Getting Started
Cruise Tycoon is a fleet management game. You earn money from voyages, spend it on ship layouts, crew, repairs, harbour expansion, and new ships, then use the expanded fleet to run higher-value routes, earn seasonal trophies, and climb competitive ranks.
- Claim or buy ships.
- Choose routes within your ship's fuel range with positive projected profit.
- Earn money from passengers and cargo.
- Add food/leisure rooms for revenue boosts, build crew quarters, repair condition, and hire specialists.
- Unlock new zones and buy dock slots to expand your fleet.
- Earn trophies from voyages for seasonal leaderboard standings and competitive rank promotions.
Focus on profit per voyage before fleet size.
- Pick routes within your ship's fuel range where projected profit is positive. Hire a Route Manager to see which ports are green.
- Place food and leisure rooms, not just cabins — their deck boosts multiply revenue.
- Build crew quarters so you can run Standard crew without understaffing penalties.
- Repair before condition drops below 70 (Good band). The penalties compound fast below that.
Beginner Tip
A smaller ship with good food/leisure rooms, adequate crew, and healthy condition will out-earn a bigger ship with empty decks, Lean crew, and worn condition.
Voyages & Profit
Voyage profit = passenger revenue + cargo revenue + deck boosts - fuel cost - crew wages - operating costs - repair cost. Every room, crew choice, pricing mode, and route distance feeds directly into that math.
- Distance affects trip time, fuel use, and earning potential.
- Passenger demand, cargo demand, and route wealth all matter.
- Each route has its own passenger demand, cargo demand, and wealth values. Higher-demand routes earn more per passenger and per cargo unit.
- Projected profit includes a small random variance, and mid-voyage events can shift the final number up or down.
- Temporary route bonuses can make certain destinations much better than usual.
Longer routes earn more base revenue but also cost more fuel, cause more condition loss (up to 6 points vs 2 for short routes), and lock the ship for longer. A long route on a ship with poor condition or Lean crew can lose more in penalties than it gains in distance revenue.
Why did this route lose money?
- Operating costs from rooms exceeded what the route could earn.
- The ship had too few food or leisure rooms, so deck revenue boosts were low.
- Crew was set to Lean or crew quarters were insufficient, applying the staffing efficiency penalty to revenue.
- Ship condition dropped into a penalty band (below 85), reducing satisfaction and performance.
- Route saturation penalty kicked in (3-10% demand reduction after 2+ runs without recovery time).
Before launching a voyage, you can set a pricing mode:
- Conservative: slower speed, less fuel, much less wear, but 12% revenue cut. Good for preserving condition on long hauls.
- Balanced: standard everything. The default.
- Aggressive: 40% faster, 15% more revenue, but 65% more wear and 30% more fuel. Use on short, high-value routes where condition is not a concern.
During voyages, random events appear. Some are automatic (good or bad luck), some give you an A/B choice with risk, and some are skill-based mini-games.
- The first event on each voyage is always a mini-game.
- Mini-games are graded: gold, silver, bronze, or fail.
- Choice events have a 30-second countdown. Picking the riskier option can pay off or backfire.
- Events can award bonus money, gems, or cause setbacks.
Good to know
Bonus ports rotate by zone every 3 hours (8 windows per day). Each window highlights 6 green bonus ports (+15% revenue) and 2 cyan bonus ports (+30% revenue). Check the map for highlighted ports before choosing a route.
Route saturation
The first two runs on a route stay fresh. Runs 3-4 apply a small demand penalty, runs 5-6 apply a larger one, and heavily repeated routes cap at a 10% demand penalty. Recovery happens one step every 4 real hours.
Ship Design
Every room you place affects the profit formula: cabins add passenger capacity, food and leisure rooms add revenue multipliers, utilities add cargo or crew support, and every room adds crew requirements and operating cost.
- Cabins: increase passenger capacity and set the ceiling for guest revenue.
- Food rooms: boost deck or ship-wide revenue. Ranges from +6% (Coffee Kiosk) up to +35% (Premium Restaurant, ship-wide). Higher-tier food rooms require more crew but their revenue boost usually exceeds the added crew cost.
