Back again.

[JSS]

We are all good on the starting of track laying to Penticton. I only wanted to state my probable reason for doing it the way it was. You made it more playable and that is great.

I do not recall the track laying at the tunnel to be that steep. It was a rather gentle slop of 3% or 4% max. In no way near or above 6%. There is something not right or I have lost it. One of the toughest spots regarding grading was a good part before the tunnel around a corner where you needed to make a sharp left turn.

By pure coincident (I upgraded the windows 10 version today and snooped around a bit) I found screenshots that I made showing the track laying between Castlegar and Cascade. It shows the route I have taken but do not recall from what build it was taken. They screenshots are of the .tga file format. I should be able to convert them or make them available for you to download them if you are interested.

[RulerofRails]

For reference, this is the tunnel before the tweak.

It was always possible to build at low grade, but the above is the "default", as in no fine-tuning to get a slight diagonal.

I don't mind looking at more shots if you want to upload them. However, I think the routes are pretty clear. At this point I have made no plans to change the grading elsewhere. You did a great job on that.


If you are wondering about late game track-laying, I will explain a little more how I am thinking. The events were already there, I just tweaked a bit how and when they can be accessed. There were two main reasons,

1. I saw that you built a couple other graded routes into the wilderness such as Rock Creek to Kelowna, or Slocan to New Denver. There are also various flat areas scattered in the mountains that become pockets for resources (it's easier for the game to seed them there).

2. The political "kickback" that eliminates a rail company will also destroy their track. It's impossible to make bridges with caterpillar track laying. So for example this can make it impossible to do anything with Nelson smelter.

3. While it's not realistic, doubling up track is good for gameplay. I see it as a strategic tool representing more general track improvement. What I like doing is doubling the eastbound climb up to Meadow Lake Pass. This can be imagined as simulating the effect that helper engines would have IRL.

This "free-mode" construction is only available if you complete all the official connection offers. That includes the "Other Connections", so it will be 1910+. If you opt out of the official connections (there's no going back) it's available sooner, but the official connections aren't limited at 475 sections per year.


Other notes.
On my last test, when trying to play normally and less test-mode, I did the exploit of connecting to Merrit coal by turning right at Otter Summit before going left down to Petain (in construction to Petain phase, you can still arrive early!). There is enough track to do this. I am considering fixing this, but want a good solution.

The obvious of shutting down Coal production there until after you arrive in Petain (wiki mentioned Merritt coal in 1907) has the side-effect of making the company "Middlesboro Collieries" unprofitable. I would need to give the company a different resource stream, or ??? If I get time I might run an experiment on controlling share price via event (is it possible to artificially keep share price up in a weak profit company in such a way that doesn't look weird?).

Why the exploit is a strong move: the Coal obtained is strategically important to feed the smelters (which will help fill your pockets), in contrast to not that much going on at Petain/Hope (maybe some Livestock from Otter Summit, but for the sake of Meat haulage to the smelter/worksites it's probably preferable to ship Cattle east to either Keremos/Penticton). I don't know the history of the place like you do. I'm not a good reader. I am a little curious what the main products in/out of Petain/Hope were IRL.

[JSS]

Re Tunnel area, there was no fine tuning necessary if I recall correctly. My approach was more from the Southeast and not from the East. There was a left turn gently up into the recess of the south ridge and then turning northwest almost directly in front of the Tunnel which was running almost straight west. This was a slightly longer route but the tunnel worked out much less steep. What I see in the screenshot is a straight approach from the east with a bridge and an 11% tunnel slope.

One way to avoid the Merritt connection might be that if there is a connection made to the mines there will not be sufficient rail to connect to Petain in time. This could be perhaps done by first making a strong suggestion to complete the Petain connection before anything else and if the player disregards this warning to have many washouts or construction mishaps around the Coquihalla Pass to lose rail material (a not unlike probability since it was a difficult stretch of construction) until there is not sufficient rail left for the connection. Just one idea.

Hope was not much of anything and got their first larger sawmill only about 1889. Yale, a town slightly north of Hope, also on the Fraser River but located on the west side of the river, was the main town in the area. That mainly because the shipping up the Fraser river terminated there and the Cariboo Wagon Road went from there north into the Cariboo region. The best that could be done perhaps is to have a warehouse there to provide goods to mimic Yale. Is there perhaps room for a Harbor?

You might also find a graded route up the Tulameen River that later joins the Coquihalla River. This was a surveyed route to circumvent the Coquihalla Pass route and had a proposed 8 mile tunnel in its route. My plan at one time was to make the Coquihalla Pass so unreliable that it would be replaced by that route.

