RSimpkinuk57

Jeffry, About mail: 1. I am quite convinced that "300 days to deliver" means only 200 days to put it aboard a train before it vanishes. 2. I am not convinced that having a post office makes any difference in that regard (whatever it may do to protect revenue from what mail IS collected). 3. I would like it to be 400 days to collect. 4. If one has a choice between leaving some mail behind or leaving some passengers behind, then as things are now it nearly always pays far better to leave the mail. I would like the mail to be worth somewhat more than the passengers (until about the 1960s). That needn't mean higher rates for mail than for passengers; make demand recovery as fast for mail as for passengers and the lower production rate will keep stations' mail Demand# at a higher level. On the more general point: my train arrives at a station and unloads. I select it, see that it is scheduled to take 3 carloads of passengers (for example) but there are 4 waiting, so order a fourth car added. In the time it takes to load the train, one carload has vanished. That is tantamount to the game saying, "Ha ha, I lied". Not acceptable (in the ideal version we are dreaming up). When the load is so close to vanishing that it cannot be picked up, it shouldn't be shown. On with the wish list: smaller ports (so as to fit more places on maps). Not 4x4 cells of ocean plus one of beach where the jetty comes ashore, just 2x2 (the platform with crane) with at least one corner on beach, at least one over ocean, and none on anything else.

I second that. Richard

Ah, now I understand. So shares are there to be bought, defending the price, if the victim can afford them. Fair dinkums. Leave things as they are. Cargo vanishing from trains: the way to prevent that (except for passengers and mail unless from ports) is to buy the industry it comes from, but of course not all maps allow that. My next undesirable: cargo at a station expiring during the time it takes to marshal the cars you've ordered added to a train (a train already there). Related to which: cars loaded at a station unload if you re-marshal, so their cargo can be lost too. Nice-to-have: replace "days to deliver" on car info box with "days to collect" (accurately!), and make post offices and the like explicitly extend the days-to-collect. More work - an indicator bar under each carload waiting at a station showing how close it is to expiring. Another nice-to-have (maybe you know already how to do this by changing data tables): make mail more valuable, and longer lasting. From what I read, government mail contracts were really important to railroads, even before adding the express delivery - parcels to a Brit like me - that RRT mail cars must also represent. Small towns could be satisfied by a daily passenger-and-mail run (one train a year at RRT scale), so the expiry time should never be less than a year (plus some margin for error).

A nice-to-have gameplay change I'd like: in Britain when our railways were being built in the 19th century, there were no sophisticated analysts working out company book values: share price was governed by the dividend relative to the bank rate. A chairman who tried to retain all the profits for expansion would find the share price dropping so the company would be unable to raise money on the stockmarket - or the bond market. He'd also risk being voted out by angry shareholders, if he withheld dividends so as to crash the share price and buy up all the shares himself. On the other hand, George Hudson could take out a bond, pay half of it out as a dividend, then on the basis of the resulting high share value issue more shares and take out more bonds. What is my suggestion: (1) stock price should either depend on dividend rate (mainly or entirely) or be subject to a ceiling dependent on dividend rate (2) the Board of Directors should insist on increasing a "too low" dividend if the company is profitable. regards, Richard

Hi Jeffry, I certainly have caught the original game red-handed deleting cargoes along with buildings, and I think TSC too. Buildings vanish (at random, depending on economic growth and how well a city is being served) at year end only. Losing the odd house from a city happens more often than losing a whole farm, mine, port or mill, and can be spotted by an empty passenger car on what had been a full train. Another undesirable: laying new track connected to old can change the grade of old track - for the worse - even several cells away from the junction. (Sometimes just inspecting grades can change them, especially I think if there is a train on the track, but relaying the track - at zero cost - often gets round this.) Something that feels wrong to me, but would be a gameplay change: I once tried short selling just for the fun of it, and noticed I could keep a negative number of shares in a company for the rest of the game (and had to if, subsequently, the target company bought back, or an AI tycoon bought, the last shares left in the open market). In my opinion when you short sell in one month, and don't cover your position by buying real shares the next, then your stockbroker should convert your shortfall into a cash deduction from your account, at the new share price, at the end of the second month. (Since this is cancelling an attempted sale, as opposed to an actual purchase, it should not affect the stock price.) Separate question arising: can you short sell a company when there are no shares left with outside investors? If so, should it be alllowed, seeing that the target cannot defend its share price by buying shares?

