Replacing Engines More Quickly

[letsdance]

this is exciting! is there a chance of an improved version of the replacer robot coming? the issues with replacing big numbers of trains is the most important reason that keeps me from playing RT2 more often. i like playing long scenarios on big maps...

[outofmage]

Letsdance, how do you want to improve the replacement robot?

[jeffryfisher]

is there a chance of an improved version of the replacer robot coming?

 

As I mentioned up-thread, the Macro Recorder is a general purpose GUI automation app for Windoze that anyone can use. And, it's not the only one.

 

The reason I recommend something like this is that after playing a little with what you can record and what you can do with playback (which is like playing a game in itself), you'll probably want to tailor a script to your own purposes and tastes, possibly tweaking it to fit the situation of any particular replacement effort.

 

When you write your own script, it doesn't need to have all of the tests and prompts and so forth that a generalized script has. It can be quite short and sweet, about 5 or 6 lines to suit your immediate need. It's much like setting up a freight train's schedule and consist. If you can get food out of a cannery, then you can do this (come to think of it, working a cannery in RR Tycoon II is more complex than writing a basic engine replacement loop in the macro program).

 

PS: As always, if anyone does download anything, be sure to do a virus scan. Even if an app looks reputable, the site providing it might not be (or they could even become infected without knowing so).

[MaglevForever]

Thanks, guys. I thought that it was not fixable. I will have to live with it for now.

[letsdance]

Letsdance, how do you want to improve the replacement robot?

i didn't test it yet, so i can't answer this =) you mentioned a chinese frame for example, didn't you? i was just wondering if anyone had further improved it. but i'm sure i'm happy with the current version, too. when i play RRT2 the next time i'll have to check it out, and also the GUI automation app that jeff mentioned.

[outofmage]

Guys, I have other robots to show you.

This one do station upgrades. 

[outofmage]

Here is another robot using Twitchell stock price 15% lower loophole to make $2 mill in the beginning of the game.

 

It works like this: the ask-bid difference and commission of a stock trade is approximately 5%, so using 15% price lower manager can make a 5% profit every hire-buy-fire-sell loop. 

Hiring this manager with reasonable signing bonus need to save/load the game a lot, and it takes like 50 rounds to reach 2 million dollars, it may take an hour to accomplish such a piece of work manually, so I made this robot.

 

 

 

 

This video only shows a part of the whole process.

 

I want to point out that this cheat feels cool at first, but it actually has no difference between typing Cattle Futures twice and then wasting all the money in the company.

[MaglevForever]

I had a look at your videos. One question, I notice that you are running the game after a certain number of attempts to hire Twitchell. What effect do you find that this has on the chances of hiring him? I always try the top window after so many attempts at the bottom one. I seem to notice that managers repeat after a while in the one box, but I never tried running the game for a short while.

 

I am always really curious how the game decides which managers to give you. Does anyone know the actual requirements to be able to hire a certain class of manager? Herbert Garrett's class, for example?

 

My personal playing style is to upgrade stations immediately and as fast as possible. I can see that this could be good when new buildings become available, if there is an easy enough way to sift through stations for pax ones.

 

As for the cheat one. I hardly ever cheat in such a blatant way and have never used any of the cheat codes. I enjoy trying to run the company as well as possible. Cheating defeats this, in my view.

[Gwizz]

Interesting, but I like the normal methods.  Nothing wrong with the robots.  They simply don't oil my wheels yet.  Maybe later.  I'll be watching.  

 

I wish the norm under -S- would chop down that tree.  His running around makes me tired.   My Chinese is a bit rusty.  Does that overlay say stupid.

[outofmage]

Meglev, I believe to hire Twitchell is purely depending on luck in the very beginning of the game, no matter hiring the top or bottom manager applying for your job.

 

The salary of a manager must match the profit of your company. In the beginning of the game while we have 0 or less profits, only several managers under $7K per year salary are available. When we expand our company and get more profit, these low salary managers will disappear.

 

Yes, usually when a station is built, the upgrades should be done right then, in case I forget to do it later. But this is very useful when the large restaurant or hotel became available, because I usually have a pretty large number of passenger stations then. My program can be flagged as upgrade mode, which will build the large hotel or restaurant  only when small hotel or restaurant has been built. Another occasion I use this robot is when I build a second passenger station for each city to have some extra demand, that's a huge amount of work, but this robot can do the station upgrades easily.

[outofmage]

 

I wish the norm under -S- would chop down that tree.  His running around makes me tired.

My English is a bit rusty, can you tell me what does this mean? 

 

[Gwizz]

When you posted the last robot attachment, I let it run and got links above my reply.  One  of the links was an -S- with the line across it.   Clicking on the -S-  , There was a little norm running to a tree that had a sign saying, cut me down.  The norm instead ran away.  

 

On another robot attachment,  I got 8 square links around it.  I didn't spend much time on them, as my overlay indicated an increased in back ground activity with Chinese words.  

 

I'm just a little suspicious:   DO WE HAVE COMPLETE CONTROL OF THE ROBOTS OR DOES SOMEONE ELSE CONTROL THEM.  