[RulerofRails]

I can't see how else to make the tunnel. In my last screenshot the tunnel area is completely unchanged from the version (423) you sent me and appears the same as the version in the archives (357).

If you have some screenshots of what you mean, this would be helpful.

One way to avoid the Merritt connection might be that if there is a connection made to the mines there will not be sufficient rail to connect to Petain in time. This could be perhaps done by first making a strong suggestion to complete the Petain connection before anything else and if the player disregards this warning to have many washouts or construction mishaps around the Coquihalla Pass to lose rail material (a not unlike probability since it was a difficult stretch of construction) until there is not sufficient rail left for the connection. Just one idea.

Ok great, thanks. Again, very useful info. Maybe I should consider using set GV4 for each of the main construction projects (if I want to get really tricky I can store the unused for later use). What is happening at the moment is there is a little excess from each project (Midway, Penticton, then Petain). In combination it's about 600-800 units, more than enough to reach Merrit without encountering the emergency rail supplies purchase. I might make the emergency measure more expensive too, so that it would be uneconomical to just keep supplies topped via that. But "problems" with the connection sounds interesting as well.

As I said, I did put a warehouse near Agassiz to represent off-map for CPR. It supplies Corn and Grain. Maybe that should be replaced with a port at Yale? For the KVR though, surely the focus more was on traffic in-out of Petain for exchange onto the river or the CPR? If there's a port at Yale, the player will obviously have an incentive to connect there and that wouldn't be a historical connection.

I'm thinking some sort of haulage to make the route over the Coquihilla pass more significant. Perhaps a target of hauling Goods to Petain could be used? I would swap out the warehouse there (currently a default conversion Lumber->Coal, Livestock->Meat, Steel->Goods) for one that demands Goods, and possibly a small volume trading conversion Goods->Cheese (I realize not totally sensible, but only Cheese and Furniture are higher price than Goods and current Cheese supply is low compared to Furniture). Then the player could either ship in Steel to Hope and convert there (default conversion port there) or source Goods from Penticton, or if they really want Robson. . . . What do you think? Maybe for each 50 loads you deliver you get a Tycoon point?

At what stage of the game did you want to suggest the Coquihalla bypass route? The tunnel is about 100 sections long. It's currently impossible to build with the current 75 unit per month maximum. It will need a special coding to allow that, which wont be a problem, just a matter of deciding what is the best way to set it.

Also, if you have more details about the impact/timing/etc. of problems for the Coquihilla pass, let me know.


ETA: The starting play when you know things are tighter is upgrades to Trail station and Trail Smelter station (for better Steel pick-up), then new large stations in Rossland, Castlegar, and Robson + some Hotels. This helps a little with Coal and Iron gathering but a bigger reason is to get coverage of all houses in those towns.

A little info about station usage in general:
With this game, the small station is not very useful except as a drop-off-only depot. Cargo moves without our help. In a pickup situation, we want to capture the stream from that resource/factory. A Large station obviously will gather from a longer section of the stream. It's possible to use a Medium station for capturing overland streams if train frequency is better than average, but anywhere cargo is on a river needs a large station.

In a distribution situation, such as Goods delivery to nearby cities, the game relies on re-hauling. That means cargo is dropped off in City A. As time passes the price there falls. Eventually the price will fall enough to allow cargo transport to City B. During the passing of time the cargo will drift towards the houses in City A, that can be 2-3 cells and without a large station a portion of cargo will probably be left behind. If less than 0.5 goods are left in City ! the price there will soon start to rise again, repeating the cycle. Medium stations are inefficiency in the cycle, resulting in lower rail ROI.

Not everything applies to the starting station area in SCBC (I don't setup to allow distribution for example). However, the efficiency of the Large stations and extra express traffic thanks to covering all houses is more than enough to justify building a second station then ignoring the placed stations in Rossland and Robson.

I went into detail about the stations because I feel that if you absolutely want to prevent them being built solid mechanisms would need to be put in place. Otherwise if the regular play is to build them anyway, I'm a bit considering setting up Rossland and Robson, large to start with and reducing a little starting cash to match (or provide room to let them be upgradeable). The feel of double-ups is of lesser quality in my opinion. (Off-topic: the AI railways do a lot better using large stations as well, even though they aren't smart enough to normally build them). It's just a feel thing, maybe it's just me, I wont tweak it if you don't agree.

[JSS]

Ok I hope you can download the two screenshots from the link that you should have gotten. Not certain from what build the shots are but I guess it was from very early on in the route making. Not much has changed on the route itself except I believe there is also a Lumber camp in the area that was added much later. Hope that helps somehow.

