Important note: These are the specifications only. The game has NEVER been written and I am NOT a sufficiently competent programmer to undertake the job.

If anyone wants to assist, either by coding or suggesting additional reality features, please email me.

Contents

• Features (below)
• Playing
• - Management By Wandering Around (MBWA)
• Employees
• - Employee Position Descriptions
• Goodwill
• Freight customers
• Passengers
• Quality of Service
• - Comfort
• Operations and Timetables
• Rollingstock
• Facilities
• Advertising
• Annual Shareholders Meetings
• Relationships with other companies
• Appendix A: Chronological Events
• Appendix B: Technical Details

• Realistic relationships with other people and companies (because they're real people), like most RPGs - customers and employees need to be kept happy
• Chronology, like SimCity: as the game simulates, things are invented (eg diesel locomotion, container freight); also external factors from history (eg wars, invention of cars and planes, change in customer expectations, etc) are realistically introduced
• Research, like Entrepeneur: you can speed up the invention of things by paying extortionate rates for researchers (but like SimCity 2000 all railroads can use it once you've invented it). Big breakthroughs are patentable, a potential source of money.
• Free economy, like Entrep: you can charge whatever you like and customers will shop around for a service they like, taking all factors (not just price) into consideration
• Quality of service measured on "bang for buck" which is variable across the customer base, like Entrep
• AIs able to be appointed and given instructions, like GalCiv - but much more sophisticated
• Scenarios, like SimCity - a CEO can take control of an underperforming company and try to get KPIs to a certain level in a set time. Optional difficulty levels may include limited budget (eg just after Webb left), stupid government/shareholder control (like CR), badly run-down infrastructure (like Tasrail) or low employee morale.

• Rise of competition: AI companies competing for your area/market will be started randomly (or existing companies will diversify into your market/area). The chance will be based on the quality of your service (worse = more chance), number of companies currently operating (fewer = more chance), and perceived size and profitability of the area/market (bigger = more chance).
• Rise of regulation and other transport related laws: If you're doing a bad job the government is likely to step in. You can also beg them to step in if you think you're getting a raw deal but that destroys goodwill and can also come back and bite you in other ways. All government functions (eg ACCC, judicial and civil courts, local council planning offices, ASIC, WorkCover, etc) will be run by the game admin.
• Management By Wandering Around (MBWA): Thanks Tom Peters. Tons of vital information is available to you if you get out of your office and TALK to people. It increases employee morale and customer goodwill too. It's almost silver bullet material, it just fixes EVERYTHING.

Multi-player operation and AI players

A large number of players will be involved in the game. These include all employees of your own company and your competitors, and all potential customers in the market. Any of these players can be either a real person (PC=player character) or an AI (NPC=non-player character).

Communication between characters is realistic - speech if in the same room, other modes (eg telephone, two way radio, etc) will be invented realistically. Between humans, the message can be anything - eg if you're driving and running late the driver of the train behind can call you up and say "get a move on"; if you're giving bad service your customer can literally ring you up and give you an earful! Communication between humans and AIs is by a limited (but comprehensive) instruction set - AIs have little imagination.

All players have a bank account and regular expenses; they can vary their standard of living but eventually have to get a job.

AI players have the following characteristics:

• Morale
• Importance factors of:
  • Money (salary when an employee; price when a customer)
  • Convenience
  • Time
  • Reliability (customers only)
  • Comfort
  • Perceived environmental considerations
• Smoker/non-smoker
• Attitude (willingness, cheerfulness, diligence, etc)
• A set of skills, of which each skill has a rating from 0-100% (average-good being around 75% to make room for superstars)

The AI module is fully object oriented - there will be lots of different AI characters for all positions. The specs will be open source so third-parties can write AI plug-ins. ("I've written a Driver AI; I call him Notch Eight.")

Starting

All users, when creating a character, must write a resumé and enter the job market. On being created the character will have a small amount of money in the bank. Until they are offered rail-related employment they have to find work elsewhere (which will pay badly and not enter the simulator except to replenish the bank account). During this time they may act as a passenger. The better their resumé the better their chance of being offered the job they're after, but if they can't live up to it they will be sacked and given a bad reference.