Undesirable: Game Play Trains that stop and wait for others should not "fade out" except for higher-priority trains (whether coming up behind, or crossing their path at a junction). This to prevent the perpetual queue-jumping (which human players can micro-manage, but which can completely mess up the AI on steep hills) whereby train 2 catches up train 1, stops, then cannot restart because train 3 behind, still going, is "treading on its tail". Game Weakness: AI not building stations outside cities to collect from industry out in the country. (I happen to like RT3's solution of the industry arranging its own transport to cities.) Nice-to-have: a zero-cost station type with no coverage, for somewhere to put e.g. extra sand (on steep grades) or water. Or some other way of achieving this with only the tower itself to pay for. Nice-to-have: when replacing a building (hotel, restaurant or the station itself) with a larger one, get back half the value of the old building. E.g. build a large station from scratch: cost 200. Build a medium station 100; upgrade it later to large, pay not a further 200 but only 150 for a total historic cost of 250. Nice-to-have: replace the "50% extra when supplied with X" by a simple, like everything else, "1 X -> 1Y" (e.g. 1 grain -> 1 cattle). Maybe keeping the free 2 a year (why 3 a year for cattle when 2 for everything else?). Maybe a limit (max 2 grain turned into cattle each year, plus the freebies) but then similar limits on other process industries' outputs.

another Undesirable: Game Play If an industry goes out of business, then of course it stops accepting or producing cargo; but cargo from it already on a train (perhaps two years old, two-thirds of its way across the continent to meet a "loads hauled" objective) should survive. (Ditto passengers and mail from vanished houses)

Hi Jeffry, organising my thoughts could take a while, so I'll start trickling a few at a time.... regards, Richard Undesirable: Game Play Builidng electric single track, then doubling it, is cheaper than building double electric. The company must be paying for doubling the rails but not for doubling the wires. % foreign track should be calculated separately for each car from loading point to unloading. In the Trans-Australia scenario I discovered by accident that if I carry loads on the "common" track as invited, but stop to pick up extra loads as soon as I am on my own track, then my company is "charged" whatever % it is of zero payment for the cargo staying on the train. Then when it all unloads at Perth (say), all loads have come on 100% my track since the last station stopped at so no foreign track fees are deducted.

"mxmtech" You can always use the editor to check the victory conditions. If I remember correctly, on that scenario it is an annual test and current personal net worth is always used, even if that is lower than you had it earlier. ... regards, Richard

I'm sure a high-salary manager will never consider applying to a tin-pot railroad. Nor a low-salary manager to a big railroad. 15 million a year sounds like big to me.

PS - as for the TGV, I cannot see the point of having the "1955 electric TGV prototype" in there at all, given that we already have the Shinkansen Bullet train from 1966. What were the game developers thinking? A French BB9200 (1957: dc) or BB16000 (1958: ac) electric locomotive would have been nice, with its ordinary service top speed of about 100mph (equal to the game's GG1 performance: was the latter really that good that early?). A British HST125 as the diesel contemporary to the TGV-Sudest would also have been nice.

Jeffry, just a minor point of historical interest. Yes, Mallard's speed record was a one-off specially-staged event in which the engine was driven hard enough to break down on its way home. The engine itself, though, was a standard production model: one of the LNER's A4 class, of which 35 were built 1935-38 (following on from 79 engines of classes A1 and A3, 1922-35). A further class (confusingly reusing the A1 designation) after WW2, when the emphasis was on slower trains with more passenger cars, controversially tinkered with the design for allegedly cheaper maintenance and/or better reliability. Two of the other three main British railways at the time (LMS and Southern) had roughly equivalent designs also put into series production in the 1930s and 1940s (respectively). The LNER DID have a one-off experimental engine built in 1929, no 10000 (never given a name), with a ship-building firm's boiler giving double the steam pressure of conventional railway designs. The experiment was abandoned in 1937, after which the engine, rebuilt with an ordinary boiler, looked and behaved like an A4 except for retaining its 4-6-4 wheel arrangement. ..regards, Richard

Akuenzi, by "overshoot" I meant that, (for example) having taken logs WEST from camp to mill, I'd look to deliver the resulting lumber somewhere EAST of the starting point...Richard

When people here write about "rot", I've always taken that to include not just loss of revenue but also the way that, if you leave cargo uncollected for long enough, it won't be there to collect any more (most noticeable with erratically-arriving mail). ..Richard

My guess - and that is all it is - is that you have used up all the allowed-for company ids and are stuck .. Richard

