Transcontinental!

[Steve]

Anyone know what I've done wrong and how I can give the UP a decent stock price?

Its been awhile.
You might have built track and then bulldozed it thus losing lots of money. Or you could have built a lot of track without having the money to do so.

You should try looking at the books and see how much money has been spent by the company and how much assets value it has. Try to get the company book value up to where the share price = $50 = book value/# of shares.

[Lama]

Would the undesired seeding take place while the game is on pause?

I probably misunderstood what you said. The initial 3-yr seeding period happens only when you select a map from the main menu in single player - play scenario, and then start it up.

[JSS]

Well EPH you are experiencing another one of RT3 nasty features.
On my SCBC1896 map I have 16 listed companies. All of those companies either run a railroad or own industries and one of them is a bank. They all have specific chairmen somewhat fitting the period or area.

I was rather surprised that after setting up those 16 companies and taking some time to adjust the share prices in the editor that as soon as I started a game the share prices were altogether different again. My suspicion was at the time that the activities in the company affected the value of the existing shares to a point where it messed up the shareholders finances and when starting the map, the financial picture of those shareholders gets adjusted (shares sold) which messes up everything again.
So perhaps the next time I make a map I will start out by giving shareholders ample funds at the beginning and see what happens. It might be that this is not the fix but I would start there.

In any case what I ended up doing was to switch between the editor, where I adjusted the shares, and starting a new game until the numbers looked good when starting the game.

Not certain on how you adjusted the individual companies share value but overall it is not difficult but just tedious. The way I did it required that the companies were pre-started and had sufficient cash for their original expenditures. I then assumed the identity of each of the companies chairman and started to manipulate the stock value by selling company stock or personally buying stock until the share price and book value of the shares were very close. At times it required to assume the role of another chairman to buy stocks in the former mentioned company.

Where it did get tricky was when the majority shareholder was not the chairman and you wanted to end up with specific chairmen for specific companies. That required a lot of additional selling and purchasing of shares.

Not much fun but I was not able to find a better way.

[EPH]

:) Moving back to America... :D

I have found the problem though I haven't yet found the solution.

After creating the necessary companies I went and put a museum and commercial building at the Chicago. St Louis and Memphis rail links. I didn't realize I was awarding ownership of those 'un-ownable' buildings to the UP.

So I bulldozed them, created them while I was NOT running a company, and all was fine... except the game now insists the company lost $1600 before it ever starts.

*Holds head in hands* I'll look at how to fix this later.


Meanwhile the game itself is going pretty smoothly. The biggest problem is keeping the player from building too very much faster than the railroad was actually built. The other is keeping the player busy enough to make the scenario fun. Once the basic elements are in and the 'special' events are ready to be added I'll think about offering it for playtesting.

[JSS]

EPH, if you can find a solution to the “lost money” issue please let me know. I have been unable to solve it to my satisfaction. The issue is that money once “lost” does not get offset by money now “found”.
On the SCBC1898 map I solved the issue of limiting the player track laying speed by only issuing a certain amount of track monthly. In addition there is also a total count of “connection track pieces available” and between the two of them a lot can be done.

[EPH]

Just to clarify the problem is not starting money - the company starts with $1 million, which is correct - but pre-start profit/loss in the negative caused by deleting the buildings. So as I see it I have three choices. None of them may actually work, but these three things seem worth trying:

1) add an industry to offset $1600 (which I think you are saying will not work)
2) delete the company and start a new one
3) disable stock trading completely

#3 may seem drastic - I mean, we are talking about the Union Pacific. But in fact most of the scandal attached to the UP centered on the Credit Mobilier (the UP agreed to pay a padded figure for track construction to the Credit Mobilier, which was owned by a select 'in group'. Thus the CM made HUGE profits while the UP scraped along and finally went bankrupt).

In RRT3 there is no way I can see to do this except to combine the UP and CM (and for that matter the CP and its counterpart to the CM) into one company.