- Leisure rooms: also boost revenue, from +5% (Card Room) up to +18% (Casino). Some rooms like Sky Lounge and VIP Club apply ship-wide instead of just the deck they sit on.
- Utilities: support cargo, operations, crew quarters, and the ship's working structure. Crew Quarters directly increase how many crew you can staff.
Every room adds operating cost per voyage. More cabins without food/leisure boosts means more passengers but at base revenue rates. More rooms without enough crew quarters means understaffing penalties. Food and leisure boosts stack additively and cap at 80% per category, so spreading rooms across both categories is better than loading one.
Every deck above deck 1 needs stairs connecting it to the rest of the ship. The game runs a reachability check from the ship entrance on deck 1. Rooms that cannot be reached through doors and stairs show as unreachable (red highlight) and block saving. If you cannot save your layout, check that every deck has at least one staircase connecting down.
Upper decks get a small revenue premium (1.15x), lower decks get a slight penalty (0.95x). Put your highest-value rooms on upper decks when you can. Some rooms like Snack Bar and TV Room require at least 2 regular decks before they unlock.
Simple design advice
- Spread rooms across food and leisure — each category caps at 80% boost, so stacking one past the cap wastes slots.
- Balance cabins (passenger capacity) with food and leisure rooms (revenue boosts) and cargo holds (cargo income). All three contribute to total voyage revenue.
- Crew quarters are essential — without enough crew capacity, the staffing penalty reduces revenue on every voyage.
- If the ship is already sailing, design changes may queue until docking.
- Make sure every deck is connected by stairs before trying to save.
Staff & Auto-Sailing
The game does not block you from sailing with low crew. You can launch with Lean crew or even with almost no crew quarters, but the staffing efficiency penalty directly reduces revenue and satisfaction on every voyage.
- Every amenity room requires crew. Total crew cost = number of crew x $8 per voyage.
- You pick a crew level per ship: Lean (60% crew, lower wages but reduces satisfaction and revenue), Standard (100%, baseline), or Premium (140%, higher wages but boosts satisfaction and reputation gains).
- Understaffing directly reduces revenue through the staffing efficiency modifier and lowers satisfaction, which hurts reputation.
- A ship with almost no crew quarters gets a severe staffing penalty that can wipe out most of a voyage's earnings.
- Route Manager (2 levels): Level 1 splits ports into green (good) and orange (weaker). Level 2 adds cyan highlights for the top 5% routes. Without one, all reachable ports show orange.
- Cruise Director: unlocks the Auto-Sail toggle. Stamina starts at 2 voyages and can be trained up to 6. Stamina restores 1 point every 4 real hours while docked.
- Both specialists are hired per ship and their costs scale with ship tier.
Automation is useful, but not free value
Auto-sail keeps ships sailing automatically, but each auto-sail leg earns only half the trophies of a manual voyage. For seasonal trophy competition, manual play with longer routes earns more trophies per hour.
Live trophy rule for auto-sail
Auto-sail legs earn reduced trophy rewards compared with manual play. In the current live rules, auto-sail halves the trophy reward on that leg.
Reputation & Condition
Ship reputation and company reputation are separate scores (0-1000 each) that move based on voyage satisfaction and condition loss. Ship reputation reacts faster; company reputation is averaged across all ships and moves more slowly.
- Ship reputation (0-1000) belongs to one vessel. Updates after every voyage based on that voyage's satisfaction and condition loss.
- Company reputation (0-1000) averages across all ships with heavier damping. Takes many voyages to move noticeably.
- Voyage satisfaction score (driven by layout, staffing, and condition)
- Low condition loss during voyages
- Adequate or premium crew levels
- Understaffing and high condition loss drag reputation down
- Excellent (85+): no penalty
- Good (70-84): -1 satisfaction, minor performance penalty
- Worn (50-69): -3 satisfaction, 3% performance penalty
- Poor (30-49): -6 satisfaction, 6% performance penalty
- Critical (below 30): -10 satisfaction, 10% performance penalty
- Short routes lose ~2 condition points, medium ~4, long ~6.
