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Old Mar 18 2020, 07:59 AM
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Tiger Tiger is offline
 
Join Date: Mar 12 2010
Location: UK but i'd rather be somewhere hot and sunny :) with a swimming pool!
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Default What is the Train Manager?



What is the Train Manager?
As of 24th July 2023 you now Boost friends trains from the Train Manager as well as sending out your own Train Boosts for your own Trains!


The Train Manager is located in your Tool box, released 18th March 2020.
  • It allows you to Unload, Dispatch and Boost all of your trains that have long cars attached, without needing to go to each of the farms where the trains are located.
  • It shows you information about each train like where each train is located, how many times it has been boosted and how long until it will return.
  • You can ONLY Boost (accelerate) your friends trains from here.

The amount of boosts needed to boost each train also changed when this was released. Although some will require more boosts than others the result is still the same. A train can only be boosted by 24 hours. This was unintentional but made it easier to implement. This may be changed again, in the future. The new boost amounts are as follows:
  • Standard Locomotive - 10 boosts
  • Enhanced Locomotive - 12 boosts
  • Supreme Locomotive - 12 boosts
  • Ultimate Locomotive - 13 boosts
  • Turbo Locomotive - 14 boosts

Trains carrying products still need to be placed on your farms. You still have to manually add long cars to them and ensure they are connected right if you make any alterations to them, before you dispatch them again. Remember, the 2 trains that help with facility work must have the 10 cars connected correctly and they must be dispatched for you to get that benefit.


IMPORTANT: If a locomotive is in your Item Storage instead of on a farm the game can NOT see which ones you own and it will not reflect that if you use the question mark in the store to query how many of which ones you already own. If you do not have all of the trains and may have upgraded the ones you are currently using the faster locomotives and then decide to add long cars to another locomotive, you will have to find where that locomotive is on your farm or in your Item Storage BEFORE you buy consider buying another locomotive.




How to use the Train Manager:

The Train Manager tool is in your Tool box in the far left column. The icon looks like this, if you mouseover the icon it will also tell you what it is:
You can place the Train Manager in your game bar using Shortcuts, if you wish, to use it when you are at market or another persons farm.



Click on the Train Manager icon in the toolbox to open it a window will open called My Train Manager.

The Train Manager has 2 sections:
  • My Trains
  • Boost Others Trains


To manage your own Trains:

1. Make sure you are in the My Trains section. Here is an example of the My Trains section selected. If the tab is not orange, click on it to turn it orange.


You will see all of your trains on all of your farms that have long cars attached to them.

It will not show you any trains that do not have long cars attached as they do not carry any products, so do not need to be unloaded, dispatched or boosted.


This is an example of what you could see, but it will be your trains on your farms:



Top right of the window you will see an AZ icon which will allow you to change how you view your trains in the Train Manager. You can set it to:
  • By Farm: This lists your trains in Farm order
  • By Locomotive: This shows your trains by locomotive type.



For each train, in the Train Manager, you will be able to see the status of the train and how many times each of the trains was boosted.
Any trains that can not be boosted will have a greyed out Boost button.

If you mouseover each train in each box, if it can be boosted an Open button will appear. Example:



Clicking the Open button will give you access to the Freight Cars and Train Status Tabs so you can check the cost in coins for dispatching each of the Long Cars, what Long Cars are on your train and it's progress through the markets.



2. When a train has returned and is ready to unload you will see an Arrived message and a blue Unload button:


When you click on Unload you will unload the train and your products will be sent to your Harvests & products section of Storage.

It's at this point, when the train is unloaded and BEFORE you dispatch the train, that you can add, remove any cars on the train, or move the train and or cars to another location or farm.
Remember if you make alterations to your trains you need to check that all the cars are connected correctly before you dispatch it again.


You will then see the train showing Idle and a blue Dispatch button.



3. When you are ready to Dispatch the train click the blue Dispatch button. Your train will be dispatched and it will show the time until the train is due to arrive back. You will see a brief notification in white lettering telling you the amount of coins and fuel spent.
You will then see that the train is dispatched and a blue Boost button.
If you do not see the boost button straight away, close and reopen the Train Manager.
If you have forgotten how many boosts you need to send per train, close and reopen the Train Manager and the Boost amounts will show on the newly dispatched train.


4. To Boost the Train so it will bring the products back sooner, click on the Boost button. A new window will open and show you your Neighbours and your Buddies. The list will show their profile picture and their Facebook name. You may send one train boost to each person every 12 hours.
Example of what you could see:
  • Red background means that farmer has set their Status as Unavailable. They may have done this for a short vacation. Mouseover their profile picture and it will show you how long they are unavailable for.
  • Blue background is your Neighbour.
  • Green Background is your Buddy.
  • As you mouseover all the pictures each background colour will change to pale yellow so it's easier for you to see who you are selecting if many have the same name or similar name.

The friends list can be filtered to show specific friends.
To change a filter, click on All Farmers and the options will drop down, then click on the option you want and only those friends meeting that criteria will show.


The Facebook Friends filter will ONLY show you Facebook friends that you had BEFORE Farm Town left Facebook not any changes you made to Facebook Friends after that date as long as you have not deleted them from that list. This filter is likely to be removed in the future.

Do NOT select farmers in one list and then switch to different list before Sending Boost Requests.

This works the same way as the Facebook version. It does not remember who was selected in a previous list, when you change the list without sending a Request the selected farmers revert to Unselected.

You are not likely to notice that this happens unless a farmer happens to meet the criteria for showing up in several different lists so that you can see them in more than one.

