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

[RulerofRails]

This map was previously released in a beta state. JSS, the author had done a lot more versions since the release, but remained in a work-ongoing state so wasn't released. He kindly sent me the latest version and I have done my best to go through it to make sure everything is working correctly. Bear in mind, this is among the most detailed maps ever made. There are over 400 events!

If you haven't tried this map before, it's a historical scenario. Your initial task is to build the historical route in a similar time frame. I can assure that JSS has crafted a great number of choices and decisions for you to make along the way. Did I mention there are over 580 events?

The scenery and route grading are top notch. If you see water cells (only visible thanks to reflection) those are hiding the visible territory border of out-of-bounds areas. An ingenious solution for sure.

The setup of mines and smelters (represented by Steel Mills) and the haulage needed for supplying the smelters is probably the best that has been done in RT3. It remains fairly solid against re-hauling cheats. But, better yet it feels natural to make use of the railway that you initially build.

If you want you can also focus on playing the stock market as an alternative win route. There are 19 companies in total and you can only get more industries by mergers, so there's lots of strategy here too.

SCBC start.jpg

Notes for beta 498:
- New chapter to build the tunnel

- 580 events now. The only time I noticed a drop in performance was when starting a new game. "Setting up Buildings" takes longer. I'm loading the map in about 40 secs now. Loading save-games is normal and gameplay is smooth, no real impact on in-game performance.

- Quite a few small bugs fixed

- Many, many tweaks. Especially to give the player better access to relevant information, especially in the ledger.

- Balancing out starting randomization has taken the leaner rather than the generous option thanks to JSS's input

- Tunnel approaches tweaked

- No more water cells hiding territory boundaries

- For now the newspapers are suspended. The map has enough events already and there are plenty of game relevant messages

- I experimented with shifting some labels, but at certain camera angles they always overlap. In my view they are informative. But if after seeing them a couple times they annoy you, shift+E and doze them.


When working on this I tried hard on the ledger to give relevant information in a condensed format. Because I spent so much time with this map, it's quite possible there are some information that I assume is known, but is actually omitted. I don't want to spoil the choices, but to give enough of an insight so as not to feel in the dark. I'm curious for any feedback/suggestions on this.


Enjoy!

SCBC1898 0-498.zip

[Gumboots]

Cool. I'll take a look at it. I've been idly messing with sandboxes a bit lately, and think I'm ready for a scenario.

If you see water cells (only visible thanks to reflection) those are hiding the visible territory border of out-of-bounds areas. An ingenious solution for sure.

I did look at the earlier beta and was wondering what those water cells were meant to do. If they're only hiding a border I'd be inclined to ditch them. You should be able to make the border invisible anyway, like I did with the "Livonian border" territory on the Latvia map. It still worked as it should, but wasn't visible when playing (ie: it mapped to the Latvia territory).

Obvious option here: Ditch the water cells, set track cost to +10,000%, set border to invisible, map to standard Canada territory (whatever it's called).

Edit: Took a quick look. At the start, when you get the option to look around, I think it'd be sensible to not make every possible loco available. It is 1898 after all, so having Red Devil's and whatever running around is a tad bonkers. I'd be inclined to drop the additional locos from that event. Anyone who wants to look around will be fine with locos that suit the timeframe.

[Gumboots]

With all the Lumber Company benefits, the combined Bank+Lumber Mill is a lethal starting strategy.

Just running a few quick tests.
1/ Taking over the lumber company is easy.
2/ Taking over the bank appears to be impossible. Tried a cold turkey merge at game start, both with and without buying available bank shares first (can't get a majority of them anyway) and with a range of merger offer prices. Merger invariably fails in all cases.

Edit: Ok, just started the game running after buying a few locos. Pop-up tells me I get all sorts of benefits from merging with the lumber company. One of these so-called benefits is a -20% reduction on logs and lumber prices. This actually reduces the profitability of logging camps and lumber mills.

Who thought that was a benefit?

Next problem: First tunnel out of Robson has terrible grades at the entrance and exit, regardless of which tunnel setting you use. The terrain needs works there. I think the problem is that the cliff facing the tunnel is too angled to allow the tunnel to sit flat. TBH it would probably be best to just ditch the tunnel entirely, but if you don't want to do that it should be possible to rework the terrain so the tunnel isn't borked.