- Adequate maintenance crew reduces wear; understaffed maintenance increases it.
- Quick repair costs $2,000 and restores 20 points. Full repair costs $150 per point of damage.
- Repair early. The penalty from Poor or Critical condition costs you more in lost revenue than the repair bill.
Why reputation may feel slow
Company reputation averages across all ships and updates more slowly than ship reputation. One strong voyage moves ship reputation noticeably, but company reputation needs consistent high-satisfaction voyages across multiple ships to climb.
Condition math
A ship at Critical condition (below 30) loses 10 satisfaction points and takes a 10% performance penalty per voyage. At $150 per point, a full repair from 30 to 100 costs $10,500 — far less than the revenue you lose sailing multiple voyages in Critical.
Harbour & Expansion
Fleet expansion requires harbour infrastructure. You unlock zones ($50K-$7M), buy dock slots within zones, upgrade dock tiers to host bigger ships, and buy ships separately. Each has its own cost and requirements.
- Zones decide where your fleet can operate next.
- Dock slots decide how many ships can be stationed in a zone.
- Dock tiers decide which ship tiers a slot can host.
- You buy dock slots and ships separately. A ship needs an available dock of the right tier to be stationed.
Buy another ship when you can afford its rooms, crew, and repairs — not just the hull price. Upgrade dock tier when you need to station a higher-tier ship. Unlock a new zone when route saturation on your current zones is costing you more than the unlock fee.
There are 8 zones to unlock beyond your home zone, in 4 bands of 2:
- Band 1-2: $50K-$100K, need 2 Tier 1 ships
- Band 3-4: $250K-$500K, need a Tier 2 ship
- Band 5-6: $1M-$2M, need 6 total docks
- Band 7-8: $4M-$7M, need a Tier 3 ship
Dock purchase and upgrade costs use a multiplier that grows with each zone you unlock (1x for home, up to 8x for the last zone). Early zones are cheap; late-game docks are a serious investment. Upgrading dock tier lets you station bigger ships there.
Trophies & Seasons
Trophies are seasonal and reset to 0 at each season boundary. They are earned per voyage based on duration AND passenger satisfaction, scaled by ship tier. Higher-tier ships with well-built layouts earn significantly more trophies. Trophies determine your position on the seasonal leaderboard and bracket promotions.
- Base trophies = 1 per 5 minutes of voyage duration, capped at 12 (60 min).
- Multiplied by a tier-satisfaction bracket: ships with satisfaction below 50% earn 0 trophies.
- T1 max multiplier: ×1 (max 12/voyage). T5 max multiplier: ×5 (max 60/voyage).
- Auto-sail legs earn half the final count.
- Trophies reset at the season boundary (10th of each month).
The multiplier depends on your ship's tier and the voyage's passenger satisfaction:
- Below 50%: ×0 for all tiers (empty/bad ships earn nothing)
- 50-75%: ×1 for T1-T3, scaling up to ×3 for T4-T5
- 75-90%: ×1 for T1, ×2 for T2-T3, ×3-4 for T4-T5
- 90-100%: ×1 for T1, ×2 for T2, ×3 for T3, ×4 for T4, ×5 for T5
A permanent 10-rank ladder sits on top of the seasonal system. Ranks never reset:
- Deckhand → Seafarer → Helmsman → Navigator → First Mate
- Captain → Commodore → Fleet Admiral → Sea Lord → Poseidon
Everyone starts as Deckhand. At each season end, the top 10% of players in your rank bracket get promoted. You need at least 1 voyage in the season to be eligible.
- Rank 1: $50,000 + 20 gems + Captain's Table room unlock
- Rank 2-3: $25,000 + 10 gems + Captain's Table room unlock
- Rank 4-10: $10,000
- Participation: $2,500
Captain's Table is an exclusive ship-wide +10% revenue room that can only be earned through top-3 seasonal play.
