The heart of Cities in Motion is the vehicles. Big and small, fast and slow, every vehicle is unique and gives its special flavour to the game. With Cities in Motion 2, we have put effort to making the vehicles better balanced and to make sure that every one of them is useful from the start to the end. The basic vehicles featured in Cities in Motion are bus, tram and metro—just like in the first game.
Buses are the tireless workmen of the streets, they run on gasoline and are very dependent on other traffic. The basic concept is that the longer the route, the smaller and faster the bus is what you should choose for it. Large, slow buses are excellent for short inner city routes with lots of passengers, and tiny, fast vehicles work well in less crowded situations.
The greatest new addition to building bus lines are waypoints. You can now more accurately choose the route your buses drive without placing any extra stops that need maintenance and might disrupt the flow of traffic. Waypoints are a great way to guide your vehicles away from heavy traffic and create optimized routes.
Another improvement is bus lanes. You can choose a road type with special bus lanes to keep your vehicles away from traffic jams. Bus lanes have a maintenance cost, but they can really pay off in dense city center traffic.
Trams are more modern, sleek, and naturally need rails to run on. As such, they are excellent for city centers and can benefit greatly from some road types, like avenues with a special area for tram tracks away from other traffic. With the new, bigger map sizes we expect trams to perform even better than before since there can now be much larger cities created and, thus, bigger city centers.
Metro tracks have lots of new features. Instead of three underground layers, you can now build as deep or high as you like. The depth or height affects the cost, naturally, since it’s more expensive to build very deep or very high than near the ground surface. With this change, you can now have more lines without intersections and not make the underground too crowded. The metro system is still being polished, we want to make it’s very flexible but still easy to use at the same time; it’s a challenge!
While there are not as many vehicles as the first game—there are more vehicle types, though—we are working hard to make the vehicles that are included are as balanced as possible so that every vehicle will have its uses throughout the game. When not in use, vehicles reside in depots and receive maintenance to keep them in top shape. If your line schedule is too tight, vehicles don’t have the time to receive enough maintenance in the depot and might experience more breakdowns. You should also keep an eye on the maintenance personnel’s wages – the better the pay, the more efficient the workers are — this way you can either have vehicles stay longer in the depot or have higher wages for the maintenance personnel and thus have more operating time from the vehicles. It’s your choice!
There are naturally more vehicle types in Cities in Motion 2, so stay tuned for the next developer diary on vehicles!
Karoliina Korppoo
Game Designer
Colossal Order
Buses are the tireless workmen of the streets, they run on gasoline and are very dependent on other traffic. The basic concept is that the longer the route, the smaller and faster the bus is what you should choose for it. Large, slow buses are excellent for short inner city routes with lots of passengers, and tiny, fast vehicles work well in less crowded situations.
The greatest new addition to building bus lines are waypoints. You can now more accurately choose the route your buses drive without placing any extra stops that need maintenance and might disrupt the flow of traffic. Waypoints are a great way to guide your vehicles away from heavy traffic and create optimized routes.
Another improvement is bus lanes. You can choose a road type with special bus lanes to keep your vehicles away from traffic jams. Bus lanes have a maintenance cost, but they can really pay off in dense city center traffic.
Trams are more modern, sleek, and naturally need rails to run on. As such, they are excellent for city centers and can benefit greatly from some road types, like avenues with a special area for tram tracks away from other traffic. With the new, bigger map sizes we expect trams to perform even better than before since there can now be much larger cities created and, thus, bigger city centers.
Metro tracks have lots of new features. Instead of three underground layers, you can now build as deep or high as you like. The depth or height affects the cost, naturally, since it’s more expensive to build very deep or very high than near the ground surface. With this change, you can now have more lines without intersections and not make the underground too crowded. The metro system is still being polished, we want to make it’s very flexible but still easy to use at the same time; it’s a challenge!
While there are not as many vehicles as the first game—there are more vehicle types, though—we are working hard to make the vehicles that are included are as balanced as possible so that every vehicle will have its uses throughout the game. When not in use, vehicles reside in depots and receive maintenance to keep them in top shape. If your line schedule is too tight, vehicles don’t have the time to receive enough maintenance in the depot and might experience more breakdowns. You should also keep an eye on the maintenance personnel’s wages – the better the pay, the more efficient the workers are — this way you can either have vehicles stay longer in the depot or have higher wages for the maintenance personnel and thus have more operating time from the vehicles. It’s your choice!
There are naturally more vehicle types in Cities in Motion 2, so stay tuned for the next developer diary on vehicles!
Karoliina Korppoo
Game Designer
Colossal Order