If you like to use several lists, please Send the Requests using one list BEFORE you change the list to a different filter.

The Search box at the top allows you to search for specific friends by typing in their First name or Avatar names.


The AZ Filter:



Selected Stay in Place Using this filter means that when you select a farmer to send to they stay in the same position in the list.

Selected Move to Top Using this filter means that when you select a farmer, they then move to the top of the list, which can be useful if you want to check the list again before you send the gifts.

Selected Move to Bottom This setting is the Default Setting. Using this filter means that when you select a farmer, they then move to the bottom of the list.
This can be useful when you want to send gifts to all farmers or lot of farmers. When you click Select on the farmer top left of the list, that farmer moves down to the bottom of the list and the next farmer appears in it's place allowing you to continually Select farmers without scrolling until you have selected the maximum of 50 farmers.
Click on Select on each farmer you want to send a train boost to. The background of that farmer will turn PINK and the Select button will dim and Change to Unselect.

If you make a mistake and selected the wrong farmer Clicking on Unselect will remove that farmer and change the button back to Select.

At the bottom middle of that window as you Select friends the 0 changes and starts counting how many you selected. This helps you know how many boosts you are sending at that particular time.

The Unselect All button at the bottom, lets you Unselect all the farmers before you Send the Boosts if you think you made a a lot of mistakes and wanted to start over.




To Send the Requests click on the Send Request button at the bottom right of the window and that will send a train boost all the farmers you selected with ONE click



NOTE: You only need to send the amount of boosts showing on the train.

If you send boosts to more friends than a train needs, once the train is boosted to maximum the friends that try to accelerate it after that will either see an Expired popup.

If you have many trains you need to consider how many boosts you need to send out for all of your trains that day, as you can only send one boost per person every 12 hours. If later that day or the following day your train has still not been boosted to maximum, as long as the blue Boost button is not greyed out, you can boost it again.


Top right of the window there is a blue Mayor Bonus Rules button. If you click on it you will see a message from the Mayor about the requirements for receiving the Mayor Bonus. Clicking on Close closes that message.


When the background colour of a train is pink, this means that you do not have 3 trains (with at least 10 Long cars) in the dispatched or ready to unload state, that you need to be able to earn the Mayor Bonus.

In the example below you can see that only the Supreme is dispatched, the Ultimate is ready to unload and the rest all have a pink background. They are unloaded but not dispatched. So there are only 2 trains showing in the dispatched or ready to unload state (Ultimate and Supreme) that meet the criteria for earning the Mayor Bonus. The others are Idle so don't count.

If you were to unload the Ultimate in the example, without dispatching another train with at least 10 long cars on it first , which would get you back up to 3 trains that are in the dispatched or ready to unload state, you will NOT get the Mayor bonus.




If you did try to Unload the Ultimate while the other trains are pink you will also see a warning popup which tells you what you need to do to be able to earn the Mayor Bonus. Example:



If you ignore the message and click the green check mark to proceed, you will unload the train without earning the Mayor Bonus.

To earn the Mayor Bonus, click the red cross to clear the popup message, then dispatch another train that has at least 10 long cars on it. One with a pink background. When you have dispatched enough trains to meet the criteria to earn the Mayor Bonus, all the trains pink backgrounds will change back to white and THEN you can unload the Ultimate to get the Mayor Bonus.

This example shows that the Turbo has been dispatched, so now there are 3 trains meeting the criteria to earn the Mayor Bonus (Turbo, Ultimate and Supreme), so the Ultimate can now be unloaded and will earn the bonus:





To Boost your friends Trains:

When you have trains from friends to boost there will be a number on the Train Manager icon in the Tool box.

There will also be a number on the Tool Box. However this number may differ as it can include the ships your friends have sent to your port for you to load and any Neighbour or Buddy Requests you have received.

The counter is updated approximately every 10 minutes as you work your farms.


Open the Train Manager and click on the Boost Others Trains tab to turn it orange. Here's an example of the tab selected:


If there are any trains for you to boost they will show in this section.
There will be the profile picture of the friend, if they have one.
Their first name or avatar name will also be showing in the text next to their picture.
Underneath their picture will be a blue button to indicate if they are a friend (non-neighbour), neighbour or Non-Friend. Those blue buttons can be clicked on to visit that farmers farms:



Notes:
  • The Non-Friend will show if the train boost was sent before the friend connection was broken as normally you would only receive train boosts from friends or it can happen if there is an issue retrieving that information from Facebook.
  • If there is an issue retrieving your friends names from Facebook, the first names can also change to avatar names and the blue button for Neighbours may also change to just Friend.
  • If you have more trains to boost than can show at one time there will be a scroll bar to the right you can use to get to the other ones below.
  • Any train that can be boosted with have a blue Boost button in the box.


1. Click the Boost button to accelerate the Train and the button will grey out like this:

2. Your reward will briefly show in white lettering. Example:

3. And the Boost button will then grey out for that train:

4. When you close the Train Manager the boosted trains will clear from that section.

You should only be seeing Trains that can be boosted in the Train Manager, however some users send out too many boosts at one time so it's possible to occasionally get one that in there that can not be boosted. When that happens and you click Boost you will not get any products as the train could not be boosted and you will see a popup like this :


If you have placed locomotives on farms that are not currently not carrying products and have forgotten which farms you placed them on and need to find them. Instead of searching every farm, you can use the Show Times Tool in the Toolbox. That will tell you where they all are and it's another way to check how long until your trains are back and ready to be unloaded and then dispatched again.





Last edited by Tiger; Feb 29 2024 at 01:26 PM.