What determines trophies
Build your ships well (rooms, food, leisure, crew) to raise satisfaction. Use higher-tier ships on longer routes. Empty or poorly designed ships earn near-zero trophies regardless of route length. The system rewards both active play and smart ship design.
Goals & Progression
Progress is tracked across multiple systems: per-voyage profit, three milestone lanes (~300 goals each), seasonal trophies, competitive ranks, ship/company reputation, and lifetime earnings tiers.
- Increasing profit per voyage (rooms, crew, condition, pricing dial)
- Completing tutorial sections (earn money and gem rewards)
- Claiming active lane goals (tap the pill in the top bar when ready)
- Earning trophies from longer voyages for seasonal standing
- Fleet growth: more ships, more zones, higher-tier docks
- Ship and company reputation scores (0-1000)
- Milestone lanes: Growth (economy goals), Discovery (exploration), and Fame (reputation and voyage quality)
- Competitive rank promotions at season end
- Lifetime earnings tiers
How milestone lanes work
Each lane shows one active goal at a time in the top bar. Goals are claimed manually by tapping the pill when the condition is met. Growth goals track fleet size and earnings. Discovery goals track ports visited, routes completed, and events experienced. Fame goals track reputation milestones and voyage quality. Each lane has ~300 goals.
Strategy & Common Mistakes
- Repeating the same route past 2 runs without waiting — runs 3-4 get a 3% demand penalty, runs 5-6 get 6%, and it caps at 10%. Recovery is 1 tier per 4 hours.
- Adding rooms without building crew quarters — the staffing penalty eats the revenue those rooms should generate.
- Running a ship with many rooms (and their operating costs) on a short or low-demand route that cannot cover those costs.
- Ignoring condition — a ship in Critical (below 30) loses 10% performance and 10 satisfaction per voyage, costing more than the repair.
- Relying on auto-sail for trophies — auto-sail legs earn half trophies. Manual voyages on longer routes earn more.
- Skipping food and leisure rooms. Their deck revenue boosts (5%-35% each) are a large part of total earnings.
Before buying a new ship, check: can you fill its decks with rooms, staff those rooms at Standard or Premium crew, and keep condition above 70? If not, the new ship will earn less per voyage than your current one.
FAQ
Use the link on each question to share a direct answer with another player.
Starting Out
What should I spend money on first?Link
Priority order: (1) Place food and leisure rooms on your starter ship for revenue boosts. (2) Build crew quarters so you can run Standard crew. (3) Repair when condition drops below 70. (4) Hire a Route Manager to see profitable ports. (5) Save for a Coastal Ferry ($600K) only after your Small Boat is earning consistently. Do not buy a second ship until you can afford to fill its decks too.
What happens while I am offline?Link
Voyages that finish while the app is closed are resolved when you return. Ships move to their destination and completed voyages appear ready to collect.
Is there cloud save or slot save support?Link
Yes. The game supports 3 local save slots, and when the server is available it also syncs cloud saves tied to your anonymous player ID. If the server is unreachable, local play still continues. Your highest-scoring slot is used for leaderboard submissions.
What are gems and how do I get them?Link
Gems are a secondary currency. You start with 10 and can earn more from mid-voyage events (random treasure finds, lucky encounters, mini-game rewards) and from completing tutorial sections. Gems can be spent to skip the remaining time on an active voyage (cost scales with time left, roughly 1 gem per 7 minutes). Season rewards for top players also include gems.
Why is the first launch downloading so much?Link
On first launch, the game downloads all visual assets (ship models, map tiles, room art, audio) once and caches them on your device. This is a one-time download. After that, updates are tiny and the game works fully offline. If it seems stuck, make sure you have a stable internet connection and restart the app.
Routes & Profit
Why did my voyage earn less than the preview?Link
The preview is a projection. Final earnings include a small random variance, and mid-voyage events (both choice events and mini-games) can add bonuses or penalties on top. If you picked a risky choice event option and it went badly, or failed a mini-game, the final payout will be lower than projected.
