The moment I have been waiting for: Top 1% player in all scenarios, both Mini Metro and Motorways. AMA.
No, they are both really fun (and highly addictive in my case). I like that you can do a scenario in 30-ish minutes (and even pause if you need to). I personally prefer Motorways over Metro, but alas, both highly recommended. Fantastic game design.
Thanks! I've played the daily Mini Metro challenge for years and very rarely made it into the top 10%. I've gone through phases with widening loops, grids, etc. I always feel like there must be some mysterious "trick" I don't know. Questions:
1. How important is it to make sure you alternate symbols? (Beyond the obvious of not having 3 in a row). Do you go out of your way to avoid two in a row?
2. Is it better to put major junctions at the most common circle/triangle symbols, or on squares, or the rarer ones?
3. How much imortance do you place on the slowdown from lines crossing not at stations? I always go out of my way to avoid doing it but I wonder if I overrate the importance of it in my mind.
4. When you notice that some random station along a single line is getting a lot more traffic than other ones, do you shift other lines to cross it or just add more carriages?
One of the most frustrating (but addicting) things with the game is that a couple of my highest scores happened when I first started playing it, before I thought I knew any tricks at all! Wish I could see what the best players' maps end up looking like.
Oh yeah, one more question... do you play the secret level? What actually happens there, or is it just a gag?
Wow. AMA, you say? When do you prefer loops, or lines? Additional lines, or carriages? How much do you tear down at once? if you don't mind me asking
I'm like median on Metro, ~60 hours over years (though perhaps just the one hour, 60x, &c). Never too late to learn some strategy, I guess. Never played Motorways.
I am also bad at mini Metro but the thing that makes me crazy is that when the game ends it says something like “your city shut down.” That makes absolutely no sense and the endgame message should’ve been “you were fired!” Such a missed opportunity!
One catch is that riders only need to get a particular "shape" of station (roughly analogous to residential, commercial, industrial, stadium, etc). That is to say, they normally don't insist on going to a particular station. Also and it's free in time, money, and political captial to change routes. The model is, I feel, slightly too simple to feel like real transport infra. That doesn't stop it being hella fun though.
I figure all the triangle stations must have well-connected bus routes going to the same area, and so on down the shapes. I mean surely you're not responsible for building an entire transit system!
I had fun with Mini Metro for a while, but in the long run it's a really frustrating game, because it always ends in failure - you start with a few stations and a few lines, but the game keeps throwing more and more passengers at you until you end up frantically trying to plug the holes in your network or "rewiring" it on the spot, and sooner or later everything inevitably blows up in your face. Plus of course it's wildly unrealistic with the way you are able to just delete your existing "tracks" and instantly construct completely new connections between your stations out of thin air, or just "teleport" trains/carriages from one line to another.
>it's wildly unrealistic with the way you are able to just delete your existing "tracks" and construct completely new connections between your stations out of thin air
IMO, Mini Metro is the far better game. In Mini Metro it always feels like the congestion can be solved, it's never hopeless... in Motorways the congestion does really feel impossible to work around, and then you lose. Not sure if that's due to my lack of skill or the difference between rail (discrete, must connect stations) and roads (continuous, can be drawn anywhere on the map)
Paid, installed it on Linux and played for 5 minutes. Overall impression: game has potential but is early beta-quality at the moment, especially in UI. I will be waiting for updates to polish things up.
* Map tile rendering is laggy; edges of map are constantly unrendered when rotating the view.
* UI seems not very well thought-out, lots of modality for no good reason. Why do I need to turn off population density view before I can build a station?
* Controls non-intuitive - where exactly do I have to click to connect two stations with a track? (It somehow worked once, and I was unable to repeat it.)
* Undo / Ctrl-Z doesn't work (cannot undo deletion of tracks or station).
* Tutorial hints for some reason always point to a fixed coordinate on your screen rather than a location on the map, so if you zoom or pan, the hint for where to build will now point to a completely different map location. With no way to return to the original location. Is that intentional? Why?
* Can we get names of water bodies, major landmarks, major streets on the map? It would add a lot of character.
I'll be entirely honest here, this kind of game is generally up my alley but I clicked off when I came across the list of available cities to build in being exclusively in the US. Not even a fictional playground for messing around in the engine, just "US primacy or bust", doesn't inspire confidence for a full release down the line. Not that I don't understand why it's like this, pulling the required real-world data is hard enough as it is, but it will limit the market I think.
