Questions for the experts

[pure al]

Hi All,

Could someone help answer a few questions for me. I'm running patch 1.06.

1) Using events, can city A be given 5 passenger cars that need to be sent to city B annually? This is assuming the cities are very far apart and normally do not have passengers that want to go from one to the other. Also if this train takes 5 passenger cars from city A to city B, over-time will city B then have 5 passenger cars to take back to city A?

2) How do you stop an AI company buying industries without effecting the Human player's ability to do the same?

3) Do bridges and tunnels have a higher annual track maintenance than standard track?

4) How do you make a city build a warehouse at a specific moment in time? It doesn't need to be in any specific location, as long as it's in the city boundaries.

Thanks in advance!

[Wolverine@MSU]

1) Using events, can city A be given 5 passenger cars that need to be sent to city B annually? This is assuming the cities are very far apart and normally do not have passengers that want to go from one to the other. Also if this train takes 5 passenger cars from city A to city B, over-time will city B then have 5 passenger cars to take back to city A?

I don't think this is possible.

2) How do you stop an AI company buying industries without effecting the Human player's ability to do the same?

Make an event that applies only to AIs and raise the "Buy/Build industries" cost by 1000% or some absurd number. It doesn't "prevent" them from buying, just makes it financially unfeasable.

3) Do bridges and tunnels have a higher annual track maintenance than standard track?

Don't know for sure, but my hunch is "yes". It's easy to test though.

4) How do you make a city build a warehouse at a specific moment in time? It doesn't need to be in any specific location, as long as it's in the city boundaries.

You can't make a city build a warehouse, but you can use an event to manually place an industry, and specify map coordinates and radius for its placement. Depending on building density, it may or may not build. I suppose if you really wanted to, you could designate a small territory where you wanted to build it, write an event to "Destroy all" within that territory, and then build the warehouse in the cleared-out space.

[Grandma Ruth]

4) How do you make a city build a warehouse at a specific moment in time? It doesn't need to be in any specific location, as long as it's in the city boundaries.

You can't make a city build a warehouse, but you can use an event to manually place an industry, and specify map coordinates and radius for its placement. Depending on building density, it may or may not build. I suppose if you really wanted to, you could designate a small territory where you wanted to build it, write an event to "Destroy all" within that territory, and then build the warehouse in the cleared-out space.

Have a look at my map "Noble Experiments" where I have the city of Cicero build a warehouse. I'm at work and can't remember how I did it, but I know it was basically what Wolvie said. I know I fiddled about with the radius to try and get it to match the city radius, and you can make the city density very low. I think my "Cicero" was actually a ghost town with no buildings except this warehouse when it turned up. It's all trial and error, really.

Passengers:
I don't think they can be co-erced into doing what they don't want to do. However, you can have a warehouse that produces and/or demands passengers. Some of the new buildings that people have been making might demand or produce passengers - the hospital, maybe? Then at least you'd have the people but I don't know how to make them go where you want them to! And the original of all the modded buildings - the Gwizz port ( ) is a port that produces and/or demands them, if I remember right.

[davey917]

Since I typed to slow, wolverine (and now grandma ruth) beat me to some things.
I'm only running the 1.05A, but I beleive most of this still applies:
1) I'm not 100% positive on this one.
--A) The origional campaign scenario 'Central Pacific' had a similar requirement using troops, although on a lifetime bases.
--B) (Unless 1.06 added it) There is no 'Loads of (whatever) hauled from 'A' to 'B'' option.
--C) Passenger are weird animals in RT3; They want to go to a specific place, and could care less where you want them to go.
--D) Depending on your purpose, you may be able to use some other cargo, such as coffee, which is only produced at city A.
--One caveat: make sure a train can actually make the trip in one year if you're using an annual requirement.

3) Yes indeed. Annual maintainance is a percentage (? 5%) of the origional construction cost. Bridges and tunnels cost more to build and, therefore, maintain. (the same goes for "graded" track as well)

4) I was typing the same thing. If you give yourself an ample radius option (IMHO at least 10 for a city), as grandma ruth said, through trial and error you should have a success rate in the upper 90s.

hope this helps.

[pure al]

It does help, I'm very impressed by the quick response! Very useful information, thank you all.

Make an event that applies only to AIs and raise the "Buy/Build industries" cost by 1000% or some absurd number. It doesn't "prevent" them from buying, just makes it financially unfeasable.

