Menu items, miscellaneous

This page describes items in the game menus not covered elsewhere.

## Briefcase

Gold members get a **briefcase**, a limited amount of online storage space where they can create, edit and store text files.

## F1 Racing

TO provides Formula One racing results to gold members as a side game.

*Note: Tycoon Online does not enable or condone real-world gambling.*

*Note: The TO F1 competition was discontinued in 2010.*

## Forums

The **forums** are a message board where players can communicate about TO. There are five major sections to the forums: **News**, **Questions and answers**; **Other discussions**; **Report errors and bugs**; and **Help files**. If you click on a section, you'll find a list of recent topics in that section, and an edit window for starting a new topic. *(NOTE: only game administrators can start topics in the News section.)* You can read and reply to an existing topic by clicking on it.

The most recently updated topics also appear on the front page. Gold members see all topics with unread posts in **bold face**.

## Friends list

Gold members get a **friends list** which they can use to link quickly to TO-playing friends to send quick mail messages. They can also display their friends' forum messages in a different color to make them stand out.

## Front page

This link takes you to the Tycoon Online **front page**, a place where you will find a central panel of useful items. The following tabs are displayed on the front page:

* ***Login information*** – here you will find information on how much time is left in the round, how many days are left in your gold membership, and how much time is left before you automatically log off.
* ***Today's TO-player*** – this is a daily lottery for players. Here players contribute token amounts of their TO savings to the TO Player of the Day. The TO player is chosen at midnight from those players who contributed the previous day. A player may only be TO Player of the Day once per round. *(NOTE: this is money taken from TO savings only. Tycoon Online does not enable or condone real-world gambling.)*
* ***News & updates*** – the most recent news items for the round are listed here.
* ***Poll of the week*** – occasionally TO will take fun or informational polls of the players. You can vote here and see the results. Players receive a small savings bonus for voting.
* ***Vote for Tycoon Online*** – here you will find occassional links inviting you to vote for TO at various online gaming web sites. Players receive a small savings bonus for voting.
* ***Latest topics*** – Here you will find the most recently updated forum topics. Gold members see the topic titles they have not yet read in **bold face**.

## Gold member

**Gold members** are paying players, who get certain extras not available to free players. Players can currently buy 70 day (one full round of game days) or 365 day (one year's worth of game days) memberships, using PayPal or Wallie cards. (If you live in a country where neither is available, special arrangements can be made.) New players get most gold member benefits free for the first week.

### Benefits of Gold Membership

* **No "Server Busy" page** - When the game updates run every 10 minutes, the "Server Busy" page comes up to keep activity low. This allows the updates to complete faster by reducing server load. Players with Gold Memberships never see this page! They are allowed to keep playing even while the updates are running.
* **Ability to turn off advertisements** - Players with Gold Membership can turn off the advertising banners.
* **Company logo** - You can create and upload a 468x60 banner to advertise your Tycoon Online company. Your banner is shown while you are logged in, and shown in rotation to other players. Players can vote on their favorite banners, and popular banners are shown more often.
* **View stockpile of shares you own** - You can easily review the current stockpile of every share you own, making it easy to identify shares you might want to sell.
* **More applicants per job posting in US** - Each time you post a job listing in the US Version, you get one additional applicant to choose from if you have a Gold Membership.
* **More FTL vs LTL vehicle choices in US** - Gold Members can set individual vehicles to FTL (Full Truck Load) or LTL (Less Than Load) instead of switching the whole transport fleet.
* **Company blog** - You can publish a company blog which can be read by other players or by anyone in the world with an RSS reader.
* **Customizable avatar** - You can change your avatar by selecting from a number of graphics for the head, body, legs, and shoes.
* **Drop-down quick info box** - With Gold Membership, an information box with stats about your company is shown. This box is available on every page by moving the mouse over your player name at the top left corner of the page.
* **Graphs** - Many pages in the game, such as Changes, Trends, and Prices, have helpful graphs. These graphs make it much easier to summarize the information presented.
* **Sales in Shops" trends page** - The trends pages offer a wealth of information. One of them, "Sales in shops", is only available to players who have Gold Membership.
* **New message count highlighting** - In the forums, threads which have unread messages are shown with bold message counts. This makes it easy to see which threads you haven t read yet.
* **Ability to lead a team** - Only players with Gold Membership can lead a team.
* **Friend List** - Only players with Gold Membership can maintain a friend list. You can choose the forum color for your friends messages. And you can use the friend list as a quick way to send messages to players on the list.
* **Briefcase** - The briefcase is a way to store notes within the game.

## Live chat

TO sponsors a **live chat** room via Internet Relay Chat (IRC) at the subdomain **irc.tycoononline.com** (room **#to-chat**). This link will take you to that room through a Java client, although you can join the chat using any IRC client you prefer.