My solution to the 'track' problem has gotten a little simpler than my original proposal. First I'm tinkering with the track-laying cost and maintenance cost. Secondly I'm restricting the amt of track you receive per month to the historic mileage (plus some). Higher levels of track can be gained through purchasing Burnettizers (and other options to be revealed later).

Since the companies start out broke (historically true) and must build forward into empty space it seems unlikely they'll be able to issue their own bonds for a while (also historically correct). So each 'leg' of track (say Omaha to North Platte) gains you land grants which you can sell or keep until the price rises. Making connections also increases productivity of farms, mines and industries in the West. I am considering adding to the company overhead cost for the land grants, representing interest and repayment of the government bonds that are being taken out. This would help recreate the shaky finances of both roads when the connection was made.

I tried limiting the amt of track a player could buy in a year and forcing him to buy the track, but I think my present method will be less complex and still serve the same purpose.

[EPH]

The bad news is the problem doesn't seem to be fixable. The UP is owned by the first player. If you delete the company the player doesn't have enough money to start another. You can't add money to the player before the game starts - I tried bumping up the starting cash, no luck - and you cannot delete the first player.

Another casualty of this misbegotten editor.

[JSS]

EPH, yes the company could have oodles of cash but the books still show it as an expense.
Option 1 will not get you anywhere if I remember correctly. Once the company purchases the new industry the expenses will also go up.
Option 2 would perhaps work but I experienced a repeatable system crash when deleting a company/player. Not sure anymore which it was.
Option 3 removes half the fun of playing a game in MHO.

I do believe your plan of cash transfers between the UP and Mobilier is doable. Every time you issue the monthly allotment (pace) of rail, transfer cash to the Mobilier. The amount transferred could be based on the UP cash position. All the shares of the Mobilier can be equally owned by all the players you select.

I found it easier to allocate the monthly track according to actual connection dates. That is I took the total game track pieces that were required for connecting to a city and divided that by the actual months of construction time required to get my monthly pace. This pace was then adjusted to account for the seasons and other attributes like keeping an experienced work crew.

The RR companies in Canada used in the SCBC map (all RR companies are historically factual) had also great financial difficulties but they started out with some funds. Mostly by selling of shares selling bonds or guarantied government backed loans. To keep going was another story and they had to rely in a large degree on the selling of land grants. On my map and true to historical facts, land grants are the ticket (I believe) and I have spent a long time trying to apply this into the game.

You can give a player more money in the editor by using a cheat code. There is just limited control over how much (I think it is 1mill increments). The reason you can not delete the first player is because he is the “human” player – I think.

If I am a bit vague at times it is because I am trying to remember what I did about a half a year ago. At my age a very intense effort is required to do just that.

[EPH]

Yes, option one won't work.
Option two won't work - the problem is the player doesn't have enough cash to start a 'second' company and you cannot delete player 1.
Option three is the only way I can see to proceed unless I junk everything and go back to an earlier map.

Odds are this one is dead, dead, dead.

[Lama]

Maybe you could let the Co. have industry w/o having to buy it?
Create a territory. Place an industry in it (while not in chairman mode). Make an event "if track built, Co. 1, Terr. N., confiscate buildings." Assume role of chairman. Build one segment of track. Voila, Co. owns industry w/o having had to buy it. CBV should be boosted by the value of that industry. (the latter point remains to be seen)

[milo]

EPH, you have a PM.

[EPH]

Hi, Lama! That's a good suggestion but it has one fatal flaw: all I have to do is start the game, buy up all the stock at $1 per, lay track and get the industry too. Possibly I could tie the event to the 'start of scenario' trigger, but then CBV would climb slowly over a period of a few years and I could still buy up all the stock at basement price.

As far as I know there is no way to shut off stock trading temporarily, so... I'm stumped.

[Lama]

My suggestion does not require you to start the game - "when track is placed" can safely be triggered while in editor. The only way that would ruin your map is if it triggered a loss or medal, b/c then, no further events would trigger.

