Ports of Call

[Kosta]

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available) (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/108)

[Tom Henrik]

See?

It pays to vote in the forum! This was the first winner as the most wanted game by Abandonia members and guests. :D

Hope you have fun playing it.

[Stroggy]

thanks!
Not really my kind of game... I'll play it after the exams.
thanks again.

You know I've got a whole lot of old games and I'd love to give them (giving something in return) but i have no idea how.

[Ioncannon]

hmm looks cool gonna dl it later.

[cosmogreen32]

This game had pretty lame programmers. Good idea though. I see they are working on a new 3d version now :roll: . Some people never learn.

[The Niles]

There are a lot of remaks lately of older games. Transport Tycoon is also being redone. See abandonware has shown people just how populair these games still are and now they are taking up the challange of making them make use of the new systems out there.

[Stroggy]

...and most of the time these remakes succeed admirably well in both disappointing the old fans and failing to reach the young crowd :)
well thats not really true, it does soemtimes manage to reach the young crowd... and usually the old fans say "its nice... but its not like the original"

[Jack]

Ah... This game brings back such memories. My friend hated this game so much I had to threaten him with physical violence to get him to play it - I loved it! This game taught me everything I know about 3-point turns and parallel parking. After bringing a 20,000 Ton cargo ship into port without tugs, parking a 4-door never scared me.

Some hints:

Don't be tempted at the start to set your home port up somewhere exotic. San Francisco is the best port and you always tend to end up there sooner or later, so you might as well start there.

Stay away from the really discount ship. Go for at least pre-owned. They sink less often :)

A really profitable run is electronics out on San Francisco to Cape Town, and then hang around in South Africa until somebody needs some arms shipped somewhere (hopefully back to America), you can make buckets of money doing this. (This is not a game for people with ethical dilemmas).

Don't bother getting your ship out of harbor yourself, it doesn't increase your status and costs so little that you might as well get the tugs to do it for you.

Don't feel bad when you accidentally ram the guys in the lifeboat when you are trying to pick them up. Hey. It's just the law of the sea. They weren't meant to make it. What the heck were they doing out in the middle of the ocean anyway?!! Seriously, it is almost impossible to pick them up, you need to be going almost in the same direction as them and just a little bit faster.

Guiding your ship through a reef is easier than getting it into Rio de Janeiro habour.

Check your office once a week like clockwork. Just pop in and out. This stops your accountant trying to pull one over you.

Probably most importantly. Never sail anywhere at full speed unless you have to because you’re on a time-limited contract. Slow your boats down to at least two thirds of full speed and you will save lots of fuel.

When fuel is cheap – fill up!

If you do take on a fixed term contract, remember to allow at about 10 extra days over what it takes to actually sail from port to port. The contract includes the time it takes you to load and unload the cargo (a day or two either side) and you often get held up for a few days outside a harbor waiting to get in. This can get expensive.

Happy boating
Cheers!

[Pip]

This game didn't sell so well. I remember getting a free copy with 3DXL that I bought for my Amiga because they couldn't get rid of them. The game was alright, though.

[Luchsen]

Unfortunately this game is on the market again. Ports of Call (http://www.rdklein.com/poc/classic/)

It's silly - the publishers say that the windows version costs them traffic and they have to modernize it, but this isn't necessary for the old version.

[another_guest]

That would seem like "squeezing a little too hard" to me...
Who on earth would want to pay for such an old game; then there are a whole range of better alternatives to spend your money on.
While I liked the game back then, I wouldn't want to compare it to more recent similar games. Let's face it, if one had to choose between paying for POC or getting something like Transport Tycoon for free, the choice would be easy...

They make it sound exciting, but in that half page, they've summed up everything that can ever happen in POC. And apparently they haven't changed much compared to the old version, apart from technical issues like CPU usage.
POC XXL might be interesting, but POC for windows? :blink:

[another_guest]

Originally posted by Jack@Sep 17 2004, 10:52 PM
Probably most importantly. Never sail anywhere at full speed unless you have to because you’re on a time-limited contract. Slow your boats down to at least two thirds of full speed and you will save lots of fuel.
This doesn't always hold. In fact, on none of my routes this holds.

With fuel costing an average 110$/ton, and 300000 profit for a mid-size freighter, 1 million for the largest ship, any speed ranging from top speed to 2 knots below it, is most profitable. In these cases, sailing at two thirds of the top speed will cause your net profits to drop with 20%.
So it only works if
1) you need the bigger sailing range
2) fuel is terribly expensive
3) you're carrying cheap cargo

[athcnv]

I first tried this game ages ago, but deleted it after getting far too annoyed with the ship maneouvering (cos I was no good at it!), and because I could never seem to make enough profit.