Why is a route suddenly worse than before?Link
The most common reason is route saturation — repeating the same route builds a demand penalty (up to 10%), which recovers one step every 4 hours. Other causes: ship condition has dropped into a worse band (check the Crew tab), crew level was changed to Lean, or the pricing dial was switched to Conservative. If you recently removed food or leisure rooms, the revenue boost from those rooms is also gone.
What does guest satisfaction actually affect?Link
Satisfaction is a per-voyage score computed from your layout (food and leisure boosts), crew level, and ship condition. It directly affects ship reputation gains — voyages with satisfaction above 80 give strong reputation boosts, while satisfaction below 60 drags reputation down. Higher satisfaction also improves the voyage efficiency score shown in results.
What does the pricing dial do?Link
Before launching, you pick Conservative, Balanced, or Aggressive pricing. Conservative is slower and earns 12% less but causes much less wear (good for long routes or weak condition). Aggressive is 40% faster and earns 15% more but causes 65% more wear and uses 30% more fuel. Balanced is the default middle ground.
What do the port colors on the map mean?Link
Port colors depend on your Route Manager level. Without a Route Manager, all reachable ports show orange (no profitability insight). At level 1, ports split into green (good routes) and orange (weaker). At level 2, the best routes (top 5%) glow cyan, with green and orange for the rest. Hire and upgrade Route Managers from the Crew tab.
Ship Design
Why is my ship underperforming even with lots of rooms?Link
Room count is not the same as revenue. Cabins set passenger capacity, but food and leisure rooms provide the deck revenue boosts (5%-35% each, stacking additively up to 80% per category). A ship packed with cabins but no food or leisure is missing most of its potential earnings. Also check: do you have enough crew quarters to support those rooms? Is crew level set to Lean? Each placed room adds operating cost, so rooms that don't earn their keep actually reduce profit.
Why can't I place a room where I want?Link
Rooms need clear door access — the door clearance tile (highlighted in yellow) cannot overlap another room. Each room also needs to fit within the hull grid. If the spot is greyed out, check that the door clearance area is free and that the room's footprint fits without going out of bounds. Some rooms also require a minimum number of decks to be unlocked before they appear in the palette.
Why can't I save my ship layout?Link
The most common reason is unreachable rooms. The game checks that every room can be reached from the ship entrance on deck 1 through doors and stairs. If any room is highlighted red, it means it is cut off. Add stairs connecting upper decks to deck 1, and make sure doors are not blocked by other rooms.
Why are some rooms locked in the shop?Link
Some rooms require a minimum number of unlocked decks (e.g. Snack Bar and TV Room need 2 decks). Exclusive rooms like Captain's Table only appear if you have earned them through season rewards. Some rooms also have fleet-wide placement limits.
Crew & Specialists
What happens if I sail with too little crew?Link
Revenue takes a direct hit through the staffing efficiency modifier, satisfaction drops, and ship reputation suffers. Severe understaffing is especially punishing. Sailing with Lean crew (60%) saves money but visibly reduces earnings; sailing with almost no crew capacity is one of the worst self-inflicted mistakes in the game.
What do directors and route managers actually do?Link
Route Managers change port colors on the map: Level 1 splits ports into green (profitable) and orange (weaker), Level 2 adds cyan for the top 5% routes. Cruise Directors unlock the Auto-Sail toggle and have a stamina pool (2-6 voyages depending on training level) that fuels automatic back-and-forth sailing chains.
Why does auto-sail give fewer trophies?Link
Because automation is meant to be a convenience tool, not the strongest seasonal farming strategy. In the current live rules, auto-sail halves the trophy reward on that leg.
How does auto-sail actually work?Link
Hire a Cruise Director, then toggle Auto-Sail ON for that ship. Manually launch a voyage. When it completes, the director automatically sends the ship back the other way, then back again, chaining A→B→A→B legs. Each leg costs 1 stamina. When stamina runs out, the chain stops and Auto-Sail turns off. Stamina restores 1 point every 4 real hours while docked. Re-enable and launch again when ready.
