need help with rrt tsc island of hope

[kamchow]

hi, i'm playing the "island of hope" mission, on hard mode, and i'm finding it impossible to get gold.

i hope one of you have strategies to help me get gold.

 

i start by playing the mission with -15% fuel costs.

during the mission, if i get the chance, i used a manager (like wootten) to further reduce fuel costs.

 

initially, i lay a line between johannesburg and dutlwe.

i then expand to windhoek so as to get the 20% fuel costs savings mini-goal.

 

i use the DB18 201 for its speed and make sure to micro-manage it.

i know the fuel costs are very high for this loco and that is why i use the above fuel costs strategies.

i find other locos are too slow and do not give me any benefit (other than lower fuel costs but take longer to deliver cargo).

 

sometimes, i run a line between new yaounde and kinshasa if new yaounde has 2 ports from which i can get 2 goods cargoes.

 

however, no matter how many times i play, i simply do not get enough goods and food to get gold.

there aren't enough sheep farms, cotton farms, cattle, grain fields etc to give me 125 food and 170 goods to get gold.

 

so, have i missed a trick?

do any of you know of a strategy to get gold on this mission?

 

thanks.

[MaglevForever]

I also choose the -15% fuel costs. What I recommend with this one is to try to focus on the Food and Goods haulage as soon as you get a primary route setup. Because only 1M cash is available to start, I aim to connect two 10+ house cities while still having enough cash for an engine. If I can get start getting some Goods produced at one of the cities within the first couple of years, that's ideal. Johannesburg to Kimberly is one of the more likely pairs. Up north the forest costs more for track laying (I have started successfully there, it's just a bit slower). In my view the Windhoek fuel saving and track pieces limit are distracting goals. Windhoek, because, since unconnected track building is allowed and provided earnings are strong enough, you can connect the nearest food producer and farm pretty reliably whichever city pair you start with. The limited track laying can be used strategically to try to use it all up cheaply in one go, but the choice, which is a no-brainer, to get more track at higher cost lowers it's priority.

 

This map has a higher than normal industrial output, so the goals aren't quite as crazy as they may seem. To help get the load count up, I tend to haul the finished products to the next city even if demand suffers a little. Distributing further takes too long and will likely cause jams or choke-points. This means that margins are tighter so I will use mainly 4-6-4 Northerns on the flats and 4-8-4 Daylights over the unavoidable grades. These both have worse reliability than the T1 4-4-4-4, but maintenance costs are lower, so with cabooses they are my pick. For long distance passenger traffic between the large cities I will use a few DB18 201s, for example: Kinshasa to Johannesburg (long distance pays nicely). Overall freight pays pretty well on this map, so I don't expect to see engines running at a loss.

 

There's a lot to do in the 20 years you are given on this one. Things that take a long time to pay for themselves like industries aren't such a good idea here. For good passenger routes I will build station amenities, but otherwise I tend to ignore them, contrary to my normal habits. Growth is pretty high on this map also, but some seeds are more favorable than others especially in the first couple of years. Sometimes I make lots of Steel and Aluminum and other times there is plenty of Cotton/Wool to use to make Goods. Some seeds will take longer to win, but at least we get variety.

 

You didn't mention the personal net worth goal. The bigger and better company you can manage to make, the easier it will be to achieve. I have found it adequate in the last few playing years to buy back some stock and then turn on a few dividends. Of course, there are more aggressive ways to attack this, so I assume you have it sorted.

 

Tip on the managers:

Hiring a manager who lowers fuel costs is good. I prefer Garratt, or when he's unavailable, Willard. The drawback for some of the others like Wooten is that they also raise the maintenance cost of the engines. Maintenance costs will end up wiping out most of your fuel savings especially in the mid-range of an engines life, after say five or more years when maintenance costs are steadily rising. In this case, once you get the extra Windhoek 20% saving, I have my doubts if it is worthwhile to keep a manager who also raises maintenance costs.

[kamchow]

maglev, once again thanks for your helpful tips.

 

i need to get my head around how to work a profitable route. if i simply run a loco between a sheep farm (carrying 2 cargoes per year) and a textile mill, i will be losing a lot of money due to the high fuel and maintenance costs. so then, i need to take the textile goods to a town/city to make it profitable. however, if i run too many trains into a station, it will simply get clogged up. at the same time, i don't have enough money in the early years to have lots of stations and locos all over the map. so, it is something i have to work on and fine tune.

 

anyway, i played the mission for the zillionth time and i finally got gold! hoorah!

 

as you said, Herbert Garratt's 40% fuel costs savings was a big help. and by luck i had wool + milk + grain + industries near the passenger line at Johannesburg so i could get food and goods rolling near the very start.

 

i've already finished mission Remember America. so, only Antarctica Rising left. i'm sure that mission will also be a killer!  :)

 

again, thanks for your help.

[MaglevForever]

Well done! That's the fun of the game for me, keeping profits up and costs down. There's always a new trick or two to discover to improve strategy a little more.

 

A tip for Antarctica: the ports actually work to a degree in this one. This is one of the game's bugs, i.e. delivering one load of a ports demand normally will drop its demand for that cargo to zero and it wont recover. In one of the threads some of the more savvy people here managed to hack the map file in such a way that the ports demands work correctly for that particular map. Poptop fixed the Coal demand on this map, but not the other port demands: Oil, Bauxite, Iron. I am guessing that they edited the map file, but haven't tried to check what they did. The reason this matters is it makes the ports useful because it's profitable to haul coal to a station covering 2 or more ports with most of the trains available. Buying the Coal mines as well gives plenty of revenue and makes it possible to win in less than half the given time. The Coal Mines will take about a year after you start hauling to become profitable so there is a slight downtime, otherwise bonds at less than 10% are fair game to set these systems up using sections of unconnected track. I don't recommend to start with coal hauling, I prefer to get a little bit of food production going first till my credit rating improves. It's necessary to make sure you are in line for a majority ownership of all the AI companies, but the AI gets more revenue than the human so will make more money with the assets it has than I could so I tend to line myself up for the mergers once I reach $15M company value to close out the game. Good luck! Enjoy!  :)