Altered prices bug

[undertoad]

Here's now what I think about this "price-spike" bug:

a) It happens if there's an "Increased Price" modifier in operation
b) It's something to do with the way prices transmit from station to station
c) It's far worse if there's any sea transport going on. The price at sea becomes insanely high, and affects the coast wherever there's a Port, because prices at sea have a very low gradient: a spike +$50, for example, 500km away from a Port, can still cause a +$40 spike at that port. On land, that kind of distance would produce a far lower remote spike, because 500km is a long way; and this allows you to make money by hauling the stuff over that 500km. At sea distances are "collapsed".

The knock-on effect transmits (in a jerky way) to the stations connected to anywhere on the land in the vicinity of the Port. This is why these "rashes" of deep green form around stations and spread.

The sea effect is because of a feedback mechanism not working. The price stops being influenced by its surroundings, to be brought down by the lack of any real demand. This is probably because coasts form a barrier, both to movements of goods (except at Ports) and to transmission of price (again, only at Ports).

I wonder whether anyone's ever seen this price-spike bug on maps where there's no sea transport going on? The fact that the Chile map had it (with not just price-modifiers, but imaginary demands in the middle of the sea) is suggestive.

I think that this instance of the bug partly happened because of the way the map is laid out. Steel is only produced in Europe (Saarbrucken and Hannover, in my case). It's demanded in the UK, but the UK is rail-isolated until late in the game when you bridge the English Channel. So steel pours out into the sea towards the UK. It wants to get to e.g. London where there's a Tool & Die. Something in the "intelligence" that moves stuff around by setting prices goes nuts, so that instead of the Steel going round the corner to Brighton where there's a Port, it keeps going straight, in a straight line towards London. It hits the coast, but there's no Port there, so it just sits there. And something about sea prices is insatiable: you can't lower the price at Sea by pouring more of the good into that cell.

I'm now figuring out another price bug, on the same map. This is where stations inexplicably have a lower price, just on the station's own cell, than the price in the rest of the station's catchment area. You can see this bug as isolated yellower cells where there's a station. It's a pain because a region can be demanding goods, but the station price is too low for your trains to pick it up and take it there.

Cars, in Reims, Luxembourg and Toul:

Lumber, in Erfurt, Kassel and Hof:

Goods, in Bremen, Dusseldorf and Kassel:

In each case, I hovered the mouse over the station cells. The price just outside the cell was exactly 10% higher. Over to the Editor, Event Debugging screen, and ... sure enough, there's a global +10% Goods price modifier in effect! I'll try removing that modifier and see if the effect disappears.

This effect isn't universal: it's only obvious in stations where there's a demand rather than a supply, and not even in all of these stations. I think that some station prices are getting "left behind", forgotten in the working out of the +10% modifier.

Unlike the "price spikes", this effect seems to come and go, and disappear quite quickly. Still, the conclusion has to be that RRT3 doesn't handle price increases well!

[RulerofRails]

I have seen this effect on other maps that don't have sea transport per se. But most maps will use some "sea" cells even if it's to represent a wide river, lake or similar. You would have to make/edit a map specifically without any ocean or sea cells and see if you still get the bug.

As far as the low price at the station, this is because the transmission of price from other stations (thanks to trains traveling on the route, perhaps too frequently?) is stronger than the effect of nearby houses. It's normal even where there is no price modifier, perhaps that just makes it more noticeable. Because of this discussion I did try adding some of the house demands to stations (those consumer goods that are at the top of the production chain). It is still completely an experiment, and I haven't found a nice balance to even start a comparison of how gameplay would be affected by this change. Potentially this idea would cut down on the frequency of this phenomenon.

[Gumboots]

The fact that the Chile map had it (with not just price-modifiers, but imaginary demands in the middle of the sea) is suggestive.

Yes, but I have seen odd things happen on the Chile map. For a start, how it spikes, or if it even spikes at all, depends on how you play it. So it's not just down the the basic map layout and the price modifier.

Second, one time (at band camp) I had a situation where the greatest demand for crystals was at Vallenar, which is connected to the ports on the ocean. The game ended up just continuing to stockpile crystals at Vallenar and the price never collapsed, even when there were literally 100 loads of crystals just sitting in Vallenar in a huge pile. Figure that one out.*

Other times, on the same map but with a different run through and a different playing style, peak prices for crystals would be bouncing all over the coastal region of Chile.