“For the KVR though, surely the focus more was on traffic in-out of Petain for exchange onto the river or the CPR?”
In real life the KVR had little or no impact on the Yale traffic. I only mentioned Yale for the purpose of product flow and demand on the map given a reasonable explanation.
The main business of the KVR in later years was the transportation of passengers and ore from the Kootenay region, forestry products and fruit from the Okanagan. In the earlier years, I would suspect, it was mainly passengers, forestry products, Cattle and smelter items. Fruit from the Okanagan was only starting to be transported by rail about 1910.

“I'm thinking some sort of haulage to make the route over the Coquihilla pass more significant.”
Your plan to make the Coquihalla route more significant sounds good. Given that they had a sawmill there furniture as the conversion product sounds fine. Can more Passengers also be made available via a conversion? I don’t remember. Extra Tycoon points sounds good also.

“At what stage of the game did you want to suggest the Coquihalla bypass route?”
Originally, I graded the in 1909 surveyed VV&E route to perhaps later somehow to use it. To use it for the purpose of bypass was only a thought later but I never came close to implement the plan. I laid track and build the tunnel (to establish feasibility) but am not 100% certain anymore if it was with the track restrictions in place. I am inclined to think so. It is again perhaps a matter of precise tracklaying.

“Also, if you have more details about the impact/timing/etc. of problems for the Coquihilla pass, let me know.”
There was a high potential of a confrontation between The KVR and VV&E (part of Jim Hills Great Northern RR) Both had surveyed a route through the narrow Coquihalla Pass a place where no two right of ways would be possible. The conflict was settled late 1913 with the VV&E basically surrendering. But one could make a conflict out of that since in reality the VV&E connected to Coalmont late 1911. So, the story line being that if you, the KVR, connected to Coalmont before the line to Petain is finished you will run into trouble with the VV&E because they had the same plan and you beat them to it. The result is no surrender on the Coquihalla line and a fight. Could that work?

[RulerofRails]

I got the screenshots.

It's a bit hard to tell, but it looks like the lower bridge/tunnel combination doesn't exist in that build.

I tried to approximately replicate the same shots in the current (same as 423 except lower tunnel entries tweak) build.

Bonus: I then turned camera about 180:

If you notice bare spots without trees in those shots, that's because water cells used to hide territory boundaries by default don't have trees in them. With a hidden territory but expensive costs to maintain the "keep-out" aspect, the trees will be back. (Did them already, but lost them when backtracking to get rid of the "can't control other chairmen in the editor" bug.)



Currently, I'm thinking 1911 or so onwards AND 50 loads delivered to Petain (using Goods demand idea), as basic conditionals to start a sequence for a construction event to build the big tunnel. Might expand this to involve the player in the earlier survey costs as well, admittedly that is a little historical liberty since it was VV&E, but . . . .

Connecting the Coal mines near Merritt (before Petain) is what I am calling "exploit." I think I will cut track allowance to 20 per month. That will probably make an early Petain connection impossible. I'm wondering if in general that higher breakdowns and/or lower speed is a better simulation of problems crossing the Coquihilla Pass than random track destruction. I would consider a couple track destructions based on really bad historical landslides/fires whatever. But IMO it's not a great positive on gameplay if it feels like you are constantly fixing it at random.

Right now I did a run with large stations for proper house coverage in Rossland and Robson. Then I built Hotels in every town. Express revenues are too high like this. By the time I get to Princeton, express revenue is $1M per year, plus $210k profits at the Hotels. If you don't remember, Hotels keep passengers on the map longer, plus act like a normal-size house to produce/demand passengers as well, then of course they profit according to how many are delivered.

What I did is kept the 20% increase in revenue for passengers and mail (at start) since this is not bugged the way price increases for freight cargoes are. At this point I am thinking of dropping the ability to build Hotels (did KVR build many Hotels in real life?) or removing the +20% revenue bonus for express. How much do you like Hotels?

[JSS]

Hard to tell but it looks like I had the tunnel entrance lower on the mountain.

“Might expand this to involve the player in the earlier survey costs as well, admittedly that is a little historical liberty since it was VV&E, but . . . .”
A fair bit of historical liberty had to be taken throughout. As an example the KVR was actually only founded in 1915 with several smaller RR being part of it. The description on how the map and your activities fit into this historical timeframe in an fictional way is briefly outlined in my map guide.

“(did KVR build many Hotels in real life?)”
Not to my knowledge. The CPR, KVR`s actual owners, are known for having done so (Vancouver, Banff Springs and several smaller ones along the Transcontinental Line) at the time.

“How much do you like Hotels?”
When travelling in North America I like to stay in the “Best Western” group of hotels. Like them and have never been disappointed.

