Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

I am about to release a scenario called "Bush v. Gore". The map used is the USA map (with countless small tweaks), the starting year is 1990-2000, the duration is 20 years, and everything needs to be built from scratch.

For the Gold medal, a trans-continental railroad is one of the requirements. But how should "trans-continental" be defined? I would like the player to have several path options, where none is apparently the best one. Right now it is NYC to California. Other suggestions?

Create territories for east and west coasts. I'm pretty sure you can set an event for connections to territories. If not, then use an event to haul one load from east to west territories.

Miami to Seattle would probably be just as difficult as NYC to LA. You could also base them off the routes of the three great "Pacific" railroads (Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Northern Pacific). Of course, those only went across from the midwest, but I'm sure those routes could be extended to the east coast.

Bush v Gore scenario for RRT3:

May I make a suggestion for the win condition for such a transcontinental challenge? Make it such that one must deliver a greater number of widgets from one coast to the other, compared to a phantom challenger. Each such delivery is the proxy for a "vote", and the top vote-getter wins! You could incorporate "vote recount" events and play it up.

Here's what I am thinking. First of all, establish some Port formulae, one for East Coast ports and one for West Coast ports, each of which has exclusive cargoes that they produce. That way, you can test deliveries of, say, rubber to the East Coast territory. Next, set up a Game Variable or Territory Variable to keep track of the opponent in the race; as we cannot expect the AI to create a spanning railroad nor to task trains on hauling long-distance, this will be a sort of phantom competitor. Just increment the variable by either a set or fluctuating/random amount periodically, starting only once the player has made the cross-country connection. This becomes a pace-setter, and to win you have to beat it whenever the game finally ends.

Vote-recount events could have effects that adjust this pace-setter value, and could be fairly humorous too. You could also incorporate a Huricane Katrina event, that calls for the player to deliver a bunch of passengers from New Orleans to other cities, up until the storm date, and then calls for deliveries of food etc. into New Orleans from anywhere for some time afterwards. A 9-11 event might temporarily boost passenger traffic, as airlines are grounded. Of course, such things must be sensitively written!

Maybe the vote count would only matter for Gold; for Silver or Bronze you just have to meet the connection & other standard requirements. On the different difficulty settings, the rate of gain for the pace-setter could be a bit steeper.

Another direction one might explore in this is the whole "red state" / "blue state" thing, assigning territory values to each state and using events throughout the game to affect which way they swing. At the end of the game, you have to have the most electoral votes to win Gold; let each state's territory value be either 0 or X, where X = that state's number of electoral votes. Sum up all the TV's and they must exceed 270. As to what kinds of events or choices might swing the states, that could be wide open, and could be a whole parallel subgame done via event scripting. Maybe events like funding for Amtrak, or auctioning off Conrail, or deregulation, or new EPA emissions standards, all these things where Washington and Railroads intersect could play a role in nudging states one way or another. Might even have a few "earmarks" or pork legislation that provides for rail expansion in a certain state, but which carries a political price tag. There's all kinds of things that could be done! And it'd be a fresh take on a RRT3 scenario.

I would think that the game has to end in Florida, at least attaining the 'vote' in Florida has to be part of the Gold.

And make sure that along the way you have to pay a ton of bribes. :)

And also tell something about vote counting machines ... which probably would bring the scenario more to realilty!

The 2000 presidential election is a decisive event, but the ending year is set to 2010-2020. Hopefully I can post the beta in a few days.

The beta is finished. Where shall I submit it?

If it's a beta test map just start a thread in the Reviews forum.