Electrification Glitch

[jeffryfisher]

Electrifying track on a crowded map means sometimes electrifying some competing companies' tracks for them because you simply must get across. It's sad because your competitor owns your improvement, but sometimes there's no (easy) way around.

What adds injury to insult is that it seems that one cannot put electricity onto an opponent's bridge. While testing, I discovered that I could pay for the improvement two or more times, but my shiny new GG1's couldn't find a route until I had bulldozed a distillery and built my own track with my own bridge through a very crowded New England.

I suppose I should be glad that I can even improve competing track. There was once a competitor's (wooden) bridge at a choke-point into NYC. I was willing to improve it to double-tracked stone at my own expense just so I could get in, but the game wouldn't let me. So I bought out the competitor, disposed of his worthless old engines, and proceeded with necessary improvements. Unfortunately, merger isn't always an option. Some enemy CEOs are unwilling to sell, and some companies go so far into debt that they're virtually radioactive.

[cogeo]

Well, if you want to cross a competitor's tracks, you will pay some small fees anyways (a percentage of your revenues - costs are all yours), for using the foreign track. And as I'm quite obsessed with building level and straight track, I prefer to avoid it as far as I can (AI's often build auful, stupidly-laid tracks). And don't worry, the competitor may "own" your improvement, but will never utilise it, as it will neither electrify track, nor buy electric engines.

AIs often do dumb things, like poorly-built trackage, or even dumping pax and freight to destinations that do no demand them. Industries "serviced" by AI companies will almost always be in the red (if it happens to be profitable will only be by accident). There's a stupid bug too, AIs replace engines at 25 yrs of age, but these engines are then replaced EVERY year, by the end of Janurary. That's why thay appear to pay so much for "Engine Maintenance". So AIs older than 25 yrs are doomed to fail sometime. They will not be in position to upgrade some of their old engines anymore, and when they get some revenue, it will be used for replacing their 1-yr old engines first! The others will be getting older and older, incurring high maintenance costs. It may even be quite safe to sell stocks of such companies short!

So that's why I avoid any give and take with AIs, not only their assets are usually worthless (you will most probably want to bulldoze tracks, re-arrange stations, retire engines etc etc), in the case of "shared" stations and industries they can cause you big losses, by dumping cargos here and there. If you are a little patient, most probably they will go themselves.

Btw, have you decoded the engines section? Just want to fix so things. This game is incredibly American-biased! The Mallard can't be less reliable than the original Pacifics, built 30 years earlier. Neither the Thaly's have a reliabilty rating of "Poor", while the GG1s, built in the 30's be "Outstanding"; and it was an engine type known to have problems even wiht cold weather! The modern European high-speed electrics are even prohibitively expensive to operate too.

[jeffryfisher]

Well, if you want to cross a competitor's tracks, you will pay some small fees anyways (a percentage of your revenues

I hate the formula. If you run all on foreign track, then you lose all revenue -- and may pay station fees to boot. Trackage should eat from only part of the revenue pie, leaving another part for the person providing the engine and fuel.

as I'm quite obsessed with building level and straight track, I prefer to avoid it as far as I can

I not only do my "level" best to avoid touching foreign track, I also minimize intersections with my own, preferring diagonal-point crossings whenever possible.

Another pitfall: Once you lay a track connecting to (not just crossing at right-angles) foreign track, you may never delete it (unless you merge the foreign company, making it your own. I don't know why, but the game's "may not delete another company's track" test is triggered when I try to delete the last segment of a track that joins another company's.

competitor may "own" your improvement, but will never utilise it, as it will neither electrify track, nor buy electric engines.

That gives me an evil idea for a new map... I wonder what the AI will do if the only engines in the game are electric ones?

AIs often do dumb things, like poorly-built trackage, or even dumping pax and freight to destinations that do no demand them.

It's fair to say that the AI rarely builds good track. It's station placement is never diagonal, causing some bizarre loops, especially where rivers and buildings conspire to limit approach angles. Perhaps most humiliating, the AI often undersizes its stations, leaving out many, sometimes most of a town's houses.

There's a stupid bug too, AIs replace engines at 25 yrs of age, but these engines are then replaced EVERY year

Wow, that is stupid. However, I can see how it happened. The program must test engine age when deciding to replace it. By accident, the programmer must have used a variable for the train's age, so it replaces its engine every year after reaching age 25.

If you are a little patient, most probably they will go themselves.

It's my theory that if a map is set so that the CEO of a company "cannot be fired", then bankrupt companies will never be liquidated. I need the simplicity of CEO == Company for some of my complex event trickery to work, so my US History map has such a setting. Some of the AIs that overbuilt wretched, ruinous track are now being eaten alive property taxes and the interest on their exponentially growing cash debt. One of them was $50 mil in the red last year and will plummet through neg $1 Billion in a couple years.

Btw, have you decoded the engines section?

Most of it. I've parsed all of the fields and discerned the meanings of most that correspond to published game characteristics. See the "modding RT2" thread for that discussion and the speadsheet that I uploaded.

The Mallard can't be less reliable than the original Pacifics, built 30 years earlier.

Another thought is that some of the more extreme engines were only prototypes, much more prone to problems than fully-evolved designs. Mallard is the epitome of this, being the name of a one-of-a-kind modded A4 created specifically for setting the 126mph speed record (and it suffered a breakdown in the process, limping home after overheating one of its cylinders). More "typical" A4s (and there were only 35 of those) did 90 in regular passenger/mail service.

the Thaly's have a reliabilty rating of "Poor"

My sheet says average. Maybe there are differences between game versions.

Reliability is a slippery concept in this game. Because speed, load and track-grade (which includes cornering) affect breakdown chance, a new, more powerful loco can have greater breakdown chance than its predecessor even if the new engine has a better rating. Where this becomes especially confusing is when choosing ratings for newer, faster locos. The game's data analyst may not have accounted for the affect that speed would have.

My opinion is that trains break down and crash too often in this game. My maps have a number of events to empower players to invest in safety.

Also, I think that there is some date-related safety improvement in the background. Maybe Gwizz can confirm.

while the GG1s, built in the 30's be "Outstanding"

That engine design's service spanned decades, so it's stats may have been based on later-year performance. This could have been exaggerated by hyper-conservative safety regulations in the US that (for instance) mandated cab-signaling, automatic stop etc and established speed limits far below what the GG1 does in the game.

BTW, did you ever stand near a track as a train approached from maybe a mile away? Do you recall hearing a whirring, "hot-water" sound with lots of ticking in it? I think that might have been the acoustic cab-signaling in use before cellular RF.