Any player can at any time propose to start a company (Even at Sun Apr 03, 2005 11:44 am if they want to), but it will only start if enough shareholders can be persuaded to risk their money on him. AI shareholders will act with a degree of randomness but based on his resumé - whether he has experience in leadership, management and the industry. The aspiring CEO can, of course, put his own money in and thus be his own shareholder.

At the time he proposes the company, the CEO will draw up a prospectus:

• Location and market sector (as wide as "common carrier" or as narrow as "Refrigerated freight") although these can be changed at an AGM
• Starting capital

Management By Wandering Around (MBWA)

Tom Peters in his books about business management talks about getting the CEO out of his comfy office where he's insulated from the world and actually TALKING to people - customers and employees. He can find out all sorts of things this way which in the normal way he'd find out months later or never at all. This action is called Management By Wandering Around (MBWA) and, says Tom, should make up a major percentage of a CEO's time.

In Higin every character, whether human or AI, can do this. They can talk to company employees, customers, governing bodies, chambers of commerce etc about how well the company is serving them, what their issues are, etc. The HR Manager should set the boundaries - eg drivers can't go MBWAing when they're rostered on a train.

Employees will tell what they like and what they don't about their job. They will be more open if morale is high. If morale is low they will either be monosyllabic, or give an earful which might not all be totally reliable. If it's really low they might hit you (I'm not sure how to simulate that yet). But if it's high, and you manage to convey the message that you really want their input and trust and value them, you will get all sorts of good ideas, inside info about customers and competitors, and other useful stuff.

Customers - ditto (replace morale with goodwill).

Local governments will tell you if they're growing or shrinking, and why (eg "our economy is based on heavy industries and they're dying out" or "it's so expensive to get petrol out here and local transport is woeful so people don't want to live here"). If you want to you can "prop up" a town by creating employment in it eg by putting a maintenance facility there. It's a bad thing to have a town exist only for the railway because it will never be a totally positive entry on the books, but by doing it carefully you can make the town "turn the corner" and become self-sufficient in its own right.

Chambers of Commerce will tell you how business is and why (eg "the young people of the town are taking advantage of your cheap weekend return fares to go to the flicks in the neighbouring town instead of supporting the local popcorn industry"). Chambers of Commerce can be regarded as both an existing and a potential customer, because they are likely to have both as their members.

Employees

Wages/Benefits and Conditions

The CEO can set whatever wages/benefits he likes and provide any working conditions (with or without consulting the HR industry press to see what market rates are), but if the employees don't like it they will leave. Minimum wage and OH&S laws will be passed at the historically correct time; they can be flouted but if the situation is discovered there will be massive compensation to pay and massive loss of goodwill.

By default, employees receive unlimited free use of your own trains (both pass and freight) and limited free use of codeshare partners' services; codeshare partner employees receive limited free transport. These will show up as non-paying passengers when examining traffic levels. However free travel is a perk which can be switched on or off (or varied).

Training

You can pay for your people to be trained in various skills, which costs money (in addition to their wages) and makes them unavailable for duty for the duration of the course but has benefits.

For instance, you can train your front-line people (train and station staff) in first aid which improves goodwill; you can also train them in security which ups the safety of passengers, especially when non-paying passengers are travelling; you can choose to what extent they are trained in customer service.

For maintenance staff, level of training affects condition of rollingstock, which can affect goodwill ("the window won't open - again!"), running costs (does this loco run on diesel or lube oil?) and in extreme cases, safety (forgot to grease the bearings???).

Recruiting

Additional employees can be recruited throughout the game by the HR Manager. Employment ads can be placed like any other ad at cost, or in stations for free.

Sacking

Your boss will reprimand you if you do the wrong thing, and sack you after several warnings if you continue to underperform. The HR Manager (if present) or the boss will then attempt to find a replacement in the job market.

An AI has no "unfair dismissal" or "nepotism" rights when sacked to let a human player in. However the AIs all know this, so if in that situation an AI is promoted to another position, morale goes way up.

