Ghost industries; and rail yards

[undertoad]

Hi all

Haven't been around for a while - non-RT life has been making demands...

It's exciting to see Trainmaster out there - but for the moment I'm sticking with RT3, I think, as I can't spare the time to really learn a new game.

I have a question about "ghost" industries. By that I mean the badly-placed, sometimes ridiculously-placed production facilities that just appear on the map, and which you have no intention of buying. For instance, some chancer decides to set up a MeatPacking plant way over the other side of the map from any Cattle. On the GoWest map I'm playing again at the moment, it's Tool&Dies; every Mom'n'Pop in New England seems to love to set up a little Tool&Die in their back yard and hope to snag any Iron that might be passing through.

These industries are annoying, especially when they're not that ridiculously-placed. A big part of my game is micro-management to make sure that all the Cattle goes to the station next to MY Meatpacking plant, and all the Iron goes to MY Tool&Dies (to take two examples). The micro-management is about making sure that trains leaving my industry's station don't take away Cattle (or Iron, as it may be), but do take away anything else that might turn a profit. In the absence of an "any cargo except..." custom consist, this means setting custom consists based on what I see piling up at that station, and excluding the raw resource that I want to stay there. And to monopolise the raw materials, I often have to set up waiting trains, that sit at a station and grab all the e.g. Iron until they've got e.g. 5 loads. That's not a problem, but it's annoying that to get them to load I often have to give them a "spoof" destination (often one of the Mom'n'Pop industry stations), and then redirect them to my industry's station once the wheels are turning.

It's satisfying to see this working, and the income statements of the rival industries show red for the last 4 years. But my real aim is to get the rival industry to die - they do do this, simply disappear from the map, but only sometimes. In my current game the map is littered with loss-making industries, which I have to constantly bear in mind as potential thieves of MY resources. I thought that making them make a loss for long enough would make them disappear, but it doesn't seem to be working. Does anyone know how this mechanism works?

On another topic, I've been trying to use the Railyards that Michael Rountree and Ned Fumpkin kindly uploaded to the site. I'm not having much success, but that could be because I'm using them wrong! What I'm doing is this, using Cattle as an example:

A---------
C-----------D
B--------

A and B are stations that capture Livestock from Cattle Ranches. D is my Meatpacking plant. I don't want 2 trains to go all the way from A-D and B-D. So I make a station at C, a rail junction in the middle of nowhere, with no community and no demand at all for Livestock. I build a Stockyard there, hoping that I can then run 2 trains A-C and B-C (or even 1 train for both), and another train picking up the Livestock from C and taking it to D (maybe among other things). The price at C doesn't seem to get high enough to get the Livestock to be loaded A-C or B-C. Maybe I'm not doing it right? Or maybe not waiting long enough for the price-effect to show?

thanks!


seb

[undertoad]

doh. The editor "tidied up" my little diagram. C-D is supposed to be further along, so that ABD and the rails between them make a "Y on its side" shape.

[OilCan]

Alright, so here's my best shot at this...

Those ghost industries appear as they do for one of two reasons: the map maker did a poor job balancing the economy of the map and so entirely useless industries spring up like unwanted weeds -or- the map maker cleverly set up a challenge for the player by adding lots of rival industries. Judging by your comments, I'm guessing that you are talking about the first reason. The take home lesson is that when you make you next map don't follow reason #1.

The reason your iron trains are not leaving the stations is because the price for the iron at your mill is zero or negative - in other words, nobody is paying for iron at the moment. The stationmaster will not let the train leave the station until the price for iron will show a profit. And for that we thank the stationmaster. (Except in 1.06V, the stationmaster will send a custom consist along its way for a loss of profit.)

Don't think of losing rivals as 'thieves' of your resource. Instead, think of them as targets to pickpocket. Set up a depot right beside their industry and ship off their resouces (return those trains empty of course). Rob them blind. Or set a depot between them and the resources and trap the resouces before they reach your rival.

The game code does remove loser industries, but slowly and for some not at all. Ever so often the game seeds out new industries like a farmer in a field casting out seeds (this is into a 'region'). But, only a maximum number of industries can ever be in the region, so the game removes the losers for the new comers. How the game choses which losers to remove is beyond me. I've watched a steel mill sit and produce NOTHING for an entire game, yet two doors down a struggling, semi profitable paper mill sudden dissapears. I do know that the game will not remove a profitable industry and NEVER one that you own regardless of how much money it loses.

The same idea happens in a city - ever so often the game seeds new industries and removes loser industries.

Without being too brash, read my handbook posted on this website for a more technical (and probably boring) explanation of how all this works.

