Money in the Right Decade

Our worlds start anywhere from 1950 to 2020, and the game inflates prices and wages all the way from 1920 to whichever year you land in. Haulage always knew that. Holdings did not — they paid the same flat sum on every world, which on a 2020 map was worth a third of what it should have been. That is fixed, and the difficulty levy has stopped quietly switching itself off before the finish.

Holdings now pay in the era you are playing

Every world replays a century of inflation before your first train moves. Cargo rates and prices arrive already scaled — but our dividend rates were flat numbers, so on a late-era world holdings quietly shrank against the haulage they compete with. Measured on the live farm, a 2020 world's holdings were worth a third of a 1980 world's, and an eighth of a 1950 world's.

Updated later the same day: the anchor moved from a 1980 reference to 1920 itself — the year the game's own inflation compounds from — so the multipliers below are now the engine's true replayed inflation, not a comparison against one world.

• Both columns move together. The swing you actually feel is far smaller than either number — a late-era world pays more and charges more, which is the game's own squeeze, now reproduced instead of ignored.
• The spread between worlds is exactly the engine's own. A 2020 world still runs eight times a 1950 world's holdings rates, because that is what a century of compounded inflation does — the same arithmetic that already sets what your trains are paid.
• Every world scales up from here — the old flat rates turn out to have been 1920 prices, and they now inflate to your world's era the way everything else in the game already did. If the totals overshoot, the base rates get tuned; the inflation itself is now simply correct.

Why: the talents board has promised since day one that dividend rates are indexed to inflation so holdings keep pace with haulage. Within a single session that was true. Between worlds of different eras it was not.

The difficulty levy was going quiet before the finish

Late in every session the market freezes so the closing standings are not distorted by a last-minute price swing. The difficulty levy — the charge that makes a harsh charter harsh — was riding on that same freeze, and stopping with it.

• The last 19 months of every session ran with no difficulty charge at all — a game year and a half, about 8% of the match.
• Income never stopped. Only the cost side did, so a Hauler Hell charter became an Easy one at the whistle. One reported company went from a $50M loss to a $57M profit across that boundary on flat revenue, having changed nothing.
• The levy now goes quiet about one economy month before the awards, rather than a sixth of the match early.

Expect the endgame to feel like the rest of the session now. On the harshest charters this restores roughly sixteen months of charges that were previously waived.

Research: 22 new tracks, one pair per vehicle type

• Fleet market and Fleet costs join the research page: every vehicle category gets a market bonus track and an operating-cost relief track of its own.
• Eleven categories — rail, electric rail, monorail, maglev, bus, truck, tram, ship, canal craft, plane and helicopter. Steam and diesel cannot be told apart by any means the game exposes, so they share the rail track rather than pretending otherwise.
• Technologies that do not exist yet are hidden. On a 1950 world there is no monorail research, because there is no monorail — and the list grows during the session as new track types arrive.
• Market bonuses are weighted by that category's share of your fleet. Cost relief is exact, paid back into that category's own expense line, and capped at 60%.

Records reward the charter you set them on

Records were the largest single source of XP on the farm — ahead of difficulty, which is backwards. The end-of-session multiplier paid a flat bonus per record whatever charter you played, so a Normal player and a Hauler Hell player were rewarded identically in proportion.

Hauler Hell lands exactly on the old numbers, so this is a trim at the gentle end rather than a quiet buff at the hard end. The XP paid the moment a record is set was already scaled by charter and is unchanged.

Town and industry holdings: the service curve is halved

• Servicing a town or industry hard still multiplies what its holdings pay, but the curve is half as steep: industries now reach 2× at 60% service and 5× at 100%; towns 4× and 10×.
• Both anchors moved, so the shape is identical and the payout is exactly half from 60% upward — pushing service high is still the whole game, it just pays half as much.

Understanding your charter

• The guide gains a full charter section: all five charters side by side, what the multiplier touches and what it never touches, how far talents claw it back, and a worked sum.
• It had been advertising the charters under names retired months ago, and telling you a harsh charter shrinks your market bonus. It does not — earning rates are identical on every charter, and always have been since difficulty went cost-side only.
• The records entry was two rulings behind as well: books are per world, and the period book is monthly.

Fixes

• The session recap could show a negative company value in the billions — large figures were being truncated to 32 bits. The same bug silently dropped your best result from the header.
• The research page could crash the world's game script the first time a company had rows to redraw. Found and fixed before anyone hit it.
• Research was offering monorail and maglev on worlds where neither exists, because the availability check was asking a question the game answers differently for a server script than for a player.
• The glossary had the build lock at six months; it is five — about the first five minutes of a company.