Bannon

This map came up in recent discussion. I did a crude translation of the GERMAN using an online language translator and tried to clean it up as best as I could. Please do not let the poor translation reflect on the scenario author. Original German text is below. I admit, this is not much better, but I think you can figure out the victory conditions, except Gold I don't understand. ;D Well, I tried. ;) Here is a link to the map: http://theterminal.dune2k.com/?p=rrt3-files-maps&id=463 Fred Flodder was elected as the new president of the United States. As the first official act he assigns you to open the country by your railway company. No need to worry about access right as you have been granted full freedom of action from the president.

Rikki -- No problems. I recently learned to add a station myself no more than two months ago. ;D I always did it the hard way. I don't recall if it was in the manual or not. Here's what I do when rerouting an entire route -- if the train is already in motion, I slow the game speed down. I let it continue and delete all the other stations. Once, I add all the stations for my new route, I delete the last station once the train has reached if it is no longer on the new route. JayEff has the more capitalistic solution for sure... just build your own industry. He is a real magnet. ;) How likely is it with the low traffic around these forums to get an near instantaneus post? Could it be a RT3 revival in the making? :D Bannon

Hello, Rikki. Welcome to the forums. As you can probably tell, there isn't much activity here... old game at this stage. But, I for one still enjoy this game a lot. 1) Yes... this is a problem. You can try doing "manual consist" (forget the term). So your train moves from Station A with a certain cargo, it automatically drops it off at Station B and you want to move it to Station C. What I think the AI wants to do is always determine what cargo it can move for the highest profit, so it might grab your carge anyway... but might not. If the cargo is clothes, for example, you can manually designate your consist to include clothes at Station B. I usually do this... add 3 loads of clothes (or however many you have), then "any cargo" for the rest of the cars. If you have a six car train, I set the minimum cars to 4 or 5. This way, the AI usually will pick up the clothes and then whatever else it wants, but with the minimum number set higher and since you just dropped off the clothes at Station B, they should be there in order to get reloaded. Experiment with this... since if yo don't have the minimum number of loads in the station, your train will wait until it get the rest of the cargos to move. I try to make is so the train can't leave without some of my desired cargo. 2) You can insert a station in the middle of a route by holding down the "shift" key. On your list, select the station BELOW the spot where you want to insert the new station, hold shift and click on the new station. 3) Good question. I played RT3 multiplayer once. Had about 4 players in game. But my connection stunk, so it dropped me. I will have DSL next week and I would be curious to try again. Anyone else play RT3 multiplayer?? Bannon

Interesting idea, Gwizzz. I'll experiment with the destroy event to get rid of a "war" port. Yes.. this post came first. I had some other ideas as I posted over at Hawkdawg's.

Hello all -- My first post one this forum (sorry to report this is mostly a cross post from the one I just left at The Terminal ) I'm looking for a good map of the US. I have the "coast to coast" map and I think there must be a better map. The terrain seems to be somewhat "layered" with large inclines leading up to plateau areas. Some of the shore lines along the Great Lakes are extremely steep. And it could use more minor cities in order to build branch lines (like Albany, NY and Flint, MI for example). I've been poking around with it. I deleted all of the conditions except the historical ones and I have been interested in the challenge of making a Great Depression situation. But, in general, what I want is a good "sand box" like map with no real conditions. I like to open the map up to 10 or so AI companies and build like crazy. Last company standing kind of thing. Speaking of Depression scenarios... there was once a map called "Money, Money, Money". (I believe). I believe the author was Dutch. All the text was non-English. The scenario worked well until the great economic crash and then it seemed to get buggy. The map of the US was good at least from what I remember. Anyone have this map? Also -- is there a guide to economic editing? I saw some stuff in the guts of the "coast to coast" scenario I did not understand. Something like "set economy to condition 1." I am assuming this is typical rise and fall of the economy. Can anyone suggest a scenario based on the Depression or one that has a more detailed "realistic" ebb and flow? Also -- I'm thinking about war time situations. Can you make a "war time" port exist for a couple of years and then go away? Thanks, Bannon --- updated this post with the other Q's I added at Hawkdawg's. I have the feeling I'm talking to the same very small crowd anyway. Viva RRT!

Redband -- go to hear from you. I will download the revised map and play again sometime. This is one of the top 5 RT3 maps. Good work! Bannon

This one is difficult to start. I started in Santa Fe to Rosario. This is difficult because you will need two bridges to start with. I used wooden and upgraded later (don't make mistake I did and build your station too close to the bridge... I had to demolish station too!). Some of the benefits include access to rivers which will bring in some of the commodities you need, close-by cities which enable you to grow a profitable RR, and a density (relatively) of industries that will generate cargos (although, not the ones you need most.) I expanded south toward Buenos Aires and had a very profitable line running before long. The next major jump I made was to link up the port city of Bahia Blanca. This turned into a gold mine on several levels. Lots of wool for which I dedicated several trains to haul back up to my main line. I made a very profitable branch line based on some of the cities to the north-west of Bahia Blanca that had barracks (General Pico and Colonel Something, etc. -- about 4 towns in all). Everything was going great until I crashed near the end. I can't even load the auto-save without and immediate crash. So, I will eventually have to start this one all over. This one starts slow. Be carefull about over expansion early on. I usually wait until I have an "A" rating before I do bonds. Otherwise the interest will kill a struggling RR. Be patient... the cash will roll in later. Good luck, Bannon

