Testing Trainmaster

[Grandma Ruth]

Finally, after 12 years, I've got round to looking again at Trainmaster!
I'm just starting to play the campaign scenarios and so far, not finding the difficulty RoR identified:

There is another problem with Trainmaster mechanically. This one I didn't try to patch: Small demands of say 0.03 or 0.05 per year as one of the ingredients on a multiple-input industrial recipe.

Such microscopic demands are too weak to draw or even keep cargo via price demand. Even if we specifically set a train to haul the cargo in and drop it on the cell of the industry, the cargo will move away on it's own after a short time if there is any other surrounding demand (including houses).

I've won the Motors scenario without too much difficulty in 1919 (game goes on till 1935). Not found the low demand a problem in this one. When I've had a go at the existing scenarios I'm very willing to test new ones and maybe make some more.

[RulerofRails]

I refreshed my memory a bit. 0.1 per year looks like the minimum for a normal industrial conversion. When you were playing the Motors scenario, did you think about why the Auto Plants are placed outside the city? That's because of this super low demand cargo retention "issue." Think of it as further from the "pull" of other buildings. Also we can see that they are not placed in the middle of a plain. But instead they are "sheltered" from the pull of buildings in other cities because they (and Motor City) are on a peninsula.

You will also notice that cities focus on only one output product. This is a simplification of the complexities of the cargo management in TM, let's say "easy mode." There is less local competition for resources. Cleaner divisions means stronger profits too. A city near mountains or the ocean is said to be geographically "sheltered." If we look at the center of that map, you will see larger price differentials develop in the valley/plateau theme.

As we saw: the Auto Plants are outside the city. This was a decision by the map maker. He/she designs the economy. We can see that there are various ways to set up TM maps based on who the author is. In this case Ed has managed fairly well to avoid a problem especially with the Auto Plants.

There are some industrial loops in TM, we multiply cargo. I would identify Blackhawk as the author/player who understood most of what those are. If we look at his scenario, TM Juice Train, we find that he has turned the possible loops off and dropped the military cargoes as well. I think it can be useful to look at this map (Ned's are probably best insight into intent, but he has left the loops in). He has done a more "normal" modern economy. He made things look "normal", industries are better distributed and in towns. Try to run the Auto Plant in St. Louis or the Glass Factory in Tallahassee.

As a player there is one thing we can do: place other buildings on the same square. These could be the railway structures (*those are bugged see PS) if the scenario allows us to build them. The map maker could of course use that as well, assume that he/she is manually placing most industries. On Blackhawk's map he turned those off, presumably because of the tavern: https://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=2656 . I did put a fixed version there years ago.

I would also highly recommend turning price islands on. TM is based on 1.06 code. Follow the directions here: https://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 891#p41891. Price islands ON will helps with cargo retention at industries which are in cities on an active network. (The small demands I brought up are too much for it though).

PS.
There is a bug with the Print shop, Hides demand is one place off in the hex. Demand is almost 0, but not quite. There is no power to attract this cargo so production with that conversion will never occur. Logs demand at the Rubber Factory suffers the same fate. Demand for Alcohol at the Chemical Plant also, but in that case, 00 00 00 80 is actually translating as "0." The game processes those conversions without Alcohol present. My opinion: fixing this may affect the way existing scenarios function? Also, almost all the Railway structures have a conversion rate of 0 per year. That appears to be making many of them just eye candy. A conversion rate of 0 seems to disable demand only functions in this type of building, for example the Hotel doesn't demand Food, Alcohol, Furniture, or Textiles. Corrected files:

June 22 TM small fix.zip

(4.36 KiB) Downloaded 169 times

The Chemical Plant and Railway structures need testing for behavior.

---

Technical spiel, illustrating demand at the Glass Factory:

The recipe for Glass:
1910 – •
3 Glass <-- 1 Sand + 0.3 Chemicals + 0.1 Machinery
1920 – •
3 Glass <-- 1 Sand + 0.1 Aluminum + 0.1 Machinery

The max output per year of Glass is 2 per year. But it also has a x2 modifier in the bty file. So effective production is 4 glass per year.

