Locomotive fixes for 1.06

[Gumboots]

As you probably know, I'm working on debugging some of the 1.06 locomotive .3dp and gfx stuff. If anyone can help out in any way it would be really appreciated.

I'm doing the more advanced stuff, which is (mostly) fun and rewarding but rather time-consuming. However, there are more basic jobs it would be nice to get done too. Not everything that should be done is a major drama. Some improvements are comparatively simple, so they'd be an ideal introduction to loco modding if anyone is interested. If you do these fairly simple improvements people will think you're really clever and you'll feel very pleased with yourself every time you play with the resulting loco. This is good. You know you want it.

If anyone is up for this sort of stuff I can give tips, file maps, screenshots, whatever to make it easier. Also, if anyone wants to list loco bugs that they have noticed here, go right ahead.

Also, if you think the default 1.06 line-up is missing locos that really should be in any patch, go ahead and list those too. This means "essentials", not just everything that would be cool.

Note that I'm already considering complete rebuilds of the following, so don't worry about bugs with these:

BR 39 (currently in progress)
DX Goods
P-2 Mountain
LNER V2
Vittorio Emanuele
2-6-4 Tank*
Stanier Black 5

Other locos which are less interesting to me may or may not get done.

* Feel free to suggest a suitable prototype for the suburban tank. This should be something that looks good, and that has good quality and free drawings available online. TBH I would half prefer to re-do this as one of the 4-6-4 tank locos, since there are some rather good ones.

[Stoker]

What is the current Locomotive count as of the 1.06 release? Just curious how many open slots there are for new locomotives to be added. As I mentioned in the exploration thread for this project, the two things that bug me the most as far as locos go are the Duke being a North American loco, and if it is removed from the list then there are no locos in that group in that era with an upgraded passenger rating- my suggestion being upping the American 4-4-0 to "Looks Sharp" to fill this void. I wish I had more 3D model skill (and more mod time), I would try to learn some of this. But, things being what they are, I think I have my hands full with handling the Cargo/Building fixes for this patch.

[Gumboots]

The passenger rating make very little difference to anything AFAICT. Limit for 1.06 is 129 locos (not counting supplementary skins). There are a fair few slots left.

[Blackhawk]

The passenger rating is a modifier on passenger revenues. Per the manual:

A locomotive with a high passenger appeal earns a
revenue premium of up to 30% on all passenger traffic it car-
ries. Conversely, a particularly ugly locomotive will drag
down passenger receipts by up to 15%

[Gumboots]

Ok, so that implies this sort of thing:

Ugly: -15% revenue
Acceptable: default baseline
Looks Sharp: +15% revenue
Ultra Cool: +30% revenue

Plus the 20% modifier for speed records.

[Stoker]

I am one of the few RT3 players who likes to sometimes push the Passenger haulage to its maximum potential, and using locos with a good passenger rating makes a big difference when you are trying to accomplish this. Most people recommend not bothering with Hotels, Restaurants, and Taverns, and in my opinion this is because they try one or two and do not immediately see tangible results and do not take into account the way that Passenger Demand/Supply will snowball when a certain critical mass of H/R/T's are reached in connected cities. This effect is primarily due to Hotels, as Restaurants and Taverns only demand Passengers, although they help increase the Demand Weighted price for Passengers. Having the Passenger price increase from locos that have "Looks Sharp" or even better, "Ulra Cool" Passenger ratings really helps get the snowball rolling and also make H/R/T's really profitable.

[Blackhawk]

There is also the dining car for an additional 20%.

[Gumboots]

Fair nuff. Well I'm fine with doing something about good express for NA in that period. Just upping the rating is a start. Could also tweak the other stats a bit to make it more specialised, and leave the Baldwin for freight.

[Stoker]

Yep, using a dining car is essential when trying to maximize the Passenger potential. Also, using a custom consist leaving one or two cars assigned to Express (or passengers) helps ensure that the Passenger ball gets going, as many times there will only be partial loads of Passengers and if left to "Any Cargo" will usually end up hauling something else.

[Gumboots]

There is also the dining car for an additional 20%.

I've found that an extra car of express usually pays better than the dining car, assuming sufficient express is available to fill the consist. IMO the dining car usually only pays when you're short of cargo.

[Stoker]

The thing about using the Dining car and loco with good passenger rating is that it increases not just the Passenger haulage profit, it increases the Hotel profits, and this increases the Weighted Demand from other cities, which increases the haulage profits, which increases the Demand which increases hotel profits, which increases Passenger Production, and on and on and on. As I mentioned, this has a snowball effect that most players are not aware of because they have only tried a Hotel or two and saw rather mediocre results and abandoned the idea of bothering with them. The key to getting the Passenger snowball rolling is to get 3-4 Hotels and one or two R/T's in each city. Most people look at the profit from a single Hotel and think "Bah, it made ~$10k, this aint worth bothering with". , but that is incorrect, because if a Hotel generates even a single load of Passengers that gets hauled, the profit from that will be ~$30-$40k, meaning the actual return from that $100k investment is 30-50% per year- often more if properly optimizing the Passenger haulage.

