Bonus routes

18GB has a notion of bonus routes, in which a train’s income is increased if it links a certain pair of destinations. Examples include London to Plymouth (for the transatlantic trade), London to Scotland, and Hull to Liverpool. These encourage the building of longer routes.

One problem with this idea is that in the later game, companies have fewer trains than the routes available. So if the London-Holyhead route is worth less than (say) London-Manchester, companies will always choose to run the more profitable route and the less profitable routes will be irrelevant. This is something I would like to change.

Historically, there was intense competition to achieve the fastest journey times on these routes. In the current draft, 18GB tries to represent this by giving a bonus to the company with the shortest route at the start of each OR, regardless of whether they actually run the route.

Recently, I’ve thought of an alternative. Perhaps each bonus should be awarded only once per OR, to the first company to connect that pair of destinations. This would give a competitive element to the game and would encourage companies to claim different bonuses. In the example above, the London-Holyhead bonus could make the route worth more than London-Manchester, so the first company to run might claim it, leaving other companies no choice but to run the competing routes. I think this is worth a try.