How to play
You are a fibre installer bringing fast internet to every house. Draw a route from the street cabinet or a trench you have dug to the orange marker stake of a house and press Dig. The excavator drives over and digs the trench tile by tile. Once the trench reaches the house, grab the end of the orange fibre cable in the trench and drag it along to the house. Where the trench leaves one that already holds a cable, the installer branches the cable off at the fork, and the new cable runs from there to the house. If stones or roots were left in the trench, tap them and the installer lifts them out.
When the cable reaches a house, tap the house. Mount the box on the wall at the dashed outline and drill its holes, then pick the fibre of the right colour and line the fibres up under the microscope before you fuse them. When every house is connected, fill the trenches with the Fill tool and switch the network on. Light runs along the cables and the windows light up.
Water pipes, power cables, district heating and old phone cables lie underground. A valve cap, a power cabinet or a red and white post shows where a line starts toward its house. The scanner shows what lies below. Where a line has been seen, the trench is dug carefully by hand, but a line you have not seen can break.
There are twelve jobs: a quiet suburb, the countryside, a lakeside village and the town centre. Each job done opens the next, and after the whole list come the jobs of the day.
Scoring
- A connected house gives 100 points and up to 60 more for the quality of its installation.
- Each trench tile filled by hand gives 5 points.
- At the end of a job, every €10 left under the budget gives 5 points, and every €10 over it takes 5 points.
- A broken pipe or cable takes 75 points, and its repair counts in the job’s cost.
- A job gives a star for the work done, another for staying within the budget, and a third for careful work: nothing broken and good installations.
- A season goes on from job to job. The client pays a job’s budget into your money as it starts, and the digging is paid from it. A finished job also pays a fee for each house. The season ends when the money runs out or when you end it.
Tips
- Start the next route from a dug trench to use fewer metres.
- Bedrock, asphalt, paving and wet ground are costly. Sometimes the way round is cheaper.
- Cross streets at the marked crossings: boring under is cheaper than opening and patching the asphalt.
- Scan where your route crosses the line between a valve cap or a power cabinet and its house.
- In winter the ploughed road and the bare field are frozen, but under the snow the ground is soft.