## Log off

The **Log off** link logs you off of Tycoon Online. A player will generally log off automatically at the next 10-minute tick after being logged in for 30 minutes. A timer appears beneath the left side menu showing how much time is left.

Gold members get 10 minutes added to their login time if they click on any game link with less than 10 minutes left.

## Logos

A gold member can create a company **logo**, a .gif or .jpg graphic banner which appears at the top of the TO browser window, next to the Tycoon Online logo. These logos are uploaded through the Settings menu link.

* The banner must be a GIF or JPG file, 468x60 pixels, and no more than 50 KB. It may not be animated.
* The banner must contain the name of your company or your player name.
* The banner may not contain any copyrighted or trademarked material, and may not list a URL for another web page.
* The banner must be family-friendly and not contain any inappropriate content.
* We suggest banners be designed to fit within the theme of the game, reflect the type of goods you produce, or play on the name of your company.

Logo owners can choose to see only their own logo or random logos. Free players see a random selection of other companies' logos. Gold members with no logo have a choice to see nothing, or random logos. Goldmembers can make this choice on the Settings page.

At the Logos menu link, users can see and vote on uploaded player logos in a weekly contest. The weekly winners get fame and glory. *(NOTE: Tycoon Online does not enable or condone real-world gambling.)*

Here is a partial list of graphics tools you can use to create your logo, courtesy of player **Uee Mac**:

### Imaging manipulation programs

* GIMP
* Pixlr - Free online FLASH based image editor
* Paint.net
* Pixia
* VCW VicMan's Photo Editor
* PhotoFiltre
* Ultimate Paint
* ImageForge
* Picnik
* Photoscape

### Image hosting (store photos online)

* Irfanview
* Image Hosting
* ImageShack
* Photobucket

## Mail

TO has an in-game **mail** system for sending private messages to other players. Clicking here will allow you to read and reply to your incoming mail.

To send a message to another player, you have to bring up that player's profile. Gold members can access players' profiles quickly by adding them to their Friends list.

## My blog

All players can write **company blogs** where they can ruminate on the game, give away their own playing secrets (or speculate on others'), or just talk about whatever strikes their fancy. You can read another player's blog by accessing his company profile. You can even subscribe the blog to your RSS aggregator and read it from outside TO.

## My company

**My company** displays your **company profile**, which shows certain interesting information about you and your company, including: logo, home city, speciality, number of completed buildings by type, CV, share price and C-rank. It also has links to your member profile, blog and share information page.

Other users can read your company profile (except for the detailed breakdown of building types); they can access it from the rankings, or by doing a search.

## News

**News** annoucements from the game management appear here. They also can be found in the forums, and the most recent annoucements appear on the front page.

## Ranking

This brings up a list of all active companies, with their current company value (CV) and rank (C-rank). The list is in C-rank order, but can be resorted several ways.

The page links to two other lists. One is a list of active members displaying their stock points and rank (S-rank). The other is a historical list of leaders in Tycoon Online Points (TOP).

Beneath the right side menu is a count of companies currently logged in. If you click on the link there, you will bring up an abbreviated ranking list showing only the logged-in companies.

## Records

The **records** section contains a number of reports on all-time and current round leaders in certain categories.

The **general records** section shows all-time records for aggregate player totals, for example 'Number of active companies' or 'Number of offices built'.

The **member records** section contains all-time and current round top 50 lists of individuals in categories such as 'Most savings', 'Most vehicles', and 'Most sales in one shop'.

You can find round-by-round leaders in the records categories in the Game history.

## Search

You can **search** here for information on a player or company.

## Settings

The **settings** page allows you to customize a number of game configuration items. Among other things, you can change your wealth tax payment time, and reserve your company name from one round to the next. You can reset your profile, bankrupting your company so you can start over, or you can deactivate your profile, quitting for now so you can come back in another round. If you are a gold member, you can also upload your logo here.

## Tip a friend

Here you can ask TO to send emails to your friends inviting them to join. If an invited player signs up for a gold membership using the email address in the tip, the player who invited him will receive a 70 day gold membership for free.

## Trends

The **trends** section contains a number of useful reports for tracking the TO marketplace during the round. Each report can be sorted several ways. They are:

* **Produced goods** – total units of each type of goods produced so far today, yesterday, and 7 days previous.
* **Number of buildings** – number of buildings of each type built or under construction, grouped by factories, shops, and offices.
* **Calculation of market prices** – a projection of upcoming price changes for each good, based on production so far today; updated hourly
* **Sales on the market** – total units of each type of goods sold on the market so far today, yesterday, and 7 days previous.
* **Sales to the bank** – total units of each type of goods sold to the bank so far today, yesterday, and 7 days previous.
* **Sales in shops** – total units of each type of retail goods sold in shops so far today, yesterday, and 7 days previous.

## See also

* PayPal
* Wallie
* Wikipedia:
	+ IRC
	+ RSS