Finally got around to playing this scenario. A great one! Started in Philadelphia this time. Many warehouses in the surrounding cities. This quickly became a "beer empire" as that was the plentiful commodity and there were many warehouses with demand. After 5 years or so, I realized I was never going to make the steel and oil cargos situated in eastern PA. I started my steel empire based in Uniontown. Great confluence of the coal and iron fields plus Pittsburgh is set up as a steel magnet with several industries requiring steel. I had an upgraded steel mill cranking out mega tons and huge profit! I played with 6 AI competitors on expert level. Look out for one of the early scenario options. Early on you are offered a decision... something to the affect of quicker station turn-around, etc. I chose the lump sum cash option -- a million dollars to your personal bank account! Logically, you would use this to buy stock. It appears the other AI players also received a wad of cash as well. So, all of the available stock at the time was scooped up quickly. I don't know if the AI players automatically get the same option you choose or not... but this did not work out to a great gain for me since one of my strategies is to gain controlling interest (51% of stock) in nearby competitors. Overall, the AI companies do OK. A few of them were successful but did not cause me too much trouble. The others ran into trouble and were eventually liquidated. The trouble they had was with track layout. Even a few small hills could spell bankruptcy for them... especially with the weaker early engines. I bought up some of the liquidated companies and rerouted the track around the hills and made the route profitable. I acquired better situated AI companies as I went. All together maybe 12-14 companies were formed during the game... about half were viable. I got the Gold... but I really didn't achieve all the goals. Bronze is 1500 oil, 750 coal & iron and 500 steel. Silver is $1,000,000,000 in cummulative company revenue. (That's $1 BILLION!). Gold is PNW of $250 million. I achieved bronze and gold requirements in 46 years (and the game automatically ended when I cross $250 PNW), but my company revenue was only about $850 M. I might have been able to pull it off in another 4 years, but it would have been close. I had just acquired a sizeable AI company and it was difficult to re-engineer its track... and I spent about $100M doing it. (The AI had one route going directly over the ridge of a mountain range! Lengthwise... not over the hump!) This is a great scenario that is well researched by the designers. Maybe a couple of bugs like the victory condition. I also had trouble getting Oil Refineries to work... not sure if this needs some sort of fix or just a fluke. If you take on this challenge... remember you are running a marathon. You need to keep expanding and looking for opportunies even in the early game. Don't loose track of the time because the goals are very high. Let's hear how you do. PS -- I'll have to check out the "revised" map.

That's it! Pennsylvania 1855. (It's a RT3 map) Thanks, guys. Hawks, thanks for the link... downloading now. I recommend this one to everyone. Very challenging. The goal is very high and you need to constantly work toward it. I think I made silver (or bronze :-[ ) when I played last. Bannon

Belbincolne -- You are correct that you are paying interest on the margin. I have no idea how high the interest rate is, but I would expect it to be somewhat high. When you go substantially into debt as an individual, the quickest way out is to acquire a company -- provided you own a substantial amount of stock in the target company. When acquiring, ideally I own 50%+ of the target company stock -- that way I can set my own price for the aquisition. Pay the minimum amount for the company in normal circumstances. If heavily in debt and you own a lot of the company's stock -- overpay for the target company. Whatever percentage of the target company you own -- that money goes directly in your pocket. Another way to transfer money from your company back to you. ;)

Hi all -- glad to see the Terminal is still here. I recently had to replace my hard drive and did not back it up entirely. Since reloading RT3, I've had a renewed interest in the game. I'm trying to locate a challenging map but I don't see it here. It was set in Pennsylvania. It was a very large map but covered only PA with a few cities in Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. The object was to haul a lot of Oil and Steel and have high Personal Wealth (if I recall correctly). From what I remember, the victory conditions were very high, but attainable. It is not "Prince of Steel." Anyone remember a map like this? Thanks, Bannon

Yes, that is correct. You are paid a dividend quarterly -- end of March, June, Sept., and Dec. You don't receive the full $1 per share at this time... but 25% of it (since it is quarterly! :) ) (You can watch the figures of your "cash" change at the end of the month). I play aggressively and generally go deep into debt with my purchasing power. I try to own at least 25% of my own companies stock... the more the better. If things get tight, I will increase the dividend rate substantially (if my RR has lots of cash on hand). This way, I am using my RR's cash-on-hand as my own piggy bank. A high dividend transfers the money to me. Word of caution though... this makes your stock very attractive to the AI players and they may start to buy your stock.

Jay -- I believe dividends are paid quarterly (end of month at March, June, Sept. and Dec.). So if you are only maximizing your payouts in Dec. you are missing quite a bit of cash overall. Please correct me if I am wrong on this payout schedule.

Hi all -- Recently played this map and was having a good time until the depression sequence hit. Can someone explain what happens? The economy crashes of course and all companies lose all cash and have a 100,000 K deficit. OK... that is a good challenge. But things did not work normally beyond that. My revenue seemed to be DEDUCTING from my cash instead of adding to it. Needless to say, my very strong company soon went bankrupt... as did all the others. AI companies with F rating where borrowing money like crazy as well. Is this a fatal flaw to this map or is their someway to beat this situation? Good map of the USA otherwise. Oh... BTW... I don't understand Dutch, so if someone can give me an overview of the map victory conditions, that might help as well! Hang Em High (ahahah... that was the only English in the Depression dialogue... funny). Thanks!