Jeffry, I agree with you on all those .. Richard

Regarding the initial questions, I've only ever played single player, only played campaign maps, and played much more vanilla RRT2 than platinum (TSC). I like micro-managing trains and taking a long time over a game (once I'm several years into a map then play a single year, save, eat a meal, open e-mail/browse websites/watch TV/listen to music, go to bed, come back next day). On (3) this means I seldom keep a loco on the same route for long. Rather, whenever a train unloads, I ask "what do I most need done next?" So if I've just unloaded grain (for the bakery), there are passengers waiting and some mail about to rot, and the incoming passenger/mail train is 2 months away, then I'll put the grain loco onto the passenger/mail run and let the passenger loco when it arrives take the food. Turning a train round blocks both tracks (the effect is worse in TSC), so if one train arrives from the east and one from the west (at about the same time) then I try to have each continue the way it was going (i.e. each takes the other's back-haul). Then I like to deliver where demand is high. Ideally this means one grain farm delivering to two bakeries alternately (unless of course the map is about making industry profits) which distribute their food to about four not-too-far-away towns/cities in rotation. So assuming the farm/mine at the start of the supply chain is in the country somewhere, then the route segment to go collect from it will be running light engine. If ever the same engine gets back to the same farm it will typically have done six to eight segments and I don't mind if one even of the city-to-city segments had to be done load-less: but if there's mail waiting I'll always take that seeing how quickly it "rots". On a small network when you start then "overshoot" is good, i.e. collect from the source in between two towns. That is, if "a" is logging camp (switching example for variety), B the town with lumber mill and C another town, then B-a-C is a better network than a-B-C. On (1) the map objectives (particularly on campaign maps) largely determine the choice of where to start but if they don't then my advice is to think strategically, that is put your first connection somewhere you have scope to expand. In the 19th Century I look not for the largest close-together cities but for good sized ones (or 6/7-house towns) a fair distance apart (up to 15 months' travel time), that are easy to connect. When engines are cheap and track is never electrified then stations (and my first roundhouse in about year 2!) are a significant investment so I look for maximum return per station, rather than per mile, or per train. (Repeat: go for easy connections: strike out across the plains first, don't struggle up mountains nor across too many rivers.) regards, Richard

I agree. In RRT3, maybe a greater choice of connected destinations would increase passenger numbers. In RRT2 I cannot believe it makes any difference at all. Each house generates "0.5 passengers per year". (It can be more or less than this according, amoung other things, to what part of what century one is playing in, but lets say that 0.5 it is.) Editing a map once, I placed 4 houses to make a town, and noticed that I always had four passemgers turn up at the station together. Which leads me to suspect a house always supplies a would-be passenger exactly 24 months after the last time. For houses generated randomly when a game starts, I guess each house's initial "year-month" is also determined randomly. Prosperity reduces the interval and recession lengthens it. When the economy changes you get "catch-up". ... Richard

Goodwill in territories where you have track goes up and down according to what you deliver, or fail to deliver (however that gets worked out). As it does, so does goodwill in territories you haven't bought rights in yet. Maybe you have a basic global goodwill with territory-specific modifiers. .. Richard

Jeffry: Passengers stop appearing after a train crashes? I've had crashes but never seen that one. Akuenzi, some more things to think about (by the way, some of this is from my experience with the original game; I don't know if TSC/Platinum is ever different) . (1) When an unloading train tells you how much each car-load has earned, this does not include all station and station-buildings revenue for passengers. I proved this when trying to work out whether buildings earn money from departing passengers, arriving passengers, or both (I did discover that, but have forgotten the answer). You need to watch how much your company cash goes up. That may mean going to the Income (and maintenance) page of the company accounts. (2) I'd like to think that not-collected-immediately cargo (including passengers) loses no revenue if eventually unloaded at paying destination within days-to-deliver of original appearance at departure station (but could be wrong). So long as it doesn't rot away completely before collection, that is. I seem to remember that time-to-collect is less than time-to-deliver. If you do exceed time then maybe penalties are exacted at different per-day rates for days uncollected (penalty reduced by post office/silo/whatever) and days on train/at drop-station. (Obviously red-flag drops are meant to represent loaded cars sitting in a marshalling yard.) (3) Distance for revenue calculations is straight-line from loading to unloading station, not distance travelled. Which is nasty if you need a 60-cell route round the ocean inlet or no-rights territory to connect cities only 20 cells apart. (4) Foreign mileage deductions can be cheated. Example: A to C is 40 cells of which the first 16 are foreign track: that is 40%. Now try calling at B, 20 cells from A, where nothing unloads. You "pay" 80% of nothing to the other company. Now when you unload at C you have come from B, entirely on your own track - but the cars loaded at A still earn according to the full A-C distance (they'd better!) (5) What does "increase by 20%" mean (for example) if there is more than one effect? Do two +20%s make a +40%, or do they make +44 (20% of 120 being 24)? regards, Richard

Just a guess, but besides moving the price of territory rights, maybe goodwill affects shareholder voting on mergers, also how much money the public will cough up should you start a new company...Richard

Hi Drewski, Warning: reworking maps to fix geographical and historical howlers can become more addictive even than playing the game. I've never played any of the scenario maps, only campaign ones; and of them only the 18 original plus (so far) the first 6 of TSC. But almost every one I played, if I knew (or looked up) anything about the countries depicted, I've spotted things wrong, so I expect you are finding a lot in South America. regards, Richard

Jeffry, one person's "really irritating bug" could be another person's favourite feature not-to-be-dropped! Who decides?

Big project indeed. What's the point - correction, objective? A close as possible to the original in case that becomes unobtainable? Or improved in some way? Will everyone agree on what way and to what extent? For what platform(s)? (I happen to think that a lot of what was done in RRT3 was a move in the right direction, and expect to play more of that when I get round to it.) On the positive side, is there open software available that could be used for subroutines e.g. for graphics? (zoom in and out? map rotation?)

Sounds like the answer must be to take the Steam-supplied .EXE and repeat the mods to that.