Strategies for reducing congestion

[Gwizz]

It should be possible if they don't want too much.

Remember the code was almost at its' workable limit for RRT2.

Adding more to it could require a lot of time and maybe a major rework of the code itself.

Might be better to just develop new code.

This could take months even years unless we had a lot of people to share the work.

Back engineering may be the best route. Of course with enough changes to keep it legal.

[jeffryfisher]

In terms of reverse engineering the game, it's obvious that the Transport Tycoon folks were successful

I just read some historical notes at their project site. They were gifted the source code.

I also looked up four railroad tycoon imitation projects at SourceForge. They all looked dead.

I also stumbled upon Take2's last 10K filing (like an annual report). It lists Railroad Tycoon as intellectual property of the corporation, so I have finally answered one question (they own it). I still don't know if they have the source materials to patch 1.56 of RT2.

If we're seriously interested in another patch, then we should start a separate thread (this one was about reducing congestion -- and then some bug in the game got us off on this tangent) and we need to get through to Take2 to see what it would take pry 9 year old code out of their hands.

[RSimpkinuk57]

Hi Jeffry,

on one minor point, have an event grant you rights in a main territory: you get them in the sub-territories too. Then have a second event take away your rights in the sub-territory. That works. ... Richard

[jeffryfisher]

on one minor point, have an event grant you rights in a main territory: you get them in the sub-territories too. Then have a second event take away your rights in the sub-territory.

Yes, I've done exactly that (like when the South loses WV to the North). What surprised me was when things like grain production (dust bowl) and alcohol revenue (prohibition) did not follow the same pattern. Events targeted at the larger territory did NOT affect its sub-territories. I discovered this when I delivered some weapons to a depot in DC and got almost nothing.

My analysis revealed that DC (and other enclaves like SF and WV) had been hit by my general purpose End-War event (decreasing military-load revenues), but had not been affected by any of the Start-War events. After two wars, they were paying almost nothing for military deliveries.

This forced me to completely revamp my use of territory variables. My "sub" territories needed to be marked with "nationality" to be affected by economic events, but that meant they needed to also be marked with a "sub" marker to prevent them from flooding my "buy into territory" event with superfluous messages. That meant losing T3, which forced me to completely reprogram one of the most complex chains of events in my whole scenario. Ugh!

[spader]

Great thread! Nice tips to avoid congestion.

Does anyone have screenshots, to show in images the solutions adopted?

[Etym]

@spader - I'll see if I can relearn how to do that and post in a few days.

[jeffryfisher]

After winning my recent Australia game, I built a nearly independent freight net. If you look closely, you'll see Thalys and a few Euros on one system, Brenners on the other.

(See Outback10g.zip )

[outofmage]

After winning my recent Australia game, I built a nearly independent freight net. If you look closely, you'll see Thalys and a few Euros on one system, Brenners on the other.

(See Outback10g.zip )

I have checked your game, this is great. But I wonder why is your track maint. and fuel cost so little?

[jeffryfisher]

I played on my Australia J map that has events bringing down costs if certain goals are met (delivering key commodities).

Those events didn't help me win; there was no way I could afford to meet any of those goals back when I was cash-strapped. Setting up steel, cement and electric/waste industries requires huge investments. In fact, my fuel price was bumped upward three times before I got the uranium => waste deliveries going, and I won the game before earning a discount on electricity.

Look in the briefing to see the fuel rules.

[outofmage]

I played on my Australia J map that has events bringing down costs if certain goals are met (delivering key commodities).

Those events didn't help me win; there was no way I could afford to meet any of those goals back when I was cash-strapped. Setting up steel, cement and electric/waste industries requires huge investments. In fact, my fuel price was bumped upward three times before I got the uranium => waste deliveries going, and I won the game before earning a discount on electricity.

Look in the briefing to see the fuel rules.

I got it. I thought it was some kind of bug or something.