METRO Typed in by ???. Edited by Parasite. INTRODUCTION In METRO, you play the role of a city planner. Using limited funds, you must construct a mass-transit subway system capable of meeting the needs of your city. Build wisely and your system will be a success, but poor planning will lead to disaster and financial ruin. HOW TO START THE GAME METRO has a custom font which must be installed on your Workbench disk. Double-click on the INSTALL FONT icon to copy the font to the FONTS: directory on your Workbench disk. *NEVER* use your original Workbench disk! This font installation procedure need only be done once, similar to installing Amiga BASIC on your JUMPDISK magazine disk. Double-click on the METRO icon. When the title sequence is complete, you can click either mouse button to begin play. THE MAIN DISPLAY Districts The city is divided into 79 "districts" shown as squares on the left side of the screen. Each district is rated for the following characteristics: population, employment, jobs, roads, prosperity, parking, riders and busing. These characteristics will vary from game to game and will change slightly during the game to represent demographic shifts. They are fully explained below, under the "Info" menu. View/Estimate/Build Gadgets These gadgets are located on the upper right of the screen. Only one of these gadgets can be activated at any time. They determine what happens when you click the left mouse button on a district. -- The View gadget (Eye) shows the characteristics of the current district at the bottom of the screen. -- The Estimate gadget (Dollar Bill) shows the estimate cost of building a train line segment between two districts. Click on one district, then on an adjacent district, and the cost of joining the two districts will be shown in a window. Each estimate costs a small amount of money. -- The Build gadget (Bulldozer) actually builds a train line segment between two districts. As with the Estimate gadget, you must click on two adjacent districts to build the line. Train Color Gadgets These are located beneath the View/Estimate/Build gadgets. They determine the color of the line segment that you are estimating or building. Only one of these gadgets may be selected at a time. Color Scale The Color Scale is located beneath the Train Color gadgets and is used in conjunction with the items in the Info Menu (see below) to show a single characteristic of all the districts in the city at once. Budget Your budget is located at the bottom right of the screen. Your money will diminish as you get building estimates, construct train lines and buy trains. It will grow (maybe!) when you are finished with your turn and the computer calculates the number of people who ride your system. Menus The Game Menu contains various game-related functions: -- Choose "End Turn" when you are finished for the turn. The computer will calculate the number of riders on your system, show any events that happen and go on to the next turn. -- Choose "New Game" to start over again. -- Choose "Quit Game" to leave METRO and return to the Workbench. -- Choose "About" to see some information about METRO. The Info Menu contains informational items you must consult to do well in METRO. -- Choose "Population" to see the total number of people in each district. The more people there are in a district, the more riders you will have on any lines running into or through the district. -- Choose "Jobs" to see the number of jobs available in each district. The more jobs there are in districts served by your Metro lines, the more people will ride your system. -- Choose "Employment" to see the employment rate for each district. The higher the employment rate, the more riders you will have. -- Choose "Prosperity" to see the average per-capita income of each district. The closer a district is to median income, the more riders from the district you will get. Prosperity also affects property costs in the district; parking and building costs will tend to be higher in districts with high prosperity. -- Choose "Roads" to see the city's road net. Each district is assigned a percentage value. Higher values mean the district's roads are in good shape and adequate to meet the district's traffic needs. So your Metro lines won't do so well in those districts. -- Choose "Busing" to see Bus Service availability in each district. You can start busing service by using the Action Menu (see below). Buses can carry people to neighboring districts, increasing ridership on train lines in those districts. -- Choose "Riders" to see how many people rode your train system from each district in the last turn. -- Choose "Events" to run through the events that happened last turn. -- Choose one of the "History" graphs to see how you are doing. They show how many people are riding your trains from the city, and how many people from districts that have train lines through them are taking advantage of your service. ACTION MENU The Action Menu contains various items on which you can spend money to improve the profitability and size of your system: -- Choose "Trainyards" to access the trainyards display. See "The Trainyards Display" below for further instructions. -- Choose "Busing" to add busing to the current district. -- Choose "Parking" to add parking spaces to the current district. Sub-items allow you to choose five preset amounts of parking, or choose "Buy Spaces" to bring up a requester, allowing you to buy what you need. Without sufficient parking spaces, people will not ride your system. -- Choose "Advertising" to buy advertising (commercials, billboards, etc.) to help influence people to ride. Advertising is preset to $500,000 per turn at the beginning of the game. You can adjust this, of course. THE TRAINYARDS DISPLAY The Trainyards window is where you can buy trains, allocate them to your lines, set fares, and budget money for maintenance. Your budget is displayed in the upper right corner of the screen. If you click and hold the left mouse button on any of the gadgets in Trainyards, it will repeat the action and save wear and tear on your mouse and your finger. Lines The large colored bars show important information about that color train line: the number of trains running on the line, the number of segments in the line, and the number of people who rode that line last turn. Use the up and down arrow gadgets to transfer trains between the Reserve (see below) and your lines. Reserve The train Reserve is shown in the lower left corner of the screen. Click in the Reserve box to buy new trains for the reserve. You should always try to have some backup trains to cover wear and tear during the course of a turn. Fares The "Fare Cost" box shows the average fare for a person using your Metro system. Use the up and down arrow gadgets to raise and lower the fare. Maintenance This area is for the amount of money you wish to spend per segment of your train system for upkeep, cleaning, maintenance and the like. Use the up and down arrow gadgets to raise or lower this amount. People are much more likely to want to ride clean