[RulerofRails]

I had some computer troubles the last week. BSOD and all that, resisted it but eventually did a refresh. Anyway, I've gotten the map about to the point where I'm about to do a solid test run or two to test all the events I added (must be at least 150, new event is now numbered "530-something") so there's a bit of work for that.

After that maybe it's deciding what to do about newspapers. I feel that I don't have the local knowledge required to take a good stab at those. How did you source the ones you already made?

BTW, about the Hotels, you can still build them but at the cost of $250k a piece. A couple can be used strategically. Eholt is a good potential location (approximates a hub).

[Gumboots]

It'll be interesting to see how it runs with that many events, and on a maximum-sized map.

[RulerofRails]

It's not hanging or anything strange. While it is a big map, there are comparatively few cities. Also, limited track and no industry building limit total track/trains/stations/buildings. I believe that there is some sort of overflow situation in the lists as Sugus once suggested being the bottleneck. If you have a decent machine and run dgVoodoo graphics can easily be handled. For a slower machine I'm pretty sure that graphics settings are much more relevant for game performance than some simple events.

I did try to be efficient in number of events needed, but it's 1.05 so there is no setting of variables equal to game functions (ex. company cash) or to other variables. All math must be done with counting and <,> conditions. That adds quite a few compared to what could be done in 1.06.

Update on test run: Of course I found a few little things I mis-assigned or omitted, I'm getting towards half-way through now.

[RulerofRails]

JSS, if you stop by sometime soon. Just wondering your opinion on robber baron type play? At the moment I'm looking to disable taking charimanship of another company completely. This would limit a lot the shenanigans that are possible. Think dozing/destroying/wasting money so it's cheaper to merge that company into yours. Also, it's possible to multi-merge other companies into 1, which increases your points with money you didn't earn, etc....

I'm inclined to also forbid issuing stock. This has medium impact here since in order to get a stake in other companies you must do something to protect your PNW. Probably will include these in the next (hopefully final) beta which is coming soon. But could always be reverted later if you desire.

[Gumboots]

Are the AI companies allowed to build their own track, or is it all pre-built for them? Bear in mind that this is a large and complex scenario, and dealing with the aftermath of merging unrestricted AI companies is always one of the most tedious aspects of any RT3 game. It's painful for even one or two companies. The obvious question becomes: how tedious do you want to make this? Personally I find it far more satisfying to sort out AI companies in advance of merging. The end point is the same, since you'd do the same things anyway, but the whole process is a lot less tedious.

Re issuing stock: will you also disable buybacks? I think that's an automatic part of disabling issues. It shouldn't be, but IIRC it's another of RT3's dumb scripting limitations.

One thing to be said for stopping buybacks is that it does sharply restrict the amount you can profit from robber baron tricks. No buybacks makes it impossible to continually escalate company creation and trashing. However, no buybacks also makes it extremely difficult to increase your PNW to a level where you can take over other companies, even if you don't want to play robber baron.

[RulerofRails]

They are all pre-built, and aren't allowed to build new track. They can't get up to much of their usual nonsense here. Their engine choice is probably their worst feature (Camelback and Eight-Wheeler). I didn't think to change that until now. I will experiment a little what they do if I forbid them from buying the Eight-Wheeler.

New companies were never allowed to be started here. So it's more like closing little doors rather than big ones. I want the player to strategize the priority of the companies he takes over. At least I enjoyed that a lot. Most of the companies own industries. Merging with them just before an industry becomes profitable can be a great move.

You are probably right that buybacks and stocks are tied together. In this scenario there are a lot of AI players, half a dozen or so of these start out rich and the larger companies have majority or thereabouts tied up early in the game. I'm not worried about losing buybacks. Actually that will give the player more of a chance to get a foothold before the AI reduces the company size via buybacks (they aren't doing it extensively, just couple times).

[Gumboots]

Ok, sounds fine then. If you're worried about the AI locomotive choice, just give them something idiot-proof like Connies, with a reliability and pulling power boost. If that is tied to company ID then it shouldn't transfer to the human player when the companies are merged. If it does, it shouldn't be hard to figure out a reset for the human player's company. A basic [when company is merged] + [test against human company] + [pulling power +0%, reliability +0 levels] should do it.

Or give them the Pennsy H3 as well as Connies, with no boosts to anything. It really is ideal for the purpose. Extra requirement, yeah, but it's a good loco to have anyway, and Connies are a passable fallback if necessary.

Although here's a thought. The worse the AI locos are, the less money they'll make, and the easier it'll be to take over AI companies. So if their locos get too good you may end up needing to rebalance somewhere else. Not sure if it will be an issue in practice, but figured it was worth mentioning.