It's US focused because it uses US Census data to be very realistic and uses US open map data for the map. The dev tried to do Canada but couldn't get it working properly because Canadian census data is weird. I've heard someone from Germany managed to use some work arounds to get the game earlier than anyone else and modded in Berlin
> but I clicked off when I came across the list of available cities to build in being exclusively in the US.
Huh. I feel like the average US city would require a very different _sort_ of metro to the average European or East Asian city, if it even had the density to make it work at all. Like, more diversity in city types would make it a more interesting game.
Does any US city besides NYC even have a full subway network (vs one or two lines?)
Well, I recognize this is a joke. I would enjoy having a simulation where you inherit and hold poorly maintained subway system like the Boston MBTA and have to bring it back to health with all the challenges these systems face
Isn't the principal problem with the MBTA that it's been underfunded for decades and has a maintenance backlog of about a gazillion dollars? I realize it's getting better on the rolling stock front, but it sounds like the track is still a challenge despite some real efforts to address some of the problems.
I do kind of miss riding it though. For the last couple years I was living there, I got to ride the Ashmont-Mattapan trolleys as part of my commute. That was a treat. One of the last weeks before we moved to Vermont, my wife rode down to Ashmont with me and rode the trolley to Mattapan, then back to Ashmont to take the Red Line back to her office.
Then you have to have dinner with an influential member of the city's planning committee and promise that the residential zoned real-estate that your company currently holds will be on offer to the committee before it is publicly offered. Also that you'll stay announcements of the new platform locations until they've bought the properties.
This was my first thought when it stressed realism. Dealing with red tape, bureaucracy, zoning issues, opposition from citizens and local officials, etc.
Yeah, I think it's way too expensive if you're not using USD. It's +70% more than the price of the current Factorio steam price in my local currency. And with 40$ for the steam release, it has to be higher than Factorio post-conversion (current Factorio USD price is 35$).
It's a hard sell for me, considering Factorio has a ton of actively developed mods (cough Space Exploration 0.7 cough), a demo, and in early access era it's cheaper and insanely polished.
From a quick glance, I'm not sure whether it's a fun game or not, as realism tends to be not fun. Requiring an internet connection for map tiles also sounds not good for offline play.
Well, I'll wait for reviews when it's out before deciding then.
At $30, I've got a lot of expectations. At $40, I've got a lot more. Neither of those price points are the impulse buy for "it might be a nice game that I could waste a few hours on." It's competing with things like Satisfactory and Factorio for promise of enduring in my library gaming.
This feels something closer to Puffin Planes ($12), Rail Route ($25), Station Flow ($18).
The difference between $25 and $30 isn't too much, but there's another significant hurdle to get up to a perceived $40 value.
It does look interesting, but for a purchase at that price point, I'm going to need to feel that its worth more than a weekend or two of gaming and something that will be a game that I want to pick up again after a month or two away from it.
Anyone know how big the bay area map is? Would be neat to build dream BART, including north bay and San Joaquin valley.
EDIT: Nevermind, purchased and answered my own question. Outer cities included going clockwise from north bay: Novato, Vallejo, Benicia, Brentwood, Livermore, Santa Teresa, Los Gatos, the full peninsula northward starting from Half Moon Bay. So a good amount, but missing some outer commuting areas like Santa Rosa, Fairfield, Tracy, Gilroy.
1st, we have Steam. That's where I and most people buy games. 30$ for a random exe is going to be really inconvenient.
Launch it on Steam at the same time, or at a minimum promise a key.
It's also not clear why it's just a bunch of American cities, if you're pulling the data from Google anyway, any city ( within reason) should work. If you need additional data, let users add it.
They said they pulled commuter data from the census and another source. They'd need to get a few datasets from other countries to pull it off that aren't in google maps.
In the FAQ they explain that they use US federal data for the population simulation, including home and workplace locations, college student counts, and flight information from the FAA.
Readit News
https://dinopoloclub.com/games/mini-metro/
No, they are both really fun (and highly addictive in my case). I like that you can do a scenario in 30-ish minutes (and even pause if you need to). I personally prefer Motorways over Metro, but alas, both highly recommended. Fantastic game design.
1. How important is it to make sure you alternate symbols? (Beyond the obvious of not having 3 in a row). Do you go out of your way to avoid two in a row?
2. Is it better to put major junctions at the most common circle/triangle symbols, or on squares, or the rarer ones?
3. How much imortance do you place on the slowdown from lines crossing not at stations? I always go out of my way to avoid doing it but I wonder if I overrate the importance of it in my mind.
