A friend of mine seems to have caught the game desgn bug, and has been contemplating a train game. He was telling me about it, and it had a lot of simulation aspects that didn't seem to really do anything game-wise, and he was asking me to help him make it into a game...
Here's where it stands at present, somewhat in parts. Can you help fill in the blanks?
Cars. There exist different types of train cars in this game:
Engines: Players start with 1 Engine. It might be better than standard engines that you can by. The Engines hav a numerical value associated with them, which determines the capactiy of the train. The capacity determines the speed at which the train moves, as well as the number of cars it can pull. The more cars in the train, the slower it moves. Adding an Engine increases the trains capacity by 1 car.
Here's the algorithm I've been considering for the capacity:
Engines add 3 to the speed of the train.
Full cars (cars can be full or empty) subtract 1 from that speed. Empty cars count as 1/2 a car.
[Engine value total] - [(#full cars)+(#empty cars) <-round up] = movement speed
Standard cars: Players start with 2 randomly dealt Standard cars. There are several different types of standard cars. Standard cars are required to do tasks, which is how you get points. Each tasks requires a specific combination of cars to be in your train.
Special cars: There will be some special cars, which give your train certain abilities. Engines are special cars which increase your train's capacity. A Caboose is a special car which will make your loading and unlaoding of stuff more efficient (extra workers). There could be other cars that confer abilities as well.
Getting cars: In order to get a new car, you'd have to pull into the shop (whatever it's called) and purchase one Car card from a face up pool of avilable cars.
Tasks. In order to score points, players will need to complete tasks, such as piking up cargo from point A and delivering it to point B, and then returning to the depot office to claim the reward. There will be some 'easier' tasks in a face up draw pool, and some 'harder' tasks in a face down draw deck - or these two decks might just be one deck from which some cards are face up and some are face down.
Tasks are rewarded with a set payout, plus a bonus if completed in a certain number of turns, or minus a penalty if it takes longer than a certain other number of turns to complete. For example, a card might payout X+B if completed in 6 turns or less, X if completed in 7-9 turns, and X-1/turn if it takes longer than 9 turns to complete. This timing mechanism may need some work to keep track of. I believe each player will only be able to work on 1 task at a time, so maybe timer (turn counter) per person would be fine.
Yes, the board would have a map, and the reason the speed vs load matters is so you can make the choice between having more cars (carry more stuff, or do more different types of tasks without having to spend time changing your train configuration), and going faster for a bigger reward.
In theory, you should be able to do small tasks faster for the bonus payoff, or bigger tasks slower for more average payoff.
As for the max speed at capacity... as a game mechanic I was going for more of a "the more you pull, the slower you go" thing, which would (a) automatically set the max speed, and (b) allow you to go faster than your opponent by pulling fewer cars.