Manual service vs Copay

[lnomsim]

Why unlock the manual service?
It takes a lot of time to service a locomotive, and we have to pay with our own wallet, while insurance is just a few meters away from the job station and only costs the copay.

I used manual service for the first time, it cost me more than 50% the payout from my last job (and 10 minutes of my time too.)

[ching mee]

Copay starts off with a small amount and every time you buy a license, the copay amount gets bigger, eventually surpassing the amount needed to manually service.

If you bought all the licenses, you will see that however much you have used a locomotive, it will always cost more than manually servicing it, it is just you are early enough in the game for copay to be less than servicing

[boris.glevrk]

in the end your copay will basically.... pay nothing.
As you unlock licences your total copay amount will rise, and you can't just pay $100 to clear everything.

This is how endgame copay works:
You pay for yourself for like 1.1 or 1.2 million, and upon the final payment, all remaining costs are covered by insurance.

So basically you will eventually have to pay for just about everything yourself, except you seriously oops-ed and have a million+ to pay. Then the insurance will take care of the payment outside that million.

And when you have to pay for yourself, manual service is half the price of using the paying machine.

wasting 50% of income on servicing is really painful for mid-game, so actually I would suggest staying at the initial $100 copay for as long as possible, until you really lost patience and want something new.

The problem of paying so much is because DE2 has paper wheel and paper engine. They lose HP really quick and thus have quite an amount to pay when you leave the $100 copay.

With DE6 too far away and SH282 not fitting everyone (due to its nature of requiring more labor), I really hope they introduce a better mid-range locomotive soon.

[lnomsim]

Thanks for the explanation.
So, it's best to abuse the copay system as long as we don't have too many licences and then switch to manual service?

About having to pay twice as much, is that 100% sure?

I went to the fee machine, and the total fee cost was around the same as the total manual service.

[GHKtruc]

There's a 2X penalty servicing at the machine

[ching mee]

The copay is usually set really low so it wouldn't bankrupt you as a beginner if you derailed/crashed, so until you get more licenses, I suggest yeah you should abuse it. Also I dont think you pay twice as much but its definitely more than servicing

[boris.glevrk]

Originally posted by lnomsim:

About having to pay twice as much, is that 100% sure?

I went to the fee machine, and the total fee cost was around the same as the total manual service.

That's because your current copay limit is about the same as half your actual cost

For example, assume you only bought manual service which adds 4900 copay
so now your total copay is 5000
and your shunter has a total (pay machine) amount of 10000
so that translates to 5000 manual fee.

And since your limit is 5000, you will have to pay just as much in copay machine as you would pay by copay.

But that's a very special situation.

Later in the game you will have a few dozen if not a few hundred thousands of copay limit, that's when you begin to actually pay the fee in full.

For example, a half depleted SH282 would probaby require like 9K for pay machine, yet only 4K~5K if you pay manually.

[lnomsim]

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

Originally posted by lnomsim:

About having to pay twice as much, is that 100% sure?

I went to the fee machine, and the total fee cost was around the same as the total manual service.

That's because your current copay limit is about the same as half your actual cost

For example, assume you only bought manual service which adds 4900 copay
so now your total copay is 5000
and your shunter has a total (pay machine) amount of 10000
so that translates to 5000 manual fee.

And since your limit is 5000, you will have to pay just as much in copay machine as you would pay by copay.

But that's a very special situation.

Later in the game you will have a few dozen if not a few hundred thousands of copay limit, that's when you begin to actually pay the fee in full.

For example, a half depleted SH282 would probaby require like 9K for pay machine, yet only 4K~5K if you pay manually.

No, that's not it, it costs 5900 somethig to service the locomotive, and the total fee (including Copay) is around the same too. Not just the Copay.

[boris.glevrk]

Originally posted by lnomsim:

No, that's not it, it costs 5900 somethig to service the locomotive, and the total fee (including Copay) is around the same too. Not just the Copay.

Pretty sure there is some misunderstanding here.

The "copay" you see on the paying machine is a "limit"
if what you paid exceeded this amount, the insurance will take care of the exceeding part.

for example:

Your locomotive requires $10K of service + $500 of emission
if you manually service, the service fee will be $10K + $500 of emission
If you use the paying machine, the service fee will be $10K x2 = $20K + $500 of emission.

However,
If you have a copay of $11K
Then when you use tha paying machine, once you paid $11K, the rest ($9K + $500 emission)
will be covered by the insurance.

That is how you could have automatic paying bill about the same as manual service.
It's because your copay limited the automatic paying (via paying machine) to a certain amount, which happens to be close to your manual service fee.

[lnomsim]

Well, there is a sandbox mode on the roadmap.

[boris.glevrk]

Originally posted by Kevin:

Why have to deal with that at all. It isn't straightforward and takes away from the gameplay. I prefer to think about trains and not a confusing insurance system.

Because if we don't have an insurance system, one crash into Oil Well would mean game over.

[ching mee]

Originally posted by Kevin:

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

Because if we don't have an insurance system, one crash into Oil Well would mean game over.

That is not true.

the insurance system is designed to be as flexible as possible and provides coverage for messups when you start the game, up until late game. There really couldnt be a more fair system than this, so it might be better for you to learn how it works instead of replacing it with a less flexible system

[boris.glevrk]

Originally posted by Kevin:

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

Because if we don't have an insurance system, one crash into Oil Well would mean game over.

That is not true.

It is.
one crash in to an Oil Well will usually generate multi-million debt, which is usually far greater than what new players own.
Even with the "you pay what you can and will be allowed to accept new jobs" setting, being unable to service a locomotive would still be a problem.
That's where copay comes in and just clears your fee.

The devs did mention that the economy system including copay is still subject to change, so if you don't like it you can just wait for it to improve. But most likely that won't include simply removing those systems.

[Altfuture]

I can confirm that there are no plans in changing the fees/insurance system. It may seem complicated, but that's only because it's something new. The concept is in fact fairly simple:

- Insurance will pay for anything above X
- X grows as you buy new licenses

That's pretty much it. If there could be a simpler system that works well, we would have made it, but this was the simplest system that I could come up with that also makes the game challenging in economic sense.

The sandbox mode will be there to remove the economic challenge altogether.