4. When you notice that some random station along a single line is getting a lot more traffic than other ones, do you shift other lines to cross it or just add more carriages?
One of the most frustrating (but addicting) things with the game is that a couple of my highest scores happened when I first started playing it, before I thought I knew any tricks at all! Wish I could see what the best players' maps end up looking like.
Oh yeah, one more question... do you play the secret level? What actually happens there, or is it just a gag?
I'm like median on Metro, ~60 hours over years (though perhaps just the one hour, 60x, &c). Never too late to learn some strategy, I guess. Never played Motorways.
Also, how much time would you say it's taken you to refine your skill to get to that 1%?
One catch is that riders only need to get a particular "shape" of station (roughly analogous to residential, commercial, industrial, stadium, etc). That is to say, they normally don't insist on going to a particular station. Also and it's free in time, money, and political captial to change routes. The model is, I feel, slightly too simple to feel like real transport infra. That doesn't stop it being hella fun though.
You can disable that in the settings.
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* Map tile rendering is laggy; edges of map are constantly unrendered when rotating the view.
* UI seems not very well thought-out, lots of modality for no good reason. Why do I need to turn off population density view before I can build a station?
* Controls non-intuitive - where exactly do I have to click to connect two stations with a track? (It somehow worked once, and I was unable to repeat it.)
* Undo / Ctrl-Z doesn't work (cannot undo deletion of tracks or station).
* Tutorial hints for some reason always point to a fixed coordinate on your screen rather than a location on the map, so if you zoom or pan, the hint for where to build will now point to a completely different map location. With no way to return to the original location. Is that intentional? Why?
* Can we get names of water bodies, major landmarks, major streets on the map? It would add a lot of character.
Huh. I feel like the average US city would require a very different _sort_ of metro to the average European or East Asian city, if it even had the density to make it work at all. Like, more diversity in city types would make it a more interesting game.
Does any US city besides NYC even have a full subway network (vs one or two lines?)
Boston and SF in my limited experience have somewhat usable networks but definitely a step below
OK nvm my congratulations to the game designer!
https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Local%20authority#bribe-t...
I do kind of miss riding it though. For the last couple years I was living there, I got to ride the Ashmont-Mattapan trolleys as part of my commute. That was a treat. One of the last weeks before we moved to Vermont, my wife rode down to Ashmont with me and rode the trolley to Mattapan, then back to Ashmont to take the Red Line back to her office.
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It's a hard sell for me, considering Factorio has a ton of actively developed mods (cough Space Exploration 0.7 cough), a demo, and in early access era it's cheaper and insanely polished.
From a quick glance, I'm not sure whether it's a fun game or not, as realism tends to be not fun. Requiring an internet connection for map tiles also sounds not good for offline play.
Well, I'll wait for reviews when it's out before deciding then.
This feels something closer to Puffin Planes ($12), Rail Route ($25), Station Flow ($18).
The difference between $25 and $30 isn't too much, but there's another significant hurdle to get up to a perceived $40 value.
It does look interesting, but for a purchase at that price point, I'm going to need to feel that its worth more than a weekend or two of gaming and something that will be a game that I want to pick up again after a month or two away from it.
EDIT: Nevermind, purchased and answered my own question. Outer cities included going clockwise from north bay: Novato, Vallejo, Benicia, Brentwood, Livermore, Santa Teresa, Los Gatos, the full peninsula northward starting from Half Moon Bay. So a good amount, but missing some outer commuting areas like Santa Rosa, Fairfield, Tracy, Gilroy.
But this is a very weird way to sell a game.
1st, we have Steam. That's where I and most people buy games. 30$ for a random exe is going to be really inconvenient.
Launch it on Steam at the same time, or at a minimum promise a key.
It's also not clear why it's just a bunch of American cities, if you're pulling the data from Google anyway, any city ( within reason) should work. If you need additional data, let users add it.
Maybe on steam I'll buy it
They said they pulled commuter data from the census and another source. They'd need to get a few datasets from other countries to pull it off that aren't in google maps.
I'll wait on the Steam release.
Now excuse me, my Pather friends called and there is a colony using ai which must be purged by Lud’s holy fire.
Highly recommended space sim for anyone else reading this!
https://www.subwaybuilder.com/simulation
I like the concept and am intrigued but at this price point I'll wait for reviews from people who have played it extensively.