Morale (AIs only)

Morale is affected by wages/benefits, conditions and perceived treatment by bosses. At rare and random intervals morale for one employee will plummet eg trouble at home. In these cases employees with high morale will confide in you; you can improve morale by giving them a break.

Obviously, morale affects performance.

Volunteers

Some jobs can be done by volunteer rail enthusiasts on a part-time basis, who are paid out of the dumpmaster - old station signs (when replaced replaced by the Facilities Manager), pieces from old rollingstock (retired by the CME) or even complete vehicles, information from head office, etc.

Volunteers do not suffer from low morale (but will quit if not given enough presents), but need the same amount of training. Their devotion to duty is extremely high, but they will have morale plummets (actually their paid jobs) more often than employees.

Employee Position Descriptions

In Management module: Any of these roles can be doubled up with the CEO.

• CEO (1): Manager of policy and liaison person between company and shareholders. Has final say as to what business the company will persue, what new lines will be built, who will be employed, all capital purchases, etc. Some of these roles can be delegated to middle management, but full details of all decisions must be made available to the CEO for approval or otherwise (in which case the CEO may only say "Please reconsider, taking into account this factor").
• CME [Chief Mechanical Engineer] (1 with optional assistants): Manager of all rollingstock matters. Responsible for design and maintenance of locos and carriages/wagons, to the specifications requested by the CEO (eg "Pax want something that can do New York-Chicago in an hour without stopping - can you design a loco with that speed and range?"). Can request "better material to work with" from Research Manager or Chief Civil Engineer.
• Chief Civil Engineer (1 with optional assistants): Manager of all below-rail matters including signalling and safeworking. Responsible for maintenance of existing track (including upgrading when necessary) and design (number of tracks, rail weight, trackbed quality, max weight for bridges, track gauge inc dual) and laying of new track, to the specifications requested by the CEO (eg "Pax want New York-Chicago in an hour - can you upgrade the track and alignment for that?"; can also include track capacity in trains per day/hour/minute). Can request "better material to work with" from Research Manager. Role can also include Surveyor (below).
• Surveyor (1 with optional assistants): Manager of land use matters for new and rerouted track. Responsible for finding the best track geometry, based on a trade-off between construction/land acquisition costs and running costs, with running costs deemed to be altered by customer perception of the trip quality (ie if quality of service is bad the fare will have to be reduced to get them to ride on it, reducing profitability; for the purpose of this assessment add that to deemed running costs). Has certain upper and lower limits as set by available rollingstock. Can report failure if there's no way to stay within limits. Works closely with Chief Civil Engineer; roles can be combined especially if little new track is being built.
• Operations Manager (1 with optional assistants): Manager of all train operations, revenue and non-revenue. Responsible for timetabling, overseeing of all operational staff and on-time running of all services. Can request better rollingstock from CME, better track from Chief Civil Engineer, more rollingstock to meet demand from CEO, more staff to run more trains from HR Manager. Role can also include Timetabler (below).
• Timetabler (many): Does the "hack work" of drawing up timetables and rosters, based on the specifications requested by the Operations Manager. Has authority to talk direct to codeshare partners about connecting services if connection has been approved in principle by Operations Manager. Must clear final timetables with Operations Manager.
• Traffic Manager (many): Local to a specific area. Responsible to ensure trains have sufficient capacity to handle payload levels in the manner specified by the contracts - eg perishable freight may be required to be despatched daily and in suitable rollingstock. Can request more trains, faster trains, longer trains or specific rollingstock from Operations Manager.
• Customer Service Manager (1 with optional assistants): Responsible for keeping finger on the pulse of current and potential customers. "First port of call" for all customer feedback and complaints; identifies potential new business. Ideally, every other employee needs to jump when these people bark - failing to do so should be a sackable offence. Assistants with slightly different roles will be called Customer Service Officer (looking after existing customers), Sales Executive (touting for new business and upselling existing customers) or Business Development Officer (identifying new business and following trends in the marketplace).
• Facilities Manger (1 with optional assistants): Responsible for selection and purchase of land for facilities, maintenance and upgrade of stations (for passengers) and loading/unloading facilities (for freight) to the specifications requested by the CEO (eg "Between 4pm and 7pm daily this station needs to handle 60,000 passengers and despatch 500 trains with minimal delay"). Can request Research Manager to investigate improvements in handling eg gantry crane container handling.
• HR Manager (1 with optional assistants): Responsible for promotion and appointment; also "first port of call" for employee grievances. Can request better pay/conditions from CEO. An AI HR Manager is required give human players a slight artificial edge in the selection process. No, it's not racial discrimination, it's an act of submission to the people the game was created for.
• Research Manager (1 with optional assistants): Coordinates all research activities, prioritising based on instructions from CEO.
• Finance Manager (1 with optional assistants but if you have too many you're getting too fat): Responsible for bookkeeping, accounts payable and receivable, monitoring cash flow, investing profits, securing loans at low rates.
• Janitorial staff (many): May be appointed to keep rollingstock and facilities in a condition specified by CME/Facilities Manager.
• Administrative staff (many): May be appointed at any time to take "hack work" off any other employee.
• Driver, Guard, Station Master, Signalman (many): obvious
• Professional Gunzel (many): Goes around the system and identifies problems. Will also find problems that someone else should have picked up but hadn't due to low morale or overwork. Reports to the CEO in the form of "Here is a problem" - finding a solution is not necessarily his job (although he can suggest one). Also increases "human presence" on stations and trains (see Comfort) by answering questions, increasing security, etc. Salary is by default comparatively low. Optionally volunteer - CEO signs on to Railpage and asks for people to assist.

