Let's take the A-Train: An all-purpose series thread

And the A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism Construction Mode has been supercharged with new features and functionality compared to the one that shipped with A-Train 3DS // A-Train PC Classic. I had a quick look around and the improvements boggled my mind. A scenario and map-makers dream come true.

Also, yeah, Nintendo do love trying to get people to subscribe to their online thing. So, user content sharing is gated behind Nintendo Switch Online.

I’m interested in the PC games, but I like me some graphics. Do I get 9 for the graphics but bang my head against the learning curve? Or should I just get PC Classic so I can learn the game before graduating to 9?

It’s hard for me to imagine anyone thinks 9 has better graphics than Classic, but I suppose Artdink is subjective

Oh god, I just looked and I’m an idiot. I thought PC Classic was solely isometric 2d. I didn’t think it even had a 3d view at all. Never mind, I’ll get that one!

Wait what? I have PC Classic and I only see isometric.

I would kill to get a tad closer to those buildings, pixels and all.

The A-Train 9 versions on Steam are older (I think they released v3 and v4) of a really dated engine, and they lacked much of the variety found in the Japanese version (I see a download pack has been added, but I’m guessing it is fairly limited). I wouldn’t expect you being satisfied by that game, esthetically.

For the record, I take SadleyBradley’s implication that isometric graphics aren’t good graphics as a personal attack.

Ha! There’s nothing wrong with isometric 2d! I should have clarified that I just wanted a little bit of train and city pr0n to go with my train timetables. Put away the pitchfork!

Yeah, A-Train PC Classic has both 2D graphics and 3D graphics. The gameplay takes place in the 2D isometric view. However, like with the 3DS version, you can also observe the game from a 3D viewport and take in the scenery. If my memory serves me correctly, I vaguely recall the function being introduced during the tutorials.

atpcc3d

I spent a lot of hours playing the original A-Train. I even played its predecessor Railroad Empire that was released in 1988! It’s hard for me to believe that so many years have passed since then.

Back in the early '90s I had a lot of fun with A-Train but for some reason it doesn’t appeal to me as much now as it did then. Maybe I’ve gotten too old, maybe I’ve been spoiled by newer graphics…I just don’t know why…but the A-Train games just don’t have the pazazz for me they once did.

So I am happy to read that so many of you are enjoying A-Train and I hope you can appreciate the James Allen review I have linked to in this post.

Have fun!

Cool!

(A-Train US was A-Train III and Railroad Empire was A-Train 2. It’s like Final Fantasy that way.)

I just discovered the Switch has a “match version with local users” command!

You can apparently transfer game patches from one Switch to another, EVEN IF NEITHER IS CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET.

This makes me happy, from a game preservation perspective. As long as you have HARD CARDS, and a Switch with the latest updates, you can have infinite Switches with all your games and the latest updates. Even if the eShop goes the way of the Wii Shop.

I wonder if this includes purchased DLC. Anyone know? It wouldn’t include 100% digital titles, but it might include DLC…

Edit: There’s no way it would include purchased DLC. Otherwise you could share DLC with all your friends for free. Sigh.

PC Classic - has anyone figured out signals? I just want one train to wait while the second leaves the station. But no matter what I do, that button (base your action on the other train) is greyed out. Manual no help, and no 9 part youtube dissecting the whole thing. Beginning tutorial 2 - maybe I haven’t sat through enough explanation?

Been a few months since I did the introductory tutorials for A-Train PC Classic. Typically though, if something is not available yet it is because the function will be unlocked later on. So, quite possible that function will become unlocked later into the second tutorial scenario since the third and final tutorial delves firmly into the realm of business management aspects like going public on the stockmarket, etc.


Please have your tickets ready for inspection by the conductor and prepare to board today’s train, as our railroading adventure in All Aboard Tourism continues!

If there is one disadvantage to writing these as I play it’s that sometimes forecasting what can realistically be achieved for the next Let’s Play entry can be tough as the scenario goes on. Going to be some deviations from what I was expecting to do at the conclusion of part four. However, what we lose in one way we’re about to gain in another as I deviate into some aspects of the game that we haven’t even mentioned, let alone touched, yet.

Let’s Play All Aboard Tourism - Strategically using other people’s money to enrich ourselves…

Click to reveal...

Returning to Nagashirojo, we briskly resume where we left off in part four of Let’s Play All Aboard Tourism. On the agenda? Expanding our revenue by expanding our railway network southwards towards the map’s southern border and forging a connection with the mid-sized city of Komita. With just 1,197,130,000 Yen to our company’s name and a single track line stretching from Nagashirojo to Komita estimated to cost around the region of 3,000,000 Yen, it is time to head to the bank for a business loan.