Now, I do ok, though this is the first game that I had to use MS EXCEL with in order to do well! :blink:
At least, I think that's the case (I created a spreadsheet with lots of formulae to calculate the total costs). It gets complicated since nothing follows a linear pattern - fuel cost varies over time at each location, and the total transport cost depends directly and indirectly on your speed (Faster = fewer days = less running cost BUT more fuel used)! I even had to create a formula to work out my average fuel cost! (Lemme see, I've got 50% fuel left that cost 100, fuel at current location costs 75, if I buy another half tank, what's the average?...)

Also, on a whim, I made my home port Singapore and simply did the Singapore-Buenos Aires route over and over, having bought the larger of the 2 pre-owned ships with a 50% mortgage. I was helped by a time-limited contract (got fined $1m for being late, even though I went at top speed (and through 1 storm) - but since the delivery was for $3m that wasn't a problem!

Oh yeah, I found that the cheapest speeds were either 10 or 12 knots (well, for my one route anyway) - 12 would be cheaper IF fuel was cheap (below 100 per tonne or less, I think), AND IF you didn't get delayed by storms (going through means risk of damage, going round means more days at sea, burning fuel!)

Note: I actually played the "1 hour of real time" limited Windows version - allowing me to run Excel in the background! (So I could put fuel price changes in immediately!) Note: Windows version allows you to play "Pure economic" way - so no ship handling! (Those "habour tugs on strike" and "alert - ship on collision course!" dilemma events still occur, but the game seems to randomly decide the outcome now.

[another_guest]

In the beginning it's sometimes hard to make some profit, but once you've got a few ships running, it's easy.
A few routes I always use:
1) for the cheapest ships: Basrah - Hong Kong. While your ships will be damaged and robbed every once in a while, in one direction the rewards are big, especially for a distance this small (5953 miles). Plus you've got the $500000 bonus if you smuggle weapons.
2) for more expensive ships: Hamburg - Hong Kong: a long route, but with fairly good rewards, and every now and then exceptional profits can be made (cargo without any time limit, paying over 3 million for the largest ship's load)
3) Tokyo - Dar-es-Salaam: 7502 miles, good rewards, annoying riffs though
4) San Francisco - various ports

Just pick the best value/distance ratios. Also, try to buy ships of a decent size: I'd prefer 2 used ships of 20000 tonnes over 1 faster ship of 10000 tonnes. After all, the price you get for your cargo is directly proportional to your tonnage. Faster ships will allow you to take contracts with a time limit, but those are risky...
A rule of thumb: for mid-sized ships (I guess those are 20000 tonnes, double of the smallest size available), I want at the very least 300000 profit for a 6000 mile journey.

I wonder when the game ends if you don't have a time limit... I've once had a total net worth of over 750 million, with a fleet of 25 ships, and the game just kept going...

[Cristiano]

can someone explain how i make the game run slower on the full old version not the 1 hour game remade for windows. old dos version

[another_guest]

Originally posted by Cristiano@Apr 17 2005, 01:01 PM
can someone explain how i make the game run slower on the full old version not the 1 hour game remade for windows. old dos version
Run it through Dosbox. You can find Dosbox and its tutorial here:
http://www.abandonia.com/main.php?nav=programs

[Kearnsy]

Oh man! I just had a huge run of bad luck!! First my really cheap boat sinks, by better one gets shelled and then emensly fined for being late, THEN I get a fine for controband and to top it all off someone stole $500,000 from my office!! :ranting: :ranting:

[another_guest]

Never let your boats go below 55%, so that they will be above 50% when arriving at their destination (except when they get shelled, but that won't sink them). And avoid the Bermuda triangle...

Being shelled and contraband... sounds like Basrah to me.
On that route (Basrah - Hong Kong) I only use ships costing $2 million. It doesn't matter that much when they get damaged.
As for smuggling, I think only the contraband with a value of at least $500000 is profitable enough to take. But avoid taking any with you when your regular load is one with a time penalty. I never take any cargo with time penalty unless I've got the largest (and also fastest) ship on that route, and the payment is at least $3 million.

Go into your office quite often, and no one will ever steal from it.

[minhtuan]

The Abandonia version works perfectly for me (I use Win98SE)

I stopped playing when I have 9 ships and 50mil (genius level).