Chemicals: 4/3 * 0.3 = 0.4
- effective demand for Chemicals per year.

Aluminum: 4/3 * 0.1 = 0.13
- effective demand for Aluminum per year.

There is a principle which effectively Adds Machinery demand from both chains together. The game doesn't consider that only one chain should work at a time.
It just simplifies and sets to collect for both. (This is part of the trickiness behind "stacking" industrial buildings on the same cell.)
Machinery: 4/3 * 0.2 = 0.27
- effective demand for Aluminum per year.

[Grandma Ruth]

Starting "Juice Train" now. I've put the corrected files in and will se how it all works out.
ETA:
I don't understand "loops"?

However, I do understand the bit about the Auto plants in the Motors scenario. I can see why Ed tried to avoid the problem, but another way to look at it is that we are trying to create realistic trading conditions in our games. In real life, if the supplier of electronics can get a better price from a retailer than from a business, he will sell to the retailer. That's capitalism! The train takes the electronics to the station, but then it's up to the local dealers/salespeople to get the best price for their goods. So once the higher-priced buyers have been satisfied, they will then sell to the lower-priced ones, i.e. in this case the Auto plants. I think "demand" in RT takes the place of "price" in real life? For the player, it means over-supplying to meet all the demand there is in an area, which of course will alter the game considerably.

So, the "Juice" scenario. I think there may be a problem with the size of the territory "Tampa". I know I'm a cheat at heart and I'm trying to avoid taking advantage of this possible loophole. (I went to great pains in "France Rebuilds" to make sure that passengers really did go to and from the Medical Centres and not from nearby buildings. Easier to do with passengers than cargo, of course.) It may be that it was Blackhawk's intention that players should exploit the size of the territory, and it does recommend expanding to other industries in the briefing, so I don't know. Let's see how it goes.

I've got railway structures available on my map so I don't follow what you've said there. Also I don't think the author could put them in, only the player. Don't they have to be within striking distance of a station or something? Nothing to stop the author placing a station on the map to start with, of course, but that's not the nature of this scenario.

I'll have a look at the thread about "price islands" - another term I don't understand! I'm learning something new every day here!!!

PS: That thread's saying "CPU"? What the dickens does that mean? Central Processing Unit? I'm lost !!!!!! No doubt things will become clear as I read it. Time for a cup of tea.

[Grandma Ruth]

Well, I read through that thread and right at the end found your excellent Readme! So I think I've done the right thing but my opening screen now looks like this:

It looks a bit confused (which is nothing to what I am!) but it opens up all right as far as I can see. I'll try and reproduce the problem in both versions and see what happens.

Later:
After one year, something is certainly happening but I'm not sure what or why. As near as possible, I've done the same thing in both versions. One full train with automatic "all cargoes" calling at four stations, Miami – Naples Oranges – Naples Commune – Tampa, then return Tampa to Miami. No custom consist, no "ship-at-a-loss", and this is what happens. The basic Trainmaster has a price island, the one with the fix doesn't.

So the "fixed" one certainly looks more consistent. I'll carry on with that but keep the other in case I want to test it out later.
Edit: @RoR - I see we're both here in real time! 7pm here, what is it there?

[RulerofRails]

Hmm, I checked again and now I see rail-yard structures available. I think my memory got a little muddled with his "un-finished" North vs. South scenario. And Gambling at the Tavern is only possible till 1910.

Loops: means that the player can build/multiply cargoes during the game. For example (multiply), the default Tavern makes a big profit while slowing building a big stack of Gold (if supplied with Gold). An example of the other case (build) is the buildable Hemp and Corn bio-mass farms. Hemp is very useful, we can make Textiles, Paper, and Petroleum at the Bio-diesel plant. These chains are all single input. By placing 2x Hemp bio-mass and a Bio-diesel plant, we can also then place an Explosives factory on the same square and get very easy Explosives. Paired with a Paper Mill, Cereal is possible with a Corn-Hemp combo. Compared to the complexities of the "regular" industries this feels like a "cheat." Blackhawk doesn't allow these bio-mass farms to be built in Juice Train.