Both high and low goodwill are partially self-perpetuating - when goodwill is low people are more likely to be cynical about improvements, but when it's high they won't be so critical of problems.

Goodwill does not directly affect patronage: some pax will continue to use your service under sufferance for lack of an alternative. But these are more likely to become fare evaders or Connex Whingers (who spread low goodwill to other pax), and will leave as soon as a viable alternative is available.

Ways to lose goodwill:

• Give bad service eg run late or let services become overcrowded (pass) or leave shipments behind (freight)
• Fail to keep promises
• Fail to communicate (see below)
• Surprise your customers (eg by closing a line for major works)
• Increase fares (pass) or rates (freight)
• Have inconsiderate Drivers, Guards and Station Masters (pass) or sales execs (freight)

Ways to gain goodwill:

• Increase value for money (by lowering fares or increasing level of service)
• Introduce new measures which help people (eg SMS updates for pass)
• Set performance records for reliability, on-time running or non-overcrowding which are at or above customer expectations
• Donate or sponsor

Communication includes:

• Drivers and station masters to the people on their trains/stations (pass)
• Sales Exec to the contact person in the customer company (freight)
• CEO to everyone via newspapers (pass) or industry publications (freight)

When diversifying, high goodwill increases the rate of uptake of new business (Hey everyone, FCL are coming to town!)

When specialising, failing to look after your old customers will decrease goodwill (Bloggs Transport? That mob that pestered my cousin's timber yard for a trial, drove the competition out of town with a cut rate, and then decided they wouldn't take general freight and left him in the lurch?).

Freight customers

The Sales Exec will be responsible to draw up contracts with customers, which can range in size from pallet-loads or less as required for a general store (in the pre-WW2 type of era before such things went by road) to BHP transporting megatonnes of steel. Fixed rates for non-contract customers can also be drawn up.

Some customers will have unusual requirements eg for a constant supply of goods in order to keep a production line going, time-slotting arrivals, or curfews. In those cases they will ask for clauses in the contract that give you penalties if you make a mistake. Allowing those clauses to be in will greatly increase value for money for the customer, making them favour you even if your price is higher than the competition. However as your competition catches up and offers the same clauses, they will become mandatory rather than optional.

Customers will rise and fall. When rising, a Sales Exec or Business Development Officer will notice a new business opportunity and chase it (sometimes building with attract more business than operating eg Alcan Project in NT). When falling, he will be told by his company contact that they are ceasing operation and the contract has to be wound up. There is a slightly higher chance of this happening if they are being overcharged. He then has the option to try to keep the customer afloat with a cut rate, but must clear this with the CEO. This is only occasionally successful.

