Cargo/raw material

[navall]

Hi,

It has been some years since I have played RT3, but with the 1.06 version it happens that even factories where I do not deliver the necessary raw material, produce the cargo. For example, if I connect certain city with textile mill, the mill immediately produces textile despite the fact that I did not deliver any wool or cotton. Similarly, trains automatically load raw material cargo from nearby coal or iron mines, although I have not connected the mines. This was not the case in the older version, I have played with original CD. It makes the game too easy even on expert level. Do you know whether is it a bug? Or is it a result of 1.06 patch or the Coast to Coast extension? Is there a way to avoid it? It seriously ruin my joy from the game that I has loved for so many years.

[Gumboots]

This is normal for any version of RT3. Cargo moves across the map (slowly) if there is a price gradient between two areas. You are getting it confused with the RT2 cargo model, which was different.

[navall]

This is normal for any version of RT3. Cargo moves across the map (slowly) if there is a price gradient between two areas. You are getting it confused with the RT2 cargo model, which was different.

Thank you very much for your reply. I must admit I am really confused indeed. The thing is that I have never played RTII and only played RTIII on cd and later on different downloaded versions compatible with Wnidows 10,11 and so on. But I would swear that at least in my cd version, I had to move wool.or cotton (for example) to textile mill, otherwise it would not produce clothes cargo. And now, if I play GOG version, textil mill ptoduces clothes cargo no matter if I haul any cotton or wool to the mill. The game seems to easy to me because all cargo is available since the first moment of the game and that is not fun because I don't need to strategize and build the tracks accordingly. But now I am confused when you say that this was never the case in RTIII. I am pretty sure that this was how I used to play it but perhaps I got lost somewhere in the transition from cd version to newer versions of the game.

[Gumboots]

I've never played the GoG version but as far as I know its gameplay is exactly the same as the CD version. RoR has played the GoG version of the game, and he's right into strategising in depth. He never mentioned any problems with how it plays.

A textile mill will produce clothing at the start of the game - if - an existing price gradient means wool and/or cotton is already moving across the map to the mill at the start of the game. Otherwise, it should not produce anything.

[RulerofRails]

RT3 has layers of complexity. I believe it's possible to have a completely different experience with it based on your perception and notice of details. For example, as a beginner I didn't use the cargo overlays which show a price heat map for the given geography and a visualization of non-train resource transportation. As a beginner, in my perception most of the industries were not profitable and I didn't understand why. I think it's possible that your perception of the way the game worked back then was different also. Depending on what map you play, the majority have many idle industries that we technically could supply and get up and running. However, with experience we know that co-operating with the game's mechanics is the easiest and most efficient way to play.

1.06 is more of a player made "minor mod" of the game than a true patch. It makes some improvements but also changes some things which didn't need to be changed (aka, the benefits of those are debatable), some of which have made the game a little easier. I recommend using 1.05. A good portion of the custom maps have been made by people who understood enough about the game's mechanics to co-operate with them. For maximum nostalgia I would recommend the campaign. Amongst those maps also there are differences with resource density. In general, European maps, especially 20th century ones have more cities and therefore factories while having a lower density of resources. In the 20th century passenger and mail revenue is lower while fuel and some other costs are higher.

The challenge in RT3, is to have a consistently profitable company. Price is dynamic. Transport demand is simulated via price difference between source and destination. Presence of cargo will suppress price. On auto-consist the goal of the transport mechanic is to equalize prices. If price is equal there is no demand for transport and we can't make any money. There is a short-term vs long-term element. At the deeper level, gameplay revolves around expansion strategy that manages working capital to systematically finance a steady diet of price differential opportunities (aka high profit short-term), while also ending up with a network that is sustainable at a medium return in the long term. When not protected by a bonds/industry-profits cushion, one wrong step can potentially stall expansion, setting progress back literally years.

Also, what difficulty setting did you use? Don't forget to bump that up if you find things are "too easy." But, finding challenge in this game shouldn't be hard to do.


PS. The GoG version is for practical purposes the same as the cd one.