Oh dear, he's done it again (1865 Ten Wheeler).

[Firefly 2-2-2]

Hi there Gum,

On an unrelated note, I found out by using 7zip that your issue with .rar files seems very simple. All you have to do is to right click on a .rar file, click "Properties", then choose "open with" 7zip. It'll open all .rar files normally.

[Gumboots]

And if you just use zip like everyone else, nobody has to frig around at all.

[Firefly 2-2-2]

Hi there, I have a couple of questions:

1 - What is the Passenger appeal of the 2-6-0 Mogul and the 2-8-0 Consolidation after the revamp? They all get these weird "Stuck at 1am" figures, but the Mogul seems to earn pretty low from Pax somehow.

2 - I liked most of the changes. However the Connie coming in 1865 will be sorely missed, esp. in those high grade scenarios where - you know - you just need the Connie's pulling power and nothing else. The Mogul seems good for freight only, while the American works well in flat terrain but suffers at grades. Ingenuity when laying track must be at work in here, I mean .

3 - The Thatcher Perkins is a premier Express locomotive, in fact the best one after the Beuth and the Crampton get obsolete (if you somehow manage to have access to these two locos at any time) up to the time the Pacific comes. Not every loco gets "Ultra Cool", plus the Thatcher Perkins is far better than the Stirling at grades. Rough places demand rough locos, I mean.

[Gumboots]

1/ The Mogul is set to 80% and the Connie is set to 70%. If you have the Pennsy H3, you should also have the custom RT3.lng for the expanded pax appeal scale.

2/ You don't really need it. You're just used to having rocket-powered Connies in 1865. It's perfectly possible to play without them.
The Mogul is intended for freight (that's what they were used for) and is pretty strong up grades.
The American has always been weak on grades. I haven't done anything to it.

3/ The Eight Wheeler is better on flat terrain, once it becomes available.

[Firefly 2-2-2]

1/ The Mogul is set to 80% and the Connie is set to 70%. If you have the Pennsy H3, you should also have the custom RT3.lng for the expanded pax appeal scale.

I didn't install the Pennsy H3. That's why there might be a problem with it. I'll try checking out the files again, but hey, what's "80%" and "70%" in game terms? "Acceptable" or whatnot?

[Firefly 2-2-2]

Hi there, I just got your files for the Pennsy.

Yeah, in terms of game balance, in between the Mikado H10 and the Connie, during the 1890-1918 timespan, there's a shortage of a good loco that will really do the job well, at least for America since Europe gets the excellent Class P8 already. So the Pennsy is really welcome.

EDIT - OK boy now the Readme file with the Pennsy already does a nice job of explaining this Extended Pax Scale. Thanks. So the Mogul and the Connie are now really ugly and unfit for Pax traffic, I understand. No problems, there's still plenty of freight to haul around to my factories.

EDIT - The Pennsy is only ever good for Freight, forget it. And it's better than the Camelback, as I can see.

[Gumboots]

Yeah, the idea is the Eight Wheeler is your 1890's express loco. The Pennsy does freight, but for lines with small amounts of pax traffic, and large amounts of freight or non-pax express, the loss of income from using the Pennsy on any "any cargo" setting would be minimal. It's still usable for mixed haulage if you just want to grab whatever is going on branch lines.

I just checked the Pennsy uploads and the pax scale has been changed since slightly then, so I should update them. We're now using this scale:

Code: Select all

	;@gumbootz: Customised passenger appeal ratings begin here.
	;---------------------------------------------------------------------
	;	#ID     Rating Name     Revenue     Hex value       Default string
	;---------------------------------------------------------------------
	;	2703 - Ultra Cool       140%        12 00 00 00     Frozen at 8 am
	;	2702 - Very Cool        130%        11 00 00 00     Frozen at 7 am
	;	2688 - Looks Sharp      120%        03 00 00 00     Ultra Cool
	;	2687 - Looks Good       110%        02 00 00 00     Looks Sharp
	;	2686 - Acceptable       100%        01 00 00 00     Acceptable
	;	3173 - Unappealing       90%        00 00 00 00     Ugly
	;	2697 - Ugly              80%        0C 00 00 00     Frozen at 2 am
	;	2696 - Very Ugly         70%        0B 00 00 00     Frozen at 1 am
	;	2695 - Gruesome          60%        0A 00 00 00     Frozen at midnight
	;---------------------------------------------------------------------

Which in terms of actual gameplay won't affect the locos we're talking about here, since the same hex code gives the same revenue. We just extended it by one level to give a higher top setting, and rearranged the setting names to give a better progression.

I never use the Camelback in default form. I've done some playing around with stats for that too, along with a basic revamp of mesh and skin.
You can get that here: http://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.ph ... 230#p45033
The posts about it start here: http://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.ph ... 220#p45007

[Firefly 2-2-2]

I'll give it a look. The Camelback seems useful as a cheap freight train for some specific branch lines. The Pennsy is a good loco, though, but you can never micromanage enough and I often see my consists loaded up with pax and mail. So yeah, in this case, it would be better to use some other loco.

[Firefly 2-2-2]

I have a question for you again, Gumboots. How do you use the Camelback, or any train at all, as a "shunter"? You mean these specific sorts of trains that go on separate or branch tracks from raw material source to factory, then to consumer market?

[Gumboots]

In an RT3 context, as a short haul unit to deal with cargoes that have minimal price differentials. So where you want to move stuff around, because there is some demand for it, but it's not worth much and top speed is irrelevant.

I was using it on the Latvia map. On that map it's best to have multiple stations in the Riga area, to get adequate coverage and minimise congestion. The multiple stations always end up generating price differentials for a range of cargoes, but there's not much in it. Moving them around makes sense to me, because if they are evened out then the main freight haulage won't depress the price at the port station, which means I don't have to micromanage to keep the haulage goals on target.