Passengers

Passengers have to be kept happy. This is not something that comes naturally to them. One bad experience balances the effect of 49 good experiences, so to keep them happy there have to be errors less than 2% of the time. A bad experience can be a dirty train/station, late, cancelled or overcrowded train, or facility expected but not provided.

Some passengers will forgive an error that is beyond your control, others won't. Passengers with low goodwill will be less forgiving.

Services have to be reliable, frequent and fast; trains have to be clean and comfortable; facilities have to be kept on top line. Expectations of these increase over time.

Passengers affected by an error can be placated by:

• giving gifts to people affected by a problem (costs money)
• keeping up the communication, most importantly at the moment (via training of operational staff) but also after the event (see Communication)

Unlike RR and TTD, passengers have a destination they want to go to. It's no good just giving them a ride. Some destinations will not be reachable without changing services. Also, they will need to go home again later (apart from a small percentage who are making one-way trips). Traffic levels for destinations are calculated the same way as origin traffic levels. Each destination attraction has a range of lengths of stay - eg a workplace will be around 8 hours, a shopping centre 5min to four hours, some country trips days or weeks.

You can build a Trip Generator (eg shopping centre, entertainment, etc - like Hawthorn Tramways Trust built Wattle Park) which may also create revenue. These can later be corporatised into a separate venture and sold off.

Quality of Service

A customer's satisfaction with your service is a score, the sum of the percentiles (that is, how you rate compared to the industry average - all your competitors) of the factors that make up your service. Each factor is multiplied by an "importance rating" which is different for each individual customer (although certain geographical and other groups will have similar rating schemes) and will change over time even in the same customer (eg in times of recession cost becomes more important for everyone).

Factors:

• Cost - with using their own car artificially deflated by 15 percentile points due to a perception problem (it looks cheaper than it is because costs like registration, insurance and repairs don't immediately spring to mind)
• Speed - measured from door to door, with each minute spent waiting without moving counting as between three and six minutes, based on the customer's Importance Rating of speed (higher Importance Rating = closer to six minutes each) and the comfort level of the place spent waiting (better comfort = closer to three minutes each)
• Reliability - non-cancellation and punctuality
• Comfort - level of each point on the journey multiplied by time spent there (actual minutes, not inflated - bottoms get sore at the same rate whether you're in a hurry or not)
• Convenience - how easy it is to get from door to door, and how easy it is to understand the requirements (including fare collection systems and timetables)
• Perceived environmental considerations - emissions per gtk (freight) or seat-km (pass). Ineffective unless properly marketed except to a very few greenies who will actually do the research themselves.

• Overall cleanliness
• Presence and cleanliness of toilets and public phones
• Amount of indoor space sufficient for patronage (stations only)
• Presence/reliability of heating/cooling
• Number of benches on platform and seats inside (station or train) sufficient for patronage
• Quality of seating (padding, ergonomic posture, presence of armrests, age/condition)
• Availability, quality, price and service quality (calculated as per above) of food, drinks, newspapers (vending machines are not as good as manned booths or sit-down restaurants)
• Perceived safety/security
• Presence/reliability of information - PA or PIDS (bad reliability makes it a negative factor, not zero)
• Human presence
• Driving style - keeping G forces low (trains only)
• Smoking - banning makes some people happy and some unhappy (smoking is one of the items in the Genuine People Personality profile). Also affects on-train/on-station employees. Option of smoking and non-smoking areas.
• Level of stress imposed on passengers - stress can come from nervousness about low security, lack of clear information, long distances to walk or not enough time to connect between services, or prolonged discomfort.
• Aesthetic design - use of colours, patterns etc

Factors for freight: negatives add up, ie they can't be compensated for by positives in other areas. However some types of freight have comparatively high tolerance for rough handling.

• Ride quality - affected by employee care when loading/unloading (careful recruitment, good training and high morale will improve this), facilities at load/unload points (eg concrete hardstand is better than gravel), wagon facilities (eg shackling points) and bogie and track quality
• Driving style - keeping intra-train collisions low
• Technology in excess of customer demands eg HACCP

As drivers run the trains the Operations Manager will be given a report on on-time running (with causes for lateness which can range from "Loco doesn't have the guts to get up the hill" to "Attempted suicide on the line") and traffic level.

