Feature Request - Tutorial / Final Objectives.

How about actually having a "tutorial" mode whereby you are led through creating railways, stations etc. in the usual "click here and then click there" way. This will help bring many new players to the game, surely? I know that I would be intimidated by the game if I hadn't played it before.

Coupled with that idea, you could have a "objective" mode where you basically have pre-designed scenarios which increase in difficulty with clear objectives and a clear order. You wouldn't be able to progess to the next until you had completed one.

You could start with a few tutorial modes, maybe one for each type of transport. They could build up from, say, "build a train link between X and Y" to "earn 1 million pounds in fifty years" to "buy every company on the map and pay off the loans" to "survive until year 2000 with 8 strong AI players starting off at the same time". This way the game has a clear beginning and pseudo-end and you could play the game also as it is currently is but call it "free play" or something. It would feel much more like an achievement to play through something and reach the end. You could even combine two or three objectives into one "mission", so that once you'd earnt a million pounds, say, you then had to carry on and buy everyone out but you wouldn't know until you'd completed the first half.

In the later "missions", you could be given a dying company against strong players and be asked to make it profitable, or have to survive several combined disasters, such as your main profitable industries being sabotaged or an UFO invasion.

I think this would keep people playing on the game, with clear objectives and a much greater sense of achievement. You could reward each early "mission" with being able to buy new types of transport or later "missions" with being able to get a greater time to complete the next objective in, or be able to access "top-end" vehicles and even otherwise unobtainable vehicles like a Concorde, which could be "unlocked" in freeplay mode (obviously, you could include a sign cheat for those who just want to play with everything anyway).