[RulerofRails]

Please note that I didn't do anything to the terrain on the map so far. That is all JSS's original handiwork. I haven't gone into the history in depth, but I would dare to say that from what I have seen in terms of detail, I assume there were actually significant tunnels where the map has them.

The thing about using water to hide territory boundaries is that the player can go into territories and see where he isn't allowed to build, instead of guessing. If you turn water reflections off, you don't see that weird shimmering on the mountainsides.


What I found with the tunnel is that to lay it first, starting from the uphill side close to the mountain and at a slight diagonal with common setting can give very smooth entries. Something like this:

Smooth tunnel.jpg

You are right though, it could be tweaked a bit. I think even just to lower one of the vertices for each entry might help. I will look into it more later.


Bank/Lumber mergers.
I nerfed the Lumber merger bonuses, it's not as deadly as before. Previously it was -20% cheaper track, and -20% track maintenance as well. My thought with this merger was always that you were swapping a pile of cash for a consistent cash stream. What happens with track maintenance is that it's based on track cost, so in effect you were -40% on track maintenance cost throughout the game. On eventually $20-30M+ worth of track it's significant.

The 20% lower price is offset by 20% higher production. Also, until you manage to reach the Coal Mines far to the west you must rely on Lumber-Coal conversion at the Robson port to get Coal for your smelter. Guess what? Lower Lumber price makes this conversion do better = potential higher profit at your smelter.

In order to takeover the bank you need to encourage Jay Cooke to sell a couple of shares. The trade-off here is that it's a little waste of PNW to drive the price up enough to get him to sell out. If you are really aggressive you will have majority by March (he will sell enough on second month turnover), and the merge will cost only a little more than the cash you receive. This is a comparatively "easy" use of this technique because a low number of total shares makes it easier to run the price up.

Um, yep. I forgot to test the look-around mode. So that's an obvious thing I missed already.

[Gumboots]

Yes I figured the terrain was the original. I just think it would benefit from a slight adjustment. When you're operating with very limited track, frigging around with unconnected bits really is not appealing. Better if you can smoothly extend from the existing track.

I might do a quick run through building the whole route, and make a list of any problem areas.

You don't need the water to see where the territory is. Water doesn't even display on territory view, and any selected territory will be coloured.

Incidentally, that SU-General-1 event gives me these locos on my installation:

Set 2-6-4T Double Header Avail. to TRUE (Should be 2D2, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Atlantic 4-4-2 Avail. to TRUE
Set Baldwin 0-6-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be BE5/7, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Big Boy 4-8-8-4 Avail. to TRUE
Set BR 39 2-8-2 Avail. to TRUE (Should be the Deltic, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Challenger 4-6-6-4 Avail. to TRUE
Set Class 01 4-6-2 Avail. to TRUE
Set Class 500 4-6-0 Avail. to TRUE
Set Consolidation 2-8-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be EF66, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Kriegslok 2-10-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be E18, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Mogul 2-6-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be E412, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Norris 4-2-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be E60CP, according to .gmp event hex)
Set N&W A 2-6-6-4 Avail. to TRUE (Should be the Bipolar, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Norfolk Western Class J Avail. to TRUE (Should be ET22, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Orca NX462 Avail. to TRUE (Should be F3, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Planet 2-2-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be F45, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Red Devil 4-8-4 Avail. to TRUE (Should be 6/6 Crocodile, according to .gmp event hex)
Set S3 4-4-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be GG1, according to .gmp event hex)
Set LMR Samson Avail. to TRUE (Should be GP7, according to .gmp event hex)
Set H10 2-8-2 Avail. to TRUE
Set Northern 4-8-4 Avail. to TRUE
Set Pacific 4-6-2 Avail. to TRUE
Set Red Devil 4-8-4 Avail. to TRUE (Yes, it is listed twice)
Set Unknown Loco Avail. to TRUE (Should be SD90 MAC, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Unknown Loco Avail. to TRUE (Should be VL80T, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Unknown Loco Avail. to TRUE (Should be Class 460, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Class QJ Avail. to TRUE
Set Unknown Loco Avail. to TRUE (Should be GP35, according to .gmp event hex)
Set U1 Avail. to TRUE
Set Unknown Loco Avail. to TRUE (Should be the Zephyr, according to .gmp event hex)
Set BR 39 2-8-2 Avail. to TRUE (Should be the Deltic, according to .gmp event hex) (Yes, it is listed twice)
Set Class 500 4-6-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be C103, according to .gmp event hex) (Yes, it is listed twice)
Set Firefly 2-2-2 Avail. to TRUE (Should be the DD40AX, according to .gmp event hex)
Set Crampton 4-2-0 Avail. to TRUE (Should be Class 6E, according to .gmp event hex)

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Which is a very strange list. This here game engine is severely borked when it comes to loco lists.