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The maximum amount of funds we can loan from the bank is determined by our company’s current assets and the bank’s trust in our company. Currently, the largest determinant of our loan limit is our company’s assets as our bank trust rating is just a measly one star. Based on our current assets the bank is willing to lend us up to a maximum of 2,287,700,000 Yen, spread across however many loans we decide to take out.

When negotiating our loan with the bank we can borrow money for a period of up to four years in length before having to pay it back in full, with interest on top of course. The length of the loan will influence the annual interest rate that the bank burdens us with. Interest rates are subject to change at the turn of the new year when the economic forecast for the upcoming year is presented, with a recession often liable to drop the interest rate by around three percent.

Any loan we apply for is subject to a 0.2% handling fee from the bank and therefore we must account for this if we ever apply for a loan whilst low on funds. The game’s UI helpfully details any handling fee, the amount of interest we are expected to pay over the duration of the loan, and the total repayment amount. Of course, we can repay any loans we have owing before the repayment date to lessen the amount of interest we will need to pay. However, bank fees apply for early repayment of any loan and thus a cost-benefit analysis should always be conducted to determine the cheapest course of action.

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With a two-year loan of 2,287,700,000 Yen secured from the bank we now have 3,484,830,000 Yen at our disposal. Now that we have the capital required to proceed with our plans to building a railway line from Nagashirojo Station to Komita, let us begin! Due to the costs associated we will begin with just a single track line. Unfortunately, we currently lack the funds to begin construction of stations at the two towns situated along our chosen route. Therefore, these construction projects shall have to wait until we have more capital at our disposal.

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Near Tomoto Station a small modification is also made to the double track line to allow for trains heading towards Hasuoka to be routed into the other platform. The reasoning behind this will become clear very soon.

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Next we purchase an Electric Locomotive with four carriages for the transport construction materials. This acquisition will almost exhaust the rest of our company’s remaining funds and leaves us light on funds. However, sometimes you have to spend money to make money and we expect this bold outlay of capital to quickly begin shoveling money into the company coffers.

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It is time for our company to diversify away from solely transporting passengers and to enter the freight market. Opening up the Resources menu we are going to proceed into the Trade Opportunity menu and assess the various purchase and sales orders on offer. We can see from the resource trade chart that Komita is currently placing several orders to buy construction materials, whilst Hasuoka is currently selling construction materials. By examining the list of trade contracts on offer we can see that Komita is currently offering, in many cases, roughly double the local sale price of construction goods.

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Therefore, we are going to cheaply purchase the construction materials being produced at Tomoto and then transport them from our storage facilities to Komita using our new goods train. Whilst the exact sale price may vary across the year, depending on the terms of the trade contracts we accept with Komita, we expect the transportation of construction goods to become a strong revenue stream for the company. To begin our new business venture we are going to enter into a contract to transport 240 construction materials to Komita by October 6th, 1992, at a sale price of 2,340,000 Yen per unit.

A word of warning though, failure to meet the obligations of our contract will grant Komita the right to seek damages. Thus, should we fail to transport 240 units of construction material to Komita by the deadline of October 6th, 1992 we will have to payout 69,120,000 Yen in damages for our breach of contract. Our company is very confident we can fulfill the terms of our contract with Komita in the time frame given, so this shouldn’t be a worry for us. If we were concerned about deadlines then we could have started out our new business venture by accepting the top-most contract on offer which ask for 120 construction materials and has no deadline assigned to it.

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Now the purpose of our small track modification near Tomoto Station begins to become crystal clear. Since our freight train is going to be making two round trips from Komita to Tomoto and back we will be tackling the tricky task of coordinating the timetable of our Komita freight service with the last loop of our Hasuoka-Nagashirojo passenger service. However, since we’ll be basing the freight service out of Komita and only operating it between 8:15pm to 6:00am we’ll only be sharing the railway tracks with passenger services for a short window of time.

Yet it will still be a long enough time frame that we’ll need to be able to have our freight train pull into Platform 1 of Tomoto Station. That way the last two passenger services can freely use Platform 2 without experiencing any hold-ups or delays on their way back to Hasuoka. Thus, ensuring smooth operations for everyone sharing the railway tracks.

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Pictured above you can see the two material factories responsible for creating the construction goods we are transporting to Komita. These two factories currently produce a total of ten construction materials a day (five each). The rate of production can rise and fall depending on factors such as economic conditions, the profitability of the factories, and whether they have any buildings nearby which boost their production (e.g. an administrative office).

Currently, these two factories are at the upper end of their production capabilities and are supplying our construction material storage yard with a steady supply of construction materials. Consequently, it does not take long for our freight service to Komita to begin filling up our coffers, generating us roughly 100,000,000 Yen within the space of two days.