Good idea, I’ll try this out and see if it works.

I don't think they can be co-erced into doing what they don't want to do. However, you can have a warehouse that produces and/or demands passengers...

Interesting, I’ll see if a strong demand for passengers will make them ‘want’ to go to a city. I was fairly sure there wasn't a simple answer to this question, but wanted to check anyway!

@davey917: Thanks for answering question 3

I'll be back with some more questions fairly soon, hope you don't mind

[Hawk]

I'll be back with some more questions fairly soon, hope you don't mind

Ask away. I have a feeling these folks love answering questions.

[pure al]

Hopefully that's true Hawk, I have a few more:

5) Can a city stop building a particular industry building after it has already built a given number of that same industry?

6) Can an industry (pre-built before start) be turned into another industry building after the initial industry is upgraded?

[Hawk]

5) If you want a particular number of a particular industry in a city I think the best way to do that is to use events to build them and set the percentage of that industry for that city to 0 in the Cities/Regions section of the editor.

6) No!

[Sugus]

Based on my (modest) knowledge I can make the following notes:

1) There are events to formulate conditions like "loads hauled from" and "loads hauled to", but there are no means to specify "loads hauled from .. to". Within Central Pacific, RT3 is simply forced to check for "loads of troops hauled till now", which could be done, because - in essence - the appearance of troops is limited to the two end points of the trackage to build (San Francisco and Salt Lake City). I used formulations like "haul n loads of cheese from X to Y" in my Spectral Analysis, but this was done simply by a condition "loads of cheese hauled to Y" and the designed limitation, that cheese will be produced in X only!

4) I think that an event's effect "add warehouse" should do it. But don't forget to specify both coordinates and radius: nothing happens, if you leave any of them zero (means "empty").

5) and 6) From my point of view, there's no chance to handle that. Related conditions and effects are simply not available.

[Hawk]

Sugus - I think we were posting at the same time.

[Sugus]

Hawk - Better two similar comments than none ...

[Hawk]

Hawk - Better two similar comments than none ...

[pure al]

Thanks for answering my questions guys.

Hawk I'll follow your advice on question 5 and try to think of a few other alternatives to question 6. I might make the buildings change from one industry to another when the human player buys the original industry, which will then get replaced by another industry. I just need to stop the player buying the first industry too early.

[Grandma Ruth]

Think about this for question 6: first of all, pre-build your industry in a tiny territory that just surrounds it. Then you can "destroy all" in that territory and do an event to build whatever you want in the same place. (But see the discussion above about radius). The two buildings would have to have a similar footprint, of course, or the second one be smaller than the first.
But what I can't work out is how you would know if the building was upgraded.

Another thing on question 5: presumably a city will only build as many industries as its radius will fit. You could see how many steel mills, for example, will fit into a city radius - although of course the radius will get bigger as the city grows. There's an interesting thought - does anybody know how big a city can grow? That would make a fine condition for an event if you could work out the logic - when SmallTown USA gets to be Metropolis, the player is rewarded by .. whatever. Hmmm...

[nedfumpkin]

When adding an industry, keep in mind the size of its footprint and the terrain. Hover the industry over the area you want it to appear at and try to get a sense of the possible places it could be built. Generally a radius of 5-7 is good for most industries appearing near moderate cities.

I'm much more in favour of using the add building event than allowing the game to spawn whatever it wants. Mines and logging camps can be put on the map in the start up event, and this can allow the map maker a lot more control over how the game sets up. You can make an add coal mine event and put however many in a particular area with a 10 radius and it is so much better than the game doing it. The only problem is that added industries have no history, whereas placed industries will. (placed meaning placed on the map during creation.)

Another advantage is that you can use the variables to select where industries get built. For example, in a map I am working on, prospectors go looking for mines. You outfit them, and based on how you do, and using random numbers, their chances of discovering a mine is based on a bunch of factors. This determines where the mines appear.

The same can be done with connections. Connect a-b and an industry appears at c. Connect a-c instead and it appears at b.

[99CarsUNTRAINED]

I thought I would post here since the title is most appropriate.

The burning question of the day is: Can a map/scenario be corrupted by attempting to modify it and/or saving it numerous times?

I started my little project using the Alternate USA map and truthfully I have lost track of the number of times, I have renamed or saved it.

I became suspicious recently by noticing buildings being generated that are not enabled. Houses in particular, I have all the cities set to zero but houses are still generated.