In order to takeover the bank you need to encourage Jay Cooke to sell a couple of shares. The trade-off here is that it's a little waste of PNW to drive the price up enough to get him to sell out. If you are really aggressive you will have majority by March (he will sell enough on second month turnover)

Ah. I was trying it with the game paused at the start. I'll try it that way. PNW is no problem, since you have stacks anyway. I just bought all the available stock at the start of the game, and still had plenty of purchasing power.

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Come to think of it, IMO the map would benefit from fewer labels. They all tend to merge together and with the city names from some angles, making the visible text a bit of a mess. I don't think the labels are necessary. A few could be kept for prominent features, where they won't be in the way, but a lot of them could easily be ditched. I deliberately didn't use labels on the Latvia map, for this reason.

[RulerofRails]

What I meant about the territory is that if you go to territories view you can see at an overview where you are not allowed. The initial route is fairly clear, but further west for example getting out of Penticton will be a bit more difficult to find. The risks for hidden territory are that you could clip it a bit, the other thing is that with limited track you can't really investigate the entire run at once so there is a chance you head towards a dead-end without knowing it. How obvious are the routes that aren't beside a river the first time you see the map? I know that at first I was taking a different route out of Penticton.

But if it's not being an obvious help in knowing where to go at a larger-scale, then I have no problem in hiding that territory.

Each section has a route description, which mentions most of the rivers/lakes/rivers etc., that are labelled. This is a different way for a first-time player to get an overview of the route. Probably it's more useful (where you're supposed to go, vs. where you are not allowed to go) than the forbidden territory overview, but does require some reading.

Personally I don't often see the labels at angles where they can bunch because I'm normally in a cargo overview mode at higher zoom levels and I navigate by clicking on the mini-map. I would agree that a couple could be re-positioned better, but I'm reluctant to get rid of these without JSS's input.


I'm not sure what's wrong with the loco availability. Have you removed any locos from the install you are using? I tried to investigate this in the past, and I thought that evented locos should work correctly even if you have extra custom locos installed, but I didn't test what happens if some of the originals are removed. For example Gilligan's Isle I tested as working even with custom locos. That was 1.06, but still.

[Gumboots]

What I meant about the territory is that if you go to territories view you can see at an overview where you are not allowed.

Yes, I know, but that still applies even if there are no water cells on the boundaries. The water cells aren't useful when using the territory view.

The risks for hidden territory are that you could clip it a bit...

You could, but if the track cost is astronomical you will realise this as soon as you clip it. If the track costs is +10,000%, which IIRC I what I used for the "Livonian border", then a single track unit that would normally cost $4k will cost $404k.

How obvious are the routes that aren't beside a river the first time you see the map? I know that at first I was taking a different route out of Penticton.

IOW, the current indications aren't working anyway. I don't know about Penticton. So far I've only got to Midway, but it's pretty clear to that point, even without any guides. Another idea: the map has hardly any trees on it, and the area would have been forested at the time. You could use areas of forest to mark out the ground either side of the route.

TBH, on the route to Midway there's no incentive to build on the inaccessible territory anyway. Even if it was accessible, it's pointless going there. The obvious route is the same one you are meant to follow, so I can't see any need for an inaccessible territory there. It would only be a consideration if you were attempting to stop an AI doing stupid things with track.

One other thing: The events are set so you lose track if you don't use it, at the end of each month. I'd say that's too frequent. I know the idea is that you keep pushing along the route at roughly the original real life pace, but the amounts of track you're getting are piddling compared to the total distance so you'll be wanting to do heaps of other things to maintain interest. Making people lay piddling amounts of track every month is probably going to be nothing more than an irritation. There's no strategy in it. It may be better to have something like a three or six monthly check, with a player/company penalty of some sort if track hadn't been laid.

