I started doing some speculation with land last night, buying up some sizeable chunks near developing towns and later selling off when the value had nearly doubled.
Is there something particular about the interface there that is bothering you?
I liked to preplan my future railways that way (old habits…), so it is an exercice in minutia, either with the left stick, which lacks precision, or my big fingers, which… lack precision, you guessed it.
I’d have to rethink my approach to the game (after all, that is what the “lay track and purchase land all at once” thing is for, to get around that lack of precision), but I just enjoy playing the game that way, instead of laying tracks suddenly — I’ll take that one to my therapist when we want to take it easy, I think.
Ah, yeah, the problem with that approach is that you’ll end up paying taxes on the land for a longer stretch. But on the other hand, I guess you do get to lock in a lower purchase price and not have to worry about developments popping up in the way.
Actually it’s not even that: I just like to plan it not long before to laying the track. It’s really psychological, as what is going to happen will happen in the short term, but it is simply much more satisfying to me, and gives me the illusion I have better graps on the expenses. I also know precisely what square I’ll have to sell after the purchase, since I carefully chose each one, while I have to rethread my steps with the better interface.
I will most likely get around to it now, since writing about it let me notice all the weirdness and lack of intelligence of my current approach. I thank you for listening to me.
I get that. And I agree that the interface does not seem particularly conducive to purchasing large chunks of land.
It would certainly work much better with a mouse and keyboard, but that’s a worthwhile trade-off for me in order to have something of this depth handheld.
The complexity is quite staggering, compared to my main point of reference which was the DS one. This feels much more like a city builder than a freeform puzzle game, even in the tutorial!
You can plug any keyboard into the Switch in my experience and it works but… the mouse? now that’s an intriguing perspective!
That’s a big part of the appeal to me. The first PC game that ever really got its hooks into me as a kid was Railroad Tycoon, so I love having a full, honest-to-goodness business sim on the system is wonderful.
It works as a keyboard, though, right? Meaning you can type words in all the Switch games that have… uh… extensive typing-words-based gameplay. But can you use WASD to move around in an FPS, for instance? Not without that adapter!
The mouse can be mapped to a stick, too.
I’ve seen people using it to play Fortnite and they seem to have it working ok.
Well have I got the Advanced Setting just for you then, behold the Selection Method option! Now you can quickly and easily purchase, or sell, large swathes of land. Better yet, when in the relevant menus the game allows you to toggle the selection method between Square or Separate, depending on what would work best in that context.
I actually just discovered that! There are some great options in the Advanced Settings menu. I especially appreciated being able to turn on the detailed Income Statement.
I officially completed the first scenario and now I’m looking forward to giving another try at scheduling busses and hauling freight with the second. Previously with the game, I’d just played the two tutorial scenarios up to the point where everything seemed unlocked rather than seeing them all the way to the end. Not this time!
Is there anyway to deselect tiles or zones during a selection? I always end up just cancelling the whole thing, which is quite frustrating, and I haven’t figured it yet.
Yes, there is. Plus it works for both the Square and Separate selection methods.
Just hover the cursor over the tile(s) you want to remove and press the A button again. If this tile happens to be the last tile you selected – thus pressing A progresses you to the confirmation phase – just shift the selection cursor off that tile, onto a different tile, and then back again.
… And I tried sooooo many buttons XD
this thread moves as fast as a train…
Steam sale: A-Train PC Classic 60% off.
Think I might jump in.
This is the same game as on the 3DS, right?
If I understood Malkael excellent explanation, yes it is. A-Train 8 and 9 are also on sale.
Yes, functionally the same game. It does though feature more content compared to the 3ds version localised and published (third-party) by Natsume. 12 new official scenarios worth of new content to be precise, IIRC. Thus, for existing 3ds owners, the value proposition kind of depends on how much you value more content, improved performance from being on PC hardware, ability to play at a larger display resolution, and all that jazz.
And it’ll probably go on sale for about the same price in six months time for the Christmas\Winter sale were a 3ds player to later decide they did want to get the PC version for additional content to play.