Better timetables (speed, frequency) gain the company goodwill; consistent problems (late running, overcrowding, cancellations) will lose it.

Rollingstock

Off-the-shelf designs will be available from external suppliers, which will be the same as is available to the competition. Alternatively the CME can design rollingstock to your specific requirements, but this will take longer.

Properties for all vehicles include (apart from the obvious ones) axle load, loading gauge outline and drawgear capacity.

Construction cost is calculated realistically by a complex formula; it can be reduced by researching new technology.

Locos have a realistic fuel supply: a long run requires a big tender/fuel tank. Fuel consumption creates business for coal/diesel/electricity industry and may require departmental freight movements. Fuel has to be paid for, and special deals can be entered into.

Passenger cars can have more spent on comfort in the interior; freight vehicles can have more spent on weather protection. Legal minimum standards for freight vehicles rise with time eg Food Transport Vehicle accreditation, HACCP, etc. Sometimes these standards will be available but not (yet) mandatory, making compliance a marketable feature.

Maintenance

You can cut down on check-ups which raises the risk of breakdowns but speeds up turn-around time (good for grain harvest time - shop each wagon in preparation before the season starts and then do just a basic check between runs). Better-built wagons (which will have increased tare weight), more preventative maintenance, and better technology will almost eliminate breakdowns.

For the moment we won't worry about workshop inventory - it creates too much complication. But pencil in vehicle maintenance for Higin version 2.0, due out just after Christmas (year unspecified). For now you just shop the wagon, it waits some time and costs an amount. The cost amount will include the value of the replacement parts minus the scrap value of the worn ones.

Repairs: accident-damaged or careless-handling-damaged vehicles can be assessed for condition and either repaired or scrapped. Factors to bear in mind include time out of service (may be severe) and resources devoted to the repair (manpower, workshop space, consumables). Decision to repair or scrap is taken by CME with input from Operations Manager (eg "We have a shortage of 100t grain wagons and repair is faster than replacement").

Value adding/refurbishment: costs money, takes the vehicle out of service, and needs a lot of expertise to be successful but can yeild vehicles regarded as new by pax for much cheaper than replacing. Releases some redundant parts which can have a scrap/resale value or be cascaded to other vehicles.

Scrap/resale value: available for redundant parts and whole vehicles. This will be higher if the item is well maintained and useful as-is. However when resold it might be used against you. Vehicles and parts can also be donated for preservation, which increases goodwill with a few customers and morale of Professional Gunzels and some other employees.

Facilities

Company offices and other facilities can be built anywhere on the system. Creating employment in a city makes it grow but there may be problems recruiting in small towns (or keeping people - morale will suffer if they are compulsorily relocated).

Land and buildings can be bought and sold or just leased.

Loco fuelling and watering and carriage servicing facilities must be available in the right places.

Some facilities eg loco maintenance will attract departmental movements and therefore require supporting infrastructure.

Advertising

As per Entrep but with enhancements.

You can advertise your mainstream services to potential customers, new services to existing and potential customers, behavioural requests (eg "Don't Hold Others Back") to existing customers, or employment to non-employees.

High average goodwill increases the value of advertising.

Media: Print, Radio, TV, Billboard (including on stations). Putting in multiples on the same theme is a "force multiplier" - a billboard can remind people of a TV ad and be almost like twice as much air time. If it's located cleverly it can influence people just before they decide who to buy from.

Subject matter: as per Entrep but more cynical. If you advertise something they don't want, the ad does nothing. If you advertise something you don't have, it works for a few weeks but then you lose heaps of goodwill and the next 49 ads (more if goodwill was already low) are ineffective. The more hype you give something, the less tolerant people will be to you not having it (or it being late). If goodwill is already low, the negative effects are more pronounced.

Features: By featuring what people are interested in you "force multiply" your ad. This increases planning time. Features can include humour (which increases goodwill), sex (which decreases it but still force multiplies your ad), sport (which increases it but is risky if "one eyed"), public figures (which costs heaps for their permission and can have a big backlash if they fall from their pedistal). Level of force multiplication is based on the comparison of your ads with the competition - eg if they advertise using public figure X and you do the same your ad is ineffective and will lose you a little bit of goodwill.

