Headquarters

Headquarters is a new page for a second screen while you play. It shows your company's books as the game keeps them: every vehicle's real profit, the balance sheet line by line, your market prices and your holdings. Your headquarters and every holding are photographed once a game year, and research can run on a plan. The market bonus now pays on the fares you really earn.

Headquarters

Open Headquarters from Live in the menu. Sign in with the Discord or Steam account linked to your player name. The company you are running then opens by itself. The books refresh once a game month while the page is open. Every AI company's books are open to anyone, so you can look around before you play. Another player's company stays closed to you.

The page is laid out like a game screen. Your CEO portrait and company logo sit over a photograph of your headquarters, beside your cash, company value, place on the world's standings and estimated final XP. A figure that changes counts up to its new value. The keys 1 to 9, 0 and H open the eleven tabs, and [ and ] step through them. A notice pops up when you climb or slip a place, finish a contract, close a game year or get a new photograph.

• Overview: cash, company value, the session's money by source, month by month charts, the map around you, and your best and weakest vehicles.
• Rankings: the world's standings, who leads and on which boards, and How to climb: the cheapest single step to the place above you.
• Balance sheet: every income and cost line for last month and the session, each with a breakdown by cargo and vehicle type.
• Fleet: every vehicle with its true profit this year: the game's own figure plus the market bonus, brand pay and reach premium paid on it. Open one for its year, last year and its net since it was bought.
• Contracts: this quarter's contracts with their progress. The subsidies on offer are listed too, with who took each one.
• Market: your own price for every cargo on every vehicle type, coloured from your lowest to your best, each cargo's share against its target, and every modifier on your rates.
• Holdings: every stake with a photograph of the place, its figures and everyone else holding a stake. An industry also shows its brand contest and the score that decided it.
• Research: your research plan (below) and what has gone into each track this session.
• Brands: who leads each cargo's brand, who hauls your brands and whose brands you haul.
• Network: your network web by web, with the broadcast's own network and health maps.
• HQ region: your seat, the towns you govern, your region on the map and your headquarters photographed year by year.

Research on a plan

On the Research tab you can put research on a plan. Choose a share of each month's profit, then set how it splits across the research tracks with a slider for each one. Every month the server buys the research for you, at the same prices as the buttons in the story book. It never spends more than 50 per cent of your bank in a month. After a month that made a loss it spends nothing.

Profit here is the game's own figure: income less running costs, property upkeep and loan interest. Research is not counted as a cost, so a plan never eats into the profit it is paid from.

You can save plans as presets for each class and mark one as your default. The default is offered to every company you start with that class. Only the player who founded a company can set its plan.

Photographs of your company

Every world saves its game every 10 minutes, a little less than a game year. Each save is now opened on the broadcast's machine, away from the stream, and photographed. Every headquarters is in the pictures, and a save or two into a match, so is every town and industry that any company holds a stake in. Town names show on them. Station names, waypoint names and signs never do.

Your headquarters appears year by year on the HQ region tab. Each holding's photographs sit at the top of its breakdown. The overview shows the newest. Holding photographs are removed 10 minutes after the match ends. Headquarters photographs are kept for a day.

When a match ends the server makes one last save. The whole map is photographed from it with the trees left out, so every line of track shows. The recap for that match shows the picture, with the full size one click away.

The market bonus pays on your real fares

The market bonus used to start from an estimate: each delivery priced as if it had travelled the average distance between the towns you serve. A company running short hops inside its towns was paid as though every hop crossed the map. The bonus now starts from what your vehicles were paid for that cargo last month.

Short trips inside a town earn a smaller bonus than before, and a long haul can earn more. The reach premium and brand income are worked out from the same figure. For the first month after a server loads its game, the old estimate is used while the new figures build up.

Docks and ship depots cost less to keep

The dock and ship depot upkeep added in v1.01 is halved. A dock tile pays 2.5 times the station tile rate instead of 5, and a ship depot's four canal pieces weigh 2.5 times.

Postcards

• Anyone can vote a postcard up now, signed in or not, once per card from each internet connection. A down vote still needs a Discord or Steam login, so nobody outside the game can bury a player's card.
• Cards have 20 ways into the town's name and 38 short notes: hellos, jokes, calls to come and play, and cosy ones.
• The town's name sits on the photograph. The credit for a real map's author is no longer cut off.
• Every postcard carries its company's CEO portrait, including the cards printed before portraits existed.

CEO portraits

There are 14 CEO portraits. Every player already has one chosen for them, and you can pick another on your profile. AI companies get theirs from their president's name. Your portrait appears on your profile, on Headquarters, on the broadcast's company plate and on your postcards.

Recaps

• The maps on a recap are the broadcast's own map and network cards, captured as they looked on air at the whistle. They replace the maps drawn for v1.02.
• A recap also shows the whole map at the end of its match, trees left out.

On the broadcast

• The company plate shows the CEO's portrait from the waist up, framed in the company's colour, with its logo on the right.
• Weather is decided in 5 minute windows. A window is sunny or gloomy. Gloomy windows come half the time on temperate worlds, a quarter of the time in the tropics and three quarters in the arctic. Each window has its own strength and one direction for its rain, snow and sun shafts.
• Rain and snow fall only out of a gloomy window, in spells of 1 to 3 minutes, and a gloomy window greys the picture.
• A flock of birds is all black or all white.
• You can hear the weather: quiet rain, wind, birdsong and thunder under the commentary.
• The time-lapse of a world's biggest town is recorded at 1920 by 1160, twice the width and height it was, so it no longer plays back blocky.
• When the story moves to a new vehicle, its cards wait until the camera has arrived.
• The hosts repeat themselves less. The desk remembers what any host has already said, so two hosts no longer give the same rule or warning one after the other.

The website

• The menu is rebuilt into five groups: Live, Compete, Build, Learn and Community. It fits on one row on a wide screen and folds behind a Menu button on a phone. Headquarters is under Live.
• Facts that had gone out of date across the site and the guide are corrected. Sessions last 4 hours. A single market factor tops out at 2.5 times and the combined factor at 5. Inflation is on.