jeffryfisher

The game is unbalanced, especially in the early 1800s. Maybe it's just too easy to raise big bucks and build inter-city long lines decades before they emerged in real life. Still, you can make money on freight if the distance is short and the locomotive is cheap. Income shifts somewhat in the "2nd century", and then pax & mail dry up in the 1960s after the announcement of air travel. In my US History map, I gave certain freights some added value: You can reduce the costs of building rails by producing lumber and steel. I created some fuel cost triggers as well. And yes, I separate freight depots from passenger terminals in all but my lowest-traffic towns. It's also a good idea to keep slow freights on their own tracks where they won't be frozen out by a steady stream of express trains overrunning them. Carefully placed diagonal crossings can allow a network of freight lines to be completely isolated from an overlapping net of express lines.

I hear that -- But then we'd definitely need some visual compression on all map scales larger than Metra. Otherwise the trains look to be hundreds of miles long 😮

I just wish the source code had been kept by someone, but between Take2 and Sid Meyer's follow-on company, it was lost

Especially since all we have are old threads now -- But I still look for new messages every day. Open RT2 isn't being worked on, but the wish-list remains for the day when somebody figures out how to launch such a project.

I've enabled it in TSC, but it appeared as a mono-colored model without a skin. Given its cost, dates and effectiveness, it is never the best engine for any use case unless a bunch of other engines are left out of a scenario. I deactivated it again because I was never going to buy one. It's my understanding that it was a switch engine in RL, a use-case that is lost in a game about main line hauling. That may be why it was deactivated by the time RT2 upgraded to TSC.

Try pausing the game while building track and managing trains.

I don't know what you're trying to do. You can't play in an unchanging present. The best you can do is to clamp down on the start year. After that, history happens. You'd probably need to edit the game EXE to alter engine retirement years.

I was unaware of that limit. It sounds like a limitation in the program, so it's probably baked in.

There's also one unused loco in the data, but it's not skinned with this, It might fit though. As I recall, it was a switch engine not well suited for mainline service.

I've never played campaigns, so I don't have any good solutions. 😮 But one brute-force tactic would be to open up your saved game in the editor and see if you can avert the ending (turn off the "campaign" setting or some such). Be sure you save it only under a new name so you don't mess up your saved game. Good luck!

Aha - You're missing a vital factor: underlying terrain. Just as ports need sea terrain squares, logging camps need wooded terrain squares. W Australia is a desert. It doesn't make any sense for logging camps to be there. If you must have some, I suggest doing a little research on real-world logging in the Outback. You might just convince yourself to zero the logging and sawmill settings of your econ regions. If not, then be careful about adding forest (unless your real aim is to create a fantasy Australia that is wet and forested). An alternative is to import finished lumber via your ports.

They also hold space for adjoining stations, and if you have a company build a small or medium station in the editor, extra cells will automatically be reserved on either side of it so it can expand into a terminal later.

My memory is fuzzy, but I think there's a data table in every map that has rows for all building types, even those not placed or allowed, so my guess is that you can "fix" the port data even on a map whose port data has no actions/transactions.

Yes, I that's what I must have meant, since I never bothered to play maps where major cities failed to spawn at the start. I wonder how reserved tiles can keep land clear without spoiling city-spawning, but an industrial building on top of reserved tiles still ruins everything. I really expected my combo to work

You should be able to go a long way with monthly triggers that produce events (consequences). Do some low-effort experiments. By fussing with players and companies in the editor, you might be able to separate ownership from player-management. In addition to stopping stock sales, I think the editor can also set a company dividend and then lock dividend rates. The trick is to allow everything while editing and later block the actions you don't want players to do. Let us know how you do. Good luck! Jeff