The Imperial Court of the Master Logistician - Mini Metro

[Heliocentric]

It’s clear that we need to draw lines and deploy engines like The Fat Controller crossed with Oppenhiemer. The public transport network must not fail. Any suggestions where we make our stand first?

[Heliocentric]

Got up to 840 in London Extreme, went with the lazy spider, which quickly collapsed as the legs grew too generous.

http://i.imgur.com/12EOLVx.gif

Actually unlocking London Extreme includes getting 1000 in london with only 1 tunnel, which is actually a fascinating proposition all by itself.

[Calamity]

Watching timelapses like that is hypnotizing, especially if you’d have a really long one

[Blackice]

I don’t think I’ve unlocked any extreme modes yet! Which is a bit crap really. I do enjoy seeing other peoples efforts though, it’s a great way to learn. For instance, I always make the square my central hub for some reason…

Anyway, I’m up for any sort of challenge - perhaps choose a map on normal (until more of us get extreme modes unlocked…), and post the gif of your best attempt in a week?

Here’s a fairly rubbish attempt at Melbourne (969, normal) when I was going through a “loopy” phase :

http://i.imgur.com/Rw5dNRW.gif?1

[Calamity]

Is the replay a game feature? If so that is pretty nice.

[Blackice]

Is the replay a game feature? If so that is pretty nice.

Yes, there’s a built in replay function, and the result can be exported into a gif.

[Heliocentric]

crosspost:

The Onward March of the Bundles [Join group for full coverage]

London Endless, 97 passengers per day:

…beat me?

I couldn’t manage to do better than 104, will iterate later

[Heliocentric]

Rethought my whole attitude, I can’t serve everyone, so why not try and focus on doing what I can well. One main line trudging through the unique stations and a bunch of loops with a square, triangle and circle, the pink line stringing a few of the disparate ring lines neighbourhoods together.
Old:http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/277346667223244745/A61044D9ED07D7D11C326F13A2314521A5786A7F/

Edit: Rethought the pink line and pinched and tweaked in a few places, gained a big boost in efficency.
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/277346667223290104/5D612BDBE2D5E2E52B91B4445C11A8427540E4BB/
Edit 2: Squeezed a little more blood out of this stone.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/277346667223338879/77F4AA3F23A2753A688F5C50F789664708DFCE49/

And fnally, the gif:weighting in at 0.5MB

http://i.imgur.com/lWRneUh.gif

[Procrastination_Giant]

Insomnia-fuelled Thames Tunnel (1 Tunnel) Achievement run:

http://i.imgur.com/cZrcr9Y.gif

messy, messy, messy, everything about this run was messy, but thought that it might be a good example for the tunnel switching required for the achievement. Stopped paying attention to the bottom half once the achievement popped and didn’t notice those two stations pop up and lost at 1.3k… I’m bad at this game.

[Ksempac]

This is an endless London with an average of 120+ and a peak of 126:

https://i.imgur.com/ZZiHdqZ.gif

I wish i could say there was a grand plan behind that, but mostly, after the last total redesign, it’s just been a succession of micro-optimizations.

EDIT: FFS, why is it uploading my GIF as a JPEG ?

EDIT2: Oh got it, everyone actually uploads to imgur

EDIT3: Squeezing efficiency where i can, at a cost of a few abandoned stations, i raise it to an average of 130+ and a peak of 135:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10885[/ATTACH]
EDIT4: Turns out there was a big inefficiency in that network !
By making yellow a loop, i removed the brown line, which freed it for other stuff…look at that, 140+ average, with a peak of 148, while adding one station to the network.

Hmm…can’t upload screenshot of the 148 peak for some reason…will try again later.

Current GIF:

https://imgur.com/lKkrY1F.gif

Turns out Endless Mode is exactly what i wanted from Mini Metro. The Normal (or worse the Extreme) Mode is always too slow at the start, and too fast at the end, so there is actually very few minutes where you’re in that sweet spot of optimizing stuff while not constantly handling fires.

[Heliocentric]

The Thames tunnel challenge was brilliant, I look forward to the others, apparently a few are a complete crap shoot if you don’t draw the right RNG seed for the stations.

A big leap in endless is realising that the peasants without diverse neighbourhoods are simply not worth tending to. If all the trains are making short trips fully loaded with people who hop at most one station then you are running at incredible efficiency.

[Ksempac]

A big leap in endless is realising that the peasants without diverse neighbourhoods are simply not worth tending to. If all the trains are making short trips fully loaded with people who hop at most one station then you are running at incredible efficiency.

