For those who have been following this project, it is once again coming off of the back burner. The experimentation with cargo transportation and with the New England / Canada map yielded some interesting lessons learned, some of which will make it into the next design iteration and some of which will make it into a follow-on game, hopefully.
It Lives!
I am building a new home for the project: Steel & Steam. This page will contain ongoing news and other items related to the development of this game. The domain is active, but there is no content yet.
Here are some ideas that I’m considering.
Coal / Fuel
Instead of having players spend $1000 (or more) on maintenance money every turn, each player’s train will contain coal boxes. After each turn, the player must spend one coal per turn. If your train’s coal bunker is empty, you are “broken down” and move at the breakdown movement rate. Coal / fuel costs vary by the current economy, if playing with that optional rule. Coal can only be purchased at destination cities or at some select major cities on the map; there will be icons to show which ones.
This should save the amount of time it takes to remind players to “pay their thousand” and/or have to make change for every player paying their thousand every turn. Instead, players will buy their fuel (spend their maintenance fees) up front all at once. Early tech trains will have fewer coal boxes than later trains. Coupled with the speed of the later trains as well, the game should speed up quite a bit in the later turns.
Bad highballin’ rolls may require the expenditure of coal as well to avoid some penalties. Or make spending coal (as maintenance) an option vs. damaging your engine. We’ll see.
In the early turns, it will be impossible to run your train from one coast to another without refueling somewhere along the way. That will likely influence some early railroad property buying decisions.
Economy Cards
Whereas the original system improved or degraded the economy based on the value of the doubles you rolled, double 1s bad, double 6s good, a new system would involve the drawing of an Economy Card when any doubles were rolled. Besides adjusting the current economy, other effects may be introduced by the card. Some cards may introduce regional effects while the card is in play, such as Hurricane Season adversely economic conditions in the southeast, while others may introduce passenger traffic to national parks.
When a National Park card is drawn, a roll is made on a table printed on the card and a passenger token will be placed on that city associated with the roll. Players can now move their trains to that city and pick up the passengers and deliver them to whatever Nat’l Park they want to. While delivering passengers to the park, usage fees for riding other people’s railroads will be paid by the bank, not by the player. The payout will be quite nice in a good economy, but very bad in a bad one. Once picked up, passengers must be delivered to a park of their choice. If not, the player will pay a hefty fine! As most national parks, or other vacation spots, were served by only one railroad property, the game will still not force players into a single-source destination.
The national park mechanism is a way to introduce some income variability into the mix. We’ll see if it’s a worthwhile addition.
Variable Usage Fees
Usage fees are fees collected by the owner of a railroad property when other players use them. Currently, the same fee applies to all properties. I may change this by having larger properties, like the AT&SF, charge more. It will make them more valuable, but may also drive traffic onto the smaller properties. I don’t have a strong opinion on the need for this yet, but the idea of distributing usage fees came up during S&S 2.0 development.
Multiple Property Purchases
A number of players brought up this question during play testing: “Why can we only buy one property if we have enough money to buy more?” As S&S began life as a Boxcars / Rail Baron derivative, that was their rule also. If anything, it prevented someone from scooping up all of the small northeast railraods in one go and/or from monopolizing a city by grabbing 2-4 connections to it.
I think the capability to purchase multiple properties would make for an interesting “no holds barred” optional rule to try out.
Multiple Trains
During S&S’s 2.0 cargo hauling development, I toyed with the idea of allowing players to run a second train. It would be expensive to purchase; within the game’s abstraction, you’re essentially doubling your business capacity. But it might make for a faster game and/or allow alternate strategies. Again, it might make for a decent optional rule.
Play Testing
Once I get 3.0 on track within the month, I’ll be setting up some play testing sessions. Stay tuned if you’re interested.