I have been making some attempt to raise the minimum demand. I understand the point that retailers may want more of a cargo. I don't have a problem with that. All I was concerned with is that say you have a station on the same cell as a factory and you deliver say 1 load of Glass there twice a year thanks to train consist settings, the factory will actually stay running most of the time.

I had all kinds of problems with the 0.1/0.2 demands in the past where I had to make partially over-lapping stations and have a special train set just to catch the cargo that was drifting away and put it back at the industry in hopes that production can sometimes occur. I have been making some little effort to enforce a 0.4 loads per year minimum at normal industries. It's still "low," but the player can upgrade the facility and the resulting 0.8 per year is a usable number.

I'm quite confident that Blackhawk didn't mean for players to "exploit" the haulage. It's hard to get accurate haulage, even if we set up events to subtract Loads hauled TO a territory from Loads hauled FROM, a player can always setup overlapping stations at the territory border and drop off cargo at one while picking it up at the other. Therefore in order to really enforce haulage numbers there needs to be a no-build zone for stations between territories so players can't exploit the overlap. We can make stations really expensive, or have them set to be destroyed when built, ..... I wonder if load time could be set so high as to be virtually unusable? That's an idea I didn't try before. If you look at my stand-alone Warrington Wire (I made some fixes on the campaign version) you will see that I have setup "accurate" haulage count measures. See if you can cheat there.

CPU: he means the AI players. In 1.06 Cash on Wheels notice that the AI companies were buying excessive numbers of locos. In trying to solve this he found the cause was that these "islands", one of the game's price stabilization mechanisms, had been turned off in 1.06.

Well, I read through that thread and right at the end found your excellent Readme!

Sorry for confusion. That was a draft readme (hoping somebody would one day check it for readability), while also suggesting that this "option" should be mentioned on the main site. The posted exe in that thread is for version 1.06. I don't think I ever got around to posting a Trainmaster one (was going to go in with Agri-Communities fix). Here's a Trainmaster one along with an original TM one in case you need it (these don't have the blurry textures patch, but this is not needed when using dgVoodoo).

Trainmaster islands.zip

(2.02 MiB) Downloaded 135 times

[Grandma Ruth]

That's probably why it looks so weird and can't decide if it's 1.06 or TM on the screen shot I posted. I'll put this one in and no doubt that will make it OK.
ETA: yes, that's fixed it. Now to see how it plays. Later - yes it gives the same consistent result, no spikes.

BTW, I made a shortcut to the "revised version" - here's the icon

Palm tree button.7z

(107.67 KiB) Downloaded 134 times

[Gumboots]

In real life, if the supplier of electronics can get a better price from a retailer than from a business, he will sell to the retailer. That's capitalism! The train takes the electronics to the station, but then it's up to the local dealers/salespeople to get the best price for their goods. So once the higher-priced buyers have been satisfied, they will then sell to the lower-priced ones, i.e. in this case the Auto plants.

If it was that simple in real life, any manufacturer of electronics components would sell directly to end consumers, because it is end consumers that pay the highest price. But then the end consumers would each need their own Auto Plant (or whatever) which would not be feasible, and the manufacturer would have to chase down each and every end consumer before it could sell to them (which isn't feasible either).

In real life you have wholesalers, and you have large scale supply contracts that trade off a lower price per unit as a reward for volume and stability of demand. So on that basis you could argue that the way RT3 does it is completely unrealistic, because there is no way of assigning production from one of your industries as supply for another specified industry.

[Grandma Ruth]

Yes, I think maybe that was something like nedfumpkin's thinking about the farms. You wouldn't in reality get individual farms selling their produce to the public (except farm shops of course!).

Depends, I suppose, on the product. Some are B2B, some are sold as you describe; wholesale-retail-customer.

[TLDR: You do get individual companies supplying other individual companies - I worked for a cashmere mill that exclusively supplied Pringle's (the luxury clothing company, not the crisps ) We got our raw wool predominantly from South Africa but I'm not sure whether we dealt with a wholesaler there, probably we did. Once we got it the chain was woollen mill-clothing manufacturer-retailer-customer. I can't imagine Pringle dealing with a wholesaler, not their style at all - more likely straight to Harrods! Now of course, they have an online shop which is something we don't even want to start thinking about for RT3.]

