New Map: Athabasca

[JayEff]

A beta. I have a bit more painting of lakes and muskeg to do yet, but here is what I have so far.

Edit: Beta03 uploaded June 27.[attachment deleted by admin]

[JayEff]

:-[

The warehouses in Fort St. John and Fort McMurray, toys4us, is supposed to demand everything, especially toys, supply nothing. Error: it was programmed to supply toys. so I have uploaded again with corrections.

[belbincolne]

The 2nd upload isn't there  :-[ so perhaps you'll give it another try and then I'll give it a bash!

[JayEff]

The new map is there, the old one is not. I just downloaded it to check. They both had the same file name.

[belbincolne]

Played this 3 times. 1st couple where I railroaded as instructed I got nowhere - no goods appeared in the Athabasca area and after their first haul my train stopped running cos there was nothing to carry so I went bust.

The third time I went the industry route and did well out of it and after about four years built a line from Edmonton north to Fort McM and this now did well and money started rolling in so I was carrying lots of goods but NO toys as - when I packed up in 1986 - there had never been any demand for toys anywhere. Incidentally although I bought lots of chemical plants in the ATS area and ran VERY profitable trains to/from them - and the nearby wharehouses -  the plants never made a profit.

There was no demand for toys in either Fort McM or Fort StJ so it seems the new map is still wrong.

[JayEff]

Edit June 27:

[Removed thickheaded assertion that I have fixed the warehouses in the second beta.]

As you can see at the top, I am uploaded beta03 with warehouses fixed ???

The map is a bit easier now, but here are a few hints on getting going:

- You can make a lot of money buying or building industries along the CPR and CNR.

- Connect the mainlines to nearby decent sized cities like Fort Saskatchewan and Camrose. Personally I like to use Fort Saskatchewan as my launching pad for heading north.

- Leech income from small AI by connecting them to the mainlines. They will run along your track, and you have tremendous income potential there. When they go bust you can pick up their lines, and begin service with your own locos.

- Make sure meat is getting to the Calgary warehouse so that you can exchange for tiires to make weapons. There is a lot of demand for weapons but little supply. The weapons chain is one of the weakest, and I should probably strengthen it somehow. Remember also that there is rubber available from the western warehouses.

- To meet your revenue requirement serving to the tar sands, you can earn some money just hauling cargo from one part to another. You can pick one part of the field to build an oil refinery, another to build a plastic factory and move the product to Fort McMurray to be redistributed out of the area.

- Build steel mills in various parts of the map. Because of topography, they don't seed easily. Steel can be used to build goods, weapons, ammunition and autos.

[belbincolne]

Back from holiday I've given this another couple of tries because I like the map! I've managed to make piles of Company money and buy up my own company but, even when there's no  recession, the shares in the other two companies fluctuate so wildly that I have trouble staying alive and I own so many shares that selling some is no use because the resultant drop in price takes me further into debt. Will have to try again not buying quite so many!  I actually shipped 3 loads of toys in 20 years although there's still no demand for them.

[JayEff]

If you have one of the first two maps, I made the warehouses produce toys instead of demanding them. That was the problem. If you change everything to demand, it will run better. I have built plastic factories in the tar sands, made toys then shipped them to McMurray. In other tests, I set up my factories in Fort Saskatchewan or Westlock.

As for the ai they are meant to have a rough time. The Northern Alberta was an amalgamation of little railways across the north. You can merge with them if the book value is favourable, and it might make your company stronger. If you own nearly all the stock in the ai and not so much in your company your company can merge at a premium and you will make some good cash.

I am glad you like the map. I would appreciate suggestions to make it the kind of map people would enjoy. I have very few events, and haven't really decided whether to leave it alone or add some events, and what date range I should choose.

[belbincolne]

Well there's some odd things here. Thought I'd got v3 but maybe it was only v2 so I've downloaded again and will try with this. But the real oddity is the ai's - I've only had 2 Canadian Rail and Can Pac both of which are so big there's no hope of taking them over. Should there be more players to start with (perhaps there are in V3). Anyway I'll see when I play v3. Otherwise I've been using the same strategy as you suggest. Personally I like a few events to add interest - especially if there's two choices (or more) with differing outcomes - Orient Express is a good (perhaps too good) example - pity that one was so hard to win anyway becuase it would have been interesting to try to get gold by each of the eight(?) choices.

[JayEff]

You always have the choice at the beginning to add up to three more ai players. Every scenario has a maximum and minimum number of ai. They will usually start hopeless little companies you can gobble up. In this scenario they are meant to fail. It is companies like this that the specially formed NAR took over and ran as their own.

CPR and CNR run off map. In Canada they are giants. I cheated a bit to make them into big fish. While laying track for them I made an event that made all construction costs double. That gave them double the book value. Now if you check the editor, they get a nice, regular stipend, to represent yield from this unseen capital that is located off map. This also stabilized their income. Their fortunes rise and fall but basically they hang in there. They are not meant to be taken over. They are Canadian fixtures that will last forever, like Hudson Bay Company, Eaton's, Woolco, Woodwards, Pacific Western Air Lines, CP Air, Air Canada and Tim Horton's.

;)

What I have in mind is two separate missions.

1: 1929. In this reality, the NAR failed to get off the ground. It is up to you to connect northern Alberta, take over some failed lines at your option. It will incorporate historical events and some critical connections. Oil in the tar sands will be played down becuse it did not boom until the 1960s.

2: a 2004 mission. After years of serving the Athabasca Tar Sands the NAR line to Fort McMurray needs a complete rebuild. This one will have the toy delivery mission. I may also add some random global climate change events, and some stuff about Ballard cars. I will give the event choice some consideration. You could have a choice between delivering toys to McMurray, and something else to Fort St. John, or choose electric or Ballard-battery operated locomotives (make an R&D investment with a later payoff).

For the next while though this project is getting a bit of a rest. I am almost finished another one that will be posted shortly.

[JayEff]

Edit to add:

Oh, I found a small problem with the toys4us warehouse. It is programmed to appear randomly as a Fort McMurray building, so this does not always happen. In the release version I will make sure one is placed there, so there is always at least one.

[belbincolne]

Well I just finished another game and got bronze - probably could have upped this to silver with a bit better management. I know you can add players and thus AI's but as this was a beta I thought I should check it as you'd made it rather than change things. There's one puzzle on the Cash front - nothing to do with this scenario so I've put in a new post in the General section. Maybe you can answer it.