yeah, whenever I read about the game, or watch someone's let's play, it all seems so simple and obvious. Hopefully it will all eventually seem that way when I'm actually playing!

I did find this Tutorial playlist to be a bit helpful, particularly the sections about Construction and Contracts.

[Hrdina]

Looking at my Steam page today, one month after my last posting, I see that I'm up to 57 hours. I guess I've been enjoying it if I've devoted all of my limited after-work game time to Rail Route.

I've continued the same Endless game on the Prague map that I started in the Jozic tutorial. I've been playing slowly, so that every time I unlock a new thing I play with that for a while before moving to the next tech upgrade. It would probably have been smarter to do what jztemple2 did and play with everything unlocked.

At this point I am at cycle 79 on the Prague map, with about 30M in the bank. I think I've got enough of a grip on the automation that I could set the game to 25x speed and walk away for a while without problems. Of course I am always tweaking something, which always has a knock-on effect on the automation that requires some cleanup. A few times I've made an "innocuous" change, then noticed later that a train in that same area of the map became stuck because I broke something.



Strangely, I think I enjoy playing this game because creating & maintaining the automation gives me some of the same vibes as my job (writing real-time multi-threaded flight software).

I had a couple of places where I've been stuck.

The first was trying to get to Tier 3 of the green upgrades. I kept adding trains but never got to the 25 trains/cycle that I required. I finally realized that I was adding freight (red) trains. Duh.

The second is where I am now. I need to have 35 red trains/cycle in order to reach red Tier 3. That would allow me to use the Coachyard for stabling regional trains. It's more difficult to add a lot of freight trains because they have to sit for a long time unloading at a platform.

My current focus is learning how to use Shunting and Coachyards effectively, so that I can better use Regional and Urban trains to increase the number of red contracts I can handle.


The devs have already announced their first DLC: Rail Route Happy Passengers. I say "already" because to me the game was just released in February, but I they had a very long Early Access period (starting June 2021) so a lot of their players are probably itching for something new. I feel like I still have a lot to explore with the base game.