Track to Release - From Beta Station to Release City
Take a look back on our journey to release!
Tycoons,
The ride towards our destination “Release City” was an exciting one for us, and we’d like to recap our journey and have a look at the ride so far.
From December 6th to 20th in 2022, we had an exciting closed beta to which far more players applied than we expected. Seeing the enthusiasm for the game this far ahead of release was inspiring for us!
The detailed and plentiful feedback we have received has been carefully evaluated, along with all the constructive criticism and helpful suggestions that were given to us by our community during our Beta.
Below, you can have a glimpse at some of these major changes, already implemented as a result of Beta player’s feedback, with many more for you to be excited about at the Railway Empire 2 Release-Station:
[h2]Important Changes[/h2]
As any good train ride needs a well-built track, we have implemented some important changes to ensure the ride will be a smooth one and live up to our passengers' high expectations.
- Custom Game settings are now more advanced to provide a more customisable experience. Please stay tuned, more details will follow, but just to spoil a few of them: You can now choose the Inflation Rate, Transportation Revenue, the cost of tracks and Maintenance, among other things.
- The warehouse can now be unlocked right at the start of the campaign. Originally this was a lot further down the tech tree, but your feedback underlined the importance of this strategically essential building.
- We have implemented a dynamic technology tree wherein older technologies might become available for purchase or through events.
- The time for bidding is now longer, to make sure you can take your time to carefully read through the auction details.
- Sandbox maps now have the option to be played without a time limit.
- After numerous requests, double track building has now been added! It is as simple as pressing a single button after creating a track as usual.
- Track crossings are now possible.
- You can now quickly recognise and distinguish between freight and post/passenger trains via additional symbols in the track lists.
- To make it clear at which size a new industry building gets unlocked in a town, we have made that information visible to the player.
- We have made it clearer that you need a university to grow your city if you already filled the special city slot with another building like the library.
[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]
Furthermore, we have been working on improvements to the quality of life of your gameplay experience, to make sure you find the ride enjoyable. Below you can find some examples of these changes:
- Auctions can now be minimized so that you have the chance to issue a bond to pay for it.
- Windows can now be closed by using the Escape button to be more in line with player expectations.
- An arrow now gives a visual indicator on the currently selected object (e.g. a train or a building)
- Added automatic savegames when a task group was completed, so that the player can fall back to when each set of tasks were completed.
- Three different font size settings have been added to improve readability.
- You can now fully cycle through the number of cars in the train set-up on your train from 8 down to 0.
- Additional customizable keyboard shortcuts have been added (e.g. build supply tower, build train station, etc)
- Auctions now have a description of what the offered technologies do, allowing for an educated decision worthy of a terrific tycoon!
- It is now possible to scroll the map using your mouse. You can enable this feature via the settings. Furthermore, there are now additional options in the in-game settings for you to choose from.
- Thanks to your notes, we have added more tooltips to the game.
- Autosave intervals have been shortened to 5 minutes for a safety net with less lost progress.
