Committee of shareholders??

[Fitch]

Ok I've got a few questions all concerning the same thing.....

So here I am, I've managed to get ahold of full ownership of my Railroad, I own 100% of the Stock....and I've managed to accumulate a significant amount of personal Cash.....Railroad A, my Original Line, we'll call it the TH&I, is running itself very smoothly, and is making a tidy profit, even in a Depression Economy, and has a Very Large amount of Cash Reserve.......So I decide to venture off and start my own New Railroad in an as of yet Un-Tapped portion of the map........So I start my new company up....Of course this effectivly "resigns" me from my chairmanship of the TH&I(no problem knew this was coming)...after a few years of running my new company I Decide to merge my 2 railroads together to maximize my profits......My New Railroad cannot afford to purchase my original, and since the TH&I has a good deal of money on hand I Decide to use it to handle the merger......So I go to "re-assume" chairmanship and a funny thing catches my eye...my Railroad, of which I am the SOLE Stockholder, is being run by a "Committee of Shareholders", How is this possible?? I'm THE shareholder.......Well I Figure this is just some RT2 Technical stuff so I come back to the TH&I and to my Utter horror discover that this Mystery Committee has changed ALL of my Trains.....I now have TWICE the Trains I had....Practically ALL of my Consists AND their Associated Power has been changed...and not only that but this Committee has Squandered Every Last Penny in the Cash Reserves, this was cash amounting to well OVER $10 Million...and all in a span of Less then 6 years.......What happened??

so my questions...

who is this Mystery "Committee of Shareholders"? As Sole shareholder, I Would assume I should have some say in the Lines Dealings.....

and How do I keep them from Changing EVERYTHING I've done to make this railroad opperate at a constent Profit??

this really has me irked...as I have a "system" when I'm playing......I try to go for Fleet Commonality....Either All Loco's are the Same or at the Very Least All Passenger Locos are the Same and all Freight Locos are the same...and I Also "Express" all of my Passengers and "Regular" all my Freights...unless it's something special....I come back and find I've gone from having the American 4-4-0's for Passenger Service and the Consolidated 2-8-0 for Freight..to having about 3 or 4 of EVERY Steam type avalible and ALL of my trains have become "Regulars".......and th ecompany was in Debt all of the sudden.....

I realize with the Whole Shareholders committee I'm probably S.O.L. with as it's a built in thing...but there HAS to be a way to prevent them from screwing with what I've done..as People talk about starting AI Lines to provide their Main Line with Material..and that alone means that the Person is setting up the Consi's and they are staying that way when they Hand the Feeder over to the Comp....

Please help..

thanks

[Gwizz]

Your butting your head against a common problem with the game that is not uncommon in the real world.  A friend ran for a state office and won.  He left his business in the hands of a trusted employee who quickly bankrupted it.

When I set up an AI, I normally leave the original AI rails alone if it is a profitable AI.  If not I change it to make it profitable to balance any expenses I may cause it. 

Then, I use AI money to build one station spurs, that serve one of my stations on my RR.  These spurs are isolated from the original AI trackage and normally serve one type of industry.  The AI locos haul cargo to my station and return empty (no caboose) to the one industry for more cargo.  I try to give the AI low value cargo to pick up that my station can convert into higher value cargo.   I always do this on pause so the committee stays idle and can't change my trains.

If you find other ways to skirt this problem lets us know.  I enjoy drop shipping since it is more like real life railroading.

[RTPlayer]

I normally start different railroads without changing companies-if the scenario doesn't require that you lay all your track connected.  For example, in North America I start a railroad up and down the eastern US, then start one between Mexico City and Guadalajara, then start one serving the three cities in Cuba, depending on what my multiplayer buddies do.

[akuenzi]

I've noticed this before as well, much to my consternation. Now I never hit unpause unless I'm back safe in my main company. If there is a wishlist for changes in a future version, one would be to have the ability to cancel out this 'committee.' There are people who head up multiple businesses, and are able to make decisions in all of them on a similar time span. It would be nice to be able to do that in this game.

