Game - Train Station 2

 

Full title : Train Station 2: Railroad Tycoon & Train Conductor

Trian station 2 is a train and business simulation video game, which must be played with an internet connection - it will give you an error screen asking to reload, should you try to connect without it, or if you loose your connection.

The game consists of jobs given by NPC's - to collect and deliver materials, for various rewards. A station you 'control' with buildings, and a population to grow. 

I've been enjoying this game on my android phone for quite a while now, collecting famous trains, which actually existed in history of rail transport. I've been expanding the city by increasing its population and adding new buildings, exploring the game's ''static regions'' as well as temporary ones from events, and filled numerous job contracts to garner gold, keys, experience and level up in order to reach the next regions. 

It's an overall free-to-play game, though just like any other Android game, you'll see many pay options to either increase your game-currencies or buy special packs - for trains and parts, or for event rewards and factories. 

The game has your station area, the map with its 9 regions to unlock, event regions appearing occasionally - events will cycle from calm times when you can just do what you want, to the train tycoon requesting specific tasks to be done in order to increase points and ranking, but also other events - either solo or in teams - though I never found a way to interact with said team, only selecting it and working on my end to get points both individually and for our team.

You can either view the station or map or enter a region - I find that following the locomotives as they travel in the map rather soothing. 

Your station area is a central hub, comprised of : 

The Railway Station, here you'll occasionally see your locomotives passing by, or collect the gold/materials you sent them for. Once a day, you can also collect the special daily reward (gold, parts, even trains, in a weekly cycle). Sometimes, you'll even see station conductors announcing the trains - if your sound's on, you can click on the whistles and hear them! (the clicking is a task in the train tycoon events, too). 

    Company Headquarters which was added only a few months ago - located east of the Railway Station. Here you can collect special rewards, including parts, gold, gems, avatars... 

    The City - located north of the Railway Station, meaning just above the visible rails. Here you'll gradually add your various buildings as they become available in your level, and a few rare ones during events. Sadly, one of the main issues I see with the game is the limited number of parcels in which you set your buildings : you reach max 45 parcels at level 170, and once you run out of space, you must 'store' some of your buildings in order to add new ones, especially during events. Details on parcels and levels, in the guide. 

    Wearhouse, Factories and Seaport - located south of the Railway Station. Wearhouse capacity can be expanded as you grow your city population ; it costs only gold (see bellow for currencies, and guide for these costs VS capacity). To grow your city population, you use materials and city plans, the latter being rewarded by the Captain at the Seaport, once you give him randomized quantities of various materials (he never asks for something your level doesn't allow to make or collect). 

The Captain remains 4 hours once you click to accept his request. It's how long you have to collect and manufacture his required materials, and then he leaves for 16 hours. The best aspect of this is that if he comes during your offline period, the 4 hour counter won't start. I suggest clicking when you have no queues in your factories, in order to prioritize his request once you do click, because you can only make one type of item per factory at a time. The bad aspect in this Seaport feature is that I often click on it when I don't mean to! 

Factories unlock at various levels and can be upgrades for a set amount of gems. Check the guide for this too. Each upgrade adds one production queue. 

Game currencies : Gold, Keys and Gems. 

You get gold by collecting it on the map (every 4 hours, once available), finishing jobs, some level-ups, rewards from events as well as from the Company Headquarters, or converting gems in the game-shop. 

    You get keys by completing jobs, and some level-ups.

    You get gems the same ways, but also with real money, or getting free gems by installing other games  - click on the gems tab in the shop either to buy for real money or to get the list of other games and what you have to do to get those train station 2's free gems  - every few weeks, they even double these offers, so keep an eye on the notifications. 

The gold is used to upgrade your warehouse, or, in conjunction with parts, to upgrade your locomotives. 

The gems are used to hire time-limited dispatchers, to buy parts or locomotive containers, to upgrade factories or hasten their production (time equals gems). 

    Train locomotives are divided into classes: common, rare, epic and legendary, and can be diesel, electric or steam. Their full transportation potential depends on their category, and sometimes special events will give you higher power trains. 

In all regions, common locomotives base power starts at 4 and tops at 20 ; rare start at 6 and tops at 30, Epic start at 12 and tops either at 30 or 45, and legendary base at 20, tops at 60 - but event ones can top a whooping 80 ! Full region details, names and powers, in the guide. I don't know if there's a guide for the special event ones.

