Had no idea where to post this, but I felt it needed to be said. Recently I've become very obsessed with playing Atrain again, you know the very old version via Maxis. Got it working perfectly under dosbox, and have been trying to develop the absolute best outcome out of scenario 1.

But, what I have noticed, is that the economic model is just silly. It might be fun, and hard, but it's plain silly. First off the taxation model is made of 2 elements, what would locally in Australia be referred to as "land tax", a tax on the value of the properties. On top of this, an income tax, of a flat 50%. Which is heavily restrictive on growth.

So, how does a player ever manage to succeed at such a terrible economic model? Well, from building expensive properties such as stadiums, amusement parks, golf courses, and so on. But, what is ironic is, you make an absolute killing from it, why I would say that this could potentially be recognised as 90%+ of your profits. It is said that the economic model in Atrain is a fun one, but take out this clear exploit, and I'll bet the game is impossible. Why at the start I spam the map with apartment buildings and make 20k off each in the process. It's funny because place a 1 mil stadium, then sell it for 5 mil a month or so later.

Also, I'd love to post a screenshot of my endevour to create the best Atrain city

An interesting discussion and a very nice screenshot disappeared from this thread due to a server crash.

So to recap what I said: brijones, with your deep knowledge of A-train game mechanics, couldn't you design a nice competitive/challenging game mode for FreeTrain? Create your ideal economic model etc..!

I must have missed that message.

Hmm, Atrains economic model has been artificially altered to make it seem hard, however adding in short-cuts to offset this.

Here's the thing, lets say, I wanted to build an amusement park in the city, it would cost heaps of cash, and the business would be worth more then if I had built it in a regional centre.

The error in Atrain, is that no matter where you build something it costs exactly the same amount almost. Land prices do not go up high enough.

I believe Atrain's economic model is by far what most the time went into, I doubt any other part of the game got as much time. It would be good if you could get your hands on the source code.

So to me, Atrain is no longer a challenge, because like any game, once you've mastered it, or solved it, you always win. I continue to play it, because I haven't reached the peak of optimal creation.

Since creation of this thread, I've gone thru an evolution of 10+ cities, and I think I've found my next design, oh gosh, when I hit this one, I went crazy. I managed to design my city so that it only needs 4 freight trains max. I'll post screenshots soon.

The above is my new plan, basically 4 city diamonds with a large factory in the middle, and each city diamond has 1 freight train servicing it.

Oh, and see the hidden stadium behind the buildings? Sold for $5,700,000, 2 seconds after I build it for $1 mil.

I'm experimenting with running a road with 5 squares inbetween. I'm starting to desire the ability to remove terrain from the map, see how ugly it forces me to design the city.

For this one, I completely removed the mountains using the constructor set. Redesigned from the ground up, I think the results are rather stunning. Stadium is worth over 9 mil. Great value I think.

It's mind boggling the way so many lease buildings can be put up considering a population of 45k. I ponder who exactly works in them, robots? I'll bet those 45k are on a killer wage driven by high vacancy rates. Also, I think I managed to determine the max road distance, see lease building right in the centre.

brijones, perhaps you can start documenting what you envisage as the ultimate economic model that FreeTrain could implement in the future?

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First, I'd actually have to get it working on my PC.

Also, AIV is very new to me. I've only actually played AIII. I know FreeTrain is based on AIV. Unfortunately, I'm finding it hard getting AIV to play on my DosBox emulator. It runs at a slow crawl.

But, from what I've seen already, I do prefer AIII over AIV. My reasoning is very simple, AIII is very restrictive. I love games that are very restrictive, because it makes it harder to solve the problem of design.

I'm also a huge fan of Settlers 2, for that same very exact reason. In an environment of heavy restriction, creating optimal infrastructure is a huge challenge. Lets imagine this for a minute, pretend you are building a railway in 1830, long before cars, and the challenge is huge, you need to hug the land rather then tunnel thru it.

An economic model perhaps doesn't work very well in a game that is heavily customizable. Take for example, Simcity 4. The original economic model was superceeded by custom mods which altered the balance incredibly. I think you have a choice in a game, as to whether you want it to be a large sandbox, or a multiplayer challenge.

I was actually thinking perhaps of creating a plugin for FT that makes it more like AIII, and then working from there. I do like many of the additions to AIV / FT, such as bridges. The two versions are very different.

Anyways, don't know what my plans are at this stage, I have Uni at the end of this month, and another project that I have on the backburner.