Maybe the problem in RT3 is not so much in the low demand of the industries but in the direct demand of the houses. All of the commodities a house demands would in reality be bought from a retailer (at the time and place of the RT3 world, in the "West" before the internet was everywhere). What we haven't got is utilities, which would now be a possibility since we got power stations - but even that would go through a retailer, wouldn't it?

I've always felt that the cargo of "goods" made by a tool-and-die was a bit weird. All of these things, clothing, food, electronics, are all what I would call "goods". This has been addressed in Trainmaster, but maybe nobody's looked at what the houses are demanding. All they need, surely, is food, medicine, goods and petrol. And possibly electricity?

The Trainmaster Supply Chain Guide is quite specific about which are Industrial Products and which are Finished Goods, but perhaps that wasn't followed up in looking at the demands of the houses. Do we need another link in the chain where "Finished Goods" go to a wholesaler, then a retailer, and the houses then get this stuff only from the retailers? You could even have pharmacies, supermarkets, furniture shops, high-street fashion all demanding different stuff. (I'm getting carried away now, I realise.)

How would you distinguish between the Goods that are going to the retailer and the Goods that are then going to the houses? Different names, perhaps? So, for example, at the wholesaler/retailer the goods are called "Goods", then generate like this 1 Goods = 1 Products, then the houses demand the Products.

In fact, looking at the TM map I happen to have in front of me, randomly, I see that the retail buildings haven't been given any demands at all. They are more like the municipal buildings. I'm sure this has been discussed before, bear with me, this is all new to me! In 1.06 the Department Store has a demand, but no supply. Same in 1.05, retail has only demands, and not much demand, either.

I really want to teach myself how to modify buildings and so forth. I can see what I would like to do, but don't know how to do it! Story of my life!!!!!

[Gumboots]

Maybe the problem in RT3 is not so much in the low demand of the industries but in the direct demand of the houses. All of the commodities a house demands would in reality be bought from a retailer (at the time and place of the RT3 world, in the "West" before the internet was everywhere).

I think this is the key point. As there are no retailers in RT3, and as various products need to go somewhere, the house demands are taking the place of retailers, which then affects surrounding industries that demand stuff that houses also demand.

Do we need another link in the chain where "Finished Goods" go to a wholesaler, then a retailer, and the houses then get this stuff only from the retailers? You could even have pharmacies, supermarkets, furniture shops, high-street fashion all demanding different stuff. (I'm getting carried away now, I realise.)

Err, yeah, you are. The only way I can see of doing it would be to introduce extra cargoes, such that the cargo that goes into a retailer (ie: pallets of packaged food) is different to the cargo that goes from the retailer to houses (ie: individual packages). Which could be made to work, but I think is likely to impose some pretty tight limits on your overall cargo chain. We're stuck with an absolute maximum of 52 cargoes and there's no way around it (any more is instant CTD) so every time you add a wholesale/retail cargo combination, that is two cargo slots taken out of the total.

Although I have noticed that some of the most playable and enjoyable scenarios are ones which do have a quite restricted choice of cargoes. For example, any pre-1880 scenario will be limited for cargo choice, but they can still be very good games. And I must admit that I don't really like scenarios which use the maximum number of cargoes, mainly because the interface gets far too cluttered. It's easier to find things at a glance if the cargoes have a bit of space between them.

I really want to teach myself how to modify buildings and so forth. I can see what I would like to do, but don't know how to do it! Story of my life!!!!!

You only don't know how to do it until you've done it once.

[Grandma Ruth]

If you look at my stand-alone Warrington Wire (I made some fixes on the campaign version) you will see that I have setup "accurate" haulage count measures. See if you can cheat there.