It's funny I see that the DOS version is the best. POC XXL is terrible. I haven't tried the Windows version.

I just tried San Francisco - Capetown - Sydney - Hongkong over and over.

The ship manual handling is the best POC offered, it makes this gem truly memorable. I like it. But when I reach Rio de Janeiro I have to let the tug do all. :D

[Van Der Litreb]

Wow, I remember playing this on my Amiga 500. I also remember that by far the easiest way to make money in this game is to completely do away with the shipping business and just trade in the ships themselves. :)

[Jabberdau]

Funny. The best harbour when my and a friend used to play this vas Vancouver and the best route Vancouver-Karachi. Always someone paying 5m$ for weapons on that route :D though bit of change to run into pirates, getting shelled etc. Once..and only ONCE there was a charter that gave a whooping 7m$! We wasn´t able to recreate it though.

[Nick Archer]

I used to play this game for hours and hours! Only Dune II (and later command and conquer!) and Civilization rivaled the time i spent playing
My tip, Start from Houston and sail to Calcutta, buy the best pre owned ship (opening market price $5mil) and buy ships low i.e. keep going to ship broker each day. Then sail to Calcutta and you'll make a minimum of $1.2 mil per transport on average. buy more ships, sell them, and eventually trade ships for a living, your income expenditure graph will steepen. It eventually gets boring, only point of doing this is on 2 player or more game so you can kick behind!

[another_guest]

True, trading ships can make you a huge profit. But it also takes about 1/2 to 1 year before the ship prices have changed from the lowest to the highest level. So in the meantime you better haul some cargo.
Though I must admit that the game gets boring after a while...

[Dark-Star]

I used to play this on Amiga a *lot*. But I never liked the PC version as much as the Amiga version, I don't know why...

Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I prefer playing POC via WinUAE :)

[Brunzer]

I've played this game al lot back then, liked it a lot. It seems that the only "getting started strategy" posted here is to buy preowned 20000t ship en setting up a standard route with it i.e San Francisco-Capetown. Well, here is mine:
Start in Rotterdam since the fuel there is generally the cheapest.
You start with 4million in cash if take the medium difficulty, this allows you to buy 3 of the smallest low cost ships and fill them up with fuel.
Give each ship a somewhat profitable cargo(Don't take time limit cargo with these ships!) and make sure they all have a different destination port.
Each port you enter manualy gives you 1 status point and every 5 points you get a million dollars bonus. So the point is to visit as many different harbors as possible and invest those dollars in High tec ships, because buying those also gives you status points.
Note: you only get status if you ENTER a harbor, not when you depart from it. And you only get 1 point per harbor, doing the same harbor twice is useless.

It's a nice game, though maneuvering is to easy once you get the hang of it.
The one player option is pretty pointless since the game has no ending but playing with 2 or 3 persons can be fun.

[gumpy]

This game is fun, but the arcade sequences can get annoying.

[hpearson]

this game was fun

i never saw it as a kid but i downloaded from here a while back


i was playing it normally until the part where u have to part the boat
first off i suck HORRIBLY

second i would try to power slide into the side way position docks


it causes so much suspense because there is that ever so slight chance of making it


to me this game is ok fun to park but nothing much besides that but still a thumbs up

[Adenosine]

Looks very interesting.
Does someone know of a freeware alternative to this game?

[another_guest]

Looks very interesting.
Does someone know of a freeware alternative to this game?

Ocean Trader, available for download here at abandonia :)
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/553/Ocean+Trader.html

[Fortinbras]

1) Start in Houston or Calcutta and travel back and forth between the two.
2) Buy the best ship you can without a mortgage.
3) Repair the ship as much as you can.
4) Always fill fuel to the max.
5) Sometimes you may want to lay up for some days to get a better offer on cargo and fuel.
6) Repair the ship when it goes below 70 % or so.
7) Don't accept bribes.
8) Always add 12 days to your ships top speed if you accept cargo with a time limit (sometimes it can be worth it even if you get the delay fine though.)
9) Check your office often.
10) If you don't want the hassle of steering by hand when going to port (you can always back out for a $400 000 penalty (well worth it imo).

Of course this is not the only way and probably not the best way to do it, but it's pretty risk free and you will earn money easily. The cargo offers are usually decent every time and once in a while you will get cargo offers well above $4 million. I also always go full speed, don't worry so much about fuel, the faster you can go between the cities, the faster you can make a buck.

Eventually you can buy more/expensive ships, but I don't like to have too many ships, since it will slow down gameplay with all that steering (becomes tedious after a while).