Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

Price modifiers are indicated as game wide effect, but is it possible to restrict to just certain territory? Test against territory? I remember having done it before but now cant seem to get it to work right.

No. You can do it with cargo production rate, but not with cargo price.

Dang was trying to cheat the alternate usa map to make hauling certain cargo easier to meet...

HA HA, good luck with Alternate US. I have tried for several years to win this scenario with no luck. Don't get me wrong, I like the plot very much and I will keep on trying.

There is an easy way to do Alternate USA, build industries that will consume all the products you need to ship. For example in Texahoma: 2 Breweries on one cell. Upgrade them, then keep them supplied and it's just about enough. This can be done for all required shipments except Corn to Louisiana and Roosevelt.

Tip: Kansas City station can be placed in Louisiana (north side of river). Start Louisiana haulage early. Then later in the game (once extra farms and Fertilizer come along), and production is up, there will be enough to meet threshold in Louisiana plus make progress on Roosevelt goal. Hauling less Corn away (not doing both at once) will keep prices lower in Great Plains making pickups more versatile.

The game's way of counting "loads hauled TO a territory" is to count loads within the territory as well as loads actually hauled to the territory. That means that with the right route pathing (everything automatic, only one station per city) you can easily get the same loads counted multiple times. This is without overtly trying to game the system, maybe sometimes add an extra step in delivery, for example use A-B-C, instead of direct A-C.

The whole topic of haulage in RT3 is murky. There are exploits possible with multiple stations that reduce any sustained haulage target to a triviality. I'm not going to recommend anyone try.

What I'm ok with however, is a "move it on" strategy, when the map-maker hasn't provided enough consumption (especially where delivery to a specific town for example with a port is required) to actually consume what is being delivered (they never do). As long as the new destination is not one of the targets (aka on Alt USA shipping from Louisiana into Roosevelt). Warehouses/ports set to demand something only consume about HALF of the indicated amount (at normal prices). Trying to keep prices elsewhere depressed enough to haul to a target place which is suffering from cratered demand is fighting the game mechanics and I just don't think that's fun.

On Alternate USA, I would consider hauling some Corn away from say Louisiana into Dixie and Florida. I don't use the same train for this. Use a different one, also set it to wait-for-cars. Also, use the re-naming option to order your trains with all on a particular run together. Press Ctrl+click current train number/name, then enter two less than the new number you want. Makes things a lot easier. Also when using wait-for-cars train setups remember that the last car will probably be half full, treat it as such.

PS. There are a couple maps which attempt to to have purely honest hauls (impossible to trick the system). One example using the 1.06 math logic: Warrington Wire as a standalone scenario for TM.

PS. There are a couple maps which attempt to to have purely honest hauls (impossible to trick the system).

I did this in my California revamp, by using revenue to territory as the goal. You can't cheat that one, no way, no how. Not even in 1.05.

Unfortunately it doesn't allow targeting of specific cargoes, but it does make for a bulletproof overall goal.

I make the warehouse buildable to try and jack up demands, yet surprisingly the home station in Great Plains can still command a higher price than a station in Louisiana that has 2 or more demand warehouse.

Probably, your issue is that the towns in Great Plains are going unsupplied with Corn, since you are loading that Corn on the train, it's impossible for it to fill local demands. You are trying to take them to a station in Louisiana that is supplied.

In this game price is absolute. A small demand can with time command near-full-price. Even one house that is unsupplied can keep prices high. However, a strong demand recovers quicker than a weak one.

This is the idea with the low-value house demands, to have a "back-ground" demand, fill out the map. Ofc, individually they will consume very little cargo. In this game, a lot of cargo actually rots without being consumed, after being hauled from town to town across some portion of the map. I call that "natural rehauling" it's part of the game's mechanics.