True, but also disappointing. Your 162 peak was great from a pure number perspective, but looking at it, it felt, for me, unsatisfying to see so few stations served.

That’s why i went the middle road, of leaving aside many of the circles stations, but still trying to cover most of the stations. I wish there was at least a minimal threshold of stations you have to cover, so that we could all go for a record with a common set of requirements.

Aside from that, here is another solution to the Thames challenge: a feeder line dedicated to crossing the Thames and nothing else.

But yeah, challenges are very RNG dependant. I had a previous attempt fail because every station popping out in the South were circles, thus any South line would invariably be full quite fast. And that attempt above almost failed around the 800 mark due to a “Would you want a bridge you can’t use or a useless Interchange ?” Sunday deal.

[Heliocentric]

“Would you want a bridge you can’t use or a useless Interchange ?” Sunday deal.

Actually, that’s less RNG, an interchange is an inevitability if you don’t take tunnels/bridges (the same thing level dependant). An interchange is a great thing outside of endless because you can simply dump large quantities of “specials” there while a express goes back and forth to the special stations only.

True, but also disappointing. Your 162 peak was great from a pure number perspective, but looking at it, it felt, for me, unsatisfying to see so few stations served.

I agree completely, but Endless feels like an incomplete game type, there will always be more folks than you can transmit as the game has not given you anything of the tools you need, but because people respawn at the narrow neighborhoods so willingly that the wider you spin your web the further you farther you spin your web of potential failures. So how do you succeed? It becomes more and more an artform and less about logistics.

Look at this noob effort i found on reddit

[Procrastination_Giant]

Still bad at this game, which i blame on the fact that i feel compelled to replay the first map over and over again to improve my score:

http://i.imgur.com/6J2WArX.gif

Normal London - 2006 Peeps. That’ll do.

[amusingthebrood]

I sunk a good ten hours in when it was released and came back last night. All of my hard learned tactics have apparently dribbled out of my ears.

I managed a feeble 850 on London chasing after the one bridge challenge to unlock extreme. I shall try again tonight and hopefully not fall into a daft single central interchange layout.

[Ksempac]

Actually, that’s less RNG, an interchange is an inevitability if you don’t take tunnels/bridges (the same thing level dependant). An interchange is a great thing outside of endless because you can simply dump large quantities of “specials” there while a express goes back and forth to the special stations only.

Oh i totally agree on the value of an interchange, but, at least for me, i don’t want/need them when the network is still growing, because i’m liable to completely change the line layout. As far as i can tell, once you’ve put an interchange somewhere, you can’t move it elsewhere and it might become useless if your main hubs have moved. So it’s more of a late game thing for me.

[Eleven]

I use lots of overlapping circle lines, interchanging with as many different routes as possible, with a central “highway” bulk line that connects the rare station types and high traffic central stations. It works okay for keeping the centre moving, but sucks at revisit times at the extremities.

I can’t decide if having trains go one way on a circle line is better than having them go in both directions. One-way keeps the revisit times consistent, two-way potentially shortens some trips on long lines.

[Ksempac]

I use lots of overlapping circle lines, interchanging with as many different routes as possible, with a central “highway” bulk line that connects the rare station types and high traffic central stations. It works okay for keeping the centre moving, but sucks at revisit times at the extremities.

I can’t decide if having trains go one way on a circle line is better than having them go in both directions. One-way keeps the revisit times consistent, two-way potentially shortens some trips on long lines.

On loops, i think it’s better to go two ways, because you risk getting overflows otherwise. If you have two stations of the same type next to each other, trains get full at the first station and dont discharge on the second station, so they can’t pick up people from the second station and that station will overflow. With two way trains you avoid that problem.

[amusingthebrood]

On loops, i think it’s better to go two ways, because you risk getting overflows otherwise. If you have two stations of the same type next to each other, trains get full at the first, dont discharge on the second, and the second gets full. With two way trains you avoid that problem.

In my experience two directions works much better as well. I found it helped keep a line flowing steadily rather than peaking and troughing.

[amusingthebrood]

I finally managed to unlock London extreme; I even managed it with no tunnel switching. I couldn’t be bothered to rationalise my routes after the 1,000 popped so my bodge job of loops collapsed spectacularly just after 2,000.

Next job, try the extreme and see how badly it goes.

http://i.imgur.com/40e21IH.gif?1