In each case, I hovered the mouse over the station cells. The price just outside the cell was exactly 10% higher. Over to the Editor, Event Debugging screen, and ... sure enough, there's a global +10% Goods price modifier in effect! I'll try removing that modifier and see if the effect disappears.

That would only affect Goods. Cars and Lumber would not be affected.

*Just thought of something about the huge stockpiling at Vallenar. That town is up a river, and the river hits the coast about halfway between two ports (Antwhatsit and Coquimbo). It is possible that the two ports (which are hooked up to the offshore warehouse demand) were sort of balancing out their pulls on Vallenar, and that the river had succumbed to your indented coast bug and was having a big demand near Vallenar. I never checked prices over the water, so don't actually know, and I don't have the saved game any more so can't check now.

[undertoad]

Yes, but I have seen odd things happen on the Chile map. For a start, how it spikes, or if it even spikes at all, depends on how you play it. So it's not just down the the basic map layout and the price modifier.

I haven't played the Chile map, but I think you're right on the general principle, which is that how you play the game also makes a difference. I'm a very monopolist/Communist kind of tycoon: if there's Steel around, for example, I want it to go to just my Tool & Dies, so that they can produce more and expand - and so I'll adjust my consists to avoid feeding a demand from a rival Tool &Die which I can't afford to buy yet. Or even better, not even connect to it until I have bought it . I mean - they're my trains, I do what I like with them!

This kind of "anti-market" playstyle will end up exaggerating demand spikes. I'm used to that. (I used to hope that if I starved the rival industries of supply for long enough, they'd fold and disappear off the map - but, like trying to bankrupt Jay Gould, this is much more than difficult (partly because he cheats, natch)). You can't resist this kind of demand-pull forever, especially if you want to expand your rails into that area (and want peace of mind, rather than constant micromanagement of consists).

But the price-spikes are something else, because they're not related to any real demand. I can't even approach the demand price-spike like an Evil Capitalist Monopolist Tycoon(TM), and think "well, if they want Steel so much, maybe I should make money supplying them and buy into whatever they're doing with it, as soon as I can afford to...", because there's nothing to buy into! It's just Steel disappearing into a hole.

(That's the point at which my "benign" techno-autocratic tendencies takes over; even as I recline in my 5m gilded sunken bath cavorting in fluttering $100 notes

EnoughCigars.jpg (19.49 KiB) Viewed 3508 times

I'm still revolted by waste. There's no double standards in this: every one of those $100 notes I bathe in is carefully picked up off the floor, dried out if necessary, ironed and put back where it belongs. My servants are under strict instructions on this point.)

Other times, on the same map but with a different run through and a different playing style, peak prices for crystals would be bouncing all over the coastal region of Chile.

That "bouncing all over" sounds exactly like what I've seen on New Beginnings. I reckon that an unmediated price-spike out in the sea is at the root of it, and how it plays out depends on how your rails (however you place your stations and rails in the particular game) interact with the sea's area of influence, along with how many crystals your auto-consist trains happen to deliver to affected stations (which could be anywhere on the network, judging by what I've seen on New Beginnings).

In each case, I hovered the mouse over the station cells. The price just outside the cell was exactly 10% higher. Over to the Editor, Event Debugging screen, and ... sure enough, there's a global +10% Goods price modifier in effect! I'll try removing that modifier and see if the effect disappears.

That would only affect Goods. Cars and Lumber would not be affected.

Doh, my bad! UK terminology, Goods train = Freight, not Passenger or Mail. I meant there's a +10% Cargo price modifier.

*Just thought of something about the huge stockpiling at Vallenar. That town is up a river, and the river hits the coast about halfway between two ports (Antwhatsit and Coquimbo). It is possible that the two ports (which are hooked up to the offshore warehouse demand) were sort of balancing out their pulls on Vallenar, and that the river had succumbed to your indented coast bug and was having a big demand near Vallenar. I never checked prices over the water, so don't actually know, and I don't have the saved game any more so can't check now.

That sounds very likely, and like the reverse of what I saw in the Thames Estuary. Rivers played a big part in the price-spikes I saw on New Beginnings. Someone had set up a giant demand for Steel in the North Sea. Apart from the effect on the coast (which spread), prices along the Rhine were gigantically high. Steel would jump onto barges to go down the river, crawling over mountains from Saarbrucken, ignoring the Auto Plant at Düsseldorf which would have paid good money for it, and then just ended up piling up somewhere short of Amsterdam, because it got all snarled up in the complexities of what happens to the Rhine in Holland (which admittedly is deeply weird and complex IRL, because of Dutch people's inexplicable preference for getting the tram to work rather than jetskiing out of their 3rd-floor windows). Even on the Meuse River, which is far more simple, the Steel would get to the river, go some way along it, and then get confused and pile up in a big ugly heap near Luxemburg.