                                                 THE ROBOTS SEEM MORE LIKE BAITED HOOKS.

[outofmage]

Gwizz, I'm confused. What do you mean you got links above your reply?

This is a free edition framework, so there will be ads pop out, just close them.

When you start your robot, please get into your full-screen game immediately, otherwise it will click on your table.

 

I only posted ONE robot. A forum staff did spam my post because my file is flagged as Trojan, but he enabled it later. But it is the same one.

 

You can control the robot by F10/start, F11/pause or restart, F12/stop. If you feel like you lost control of the robot, press F12 immediately.

 

Edit: Maybe your OS doesn't have Chinese language package, so the characters were shown as squares. 

 

I thought because you don't understand the language, you won't be affected by ads, ironically it turns into the exact opposite result.

 

I figured you saw that norm running into a tree and ran away, that's a browser game advertisement.

[Gwizz]

1. testing.            S     A strike through is what I clicked on to get the norm.   I click on a number of buttons to see if they did anything.  

Can't get the robot to repeat the norm's running with his axe.   

When you posted the Robot the first time, the Chinese letters flashed by when I first clicked on parts of the robot. 

It no longer does that now.  Maybe the norm is hiding in the woods.    Otherwise everything is in English.  

I wonder if the Chinese translator will give me something different to look at?    If I had more time I would try it..

Also the robot is no longer in the center square of the 9 squares.  There are only 6 squares now. 

And they do look like links (advertisements) that a person might click on.

 

You must have good control of the robot; otherwise you would have crashed and burned by now, like that 777 did yesterday.

 

PS:  I flew the 777 in the simulator.  It has the power under certain conditions to fly straight up.  I had no passengers or baggage load and only about  a 15 % fuel load.

I pulled it vertical at just over 80 degrees and was still gaining speed,  when the instructor asked me if I was trying to fly it like a rocket.  

I said I didn't believe it could do that.  He said, believe it.   

 

The triple 7 that made a hard destructive landing in England, a few years back also came out of a steep dive for a landing. 

Ice formed restricting the amount of fuel getting to the engines.                   

 

Yesterdays 777 hard landing.  http://www.king5.com/video?id=214495201&sec=1132445&ref=articlevidmod

 

 

Wooooops:  I'm eating crow again.  It was the 757 simulator we flew, not the 777.   The 757 is the short take off plane with big engines and Lots of power.  

[MaglevForever]

Gwizz, I am curious what you do to replace your engines. From what I gather you seem to like to play large games. Are they often long enough to replace the engines?

 

If you don't want to use the robot that's fine. Have you ever tried the method I mentioned in the beginning?

[Gwizz]

I tend to replace locos when their risk is between 2.0 and 3.0 or when a new loco offers a large speed gain.

If the loco is on a short run then acceleration is also important.  I seldom buy more than 20 locos at one time.

My method for replacing locos is:

If the first one I buy, duplicates a route, I will remove all stops from new loco #1.

Then I click on the next loco I want,  pay for it, then hit the shift command key then repeat for loco #3.   ( I haven't used the method for a while; the control key might be the tab or Ctrl key)

I tend to like the shorter games, since I tend to run my trains slowly.  As you know I also tend to control more then one AI company and its' IA trains on pause.

 

I do admire risk takers in their effort to improve the game.  I have downloaded Robot to a thumb drive but have yet to us it.

I'm waiting to see if you all have success. :( :D

[MaglevForever]

An update on my replacing engines track corruption:

 

I have now built track around the corrupted track. I had to build track that crossed at the points. When I tried to build other track, I crashed the game.

 

This problem is annoying, but I managed to route around it for the most part now. I am not exactly sure what caused it. My game is so large that it is really hard to narrow it down. Jeffry, you mentioned that it could be caused by retiring engines instead of just replacing them as I have believed it is. Could be. I simply don't know.

 

What do you think, would stopping all trains help these problems? What is the easiest way to do that?

[jeffryfisher]

At this point, stopping other trains won't help. The game has corrupted data in it, and it may be impossible to clean it out.

 

The only other idea I have (and it's unlikely to help) is to run a train up and down the troubling track. Maybe the track status will clear when a train runs clear through and off of it. (but don't hold your breath)

[MaglevForever]

Sorry, I didn't state that clearly. I meant that I should have stopped all the trains before replacing them in great numbers. I want to know how to do this easily for the future. Do you think I would have avoided the crash if I had done that?

 

I tried your suggestion. Didn't do anything until I tried to make the train high priority. On high priority trains sail back and forth on that track just fine. They freed most of the track up for normal priority trains to run on except for two places. But sad news is that when I go to bulldoze it, the result is the same. So, I could have used it with high priority trains as a single track, trying to double-track it crashes the game.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Mixedfusion]

Does anybody still have access to the bot to replace the engines ?

 

[jeffryfisher]

Did you try to download the attachment on page 1?

[Mixedfusion]

9 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

Did you try to download the attachment on page 1?

Yes i did, and it gives me a file error

[Gobalopper]

@Mixedfusion I've fixed the link, try again now.