What about Trainmaster

[AT41B]

Daily, I check in the category of Trainmaster to see if any activity has happened. To my dismay, nothing has.
I am in the process of creating a new or somewhat new game in Trainmaster. I am constantly making changes to it before I attach it for Beta play.
It now, as it stands, is a 40 year play. But, I am learning that I most likely I needs to cut it down to 25 or 30 year play. Leaving it at 40 years, I am sure that most players will get BORED and just quit. Also, I started out with 48 cities but I cut it down to 31. But as I played the game, I realized I needed more cities because of the distance between them. The number of 'Farmsteads' is too great I think, so I will adjust the starting density to much less.
The game doesn't have a win or lose ending, it is to see how much a player can improve after the first game. What do you think of that, let me know.
Yes, I am learning a lot by doing this scenario.

[AT41B]

Hawk, you may want to move this thread to some other topic line.

[RulerofRails]

When it's ready, I'm interested to see how you have designed your map.

It's true, Trainmaster doesn't get a lot of attention. I think one of the biggest hurdles for people is the idea that micro-managing is required. On well-designed maps and with good planning it can be greatly minimized, but that does take a good understanding of the game mechanisms.

[Gumboots]

RoR nailed it. I know Ned set up the micro-managing thing as a "challenge for expert players" but unfortunately most people just find it boring.

[RulerofRails]

Probably it was by intention that Ned wanted to get a map that was almost totally green (lots of demand). After awhile I discovered that this demand is in fact impossible to quench. viewtopic.php?p=41650#p41650.

I did get an idea to mod the agri. communities a bit to address/take advantage of this feature. viewtopic.php?p=41677#p41677 Never got past the "idea" stage.

The bottom line is that you can spill 1,000s of loads on to a TM map without collapsing price (China maps are good examples).

Whether you like/dislike this strong demand, whether it being un-satisfiable was intentional or not, I get the sense that the output amounts of resources in TM should be bumped a bit higher for balance (more locations, not really the answer especially since more agri. communities = even more demand).

Of course it's possible to do this with event and I would recommend having less locations and higher output via event for raw resources.

[Hawk]

Hawk, you may want to move this thread to some other topic line.

Done!

Daily, I check in the category of Trainmaster to see if any activity has happened.

BTW! Are you familiar with the option to check only new posts since you're last visit, as mentioned about half way down the first post in this topic?

[Gumboots]

Probably it was by intention that Ned wanted to get a map that was almost totally green (lots of demand).

I remember when he was first describing TM to me he said that "Everyone wants your stuff", so I assume the insatiable demand all over the place was intentional. I tend to look at RT3 the other way around. It bugs me that I can't just send my resources on my trains to my industries, which of course is exactly what you would do in real life.

Of course it's possible to do this with event and I would recommend having less locations and higher output via event for raw resources.

Do you think it would be feasible to turn TM into a game which did not require micromanaging?

[RulerofRails]

Maybe. I still think you would need to plan to make the right connections with your trains (from source to industry in need), but with more resources there would maybe be less incentive to try to direct all cargo specifically (TBH, my methods for TM are mainly to roughly simulate the impossible "haul anything but" wish-list option). Industries are more complex (most are 2+ inputs) which IMO isn't a bad thing (they could be improved, see below), but there's naturally less chance that auto consist distribution will get them going.

For me, TM would be a lot less frustrating if the demand for the industries was setup better. Some of them have a demand of <0.02 per year for a particular cargo (the sum of demands for all active functions at full output) which is a barely visible green triangle on the game map. If it were up to me I would mandate a demand shown on the map of at least one full load per year, maybe even 2 per year (there are various ways to accomplish this, some trickier than others). With the current small triangles on some industries such as Glass Factory (other examples), you are almost forced to build an industry specific station on the same cell to guarantee delivery. This isn't ideal, but the main annoying thing for me is that this demand is too weak to hold a "stack" of cargo. The cargo you carefully delivered will often start to drift away just from the natural cargo movement.

Currently I'm trying to stay focused on the cargo/engine project. But, I would possibly consider trying to fix the low industry demands, if I had time, energy etc. and felt that others were interested. I would bump the TM resource outputs at the same time. Might make some adjustment to the seeding rate of municipal buildings (must be adjusted in the bca files). Not a re-invention, just what appear in my eyes to be bugs. If someone else finds anything, post it up, there's a small chance something might happen one day.