The release of 1.0 hit just a few weeks ago, and I’ve played… a lot. Not every day, though! In fact I took several days away from the game over the last week or so. Burnout is real and to be avoided.
With that said, I have finally hit my actual favorite part of the game:
Trains!
I should back up a bit though. Since completing the Ironworks a couple weeks ago I embarked on a variety of tasks & projects, including replacing my starter steel production site with a much more robust and capable set of machinery. Mind you… I decided to build my new Steelworks way out in the eastern “dune” desert. Which is to say, all the way across the map from my main base of operations. Why would I even consider such a move?
Ziplines! And Power Towers! With Platforms!
See, some time ago the developers added the Zipline as a way to move around the map. It was… terrible. Trying to Spider-Man your way around the map avoiding the power poles that the power lines you’re navigating along are strung from? Not my idea of fun. I never got the hang of “Thwip, release. Thwip, release.” (I am not as good a student of Peter B Parker as Miles Morales. No surprise, really.)
More recently, though, they added the Power Tower in two versions, with and without a platform to stand upon. Even better, the Power Tower features upside-down power nodes that don’t interrupt the Zipline. Even better than that, one can snap walkways onto the platforms to create transfer stations. Check this out:
So all I need to build anywhere on the map is to run Power Towers in a line from Here to Way Over There. And every so often I make a transfer station so I can head off at 90-degree angles later on in the build. This is, I assure you, a finicky process… but it sure beats walking. And when you’re done with this setup you have an easy way home again and you’ve delivered power to wherever you’re building your new project!
(Yes, rail networks do that, too. But I don’t have a rail network. Yet.)
After getting the Power Tower network going, my first actual projects involved petroleum, both for making rubber & plastic and for generating oodles of power. That’s right, my coal power plants are already nearly obsolete! And my biofuel generators are totally obsolete! Happy day, happy day.
Then came some more milestone unlocks and sending off the Phase 2 shipment up the Space Elevator somewhere in all of this along with some research… blah blah, I got a lot done is what I’m saying.
And after all that it was finally time to zip my way eastward.
After spending most of two years doing weekly-or-so sessions with the kids in a savegame that we’d started in the dune desert… seeing it so empty felt kind of weird. But I got past that and proceeded to put an entire weekend into building a Steelworks with attached Motorworks. Along the way I also started utilizing the power of the Dimensional Depot, about which I shall go into greater detail in another post, soon. It’s so cool. But comes with caveats… anyway. Later.
The important part is that I make 10 Motors per minute, along with the three core steel-based products (beams, pipes, and “encased” beams).
But now it’s time to run a train line all along the route that I just built all those towers. Which does, indeed, feel redundant. Oh well. I regret (almost) nothing!