Events & Mini-Games
How do mid-voyage events work?Link
Events fire during active voyages on an escalating timer (the gap grows with each event). The first event on every voyage is always a mini-game. After that, you get a mix of choice events (pick A or B within 30 seconds), automatic good/bad luck, and occasional later mini-games. Events can award bonus money, gems, reputation, or cause setbacks.
Do mini-game results actually matter?Link
Yes. Mini-games are graded gold, silver, bronze, or fail. Better grades give better voyage bonuses. Failing still lets you continue the voyage but you miss out on the reward and may take a small penalty.
Reputation & Repairs
What does ship condition actually do?Link
Condition is a 0-100 score that drops after each voyage. It penalizes satisfaction and reputation at lower bands: no penalty above 85 (Excellent), minor dip at 70-84 (Good), noticeable at 50-69 (Worn), serious below 50 (Poor), and severe below 30 (Critical). Repairing early is cheaper than the revenue and reputation you lose by sailing in bad condition.
Why is my reputation not going up much?Link
Ship reputation moves after every voyage based on satisfaction and condition loss. Company reputation is an average across all ships and updates with heavier damping — it takes many consistent high-satisfaction voyages to move noticeably. Focus on keeping condition above 70 and crew at Standard or Premium on every ship.
Harbour & Expansion
Why can't I buy or dock a certain ship in a harbour?Link
Three things gate ship placement: (1) You need an empty dock slot in that zone. (2) The dock's tier must be equal to or higher than the ship's tier (e.g. a Tier 2 Coastal Ferry needs at least a Tier 2 dock). (3) The zone must be unlocked. Upgrade dock tier or buy a new slot in the Harbour's Docks tab.
Trophies, Seasons & Leaderboards
Why did I get 0 trophies on a short route?Link
The live trophy system is based on base voyage duration. You currently earn 1 trophy per 5 minutes of base route time, so routes under 5 minutes do not hit the first step.
Do trophies reset every season?Link
Yes. Trophies are seasonal and reset at the season boundary so each season starts fresh.
What carries over between seasons?Link
Your company, fleet, layouts, harbour progress, competitive rank, and wider save state carry over. Seasonal trophies do not. Your competitive rank is permanent and can only go up.
How do competitive rank promotions work?Link
At each season end, all players in the same rank bracket are sorted by revenue per voyage. The top 10% of that bracket get promoted to the next rank. You need at least 1 completed voyage in the season to be eligible. There are no demotions. The 10 ranks go from Deckhand up to Poseidon.
Saves, Offline & Cloud
Why did my ship location or pending voyage update when I reopened the game?Link
The game catches up completed voyages on load. If a ship finished while you were away, it is moved to the destination and the voyage becomes ready to collect.
Glossary
Route Saturation
A demand penalty that builds when the same route is sailed too often without enough recovery time.
Base Voyage Time
The route's stored core duration before temporary speed changes. Seasonal trophy gain uses this timing basis.
Ship Reputation
The reputation attached to one specific ship based on how that vessel has been performing.
Company Reputation
Your broader brand reputation, which moves more slowly and reflects the whole company over time.
Dock Tier
The ship tier a dock can host. Owning a ship does not automatically mean every dock can support it.
Auto-Sail
Automation that keeps ships moving through repeat sailing behavior, supported by Cruise Director stamina.
Lifetime Tier
A long-term status layer based on lifetime earnings rather than one season's result.
Growth / Discovery / Fame
The three live milestone lanes that reward empire expansion, map exploration, and reputation progress in parallel.
Pricing Dial
Pre-voyage setting (Conservative / Balanced / Aggressive) that trades off speed, revenue, fuel cost, and ship wear.
Competitive Rank
A permanent 10-tier ladder (Deckhand to Poseidon) where the top 10% of each bracket promotes at season end based on revenue per voyage.
Gems
Secondary currency earned from events and rewards. Can be spent to skip voyage wait times.
Reachability
The ship designer's check that every room can be reached from the entrance on deck 1 via doors and stairs. Unreachable rooms block saving.