[Gumboots]

That "bouncing all over" sounds exactly like what I've seen on New Beginnings. I reckon that an unmediated price-spike out in the sea is at the root of it, and how it plays out depends on how your rails (however you place your stations and rails in the particular game) interact with the sea's area of influence, along with how many crystals your auto-consist trains happen to deliver to affected stations (which could be anywhere on the network, judging by what I've seen on New Beginnings).

For that particular game I wasn't using auto consist for the crystals. I was deliberately trying to pump the price spikes as an experiment, so just about every load of crystals on the map was on a train that was set to only haul crystals. As soon as one of them arrived at a station and unloaded, I'd immediately reload it to go to the highest priced station at the time. During that play the peak price reached about $900/load, and peak delivery profit reached about $200/load.

[RulerofRails]

Well, I have completed a couple of tests with altered base prices and then an event applied at game start to bring prices back to roughly normal. I'm no longer getting these breakouts. I rigged it so that prices can double without issue. The good news is that even though any further All Cargo price modifiers must be scaled (for example 10% higher is now achieved by +5%), the price modifiers for existing cargoes work just fine. However, there are side-effects.

1.
Because said event only fires when the game starts, during the pre-game simulation the tycoonatrons are shifting cargo much faster during this period. This means that the cargo economy is more advanced when starting a game. Slight positive to this is that stacks are less likely, but it isn't backwards compatible in terms of starting difficulty with existing maps. The low cargo count on the map at game start is fundamental in holding the player back in the earliest stages of the game.

2. (with possible workaround)
The Labor & Overhead costs for industries is tied somehow to expected profitability of the industry depending on the base cargo prices. Using higher base prices means that resources are less profitable. Conversion industries seem pretty comparable. I haven't ruled out that this may be causing slightly more resources to seed. On the bright side there's less to be made from buying these. An active demand may remedy most of this problem, so if some extra lines are added to the farms with a super low demand (0.01 for the cargo they output) this will probably remove this issue.

The question is, how much would working price modifiers add to the game? Would it be enough to outweigh the first setback?

[Gumboots]

Sounds like this would really want map seeding adjustments for best effect in the earlier stages.

[RulerofRails]

The component of Labor and Overhead Costs determined by the purchase price of an industry is linear and determined as $3k for each $100k above $0.


The other components are more difficult to determine. Here's a view of my testing that's hopefully understandable. Notice there is some sort of slight progression with jumps at the $125k and $190k price points as I noted elsewhere. I omitted the results for the very low figures, because the warehouses I was using for consumption to keep demand rock stable stopped consuming. The price at which the resource was producing was at the highest level, which turns out to be $10k less than the corresponding In-game Price. The quantity that the industry consumes in a year has a slight effect. It's probably just caused by rounding though.

Main representation here is the ratio of Labor and Overhead Cost per load produced to the highest (In-game Price, representing unsatisfied demand) cargo price achieved in a normal economy after subtracting the component that represents industry price.

The practical part of the second section dealing with the price modifiers shows that Labor and Overhead costs per load produced are higher. I used the price at the point of consumption price to generate the percentages. I based the event modifiers of these in the first palce so I think this use is justified. These higher costs when using reduction events may complicate this idea, and even nix it completely.

The game is too smart for my workaround that I had hoped would lower Labor and Overhead costs. Adding a demand for a cargo that is also produced doesn't appear to work. At least in the way I did it. Even if this change was scaled back to allow only 50% higher prices, The problem is that any actual price drops from the current "normal" will in turn drive up the cost. I think with 25% or so the idea could work, but again is it worth it for that?

I have to say that not all understand the right way to rig industries as can be seen by port recipes that are sometimes losers. I feel some ports are little more than eye candy (except to allow cargo out onto the water). Hopefully this information will help with understanding this topic.

---

Re-jigging seeding is a lot of work. There is actually a different workaround I thought of in the meantime. Because the original idea requires an event added to an existing map, extra effects could pretty easily be added at the same time.

From my testing, adjusting the production rates in game works exactly the same as if done in the files themselves. It would be simple to cut all those base output values in the files (for example by half) and then with the needed event that would give "normal" prices, include a second event that would set the cargo production to normal (in the example +100%).