I've never used the stockyards. I know they work only in 1.06V because you have to custom ship at a loss to the stockyard. Maybe another person on this forum who has used them will chime in. (Why not build a meat plant at C? - no rivals to siphon off cows way out there!)

[undertoad]

Hi Oilcan

Thanks for your comments. You're preaching to the converted - I've read your excellent handbook several times, and refer back to it on occasion!

The "thieving" I talk about happens after I've completed the "pickpocket" phase - I've stolen all their resources, and the "thieving" I'm trying to prevent is resources going back to them, through trains with any "Any Cargo/Any Freight" consist item leaving the station(s) where my stolen hoard is taking some of the resource with them. Of course all my previous pickpocketing will make the price of the resource go up at the stations I pickpocketed, which is why this happens.

It's good to know that loser industries don't always die off. I was hoping to make these industries die off, and thought that enough years of losses would do the trick, so that I wouldn't have to micromanage any more to prevent them "thieving". But from what you say it seems this won't always work.

Stockyards - well, I'm using 1.05. Doh. Guess I'll look up 1.06 and install it, as shipping at a loss will suit me very well.

cheers


seb

[Moggie]

About shipping at a loss, I was just playing Juice Train and the way I got the bottling plants into high gear was to use custom trains from every station that had produce. Always reserved space for at least 2 cars of produce. Then I ran the trains back express-only to make sure they wouldn't move the produce right back. Instead of a 3-car train every now and then I was running 2 full-size trains of food to New York.

edit: What I don't understand is slapping me with an order to transport 10 sugar yearly when there's no sugar production on the whole map (except for 2 factories on the edge, hundreds of miles away from any and all even possible raw material sources...

[nedfumpkin]

undertoad...the railyard structures we originally made for 1.05 which doesn't have the ship at a loss feature. They attract cargo, but you have to know how to use them. There is a thread somewhere that discusses them.

As for micro-managing cargo, if you are into that then TM is the way to go because it is geared towards that aspect of the game.

[OilCan]

Ned...I take my hat off to you. its uncanny how you don't miss any reference in any post to 'micro-management'. Do you have an auto search set up in this forum for 'micro' or something like that?

[Blackhawk]

About shipping at a loss, I was just playing Juice Train and the way I got the bottling plants into high gear was to use custom trains from every station that had produce. Always reserved space for at least 2 cars of produce. Then I ran the trains back express-only to make sure they wouldn't move the produce right back. Instead of a 3-car train every now and then I was running 2 full-size trains of food to New York.

edit: What I don't understand is slapping me with an order to transport 10 sugar yearly when there's no sugar production on the whole map (except for 2 factories on the edge, hundreds of miles away from any and all even possible raw material sources...

To get the TM medal you'll have to expand into the mid-west of the US by Chicago and the creameries in Wisconsin. I believe I've used the coal in Southern Illinois, near St. Louis to build a chemical plant and make chemicals. Then send the chemicals up to Des Moines. Also usually there is paper in Louisville or Cinncinati, which I also send to Des Moines. And the corn is scattered across midwest/Illinois/Iowa area. Then I send the sugar to the creameries in Wisconsin. I'll have a train carry maybe 6 loads of sugar to the first creamery, and then bring 3 of those loads to the 2nd creamery as well so I'll give me more loads of sugar shipped.

I also manufacture sugar in Southern Florida and I think I usually send that sugar as well as the surrounding grain/rice to the cereal factory in Montgomery.

I think to get the maximum food production you'd need to make and transport sugar so I don't think I set the number of loads too high.

I'm not entirely sure but I think you can also build sugar refineries on the map as well.

[Dixie Flyer]

Those "ghost" industries can be dealt with easily. Press the shift key and E key simultaneously, this opens the editor, then use the bulldozer from the icons at the left of the screen. Problem solved. I don't even view this as cheating anymore. I view it as fixing a situation brought up by a poorly designed map, especially if it is one of the maps that came with the game. Texas Tea is a prime example of such, Alcohol is a valid cargo, grain is a supplied resource, produce is not; yet distilleries are enabled and breweries are not. Most of the user made maps suffer less from such blatant mistakes and have much better seedings of industries.

What cam also help at times is to place a small station in the same resource square as the industry you want to supply. This also applies to robbing industries but I rarely do that. By resource square I mean the squares you see when in the global price view. Another trick using resource squares it to put your industry in the same square as an existing one. This is especially helpful in some of the maps with textile mills and a large number of cotton farms. Instead of trying to siphon off the cotton just build a mill of your own in the same square as an existing mill. Both mills will draw off of the same stack of resources. This trick can also be used with your own mill if industries are being supplied with more resources than they can use when upgraded.