trains, but maintenance can really eat into your budget. Leaving the Trainyards You can click either the "CANCEL" or "OK" gadgets to return to the main screen. "OK" ratifies any changes you made in the Trainyards window, while "CANCEL" nullifies and changes that you made. HOW TO PLAY A TURN (THE EASY RULES) This section contains an outline of what happens each turn, together with some pointers on playing the game well. See the next section for a more detailed look at the evaluation algorithm used to determine how many riders will use your system. First, survey the city. Choose the items from the "Info" menu to get an overall feel for where things are. Remember, to get the most income, you need to connect highly populated areas to areas with many jobs. Don't compete with the highways, and remember that prosperous areas are always expensive to develop. Too, people who don't have jobs won't find your train system as useful as people who have to commute every day. Find a couple likely-looking districts, click on the "Build" gadget, and then two districts to build a line. Remember, you can always use the "Estimate" gadget to find out ahead of time how much a line will cost. Your train lines are shown as colored lines on the screen, joined by square stations. If two different colored lines meet, a Metro Center will be constructed automatically for you, allowing transfers from one line to the other. From the "Actions" menu, allocate money for parking and busing as desired. People won't use your system if it's not convenient. They also won't use it if they don't know about it, so you may want to set aside some money for advertising. Select "Trainyards," click on the train gadget to buy some trains, and allocate some trains to your new line. It's a good idea to have backups, but the more trains you have per segment of line, the more riders you can accommodate. Set fares as high as your dare and maintenance spending as low as you dare. You will definitely want to charge and spend more than the minimum. Click "OK". Take a deep breath and choose "End Turn" from the "Game" menu. The computer will determine how many riders you attracted. The government will subsidize you. Random events may happen. You may have problem areas in your system reported to you. Your new budget will be displayed in the lower right hand corner. How did you do? HOW TO PLAY A TURN (THE HARD RULES) This section goes into more detail about the game rules and the evaluation algorithm. It's not necessary to read this section, but you'll probably score better if you do. Estimating Line Costs Each segment of a line costs a certain base amount of money. Building stations and/or Metro Centers will increase the estimated cost. Metro Centers are much more expensive than ordinary stations. The total base cost is then modified by the prosperity of the target districts to arrive at a total cost. Building Lines Train line segments can join any adjacent districts not already connected. This rule should be understood throughout the rest of this section. You are always considered to be working with the currently selected Train Color gadget's line. The following rules summarize the only legal placement for a new segment of the current line: -- If no segments exist, you can build that line between any districts. -- If the line already has at least one segment, then you can only extend the ends of the line. -- Lines cannot cross themselves. I.e. you can't make a figure '6'. Different colored lines are allowed to cross, in which case a Metro Center is automatically constructed. -- You can join the ends of a line to form a loop, but you cannot build any more on that line, since there are no ends to extend. -- Any district that has a line segment must have a station, unless it has or will have a Metro Center. These will be constructed automatically for you. -- Stations and Metro Centers are always accounted for in the estimate and building costs for a line segment. The Evaluation Algorithm This section provides a generalized description of how the total number of riders is computed. First, total (citywide) jobs are compared with the job total in districts served by your system. The greater the percentage, the more riders you will attract. You will only get riders from districts with train lines or busing service. This percentage is used in conjunction with the employment and population ratings of each district to determine the base number of riders for each district. You will get the most riders by constructing lines through both high-population and high-jobs areas. Separate lines do not "help" one another unless they are joined by one or more Metro Centers. The base number is then modified by the prosperity of the district. Really rich people won't use the Metro, and really poor people won't be able to afford it, unless your fare is low . . . Parking is looked at next. Populous areas that might produce a lot of riders are penalized if enough parking is not available. Roads are then examined. The better the roads in the districts you are serving, the fewer the people who will see the advantages of paying money to ride your train system. Following roads is busing. Districts with busing but no lines can "export" riders to adjacent districts with lines. Next, the remaining riders are compared with the capacity of the line. Too few trains on a line will result in crowded conditions, discouraging people from riding. The number of riders still with you is adjusted by the fares you are charging. High fares will earn you the most money, of course, but may turn away those that might otherwise ride your system. On the other hand, a fare that's too low might mean that you'll lose money. Maintenance is evaluated next. Well-kept, clean trains will attract some riders who might otherwise be disinterested, while poorly maintained trains will certainly scare away some riders. The last factor affecting your riders is advertising. Since this affects the entire city, it can raise overall riding levels. Once the total number of riders is determined, the computer takes your fare and computes your new budget. To this is added the year subsidy from the city government, and then maintenance costs are subtracted. The final figure is the money that you have available to spend next turn. The money budgeted to you by the government is reported to you via a requester. There will possibly be other events as well: strikes, fires, new construction and the like. If you are doing particularly well or having difficulties, that may show up too! You can always review last turn's events by the "Info" menu's "Review Events" item. HOW TO END THE GAME The are four ways to end the game: -- Choose the "Quit Game" item from the "Game" menu. Quitters never win. -- Choose the "New Game" item from the "Game" menu. Ditto, but at least you can try again. -- Going bankrupt. The computer will put you out of your misery if your treasury goes below zero. -- Time Limit. If you make it for 15 turns without going bankrupt, the computer will show you how well you did and give you a rating.