{NEW BETA} fix/update South Central British Columbia 1898

[Gumboots]

Ok, I get that you have to wing it within the limitations of the game's abilities, but having to build the tunnel once construction is complete sounds weird.

"Hey, your new tunnel that you paid millions for is ready. Now you have to build it."
There might be a better story line available, but I'm not sure what it would be. Not a big deal anyway.

[RulerofRails]

Yeah. It's a limitation players will just have to live with. I'm not even going to entertain the idea of trying to use an AI to build it. The other obvious option would be pre-placement from the start of the game and to me that feels worse.

The whole idea with a long period of "building" the tunnel was because JSS spent a great deal of time in simulating rate of track construction per month. It feels wrong if you can then blast a very difficult tunnel in one shot. And, yes, I know there are two tunnels coming out of Robson. But I'm not going to fiddle with the story-line there. They were not major projects like this proposed tunnel.

BTW, in the ledger there will be a progress of construction figure (such as 32%), along with rate of construction achieved last month (such as 2%). Rate for last month may suffer from rounding error. Would be better with a decimal place, but AFAICT getting decimals in the ledger is a bit tricky in 1.05? Maybe I will think of something. The idea is for the player to know that something is "happening."

[Gumboots]

Here's a thought: could you pre-place it, and hide it with trees? If it's combined with a no-access territory the player wouldn't be able to see it most of the time. The only way they could see it is if they have trees turned off during tracklaying, and if they happened to be looking at the entrance or exit of the tunnel. If you really wanted extra hiding you could drop a large house or something just outside the entrance and exit, or even something useful like a maintenance shed.

Then when "construction is complete" have an event open the territory, and confiscate the track (and buildings, if necessary) to the player's company. I think that would work.

[RulerofRails]

I tried to use trees, buildings, maint. sheds, etc.. to hide a tunnel entrance. Short version: none of the methods I tested were successful. Track automatically hides trees. I used height modifications to try to get around "can't place" message. Didn't work. From what I saw, if there is a building at any height (ok didn't test enough to say that, but you get the idea) in the path of the tunnel, you can't bore it (when in reality it should be miles beneath).


Interesting side-notes:
You can actually "connect" a junction at ground level from midway along a tunnel. You get one piece of insane grade on each side of the junction. I didn't try how that affects running in a real game, but momentum mechanics probably mean in most cases the train wont lose much speed.

Bug in tunnels.jpg

If you wondered what is "inside" a tunnel, here you go:

Tunnel innards.jpg

[Gumboots]

Bummer about the hiding. Anyway, I remember that tunnel jumping thing from when I was playing with that "completely OTT eye candy" sandbox with the huge waterfalls. If you run a bit of track across ground that's above a tunnel, it totally screws the tunnel. The only way to fix it is to re-bore the tunnel from scratch.

I'd be inclined to put a strip of no seeding no nothing at all territory above the path of the tunnel. That way it won't get screwed by the game engine after someone bores it.

Tell ya what. If you're really keen to hide it I could whip up a customs house or some other superfluous building skinned as a huge boulder or whatever. Drop one of those at each each and you won't see the tunnel. Then destroy buildings in that territory before opening it and confiscating the track.

[RulerofRails]

I'd be inclined to put a strip of no seeding no nothing at all territory above the path of the tunnel. That way it won't get screwed by the game engine after someone bores it.

Using reserve cells works just as well I believe. But good point, JSS hadn't gotten to put reserve cells there. They are used quite a bit on the main path.

Tell ya what. If you're really keen to hide it I could whip up a customs house or some other superfluous building skinned as a huge boulder or whatever. Drop one of those at each each and you won't see the tunnel. Then destroy buildings in that territory before opening it and confiscating the track.

Thanks for the offer. Would this mean that an extra file is needed? Up to this point I have tried hard to avoid needing extra files. For example tweaks to price (it had +20% cargo prices before) and to the Steel Mill (at one time I wanted to do 2 Iron + 1 Coal conversion) could have been handled with drop-in-files. But I worked on other solutions that avoided the extra files.

[Gumboots]

Reserved cells would be fine, and are easier to implement. I had forgotten about those.
And yes, it would mean extra files. Understandable if you want to avoid those.

[RulerofRails]

The tunnel event coding is just about finished. Now I was looking into Goods to Petain. I wanted to try to prevent most exploits by making stations much more expensive in a zone (hidden territory) wherever a large station can overlap the Petain warehouse or station. However, I realized there is an obvious problem: the AI has a station there (neighboring cell). It's a simple thing to hook to it and start some re-hauls.

I could go down the route of correcting haulage between the two. (I'm not sure I can protect against a train that sets off and is then re-routed back to start station???) Bit more involved events needed in 1.05, but doable.

I did have a thought just a bit ago about using revenue, but my initial enthusiasm for this cooled to the point I don't know which is a better option. Which is why I am asking if someone has an idea. . . .

One of the things I did since the version in the OP is swap the Petain Warehouse for one which demands lots of Goods. But ok, with the way things are there is still a Port at Hope with the same recipe. And that recipe demands Livestock and Steel. So it goes like this: a revenue to Territory goal is going to end up encouraging hauling products (Livestock/Steel which can be sourced at $50k even up to close to $100k per load) to Petain that are destined for Hope. And of course it's a backtrack on the journey since Petain is "beyond Hope."



ETA:
I'm using LTD haulage, so the correction on haulage isn't actually that hard. There's no time pressure such as year end on YTD hauls. And my accuracy is set to matter in 50 load increments.

The basics of the idea are to use 3 Petain territory variables, TV2, TV3 and TV4.

It can be done with as little as two events (weekly setting).

1st event:
IF
LTD Goods by Company to Terr. > TV2

Then
TV2 +1
TV4 +1


2nd event:
IF
LTD Goods by Company from Terr. > TV3

Then
TV3 +1
TV4 -1

These could be repeated (same events ran twice) for more accuracy. But 52 loads per year is probably fast enough, IDK. TV4 is the corrected LTD haulage figure.

What I might do is put a trigger to try to detect cheating if players are hauling a lot of Goods from Terr. in a year. Such as if you haul 20+ that year. First a warning. Afterwards, if it happens again maybe the whole mechanism to get points from Goods haulage may be deactivated. (The consumption at the warehouse is set to 48, which means it should consume 24 loads per year).


In the end the AI may take the Goods from the territory for you and you could haul them back. If you go to that trouble, well I think your scheming cannot be stopped.

[Gumboots]

I'm not sure I can protect against a train that sets off and is then re-routed back to start station???

Don't think so. If someone is that determined to cheat you might as well let them. They'll find a way to anyway.

[RulerofRails]

I'm not sure I can protect against a train that sets off and is then re-routed back to start station???

Don't think so. If someone is that determined to cheat you might as well let them. They'll find a way to anyway.

Turned out to be no problem. When that happens both the "FROM" count and the "TO" count record the haulage.