While we're at it, this game limits a person's ability to pay out a dividend because the 'board of directors' feels the company can't afford it. This is always an annoying limitation, especially when the time comes that I own 100% of my railroad. What board? I am the board! :) In real life, dividends are made from wholly owned companies all the time, many times at the complete whim of the owner, and many times in instances where no dividends should be paid... but this would add an interesting wrinkle to the game if it would allow us to 'waste' all of our cash and more on a dividend! Instead, the only way we can get our money out seems to be through the stockmarket, and having the company buy back shares to prop up the price, all while we have it on 'pause.' I know there are back room deals, but this seems more unrealistic than allowing a company to issue a dividend to its sole owner at any time.

[jeffryfisher]

my Original Line, we'll call it the TH&I, is running itself very smoothly, and is making a tidy profit, even in a Depression Economy, and has a Very Large amount of Cash Reserve...

$10M is a comfortable early-game cushion, but to qualify as "very large", you need multiple hundreds of millions (even an AI can pile up half a billion)

I start my new company up....Of course this effectivly "resigns" me from my chairmanship of the TH&I(no problem knew this was coming)...after a few years of running my new company

Uh oh, you ran the clock? The AI doesn't think like we do. To get it to act as care-taker, you need to put it into a straight-jacket (generally having no cash helps).

my (first) Railroad, of which I am the SOLE Stockholder, is being run by a "Committee of Shareholders"

This is a line of text out of the default2.lng file. All it means is that none of the player-characters (Stanford, Hopkins, etc or your own avatar) has been elected chairman. In my modded version of the file, I changed the text to read "No Chairman: This company is being run by monkeys from the zoo", which gives a more accurate picture of the quality of management.

so I come back to the TH&I and to my Utter horror discover that this Mystery Committee has changed ALL of my Trains...

Yep, that's what happens when you abdicate control to a machine that could barely run an elevator, much less a railroad network.

this Committee has Squandered Every Last Penny in the Cash Reserves, this was cash amounting to well OVER $10 Million...and all in a span of Less then 6 years.

That's nothing. When I decide to "go transcontinental", I can burn through $20M in one "day" (on pause) building track, stations, trains and improvements.

As Sole shareholder, I Would assume I should have some say in the Lines Dealings.

Only if you exercise your control by voting yourself in as chairman. If you don't take the reins, then the horses run free, with about the intelligence of actual horses running a RR.

and How do I keep them from Changing EVERYTHING

Leave the company in debt. Better yet, don't leave the company. Instead, grow it to the places you want to develop. If disconnected track laying is allowed, then build detached systems without ever leaving "your" company.

there HAS to be a way to prevent them from screwing with what I've done.

What you ask requires access to the source code and the tools to compile it.

People talk about starting AI Lines to provide their Main Line with Material

That works when one makes moves with the game paused and the AI is left in a tightly constrained condition (no cash, broken track etc)

[RSimpkinuk57]

akuenzi: You can only pay out, as dividend, cash that the company has. So wait for that richly-loaded train to reach destination, THEN give the order. (Tbis is wrong in one respect: if I remember correctly a quarter of the dividend is paid every three months, so you should be able to set the annual rate to four times what the company has at the instant). To pay yourself (sole shareholder) more, the company must borrow (take out bonds).