[Gumboots]

But an extra car of passengers or mail still often pays more than the 20% you'd get from a dining car.

[Stoker]

You are overlooking the production boost that increased profit gives. The exact mechanism of RT3 Passenger production is a bit murky, but I can tell you for sure that increasing the profit of Passenger loads also increases the Weighted Demand Price across the whole map, which in turn also increases Passenger production. This Push/Pull of Production/Demand is connected to the price.Higher price=higher production. Hauling more Passengers and maximizing the profit then boosts production, and on and on and on. I am one of the few people who has mastered the Passenger Optimization strategy, which nearly all RT3 players swear is not possible.

[Gumboots]

K. Well this is getting off-topic anyway. You can always write a guide about it.

[Stoker]

No thanks on the Guide suggestion. I am really not trying to get people to try certain strategies. Whenever I try to explain advanced RT3 strategies most people get defensive and say something like" Ya, but I have fun playing my way". Which , of course, means that they most likely don't understand what I am talking about and/or would rather muddle along with faulty methods than take advice on how to become an expert at this game from somebody else. As I mentioned in another thread, I play RT3 and Mod it for my own reasons. If the suggestions on strategies or things I have made for RT3 are useful to other players that is fine, but it is not my primary goal.

[Gumboots]

Bonzer. I'll try the strategies later. Can we get back to locomotives now?

[Gumboots]

BTW, one of the prime contenders for the current tank loco replacement, IMHO, would have to be the Furness Railway Class 115. It's a 4-6-4T instead of a 2-6-4T but I don't think that's much of a problem. I like it because it's a bit unusual for the period (inside cylinders and Stephenson valve gear) but it's the right timeframe to replace the current model and it's a slick looking unit. Would also be easy to model due to the clean lines.

115_postcard.JPG (64.27 KiB) Viewed 18150 times

[Gumboots]

I've just been looking through the general loco stuff for 1.06. There are quite a few loose ends that never dealt with.

One thing that's irritating from a modder's point of view is that nobody seems to have given a rat's how things were named. For instance, the Class G10 is called in EngineTypes as "class_g1", while the PK4 is named as "g10", and inside the PK4 some assets are called as "ClassG1" and some as plain "G10". This is just bonkers, and will only serve to confuse things.

The 2-6-4 Suburban Tank is called as "262t" in EngineTypes, while the PK4 is named "264t", and again the contents of the PK4 use a mixture of "262T" and "264T". This is bonkers too.

So, as much as is humanly possible, without breaking backwards compatability, I'm going to make it as non-bonkers as possible. I would dearly love to make it non-bonkers everywhere, but that might break some odd scenarios that specifically call these locos, so unfortunately we'll have to put up with some residual bonkersness (or bonkersosity or whatever).

The G10 being named as g1 (some mythical loco) in EngineTypes is something that can't be fixed without breaking backwards compat. The PK4 and asset names are fixable, so can all be changed to G10. A readme in both directories can document the inconsistency.

Since the tank engine (which is definitely not called Thomas, so don't even think about it) is called as 262t in EngineTypes it makes sense to actually model a 2-6-2T in the game. At the moment its not really modelling anything at all and I suspect nobody ever uses it. My bet is that we could break this one if we wanted to as I can't imagine any scenario calling such a beast by name. Who's going to want to see half a Class 500 running backwards?

[Gumboots]

Actually this gives me an idea. My bet is that some of the "less appealing" models will never be specifically called in any scenario, simply because they are not exactly the sort of thing anyone is likely to get enthused about. I know, for example, that Arop flatly refuses to use badly modelled locos in any of his games (meaning any game he plays, on his own maps or anyone else's maps).

This means we may be able to get away wth rationalising things all the way down. Easiest way is to try it and see if anyone grumbles about a particular map crashing. If nobody grumbles, I'd say that means no problem. If things can be rationalised, that'd be great.

[Stoker]

I think you are overlooking something. In many cases people have events to exclude the use of loco's that they don't like or don't want in a scenario for whatever reason. To the Game Engine it does not matter if an asset has been called to exclude it's use or to enable it's use, just the mention in an event will cause a crash if that asset is no longer in the list. The work-around to maintain backwards compatibility with scenario's is to leave the existing call- name on the list and just swap out the asset with the new one and change the in-game name in the .lng. I know this makes the asset naming convention even more of a mess, but this is the only way to prevent missing asset crashes. Just pencil in the idea of doing a complete Mod after this patch is done and you can have free reign to do all the changes you want without having to worry about this issue.