Using and building facilities

• Dispatch
• Taxi rank
• Rest stop
• Gas station
• Repair shop
• Building facilities
• Buying facilities on the marketplace
• Moving facilities
• Contracting facilities

Facilities are buildings providing various services to your company. You may own facilities, or contract them from other players. Facilities have a fixed location on the map.

A dispatch is a call center that accepts calls from customers and puts them into a queue. Taxis can then accept customers from that queue and drive them around.

Each dispatch is defined by its catchment area. Dispatch customers (and places they go to) will never be further away from it than the catchment area distance.

By default, all dispatches start off with a catchment area of 3.1 miles. That is, all customer journeys start and end no further than 3.1 miles away from the dispatch. Average journey length from such a dispatch would be about 3 miles (straight line distance), with the maximum of 6 miles for some journeys.

Catchment area can be increased by applying the Dispatch catchment improver item. Only the dispatch owner can do this, however.

How customers are treated by the dispatch

Customers show up randomly within the dispatch’s catchment area. A dispatch maintains a short queue of such customers, and when asked presents a subset of that queue.

When talking to a dispatch you can enter your desired journey length. However, this only affects the order in which the customer queue is shown to you. That is, a dispatch with a very large catchment area will not, generally, be able to provide customers wishing to go a short distance. If you talk to a dispatch with a catchment area of 100 miles, almost all the customers waiting on it will want to be driven 50+ miles.

Dispatches that get a lot of use (lots of customers served) will tend to have longer customer queues, so they will be able to provide more customers with a desired journey length.

Dispatch charges

If you do not own the dispatch, you are likely to be charged a small fee upon accepting a customer from the dispatch. This fee is dependent on the access contract terms applicable to the dispatch. See the section on Contracts for more details.

Dispatch marketing

Each dispatch also has a marketing attribute. This affects tips by customers taken from that dispatch (up to a maximum of 50% extra). For example, a dispatch with a marketing of 10% (the default) will add 5% to tips. A dispatch with a marketing of 50% will add 25% to tips.

Marketing can be improved by applying the Dispatch/rank marketing item. Only the dispatch owner can do this however.

Dispatch challenges

A customer in the queue can be served by several companies. Second and subsequent companies that see the customer entry will see a Challenge available marker. When accepting a customer with an available dispatch, your tip is affected by how long your route is compared to the one already applied to the customer by someone else. If your route is shorter, you will get an extra 20% to the tips (as well as an extra challenge point in your player account); otherwise, you will loose the marketing portion of the tips.

Taxi ranks provide another way to get customers. They allow you to type in your desired destination (at a neighborhood level, ie Central Park, New York City). Then your driver will simply arrive at the rank, wait for the customer, and drive him to the destination.

Drivers need to wait for the customer when using ranks. This can take up to 50% (randomly) of the time it will take to drive the route. Maximum waiting time is reduced by 1.5% for each charisma skill point that a driver has.

Rank marketing

This behaves identically to Dispatch marketing. Tips from customers taken from the rank are increased by up to 50%.

Rest stops allow your drivers to recover their energy much quicker (1 hour in a rest stop gives 1 hour driving time). You need to assign your resting drivers to a rest stop by clicking the Use rest stop button on the driver’s page.

Rest stop location is important as the time it takes drivers to get to a rest stop is affected by how far away they are from it.

You may refuel your cars at gas stations. Base price for petrol in Taxi Mogul is currently $3 per gallon. However, if you do not own the gas station, you will also pay the markup mandated by the access contract for that station.

To refuel a vehicle, make sure it has a driver in it (and it isn’t broken), and click it on the Drive page. Select Refuel/repair in the popup bubble. You will be shown a list of gas stations and repair shops accessible to you (duplicated on the map). Select the one you want and enter the amount of fuel you want to purchase.

Since it will take some gas to get to the gas station, that will be automatically added on to your bill.

Repair shops allow you to improve conditions of your vehicles as they depreciate. Repair cost for each condition point depends on the vehicle. However, if you do not own the repair shop, you will also be charged the markup mandated by the access contract for that shop.

Vehicle depreciation incurred while getting to the repair shop will be automatically added to your final bill.

You may build facilities once you have enough cash. To do that, simply click the Build a facility button on the Facilities tab on your company page.

You will need to define a facility location on the map. Simply click Add facility site, and then double-click in your desired location on the map. You may mark multiple sites, and then select the appropriate one on the facility creation page.

It takes a few days for the facility to be built. This delay is waived for premium players.

There is a limit on how many facilities a single company can operate. Building more facilities than the limit incurs legal fees in form of BureauPoints. These limits and charges are as follows:

• Dispatch: 3 per company, 13 BP for each subsequent one
• Mechanic: 5 per company, 9 BP for each subsequent one
• Gas station: 10 per company, 6 BP for each subsequent one
• Rank: 3 per company, 10 BP for each subsequent one
• Rest stop: 2 per company, 16 BP for each subsequent one

These limits do not apply for facilities purchased on the marketplace.

You may also purchase facilities on the marketplace. Do keep in mind that facilities sold on the marketplace are already located somewhere. You might need to move them to make them usable to you, which will incur additional cost.

You can move facilities by using the Move facility item. Once you have one of those in your inventory, simply go to the facility page and click the Use Move facility item. You will then be able to select one of your facility sites as the destination. Moves are effective immediately.

It is quite unfeasible to operate enough facilities for all but the biggest of companies. Instead, you can get access to facilities run by other companies through contracts.

You can see a map of all the facilities available in the game by navigating to the Facilities community page. Once you find facilities that you would like access to, you can message the company that runs them and ask for a contract.

There is also a Small ads page on the community section (shows latest posts from the Let's team up forum) where companies can advertise their facilities.