Cargo Data for v1.56 (ripped from EXE file)

[jeffryfisher]

Responding to a question in another thread, I realized that the cargo data sheet I've been using was imprecise. I've looked into the RT2_plat.EXE file and pulled out the actual numbers. Here's the spreadsheet (see attachment).

I am fairly confident of the column labels for everything except "distance factor". I can't quite figure out how those numbers (especially the many zeros) would be used. Maybe it's a bonus for distance and many cargoes earn nothing extra for distance at all.

Edit: I can now see that these "distance" values exist for cargoes demanded by cities and towns. Milk is the only such that has a zero. It's such an anomaly that I suspect it is an error. I now think that what I had labeled as a distance factor is really an urban demand factor. My next mod upload will have a 0.12 for milk. BTW, has anyone delivered milk directly to a city? Does demand ever recover?

Cargo v156.ods

Edited June 30, 2018 by jeffryfisher
Replaced original file from v1.56

[jeffryfisher]

For those who've downloaded my modded EXE, here's a similar sheet with modified values in red.

Cargo v156xj.zip

[HeWhoHunts]

Thank you for posting this, after I've had a chance to mull it over I'm sure I'll be full of questions lol

[RSimpkinuk57]

Hi Jeffry,

I've delivered milk directly to a city in some of the original campaign's early maps. You are right, demand never recovers.

By the way, can you mod. the amount of time before it rots? (Same for mail). On the 1 year represents 1 day's travel scale, I'd like to be allowed a full 12 months to collect (maybe 13 or 14 to allow for late running). Lose value in less than that time yes, disappear completely no. Historically railroads often ran mail (and milk) trains just once a day.

regards, Richard

[sebastian_4z]

Thank you for uploading the cargo data again. I have two questions.

1) I was always under the impression that there are two separate factors that manage the time and distance sensitivity of cargo value (because there are "Ship Distance" values in Table 2-1 of the strategy guide and "Rot Factor" values in Table A-2). But, judging from your file, I now suspect that the "rot factor" is actually used for both effects. Is anything known about this?

2) Do you know the meaning of the last column which is labeled "Station Bldg"?

[MaglevForever]

Sorry, I missed your post.

 

1. In the later version of EXE data included with his US History map, this column isn't called "Rot factor" but rather "Distance Factor." Actually, these numbers don't line up with either set of values you mentioned in the official documentation. For example Mail's Rot Factor in the table is 10, Passengers 8 and Milk 5. The file shows: 0.54, 0.45 and 0.32. Ship data has only two freight values 0.1 or 0.2. The data in the file has a wide range of values across all cargoes. This is confusing to say the least.

Some people have said that it appeared that the ship distance criteria was accurate. Those with 0.2 seemed to benefit from longer hauls. My own experience lines up with this. Food is worth hauling long distance, Lumber is not.

The only mention of rot in the strategy guide is this:

Quote

• The later the date, the rot factor is increased as trains become faster.

My personal take is that game date has the biggest influence on "rot factor", which is why the list was only put in the appendix.

 

But it's not that easy, the very next sentence

Quote

• Some cargoes are more time sensitive than others are. These rates can be checked in the "Days to be delivered" column on the reference card or by right-clicking on a cargo to see the basic delivery time you have.

links "days to deliver" with time sensitive, which with a basic understanding and context could be assumed to be "speed of delivery." So my speculation is that both are used to determine rate of revenue loss aboard a loaded train.

 

I haven't experimented with the EXE file myself, but surely this theory could be tested easily if you control everything else, but just change the "days to deliver" on a specific cargo? If someone doesn't try it sometime, I might even try to poke around in the hex editor to test this idea.

 

2. This means that there is a station building that affects that cargo. For example the Refrigerated Storage building affects Produce and Milk.

[Bossatchal]

On 7/13/2018 at 8:02 PM, MaglevForever said:

Sorry, I missed your post.

 

1. In the later version of EXE data included with his US History map, this column isn't called "Rot factor" but rather "Distance Factor." Actually, these numbers don't line up with either set of values you mentioned in the official documentation. For example Mail's Rot Factor in the table is 10, Passengers 8 and Milk 5. The file shows: 0.54, 0.45 and 0.32. Ship data has only two freight values 0.1 or 0.2. The data in the file has a wide range of values across all cargoes. This is confusing to say the least.

I think that the rot data from the file does match the Rot Factor from the table. I think the data was just simplified for the table by multiplying by 200/12. After someone made the table, they might have tweaked some of the data which might explain the slight value discrepancies e.g. mail .54*200/12=9. 

 

I'll admit 200/12 is probably not the exact number, but I only had Rot Factor table numbers for cement, paper, autos, mail, passengers, and milk from this forum. I can't find this Rot Factor table online.

[Thomas Crampton]

So, if anyone is watching this, there's a discrepancy between the column name in JeffryFisher's extract "Distance" and the official strategy guide where the values are listed as "Demand per House".  I've been doing map editor assisted experiments for deriving demand values, and it seems more likely that the latter is true, because there does seem to be a correlation between consumer demand regeneration and the number of houses served by a station.

EDIT: FYI for anyone looking for the strategy guide and appendix with the official tables, they're included as HTML files in the Steam installation directory, and thus probably the GoG version as well.

Edited July 5, 2021 by DukeLeto7
Note on Strategy Guide

[jeffryfisher]

8 hours ago, DukeLeto7 said:

there's a discrepancy between the column name in JeffryFisher's extract "Distance" and the official strategy guide where the values are listed as "Demand per House".

Yeah, column names were guesswork and came from multiple sources back in the day. It was not always clear which source to believe, so I may have gone with the wrong one on that column. The numbers however come straight out of the program's executable code (numbers in search of meaning).

[Thomas Crampton]

I'd speculate that (apart from the discrepancies between the integer rot factor values in strategy guide appendix table A-2 and the fractional values for ship distance in table 2-1) the differences between the info found in the strategy guide and the extraction from the 1.56 executable represents game balance tweaks made for the Platinum version.  Or possibly tweaks made in between the finalization of the text of the print edition of the strategy guide and the finalization of the code for either the Second Century expansion or the Gold version.  There's probably still a considerably larger gap between the finalization of a printed text and the beginning of a print run than that between the finalization of a gold copy of a software and its distribution, although this may have been more or less 25 years ago when physical printing was less digital and CD-ROMs were still the go to media of software.

It looks like the rot factor and the distance multiplier are the same thing.  The bigger the rot factor as fraction of 1, the larger the multiple of the default price you get per hauling distance, and the faster that price "ticks down" as you take longer to get there.  The speed of that ticking goes up the later the game year.  This also implies the factor is the base of an exponent.

If you could make a similar dump of the values in the executable file for the various industrial buildings, I would reward you with 10 million Atreidesbucks.*

(*Not negotiable currency only redeemable on Arrakis between 10190 A.G. and 10191 A.G.)

[jeffryfisher]

I (and others) have already dumped the industrial buildings. They're on a tab of my EXE_Data spreadsheet, which I think ended up as an extra file in my US History zip file. Beware that there are tabs for both original and modded data tables. If you do your own modding, then you'll want to copy out the tabs of the originals and then get a hex editor to go in and do your own tweaking, keeping a record of what you've changed. Note that the exact addresses of the data tables are different for each version of the executable. Mine map to the v1.56 disk version. I think somebody else posted addresses for Steam in a thread around here somewhere (probably one of the larger modding threads).