Procedure: A campaign can be planned in your own offices (taking time but no money, because the PR guys are on a salary) or contracted out (taking about the same amount of time and costing a fixed amount). It is launched at an initial cost; it is continued at a cost per time. There can be a renewal cost eg a billboard getting weather-damaged. It can be terminated any time. Effectiveness decays over time as people get bored with it.

Annual Shareholders' Meetings

Each year, the CEO has the option to ask the shareholders' permission to make major changes to the company operation. These include:

• Diversify or specialise the business
• Recapitalise
• Wind up the company

One month before the meeting the CEO must finalise the agenda and decide on the dividend to be distributed.

Shareholders are played by AIs. They act with a large degree of randomness, but are more likely to support a CEO's motion if properly buttered up. This can be done by giving larger dividends or by giving extra benefits to shareholders (eg free transport, drinkies at the meeting, etc). However if the benefits are switched on just before the agenda is finalised the shareholders will see through the CEO's methods and be even more wary and suspicious than otherwise.

Either the shareholders or the CEO can call a Special General Meeting at any time with one month's notice. SGMs can consider any of the matters AGMs can; the agenda is set by whoever calls it.

The shareholders will, for the first few or so years, be interested in every detail of the company operations. After that they will slowly become laid-back as long as they have a nice fat dividend. If it gets too thin at any time they'll become more interested in your day-to-day operations and start suggesting ridiculous economies at AGMs, like bringing in a downsizing person or reducing maintenance on fast freight vehicles. The CEO will then have to argue very persuasively...

Relations with Other companies

Unlike some games, this will emphasise the option of doing deals with other companies - railway companies and others. Companies which have player characters as CEOs can be communicated with by messaging, so anything is possible. NPC CEOs can be given a fixed set of offers:

• Codesharing (feeding passengers to/from railways in adjoining areas, buslines, tourist attractions, etc)
• Guaranteed connection with a bus company or adjoining railway (which will increase patronage for both and raise customer satisfaction at the expense of timetable complication and added possibility of late running)
• Sub-contracting various bits of your operation eg maintenance
• Through-running arrangements, which speeds up point-to-point service time at the expense of fleet management complication and/or crew training
• Joint ticketing
• Lease arrangements for rollingstock or facilities

Some of these dates aren't quite right and may be randomised.

1825

Mechanical motive power and wheel-on-rail technology first used for public transport - minimum opening date. Theoretically this should be researchable, but what with the loco technology of the time it's not worth it.

1849

Gold found in California

1851

Gold found in Australia

1876

Telephone invented

1880s

Land boom in Australia

1902

Radio communication invented

1908

Mass-produced cars enter market

1914-1918

War in Europe and Middle East (massive increase in frequency and severity of accidents when playing in war zone; complete non-availability of funds elsewhere; massive increase in very urgent passengers and freight; pax expectations of speed, reliability and comfort drop severely)

1929

Stock Exchange crash leads to Great Depression

1935

DC-3 brings fast, reliable air travel

1939-1945

War in Europe, North Africa, India-China, Pacific (As per WW1, plus government control of railway companies)

1945

War-surplus trucks and aircraft make alternatives to rail transport much cheaper

1952?

Population of "new world" countries increased greatly by immigration (hence lots of pax with little idea of geography and variable levels of English)

1960?

Shipping container revolution

1962?

Cars become "cool"

1973

Oil crisis

1973

Mobile phone invented

1980

Microprocessors become viable for transport environment

1983?

OH&S laws passed in Australia

• Map files: object oriented - objects of various properties exist at various locations. Much better than bitmap-style.
• Other companies (non-railway): open interface so third-parties can write tourist attraction, shopping centre, busline etc simulator plug-ins.
• Rollingstock and track file formats: open-source so other people can build them. Depending on the mentality of Micro$oft and Auran, I'd like to have it possible to import the necessary bits of MSTS and Trainz track and rollingstock files too.