Smoothing terrain where track will be placed

[Gumboots]

I'm looking at modifying an existing scenario, and I want to test terrain where track is going to be placed.

Note that the idea is to end up with a map that does not have company assets all over the place, and has default credit ratings and all the rest of it. IOW, no screwing around with the standard game settings at the start of a scenario.

I know I can create a company in the editor, and have to for laying track (which is yet another stupid RT3 oversight) but is there a way of saving the map after track testing without having any crud left over from the temporary company?

[Kowalski]

As far as I know, if you demolish all the things you built with the temporary company and then liquidate it, it will be as if it never existed.

[Gumboots]

Aha. Thanks. I'd never noticed that option in the editor before.

[RulerofRails]

Yep, a temporary company seems to be the easiest way. Arop made his maps this way (although he deactivated via event at game start instead of with the "Liquidate" option), laid out the network to sculpt the terrain. The only things that will happen are that this will use up a Company ID# slot (not a big deal, as long as you keep it in mind if events will test for Company ID#) and it seems that whichever logo is used for that company disappears as an option for subsequent players.

See this discussion about the logo Arop always used. Behold the

[Gumboots]

I like the flying pig. I'll use one of the really ugly logos for the disposable company.

[Gumboots]

Ok, so why would the !%!$@$ editor refuse to let me start temporary companies? It's not lack of personal cash, because that was on the default $100k and then I used the big dog cheat to bump it to $10.1 million just in case that was the problem. Wasn't. Editor still says I can't start a company.

This is on the Latvia beta, by the way. I was going to test and reserve cell for routes in and out of cities, but the thing won't let me.

Eidt: Aha! Had "Disable starting multiple companies" checked as one of the scenario conditions. For some reason RT3 thinks that means you can never start any companies at all in the map editor. Pure genius. Absolutely brilliant. Which !&!^@%#@ numbnuts thought that was good idea?

[Gumboots]

Found yet another reason (one of many) to hate whoever coded the RT3 editor. You cannot un-reserve city cells that are reserved by default. Say you have a map, and you know how it will be built on, and you want to maximise buildability while still preserving as much seeding space as possible for each city.

You cannot do it.

They stopped you.

Why? Probably they were stupid and/or evil. Evidence of this?

1/ You can see the grid when laying track. You can see the grid when laying rivers and lakes. But you cannot see the grid when modifying terrain.

You know, that terrain thing that affects the grid everywhere? That one? Well, you can't see it. All you can see is a mass of green when using the terrain tools. So if you want to correct some terrain lumps to smooth out a stream or whatever you have to do it blind. This means going back and forth umpteen times between tools to fix what should be an easy thing to fix.

Brilliant. Stupendously stunningly intelligent coding. Absolutely fantastic forward thinking.

2/ The aforementioned reserved cells. Yes, I know they are done that way to give RT3's stupid AI's a chance of laying track into and out of cities but a lot of scenarios don't have AI's. So, if you are providing people with an editor maybe you should, y'know, let them actually edit stuff. Just as an off the wall wild ass kinda brainstorm thingy. Nothing that any sane person would actually implement. This is how I know they were stupid.

Or, if you are not going to let them edit stuff, maybe you could include a helpful footnote to the effect that they cannot actually save the edited stuff so they know before they spend hours editing stuff. This is how I know they were evil.

3/ Oh yeah, brush sizes. Did you know that the brush sizes for painting regions do not relate to the brush sizes for painting territories? Even though territories and regions are painted on the same scale? So if you are switching from one to the other, you will have to change brush sizes even when you want the same size brush. Again, this is pure genius. This thing was coded by Einstein.

4/ Oh yeah, those reserved cells. Hey guess what? There is no way of seeing a city's seeding limits when using the reserve/un-reserve tool. No can do. So if you want to lay reserved cells out to a city's seeding limits, which might seem like an obvious way of, y'know, actually reserving cells, then the only way of doing that is by going into the regions tool and seeing where the city region limits are, then going to the territories tool and painting in a temporary territory so you can see the limits, which of course has to be done by guesstimation because you can't see the city region in the territories tool, so you have to go back and forth several times to nail the thing down.

5/ Terrain tools again! I just remembered one of the best ones. The terrain modification tools will never remember which one you were using, and will always default to the one terrain modification tool that you never want to use, because it is uncontrollable crap and will always screw things up. This is fantastic when you are doing a lot of work and constantly changing screens, because if you don't remember to reset the thing to the tool you want it will inevitably screw your terrain for you.

Stupid, and evil. I believe I may have mentioned this before.

[Hawk]

I'm thinking the reserved cells thing was an oversight or something that wasn't completed due to time constraints in regards to release.
Why do I say that. Because you could change/edit a city's reserved cells in RT2, and it looked just like it does in RT3. Plus you can change the reserved cells in RT3, but the game/editor won't save the changes. Or at least that was my experience.
I remembered you could do it in RT2 so on one of my first maps I tried it in RT3, and what do ya' know. I could change them but the changes weren't saved.

[Gumboots]

It won't save the changes if you try to release cells that are reserved by default (IOW, the "Maltese cross"). It will save them if you add more reserved cells of your own, or if you release cells that you had reserved yourself.

I had just finished setting up all cities, when RT3 crashed. It would wait until I thought I had finished, and just before I did a save. Now I have to do a stack of them again. Of course, you'd be more willing to save frequently if the editor didn't tend to bork things with every save.

Just thought of another reason to hate them. No "clear the decks" button. You can liquidate your temporary company, but you still have to go around and manually demolish everything you built while testing. You have to do this before you liquidate your temporary company, because if you try to do it after liquidating the company it will cause the game to crash. Guess how I found that out?

And just for added fun and games, you have to do this without accidentally hitting one of the city markers with the bulldozer. Ask me how I know. Go on. I dare you.

[Hawk]

Just think of all the experience and knowledge you're gaining.

[Gumboots]

I may have to learn Latvian so I have a greater range of swear words. I'm using the English ones far too much and it's getting a bit repetitive.

Although I did once read a wonderful Serbian curse which translated as "May your mother recognise you in a hamburger". That pretty much sums up my current feelings about those who coded the RT3 editor.

Edit: Looked it up. It was actually a meat pie, not a hamburger. The phrase in question is "Da bi te majka prepoznala u bureku". Just in case anyone ever finds it useful.