I couldn't find a stand-alone version. However, I see on the campaign map that Bradford is not mentioned!!!!!! Bradford, the centre of the woollen industry in the 19th and, come to that, early 20th centuries. Don't believe all the propaganda that Leeds puts out

[RulerofRails]

Um, which TM retail building did you see without demands? If we look in the documentation all the buildings should have demands. Now, in some cases it will not be visible in the info panel to the player. So check in the document and then go to the view for that cargo type specifically. It's quite possible that they really don't have a demand, and that could mean some corrections are needed to the files. I found a couple buildings, including the Hotel, that weren't demanding what they were coded to because they had a production rate of "0" per year. Probably there are some I didn't catch. I haven't gotten to the all the municipal buildings yet.

From my understanding Ned wanted these municipal buildings to compete for cargo you needed for industries. I believe he also wanted to simulate that trucking started to erode railway usage. You will see that toward the middle of the 20th century there is a large increase in consumption rate at the Grocery/Hardware etc.. The Shopping Mall is introduced in 1958. After 1982, among the various types of cargo, this building can consume up to 23 loads per year!

Just to be clear, I didn't have a problem with this. My talk of "low demand" is not this. While playing, I understand and am prepared to take control of my cargoes so they aren't lost to retail. Majority of the demands are fine. I am only concerned with the very weak ones. The ones where all the cargo will drift away even if the building is some distance from another demand for that cargo. I settled on 0.4 minimum as I said. What I am trying to get away from is the feeling that we are fighting too hard the game mechanics. Micro-management will still be required for these and a lot of other industries. It's just less of the hair-pulling type, where we will get frustrated with the game behavior.

In regard to how cargo gets to a house. We are getting paid when cargo is dropped at a station, or it's produced at our industry. The final trip to the doorstep is not up to us. I can easily imagine that some middle-man has picked it up from the station. Then the inhabitants have bought from him/her.

The way RT3 has been setup is that when we run trains there is automatic distribution of consumer goods across the map. A lot of our money is made by "re-hauling." Cargo is dropped in city A, it remains there some months till local price drops (we might imagine that local demand is satisfied), then if there is a train the same cargo will be picked up and taken to City B. Here again it remains some months till local price drops. Then it goes to City C. This is a cycle. After a while longer price in City A has recovered enough for a new shipment to arrive there. etc..... This behavior is in my view responsible for a lot of freight profits. Having houses scattered about the station is a key part of price recovery from what I can tell. It's also a way for the size of the city to matter. More houses = faster recovery and therefore more frequent deliveries with our railway.

PS. Standalone Warrington Wire: https://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=4021
I know there are issues in the 1st campaign map and others. Ned was, and wanted others to be, ambitious with scenario "scripting." Because of this I'm not surprised to see some blunders. Those could of course be fixed if one of us should have the time and motivation.

[Grandma Ruth]

I can't find the map I was looking at where it didn't have a demand, but I think it might have been a Department Store. I'll keep an eye out and if I see anything like that again, I'll check it.
Thanks for the Warrington Wire link. Don't know why I couldn't find it. I'm losing the plot today, I fear!
Later:
That is so clever, using the variables to calculate the haulage. I see what you've done with the territory, but the problem in Blackhawk's map and my own France Rebuilds map is the same - placing a building through an event. Your target territory has to be quite big to allow for the radius where the building might randomly be placed. The other alternative is to do what you've done and present the player with a company already up and running. In my case that wouldn't have worked because it's a progressive thing with buildings being built by events throughout the game. I'm going to convert that map to TM, I think. Another thing I've never done but I love Gumboots' saying "You only don't know how to do it until you've done it once." That might have to be my motto from now on!

[RulerofRails]

You can use a bigger territory as any loads "WITHIN" a territory will be added to both the TO and FROM counts, so they cancel each other out. We could build 10 stations in the target territory and it doesn't matter. But for sure, the larger the territory, the larger the surrounding buffer territory needs to be to prevent overlap.