Each job will display how many of your locomotives are compatible and when you click on specific jobs, you can see which ones you can send, what's their capacity and then, you can calculate and choose your dispatcher, locomotive and job accordingly. For a given job, trains will be sent for a set amount of time, anywhere between seconds in level 1 (Britain) and up to 8 hours for rarer jobs. They're always displayed. If your locomotive power isn't high enough, you'll need to send it multiple times, to complete a job - hence the importance of upgrading. 

Materials are either collected raw on the map, or can be created in the station factories : iron oar, coal and steel available from level 1, and others become available as you level up. For ex, iron powder in 5, wood in 10, chairs in 20... Some can be collected once you build the relevant factories on the map (timber factory in Germany, gasoline factory in USA and flour factory in France are my current 3 available). They take a lot of time, but will save you a lot more on the long run (once you can!). 

To get materials : the raw ones are, as stated above, scatted on the map, which means that each region has its own material. With a dispatcher, you send the region's specific trains to collect - which takes anywhere between 30 seconds in Britain to 5 minutes in higher level regions, and fabrication in station factories varies from 3 minutes to over an hour, even 1h45 for sofas. 

Factories will use either one or several raw materials in order to make a set of its items. Luckily, as you level up, you can hire more dispatchers, sending trains to collect the various raw materials simultaneously, and every 6 hours, you can view an ad to manufacture one queue "instantly" , that is the ads' duration (15 to 30 seconds), so my advice is to always use on the longest duration item you can make (and need) at that level... what's the point in viewing a 30 seconds ad to speedup a 3 minutes item when you can speedup a 1+ hour item, right ? 

The quantities you can collect depends on your train's power, which can be upgraded using gold and train parts ; the quantities you manufacture are hard coded in the factories, from 30 to 690! Complete list in the guide. (event factories also vary and don't appear in this guide). 

Dispatchers : you start the game with 3. You can get more either by using gems or real money (I never do that, personally, though I may one day use gems). As you level up, however, you can hire one extra dispatcher, against gems or on a higher level, against materials, which is what I've done every time. Details in the guide, but I'll add here that in order to understand the materials alternative is that you have to wait longer than the gem-hiring option, every single time, because you need a higher level to access it. 

Since at first, you won't have many gems, at least as a free-to-play player, you'll need to be patient.

Also, every 6 hours, you can view an ad (15-30 seconds) to get one extra free dispatcher! 

Keys, locomotives and parts : as stated earlier, finishing non-event jobs and levelling-up are the two main ways to get keys. These allow you to buy locomotives every 100 or 200. You get randomized results, with the displayed % chances for each type of train and most often, you'll get multiple copies of the same - especially of common. It's ok, sending the same train in multiple copies is allowed. 

Every 4 hours you can collect gold on the map, as well as opening  free boxes of parts in the "Roundhouse", which you access in the screen's bottom right side as seen in this screenshot >>> 

Which brings you here

Check also the daily offer for containers of parts and locomotives - they appear in a cycle but aren't always as interesting as one another... calculate your costs and make your choices. 

There are as many classes of parts as of locomotives (common etc), required for upgrading your various locomotives - you'll  need gold for all + common AND the specific class parts to upgrade any given locomotive, ie, a common locomotive needs gold and common parts, but rare rare needs gold, common AND rare parts and so on.

The game's twitter page will announce any necessary maintenance (which is rather rare), glitches, updates, and offer redeem codes for keys - usually event ones, sometimes train parts.

Events start at 2 PM my time (France), but I'm not sure if it's universal or depends on your own location and server. They last anywhere between 2 and 21 days. 

Despite the couple personal issues I have with my eyes & fingers VS game, I find train station 2 a pleasant, even relaxing game. The amount of details I shared may make you think it's a very complex one, but it's far less than it sounds - and less than some other games I tried. 

Graphics are alright, it's kinda fun to follow the trains, or zoom on them to see their details - and nice when you manage to score well in event ranks, though for some, I resigned myself to lower personal results, as I play some of them against paying customers.

I still enjoy it and find the variety of events and their cycles actually well balanced, as to avoid total repetition - and seeing level and population numbers increase is quite cool. 

PS : one can potentially play the game on PC, using an emulator. I do that for Love Nikki (to be reviewed soon), on NOX, but Train Station 2 simply won't display for me, despite 8 GB of RAM and a rather empty hard drive. I hope that one day, I can find a way, because it'd help my vision to see on bigger screen, or at least, to afford a tablet, eventually.