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During the early hours of August 25th we complete the terms of our first trade contract with Komita and so we enter into another one. This time the terms of the contract mean that we have 83 days to ship as many construction materials as possible to Komita for a sale price of 2,280,000 Yen per unit. A rather lucrative trade contract if we can maximise the supply of construction materials being fed into Komita. Looking at our funds we can see that our bank balance has been enriched greatly within a short period of time by our diversification into the freight business, rising to a total of 386,150,000 Yen.

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Using the large stream of revenue unlocked by our entry into the freight business, we prepare for the next step of our business plan. Consequently, by September 7th we have constructed a train station at Nobusu and are in the process of upgrading the town’s road infrastructure to accommodate a planned bus route between Nobusu and Komita.

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Since urban development is heavily influenced by passenger activity at stations we are going to turn Nobusu into a transfer hub for Komita tourists traveling to and from Nagashirojo Castle. We’ll bus tourists in from Komita, get them to spend some time in Nobusu, and then transport them by a connecting passenger train service to Nagashirojo Station. Something that wouldn’t happen if we just offered a direct train service from Komita to Nagashirojo.

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Since we will be parking our passenger train at Nobusu Station over the night we will also want to construct a simple passing loop for our freight service too. Then go into the operations route menu for our freight train to examine the settings of the new railway points to make sure that our freight train does indeed utilise our newly added passing loop at Nobusu Station.

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During September 11th we receive notice that we have reached the first of our objectives, as achieve our 200,000th annual tourist visit for the financial year. One completion condition successfully dealt with, now we just have to ensure that the region’s population hits 20,000 people within the assigned time frame and we’ll be assured of success. With 231,760,000 Yen currently residing in our company’s coffers we will have to continue advancing time for a while to be able to afford the rolling stock we want for our new passenger service.

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Which seems like an appropriate stopping point to conclude part five of Let’s Play All Aboard Tourism. I hope you will join me next time when we complete our plans to turn the town of Nobusu into a thriving tourist transfer hub. We’ll investigate buses and bus routes, establish the tourist route from Komita to Nagashirojo, assist in the urban development of Nobusu with subsidiaries, and discuss how we can become a property developer. Until the next time we met, I hope you have a safe journey aboard the A-Train!

A small question, slightly tied to the current chapter in the Book of Malkael: in the first tutorial of the (dated, the game was still 1.0 back then) Switch demo, I tried to expand and create a connection to the south city, but it doesn’t seem to happen. There is no little exchange arrow.
Screen Shot 1
Should it happen automatically (I’m only trying to transport voyagers)? A limitation of the demo maybe (although it hinted I should expand to other cities)?
There is no route showing up for the new train I try to setup to that city either.
Sorry for the demo question.

Hmm, worked fine for me in the Switch demo when I played it before getting the complete game. The game should automatically prompt you about connecting the railway line to the neighbouring town when you go to confirm your track placement. So, connecting to Komita should be possible in the Switch demo.

When it doesn’t prompt me that usually means it cannot establish a connection point at that exact location for some reason. For example, there is no outside city to connect to on that edge of the map border. Though, creating a map connection does cost a pretty penny, or Yen in this case, so maybe it is a money thing if you have less than 1,000,000,000 Yen currently?

Unsure what the problem could be if you can’t create a connection point in the same general area that I did, since that is where I also created one during my demo playthrough.

I just tried deleting a single segment of the track, it told me it mean losing lots of prospective money (that I didn’t pay to begin with). I then tried to reconnect, but it didn’t change anything, no prompt. I then deleted the line to the station, and reconnected it from there, and behold, I got the prompt to connect to the neighbouring town!
Thank you!

Sounds like the demo may have encountered some kind of bug then if the removal cost was in the millions of Yen range (e.g. 749,750,000 Yen). The huge demolition cost would have been from the game treating the track like it was connected to the outside city.

Oh well, all sort now at least, so ultimately no harm caused.

I still am experiencing button confusion, but the game interface is slowly turning away from being a beast I have to fight against, into a pachyderm I have to be patient with. Progress!

@Malkael question for you.

I am getting an A-train game.

Nominally I’m thinking All Aboard Tourism because
A) Switch, and I play most of my games there these days
B) most modern
C) seems like there is a number of features and updates that make it interesting

However PC classic is on sale on Steam. Which has its own appeal.

If the games are of relatively equivalent quality and depth, then tie goes easily to All Aboard Tourism.

So which one would you recommend?

Also note I do love this genre, and my favorite rail building game so far is RRT 3. I love the economic, building, routes, etc. not so much designating switches and stuff like in Railway Empires. Also I love a good dynamic economic simulation, it is why RRT 3 is a top 10 all time game for me.