Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

Update: I've now dumped timber and meat on Seattle, 50 loads each over the course of three years. The prices in Seattle haven't dropped very much; actually,the good people on the coast have scarcely seen the stuff. It goes straight to the harbor which consumes a small part of it and dumps the rest i...

First off, this map is broken: car factories but no tires or rubber. Aluminum mills but no bauxite. Lots of fertilizer and no place to put it. So it was created by poptop -- still, someone clearly wasn't paying attention. Or maybe that's on purpose and all those useless factories are meant to be dec...

Given that nobody in their right mind would be laying track at anything over 6%, even for short stretches, *cough* (raises hand) *cough* Alright, I recently played Rhodes and currently play Coast to Coast, so by now I'm quite used to the 2D2. While not exactly a mountain goat, it's still a better c...

The results are in. From a standing start, after accelerating for 10 bits of track, the following speeds were attained: uphill at grade 8-11: 8 mph uphill at grade 6-7: 11 mph almost level track: 14 mph downhill, grade 4-5: 45 mph All measurements were taken on the same trip, so always the same loco...

Long detours slow down cargo shipping times. Bridges are faster, therefore potentially better ROI. Also, long detours, if trying to avoid tunnels, are often used in mountains where the grades can be quite bad. This slows down shipping times even more, and if two trains do meet and the lower-valued-...

However, assuming profit is your only aim (which aint the case or we wouldn't play with trains) another question is whether or not taking the money invested in rail and putting it into industry instead would yield even more. I don't think that's still any question. And now off to a different line o...

May I steer the conversation back to the topic? From some dry runs I did in the mean time, it seems that railway systems ON THEIR OWN are seldom as pofitable as any decent industry. (Notice the qualifications) To put that in context: ordinary industries, like the sawmill or tool&dye you put on t...

Just gave it a try and sold all my industries. Overhead went from 2,600k to 1,400k, salaries 64k -> 46k. Presumably the industries' salaries are kept under overhead. In the years before, I've seen my overhead rise steadily without good reason. I bought no more industries, laid no track... why was ov...

According to the ledger, the whole railway system, track, stations and trains cost me 6.8 Million for the six-city network and 10 Million for ten cities, giving me a 3rd-year revenue of 22% and 25%, respectively. I might add more data as I get it. When you say it cost you that much, do you mean it ...

In order to win this, you need a good business opportunity that you can still exploit even with your meager funds. That's a question of luck and/or cheating. You can: -just get lucky the first time you try this. -restart this scenario until you get a setup where your meager funds can be put to good ...

I'd suggest taking a good look at your ledger. If you are playing on Expert level, your fuel and maintenance costs for your trains will often be very close to the amount of revenue they generate. ;-) Your wish is my command. I just took my current scenario where I had built a 6-city network in Janu...

[quote="EPH"]I'd be surprised if an industrial empire can be more profitable than a mature rail network, [/quote] Me too. *Some* industries yield insane profits. This, of course, are the ones you buy or build first. But if you stick with industries, you'll eventually have to settle with mo...

Nothing new here, just trying to squeeze the thread's information into a few short paragraphs. The problem with small railroads (connecting only two or three cities) is that while they may create a decent revenue at first, it's bound to plummet quickly, as freight prices at all stations quickly beco...

Probably the fastest way to win this scenario is to not lay track for the first ten years or so. The area's mostly flat as a pancake with several rivers, wares will easily move around even without your assistance. Most industries will work even better than usual, while there's only small price diffe...

Glad to see that you're considering further development :) I really love that scenario, mostly because it's both easy and challenging. Having only a small number of large cities allows for a clean network and to concentrate on the actual task at hand. Meeting the fertilizer goal requires some tycoon...

Alright, I get the picture. I have to say, you're probably licked. If you ever clicked on a home, you know that it will consume 0.03 loads of alcohol each year. So in order to keep a brewery busy, you need to distribute the booze to about 180 homes. When it comes to city sizes, one star equals about...

If I knew how I could get those numbers to translate to higher prices at my station (and therefore higher prices at my factories), I would have had far more financial success. At the risk of preaching to the choir: you're aware that the freight rate simply is the price difference between the two st...

Hello again. I've been watching this closely, and here's what I found out so far. There's probably more to it, and/or I may have gotten something wrong. But anyway: - there has to be an actual train running the route. The current station may only inherit demand from the next station on the train's r...

I haven't successfully finished that scenario yet. I can however say that it looks good, is fun to play and certainly a challenge. The one thing I can complain about is the bumpyness of the map. That there's only a few distinct height levels not only looks odd; track resembles a staircase more than ...

Sometimes, demand will propagate by rail. If you can't make sense of the above sentence, I'll try to explain a bit: at station A, there's a sawmill; at station B there is none. Sometimes, station B will become aware of the demand at the other end of the line and increase the price it bids for timber...