Two Lanes, End to End

A server patch on top of v0.97, almost all of it the Rail Baron. Its double-track mainlines are now two full lanes end to end, signalled the right way round, fed by one train per 20 tiles bought as the line earns them — and its trucks and buses are only bought where a road actually goes. Also inside: the construction rebate that was paying out nearly four times what it rebated, and the 30% cap that replaces it.

Two lanes, end to end

The AI's double track used to arrive with one end joined and the other not, with a three-platform ladder standing at a station one train could reach and a loop no train could use. The order was the bug: the second lane was laid last, after the ladder, the loop, the signals, the depot and the running train, onto ground those things had since taken — and when it failed, the clean-up took the first lane's throat down with it. Now:

• The second lane goes down straight after the first, on the ground both were surveyed on, and is checked tile by tile with the engine before a single train is bought. A lane that cannot be laid is taken back without touching the other, and the route opens as honest single track with one platform each end.
• It is surveyed beside the first lane, two tiles to one side and then the other, instead of as a fresh search across the map. A blocked side answers in seconds; an open one lays a 278-tile lane in a few short legs.
• Stations want a flat apron. A site is preferred where the ground beyond the throat is level for six tiles and wide enough for the platforms, so the ladder, the lane split and the depot all sit on the flat — the nine to thirteen clear tiles a seven-long station really needs. A preference, never a veto: a stepped site still builds when there is nothing flat within reach.
• The station follows the lanes. One platform each end unless there really are two lanes to feed a ladder, and the ladder is built at whichever throat the route actually used.

Signalled the right way round

Every one-way lane the AI has laid for the last three weeks permitted travel in the direction opposite to the one it was designed for. Nobody noticed because two opposite one-way lanes make the same railway either way round — the trains ran and the money came in — but everything built against the intended direction was inverted: the balloon loop was an entry loop, and the depot meant to hold arriving trains sat on the departure lane, so departing trains dipped into it. Corrected, and pinned by a test that reads every signal's facing.

• Each arrival lane now ends in a one-way path signal. An arriving train reserves a route through the lane split, the throat and the ladder into a free platform, and one that cannot yet get one waits on its own lane, never on the split.
• A ladder at the far end too. Platforms that used to dead-end and reverse out through the arrival throat are joined to the loop, so every platform is entered under the path signal and left through the loop — in one end, out the other, for all three.

A correction to v0.97: it promised "path signals through the throat, one per platform". A signal cannot stand on a ladder tile — the engine refuses any tile whose tracks cross — so that could never physically exist, and only one ever did. The path signal at the end of the arrival lane is the version that works.

One train, plus one per 20 tiles

A double track now sizes its fleet from the route it actually laid: one train plus one for every 20 tiles. It opens with two, then buys the rest one at a time as the line earns them, and the Rail Baron starts no new railway until that queue is paid for.

Cargo supply still decides whether a route gets a second lane at all — two trains' worth or it stays single — it just no longer caps the fleet. On this economy more trains lift the transported share, which lifts the source's own output, so a line grows into the fleet it is sized for. Expect a Rail Baron to run fewer, fuller lines and to sit on one for a while before starting the next.

No more turning the wrong way

Where a station stood broadside to the line, the AI's track would turn away from it, run a long way past and swing back in — the "coathanger". The waypoint it aimed for sat on the station's axis a whole 50 tiles out. It now sits 16 tiles out, so the turn is made where a person would make it; 50 remains as the fallback when the close point cannot be built.

Trucks and buses only where a road goes

The AI's feeder stops around a rail, ship or air station were being linked with vehicles before anyone checked that a road joined them — a truck stop and depot on a stub dead-ending at the track, vehicles ordered between two stops with no road between. Every purchase path now builds and verifies the road first; where it cannot be joined, nothing is bought and the log says so.

Two older faults fell out of the same hunt: every feeder the AI had ever tried to buy was refused — its "best road engine" was usually a tram, handed to a road depot — and the money it checked against was its loan headroom rather than its cash. Both fixed, so you will start seeing AI trucks feeding AI railheads for the first time. Rail Barons still run no road vehicles at all, by design.

The construction rebate was a money printer

A player's finance window showed it plainly: +3.2 million on the infrastructure line against 830 thousand of construction that year — the rebate paid 3.9 times what it was rebating. It priced a piece of track off an upkeep constant instead of the real build price, then applied the inflation index a second time. It now asks the engine what a piece costs and pays a percentage of that, and nothing else.

• The capped rebates stop at 50%, not 30% — and the cap now counts everything that feeds a rebate, which is the next section.
• Money already paid out stays paid. No company is charged back; the printer simply stops at each world's next reset.

Every rebate caps at 50%, all in

UPDATED 2 SEPTEMBER, AFTER PUBLICATION — this note first said 30%, on talents alone

Each rebate has its own 50% ceiling, and the ceiling counts everything that feeds it — your talents, your class innate and the research track — so the pieces can no longer stack past it:

• A research track stops selling levels at the cap. The moment your combined figure reaches 50% its buttons read "at cap", a press charges nothing, and the status line shows the combined figure against the ceiling instead of a next level you cannot use.
• Money banked toward a level that will never be sold comes back to you — including when the cap arrives from outside the track, such as a class innate landing after you banked. It comes off your research total too, so the rankings offset stays exact.
• Research Grants pays on the money the charge actually kept, never on a refund.

Difficulty multiplies your operating costs and can never touch capital costs, so a capital rebate sized against the operating scale was always going to outrun what it rebated. A maxed Magnate's rebates rise from 30% to 50%; a maxed Industrialist's construction rebate, which could reach 100% with everything stacked, now stops at 50%. The operating-side reliefs are untouched.

Fixed

• A reset company no longer leaves its signs on the map. Monopoly and HQ signs are cleared before the company is folded, so a reset does not litter the world with white orphans.
• The AI's exclusive-rights check now covers air routes. It was silently skipping them, which is how an AI airline could still land in a town you hold — unloading, never loading.
• The Rail Baron wastes far less time between routes. When a long survey failed it used to try one giant search of the whole distance: measured across the farm, 2 successes in 1,332 attempts at nearly four minutes each. Gone. A failed middle leg ends the survey at once, and a failed end retries only the other throat.
• Signals are never placed on a junction tile, and never on either side of a bridge.
• An Industrialist could stack its way to a 100% construction rebate — talents, the class innate and research were each capped on their own and never as a total, so with everything taken new track was free. The all-in cap above closes it.
• Research money banked toward a level that could no longer be sold stayed banked for the rest of the session. It is returned now, and swept back monthly in case the cap arrived from outside the track.
• The talent board's own tooltips still said the rebates were capped at 60%. They now say 50% all in and name what counts.