In Rail Nation, your restaurant is huge

Rail Nation is a train game on its surface, but peek behind the curtains and it reveals itself as a math game with a train skin.

You can make $10,000 an hour by spending $250,000 or $2,000 every 45 minutes by spending $50,000. Which is the better investment?

The $250,000 is an engine house upgrade plus a new engine plus the cars. The $50,000 is a restaurant upgrade. And when I look at a Rail Nation player’s station and see a high-level concourse and a maxed engine house but only a level five restaurant, I suspect I’m looking at a player without a lot of cash flow.

See, the thing about your trains is they’re subject to wait time and other factors you can control only so much. If they’re transporting a raw good, your options for increasing money are limited. You can get a license. You can win a worker. You can invest to lower wait time. But the faster you and others deliver that good, the worse the price. Some of the worst magic/golden hours come when the new good is raw and close. In that case, your trains won’t be making you a ton of money, but if you’ve fully upped your restaurant and gotten your hotel close and your corporation has players who are alert enough, you can clear $6 million a day from your restaurant.

Your shopping center can help too, but your restaurant gets clicked far more. In my view, it’s the most important building on the third day of a Rail Nation player’s season, when noob protection is gone and trains that were making $20,000 an hour are now making more like $8,000. Right now, running iron ore with no license and no worker with noob protection, my rhinos are making $11,000 an hour each.

My restaurant gives me $45K every 45 minutes. It’s like having five rhinos. And I don’t have to repair it. And it doesn’t require a good’s price to stay solid or even meh.

Good luck <3