As an old player of the good old Transport Tycoon, I’d like to suggest to use few little features of that old game to improve the gameplay.
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Marquee text: having the possibility of choosing which messages appear as marquee text in the bottom I think is a must have for a game like this. Actually is incredibly annoying to have all those messages that pops out and you have to wait to press ok.
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Newspaper: I think it would be nice to have the news shown as magazine page or newspaper (like the old transport tycoon).
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News sounds: I’ve always liked the “ooooh” sound of transport tycoon when a new vehicle came out or the applauses when the first transport arrives to a new station
Here you could do something similar, like a drum rulling while the game judgment is arriving and and 3 different sounds when the results are out like: big applauses for a 8-10, small applauses for 5-8, angry whistles for 0-5 -
Starting year: it would be nice to set the starting year instead of just the game lenght, perhaps just some fixed starting point like:
1982: where you have only the G64 and you have to wait 1 year before the pc came out.
1983: like now
1990
2000
2015: where now ends the console release (like starting at the end)
Obviously due to the console developing cost/licenses the starting cash should vary
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Future consoles: when the endless part starts, I think it would be nice to keep getting more consoles with random names, shape and stats, so every game will be different when the endless part begins.
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Direct competitors: obviously it has been suggested many times, but I think that the game to be realistic, it can’t have a real list of opponents or it should have hundreds and it will became insane to play. I think it will be nice to have 2-4 NPC direct competitors (nearest your level) to have fun with, like actively trying to steal researches or sabotage (instead of being a random event), obviously they will do the same to you and in both ways there must be a chance to get caught (that increases if you do those things too often).
To make it more realistic you could also add the chance to buyout a competitor to gain part of his fans.
Also you could make customizable the overall competitors number from 100 (min) to unlimited, so if there is a fixed amount you could buy them out one of a time and became the one and only (including micronoft, vonny, etc… so you’ll get their consoles), or just keep having opponents until the end of time
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Research lab: actually it doesn’t have many topics to search, so I think it would be nice to use it to unlock the “next generation” graphics. For example, if you have “3D graphics v 5”, you can use the lab topic “next generation 3D graphics” and it will unlock the “3D graphics v 6”, obviously the higher is the level, the higher will be the time required until you reach amounts like 100k points or more.
I think that’s it, at least for now, I hope you may like the ideas