Hi to all.

[RulerofRails]

Hmm, I haven't seen that problem with bonds. Maybe it's new. I know that we can get the max if we take the medium and then the large one. Under circumstances it's possible to take 3 small ones. That might be a strategy if earnings are weak.

I believe engine "maintenance" is akin to running cost in RE1. That means trains that wait till full cost you far less than a bunch of half empty ones. Did you reduce your employee costs as much as possible? In 1830 you probably don't want to cut speed too much. I also really hate to see the "servicing" trains block my stations for longer, but the rest are IMO fair game.

What is your target? Just to survive, build the transcontinental eventually, or?

[Orange46]

What is your target? Just to survive, build the transcontinental eventually, or?

Just to survive and to experiment with things to see how they work. I stopped the custom experiment and went back to the scenarios (Florida) to see what the latest upgrade is doing. I noticed that the bonds now have 3 lines - face amount, accrued and penalty interest. There were only 2 lines before and I think that the penalty interest was what was missing. In any case, I only kept the Florida bond a short time and the penalty was small. After I play a few more scenarios, I will go back to the experiment. I am not sure what map I will use, as the North America map is probably way to large to hold my attention.

edit: Actually, I am looking for a SimRe type of experience from the RE1 Workshop.

[Gumboots]

If you guys want a dedicated RE thread, let me know and I'll split this out to one for you. If here's enough interest it could even have its own board (probably too early for that).

[Grandma Ruth]

If I ever get through the Coast to Coast scenarios, I might be interested to look at something new.
@Orange46, remember we had a good time tweaking one of your RT3 scenarios, and almost met in person? Happy days!

[Orange46]

Of course I remember my Grandma who imported booze from Canada to the US.

[RulerofRails]

edit: Actually, I am looking for a SimRe type of experience from the RE1 Workshop.

The SimRe series was IMO practically rendered obsolete by the change that allowed RE1 to be played at 50% speed. Further updates to Free Mode, the "Advanced Settings," further reduced the relevance of this series. A Free Mode on hardest settings is more restrictive.

The most interesting workshop creation are probably those that lower cargo volume. I wanted to do something later in the game's life. The Advanced Settings show up as editable. But they don't do anything. So I reported that this was broken, and waited for a fix. Eventually the answer was that they had no intention of adding this functionality and that discouraged me from trying at all. For example, it remains impossible to edit track-laying or station building cost. I met one guy that was "editing" his game files to make some interesting changes but I hesitated to get into that and for sure this isn't a solution for something published in the workshop.

There are a small handful of quality workshop submissions that are at least on the level of the official scenarios/DLCs. If you like I can PM you some links.


About RE2, I played as you suggested for a Transcontinental target reached in mid 1835. Starting in Boston. I canceled out any connection bonuses, by building burn track for that amount and then dozing it once the refund grace period had passed. I had territories enabled. I used employee settings to reduce my revenues by a further -10%. from normal. Didn't do any research except on the main path in order to get new engines. Didn't use bonds. For the sake of realism I didn't go into New Brunswick for Grain. So, it was quite a slow start to save up enough to get the bridge between NYC and Albany, while only NYC was growing. By the time I reached Buffalo, I was starting to get a decent revenue stream, and it was just a steady westward expansion after this.

I will send you the save file in a PM. During this play I realized that instead of using employees to reduce revenue it has more impact to instead maximize their costs, 6 hour days at 200% across the board. Combined with no bonds and a couple other things this is a way to make the official campaigns/scenarios almost interesting strategically.

[Orange46]

Sounds like you improved (or perhaps unimproved) on what I did. I will have to try Boston. It seems that making NYC an objective, rather than ignoring it as I did for a very long time, would then make the game more interesting to me.

Right now I am doing the gold rush scenario in RE2.

Yes, I would like to see your Boston save file.

[RulerofRails]

Yes, I would like to see your Boston save file.

Check your private messages. It should be there.

[Orange46]

$164.000 in cash and a Ticket to Ride Bangor to San Francisco connection with hardly any dog legs accomplished before 1836 on our super hard setting - wow.

edit: and you did it in 10 hours and 31 minutes. That's how much time I spent on just the gold rush.

This needs to get posted on the RE2 Steam Forum somehow. Perhaps the save file of the game just after all of the bonuses have been deleted. Maybe the developers could make it into an official scenario, with the proper goals; or, is the game just too easy. But, I do enjoy the game.

[RulerofRails]

I think one of the keys was that I stayed out of debt. There might be a place for it, but that would have to be carefully considered. Using it for something expensive like the bridge NYC to Albany could work, but you would probably have to leverage value. Save part of the money, and then try to get Syracuse connected as well in order to get a bump in total express volume (depends on number of cities connected) which would be the revenue to pay for the bond.

I did all campaigns and scenarios except the last scenario in 40ish hours. In RE1 I was used to playing without pause. So, I carried the habit over. In the last scenario I used pause and studied what is going on a bit closer. I think I'm over "no-pause" being a strategy to make things "interesting enough" for now, but that's another story.

If you share something, I think the idea is the important part. People need discipline to play like this, there is no way to verify people followed the rules. There are other possibilities, partial Orient Express on the big Europe map for example. I said somewhere that I would pay extra to have all the difficulty settings available in the existing scenarios/campaign. But sadly, these devs want to support "mobile" gaming like Nintendo Switch. That shows what demographic they are aiming for. RT3 will never be surpassed. Social media spoiled things.