Speaking of which, the CA-Track Count 03-01 event seems pretty pointless to me. 20 track units is not enough to do anything worthwhile. Might as well either make it a decent offer, or ditch the event to simplify the coding. I'd say anything under 50 units is not worth bothering with, and frankly even 50 units is getting too low to interest me. If keeping it, I'd make it a duplicate of 02-01 and offer No/50/100.

Hmm. CA-Track Const-01-02: you get a pop-up saying labourers are available, and asking if you want to start building track. Yay! Of course you do. It's a train game. Result: 75 pieces of track. Say wot? That gets you nowhere. I'm getting the impression the scenario would be improved by going through the events with a fairly ruthless attitude. IMO offers should either be worthwhile, or should not be coded in the first place.

I'm not sure what's wrong with the loco availability. Have you removed any locos from the install you are using?

Sure. I've removed all the diesels and electrics. I never use them, so I don't want them getting in my way, so I ditch them.

The way they coded the loco list is how you would do it if you were specifically designing it to break as easily as possible. Ditto for the cargo list. What appears to be happening in most cases is that if a loco is missing it will pick the next one in the list. However, that still doesn't seem to explain all the cases listed above. I'm not sure what is happening with some of them.

What they should have done was code it to call locos and cargoes by ID number, which is not affected by name. That way it wouldn't matter which ones you had installed or removed. The ones that were called would work correctly as long as they were there, and any missing ones would just be skipped. I'd call that a basic 101 level coding failsafe, and have no idea why they didn't chose that option. Anyway, we're stuck with it.

I'll probably set up a custom loco list to suit myself anyway. For example, the Pennsy H3 is ideal for this map.

[RulerofRails]

Invisible territories don't show up in the territory list. But I'm going to get onto hiding it anyway.

Actually, you don't lose track you don't use. GV4 is your available track. There is a series of events: CA-Track Count ... . At the end of the month, these will re-add any unused track to GV4 (minus a little due to rounding). You can play the game competitively without caterpillar track laying.

There are two different track laying modes. One when a construction event is going (UnsuitforRail TV3=75) 75 units per month in summer/50 per month in winter, the other when there is no construction project (TV3=10/20) constant 10, 20 is special case. The events in question: one will appear during a construction event, the other when there is no project. These are the final fail-safe to running completely out of track.

When building the initial line you will receive enough track (GV4) to complete the line. Afterwards you will receive various offers of track purchase. Once the official routes are completed, every year you will be able to buy and build a decent amount of track (proper construction mode) from May to November, 75 every month except only 50 in October and November (possible 475 units per year) without any sort of caterpillar stuff.

BTW, CA-Track Const-01-02 does more than you might think. This event will start a construction project (May to November) later in the game. (CV4 handles construction projects.) Thing is that this comes after the master track control : CA-Rail Const.-01-01. The (75) buildable track pieces here are just to simulate for one month what CA-Rail Const.-01-01 would have done during the month of May, if it were later in the list. I did that because I couldn't be bothered shifting events around (I don't dare to actually move any, the one time I tried that the order priority of others completely failed). I suppose I could have also set it to fire at the end of April instead beginning of May. But it's tested as working this way.

Included in the track system are events to give you choices on how you manage your employees: rest/visits/security etc.. I don't want to spoil everything, but it's possible to get some Tycoon points out of those.

I added the Pennsy H3 into the map loco table already (ticked). In my install (haven't removed any locos), if Pennsy H3 is installed I can use it.

[Gumboots]

Actually, you don't lose track you don't use. GV4 is your available track. There is a series of events: CA-Track Count ... . At the end of the month, these will re-add any unused track to GV4 (minus a little due to rounding).

Seems pointless. Why not just a simple "Track units +whatever", instead of the rigmarole of resetting track to a fixed amount, then calculating how much to re-add to that to make up for the loss of residual track? I can't see the point of complicating it with the extra conditionals. The simple way makes more sense to me.

These are the final fail-safe to running completely out of track.

Does it matter? It's perfectly normal to temporarily run yourself out of track in limited track scenarios. It's how most people play them, AFAIK.

[RulerofRails]

There would be issues with a +track system with the seasons. You would need to reset for each season and then you would really lose some track allowance since 1.05 doesn't allow you to add variables (if you didn't do similar again). The current system is working (as far as I can tell). I hope you understand that I'm not really looking to, nor have time to, re-do concepts like this.