In Britain, in the days of railway tycoons and companies, if the Chairman and his (amateur) board committees didn't pay attention, then the professionals would run their departments. The general manager might want to run some extra trains, only for tne Loco Superintendent (who not only bought and repaired the engines, but also controlled the running sheds and engine crews) to "take no orders from a jumped-up booking clerk". The loco man in turn could order a (desperately needed) new design of engine which the Chief Engineer (in charge of track maintenance) then banned as unsafe (too heavy) - after it arrived and had to be paid for, this really happened once.

regards, Richard

[immpy]

Sadly, the only way to keep them from TOTALLY screwing everything up is to keep a constant watch on them. I have been able to "guide" my AI Companies by making an annual visit (if you will) as long as Chairman switching or jumping is allowed in a particular game. I know it's tedious, but one must constantly check their consists and make the changes (if necessary) to maximize their efficiency. And check also their track layout, and improve it as necessary. Usually, the companies I take over are so poorly run by the time I arrive, that the changes I make are very effective in regards to their profit-making ability. As a rule, the AI generally do their absolute best efficiency-wise, and profit-wise, when they are newly formed companies. They proceed downhill quite quickly from that point. By jumping in, I am giving them that "like-new" feeling once again, and they make money as only they can. Who else can haul cattle to a city that only has a textile mill and still receive revenue for the cargo hauled? Only the AI. Annually stopping the game to check on them becomes a labor of love when you see their profits head upward rapidly. Remember this too, you don't have to own them, but you must be able to CONTROL them, meaning you need to be the majority shareholder. After doing this for a few years, you may then decide to make a merger with them. And when you succeed, not nearly as many changes will need to be made to their tracks, consists, etc. because you will have been addressing their issues all along. All of this is part of the enjoyment I receive from playing the game in this style. I realize it is not for everyone, but it must be done if one doesn't want the inmates to be running the asylum.

[jeffryfisher]

I run my games' AI companies differently: I run them out of business. When I decide the time is coming for me to build through the space occupied by one of them, I virtually sink the daggers by building into their most profitable cities and making them unprofitable (sucking out all of the express cargoes). A few years later, they kick the bucket and rip out their wretched track so I can replace it with something sane.

I prefer this to mergers because mergers put cash into the pockets of the same idiots who got in my way before, which means they'll start yet another RR with the quality of a chain-linked fence. Bankrupting puts those AI players where their stupidity belongs: in the gutter face down.

PS: One of my wish-list items for a remake of this (the best RR game ever) is that the computer-player algorithms would be written in a simple to use, human-readable scripting language and placed where an advanced player could mod them. The same script could then be used to write caretaker functions for one's own RR -- So you could delegate certain tedious operations to scripted "employees" who would handle the mundane but pause the game to alert you when they run into something odd.

[SD45]

On 2/19/2019 at 11:46 PM, immpy said:

Who else can haul cattle to a city that only has a textile mill and still receive revenue for the cargo hauled? Only the AI.

That might not be entirely the case. It's still very dependent on passengers. 

There's a map in the Platinum edition called "Local Industry". A few set-up events insures that there's no passengers to haul, and a extremely low amount of mail. (The point was to haul freight, lots and lots of freight.)

Result - When the AI encountered this, it ran itself into the ground, with no cash, trains totally stationary waiting for cargo that never came, and it declared bankruptcy twice. (Why it didn't disappear at that moment, I have no idea.) The company was worth next to nothing.

Because it had some useful trackage (the map was rather flat), I bought it for pennies on the dollar, leaving no money for its president to start another company, and then I threw away all of its trains (I know this can cause problems, but no bugs reared their ugly head, and I was lazy.). I eventually won the sliver, using said trackage to span across the map. 

Edited March 11, 2019 by SD45

[jeffryfisher]

30 minutes ago, SD45 said:

it declared bankruptcy twice. (Why it didn't disappear at that moment, I have no idea.)

If it was worth buying, then its debt probably did not yet exceed its equity value. Bankruptcy can be declared when a company is insolvent (lacks cash), but it will only be liquidated when it's so far in the hole that it has net negative equity (and you need to be running the game with the liquidate option turned on).

[SD45]

Now that makes sense. Because it was in such sad shape, it would've ended up with a net negative equity eventually, and I would've had to build that portion of track. (Not that it would've really mattered, I was rolling in cash.)

Edited March 11, 2019 by SD45