[milo]

The stock price obeys some rather bizarre behavior. Try this one out:

• Create a map from scratch in the editor. Create a company with default values. Cut the company's cash from 1100K to 195K. Bring up the stock chart. Stock price is $4/share.
• Create a map from scratch in the editor. Create a company with default values. Bring up the stock chart. Cut the company's cash from 1100K to 195K. Stock price is $21/share.

What's going on, I think, is that someone tried to optimize the code a bit. Stock price requires a ridiculous amount of calculation. So, instead of recalculating it each time, the developer stored a 'last known value' and a timestamp. When the game needs the stock price, it compares the timestamp against the game clock, and uses the saved value if it's up-to-date. Bringing up the stock chart in the editor is the first operation that requires calculating the full stock price, and because one doesn't generally run the clock in the editor, that value gets saved and is used until the player unpauses the scenario.

Possible workaround: unpause the game for an instant while in the editor. I think the game clock gets reset when the player launches the scenario anyway. This won't solve EPH's issue with unrecoverable company losses, though.

[JSS]

Thanks for that tip Lama. (Why didn’t I think of that? ) Clever way of adding assets to a company.

[milo]

Well... if you're insane and have a binary editor... here's how to reset economic conditions:

• Back up your map!
• Look for a CE 32 00 00 sequence. One of these marks the beginning of the Company section of the GMP file. Another sequence, CF 32 00 00, marks the end of the section. Each company record is 30340 bytes long, and they start about 145 bytes after the section beginning.
• Search between the sequences for the name of the company in question. After you find it, subtract four bytes from that offset to get the base address of the company record. Call this X.
• Financial numbers are stored as doubles: eight-byte floating-point numbers. X+3719 is the Industry gain/loss for the current year. X+7263 is the cumulative Industry gain/loss. X+4951 is the Industry asset worth. Set all three of these to 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 to clear out losses caused by bulldozing buildings. You may also need to clear out the Misc Costs items at X+4511 and X+7335. NOTE: This will also clear out expenses incurred by building legitimate buildings, so be careful!
• Clear the stock price timestamp by setting the four bytes at X+3323 to 00 00 00 00. That will force the stock price to be recomputed the next time you bring up the stock chart.

Sorry, can't turn this into a clrcheat-like utility until there's a more reliable way to locate the company section. Nothing prevents either of the markers from occurring elsewhere in the file.

If you're not insane, Lama's brilliant trick seems like a much better approach.

[EPH]

Thanks for the tip, Lama. Milo has just returned the map with the history scrubbed off of it, so we'll see if that will work.



Thank you Milo! Your fix does indeed work exactly as I need it to.

[EPH]

Okay...

Thanks to the help I've received from you folks, the Great Pacific Railway is rolling over the plains. I've tested it as far as Cheyenne and Reno and I'm tweaking the prices and stuff now.

Here's how it works so far:

As you make connections, you are awarded land grants and US government bonds. The land grants are worth more later (if you can hold onto them) and the bonds eventually must be repaid (for a lot more than they brought you). Track is allocated per month with additional lots available later. You can beat the actual time to the Golden Spike, but you'll have to work at it. :)

Construction in winter is almost impossible (+1000% price increase). Track-laying costs and maintenance are high anyway (+50% until the connection is made).

You are allowed to build and buy industry; I reversed myself on that. Until the Golden Spike is driven you should not exceed $500k annually in industrial profits or the public will think you are scamming their money. After all, you are supposed to build a railroad, not an industrial empire!

I am working out the events for the Credit Mobilier and the resulting scandals. You will have the choice of being completely clean and losing influence with the government, taking the historical path or REALLY wallowing in the slush funds. :)

You have four years - yes, four years - to build it. Then you'd better figure out how to run the thing at a profit so you can pay off all your creditors!

Events for alkaline water west of Rawlins, snowsheds, Indian attacks, fires and labor strikes will be added.

Please let me have your comments and suggestions... it isn't quite ready to beta-test, but it will be soon.

[wsherrick]

Well-I'm all excited! I've packed my bags and am on the way to Omaha.
I hope the Union Pacific honors my engineers licence :D

[Hawk]

Now this one sounds interesting. :D