Merger question

[Diablogrunt]

I have really never messed with mergers so fooled around with it a bit in the current game I am testing. After taking over a lame railroad, I found that it was running 4 steam trains between their only two cities with no water towers! There was a full compliment of most every other station improvement possible at both large stations, and all 4 trains showed almost full water after running for 3+ years! Is this a program bug or what? Now that the trains are mine will the water be required? Of course, one of the big negatives for the merger was the assumption of almost $2 million negative cash. The only way to make the acquired railroad profitable would be to add more track to nearby stations but cannot be done any time soon with the debt. It looks like the best plan in this situation would be to add the necessary track to their track before the merger (which I always allow in my scenarios). In any case, I am abandoning the merger and returning to a previous save at this point.

[jeffryfisher]

Computer-run companies cheat. Their engines don't need water or maintenance (so if you use their track, don't count on getting any). They also ignore demand, being able to deliver anything anywhere for simple-economy payoffs.

The main reason to merge a computer-company with yours is to remove an obstacle to expansion. A secondary reason (if you own most of the stock) could be to drop a huge wad of cash into your own pocket. For the most part however, computer-companies are trash. The best thing to do with them is drive them out of business (with the remove-track option selected)

[Diablogrunt]

"Remove track option????" What is this? I know I can bulldoze their track once merged. I also discovered that water will be needed once the merger happens. In the game I referred to in first post it turned out that the company I ended up merging with had just gone bankrupt. I merged because they had started in another location that I almost started with. I quickly made the merged RR profitiable and endied up with much higher quotas for the winning conditions than I would have without the merger. Since this was a test run for a new revised map it has set the winning conditions probably too high to be duplicated.

[Silverback]

I believe the remove track option suggested is the "Liquidate Bankrupt Companies" in the Gameplay section of the game options of RTII and so applies game wide - there's not an individual map option as far as I know. It only applies if the company is liquidated usually after at least one bankruptcy and then when the share price falls to $1. its my preferred option but isn't the default. normally the track is left littering the map. I don't recall if you can merge with a liquidated company in RTII  - I think railroad tycoon 3 introduced this option and it wasn't available in RTII.   

[jeffryfisher]

25 minutes ago, Silverback said:

"Liquidate Bankrupt Companies" in the Gameplay section of the game options of RTII and so applies game wide - there's not an individual map option as far as I know.

That's it. It's an option for the player like start year and difficulty settings.

The name is misleading. Liquidation happens at year-end if a company's "book value" has fallen below zero. A company can declare bankruptcy many times before book value hits bottom, and each will discharge half of its debts. However, a company in a death spiral will eventually hit zero book before it can declare again (I think the cool-down is 5 years).

Beware however: When a company's track is ripped out, it may cut gaps in yours (if you ever crossed it). You should be saving your game just before each year-end anyway. If a liquidation rips out track, roll-back to your December save and carefully walk all of that track (and stations) making notes of track-breaks and opportunities. You might even spot a train that is in danger of vanishing with the track. If you can stop it before it enters the danger zone, do so. If not, then note its route & cargo (and pray that the deletion does not cause file corruption).

[Diablogrunt]

On 3/5/2018 at 10:15 AM, jeffryfisher said:

Computer-run companies cheat. Their engines don't need water or maintenance (so if you use their track, don't count on getting any). They also ignore demand, being able to deliver anything anywhere for simple-economy payoffs.

I am under the impression that human players in expert mode receive hardly any revenue from undemanded cargo. Are you saying the AI players get more than the human player would for the same undemanded cargo?

[jeffryfisher]

On 3/6/2018 at 12:59 PM, Diablogrunt said:

human players in expert mode receive hardly any revenue from undemanded cargo. Are you saying the AI players get more than the human player would for the same undemanded cargo?

I think so, yes. The AI is too stupid to manage complex industry. It seems to just pick up whatever it finds in its stations and then dumps it somewhere.

[Silverback]

Human and AI don't play by the exact same rules as has already been observed above.

Without the source code or documentation of the economics for the AI we can only speculate. It depends on the difficulty levels as to how much the human player gets for undemanded cargoes anyway - this much is known - and also the modifiers are known (select a map then click options and select a difficulty). the AI may get the exact same BASE value as the human player but then any revenue modifier percentage will take effect anyway - we just don't know definitely.