What you could do actually is have a warning about "cheat" each time a player placed a station in the buffer zone. (There could be some small chance for legitimate loads to be discounted this way, but if you warn the player then it's on them, the trickier they try to get I think the lower their count will be. ) Then you could subtract any loads FROM the buffer territory from the total. The only trick there is that events can only test for one territory at a time. So we would need two events. One will test for the loads, but save that to another type of variable. Let's suppose Game Variable 1 (GV1). Then the next event on the list, set to fire with the same trigger will transfer (should be the same as the existing counter events) that to Warrington's TV1, while also setting GV1 to 0 again. (If reset immediately after transfer like this, you can use GV1 to transfer anything that's needed within not only Territory, but Company and Player variables as well.) Then we would need to subtract TV1 from TV2. This can be added with the existing "iron Count Real", as long as our new events are above it in the list.

If you don't understand that I could mock-up an example. You might notice that I'm into the "technical" side of the game. Things like this. I have made no cheat haulage for 1.05 as well, math is just a bit more difficult there. (The above idea is impractical in 1.05). Setting variables is impossible in 1.05, counting must be done one step at a time. I have actually never completed making a map of my own. I don't really enjoy the creative aspect. For sure you can learn how to edit the bca files (those control industrial supply/demand/conversion recipes among other things). All you need is a hex editor, then download RT3 Notes, and reference Pjay's breakdown of the bca file to find what you want to change. If you have questions about that either I or Gumboots can easily assist.

[Grandma Ruth]

What I was thinking about the Tampa territory - as far as I can remember and this was more than 24 hours ago - was that you could put two stations there and run one load between the two of them ad infinitum. In fact, you wouldn't even need two stations - I just accidentally cheated because I ran a train back to the station to re-load it and of course it counted as two departures. So that would be taken care of by the "real" count being (In - Out) or (Out - In) ????, using variables as you have done above. That would also avoid the "staying on the train" phenomenon where, quite legitimately, a train stops at a station and some of the cargoes are unloaded and then reloaded again because they're going somewhere else. That happened in "France Rebuilds" especially because you're counting passengers and they tend to do that.

My problem in "France Rebuilds" wasn't to do with cheating but with numbers being "accidentally" added to the count after they should have been stopped. In the end I dealt with that a different way. [Oh dammit! I've lost my own map now, I'll have to download it again from here!] So as far as I remember, I made a new condition that checked whether the count should be being made or not - so if it failed that test it didn't do the count at all.

I'm going to have a go at making a new building so hold on to your hats, I'll be back with some

[Gumboots]

I have made no cheat haulage for 1.05 as well, math is just a bit more difficult there. (The above idea is impractical in 1.05). Setting variables is impossible in 1.05, counting must be done one step at a time.

TBH I do love the extra maths that 1.06 will handle, but I do not love the fact that the built-in HAAL option effectively invalidates haulage targets anyway. When you can choose to haul any desired cargo, in any desired amount, from any source location to any destination, regardless of prices, it basically becomes impossible to get a "real" haulage count.

Sure, you can count cargo from the relevant territory, and subtract that from the loads to the territory but, providing there is adequate cargo available at a source outside the destination territory, none of this will help. Any muppet can just load up whatever they want, wherever they want, and haul it to the required destination.

Given how often haulage quotas are set as scenario goals in RT3 (they are pretty much what you could call a "core feature") I can't help thinking that HAAL is near to being a game breaker, and should never have been included. IMO, what would be good is another version that keeps most of 1.06's features but gets rid of HAAL. That would have some benefits overall, for many scenarios.

All you need is a hex editor, then download RT3 Notes, and reference Pjay's breakdown of the bca file to find what you want to change. If you have questions about that either I or Gumboots can easily assist.

If you are prepared to throw a fairly small amount of cash at the problem, for a license that will last for several years, I can recommend the Standard version of HexEditorNeo. Their implementation of the bookmarking feature is superb, which I find very helpful. It's not free, but it's really not expensive given what you get, and how long the license will last. They seem to break my license for it about every 5 years, so it works out at about $5/year.

[RulerofRails]

It seems Ned wasn't keen on HAAL for TM either. But the better math and other possibilities seem to have convinced him to use it in the end.

I agree that HAAL has more downsides than upsides. RT3 isn't going to play like RRTII. I got the sense that some felt that this ability had been "omitted" from RT3. But I think that the developers made the right call to not include it.

Even in 1.05, people can "hi-jack" trains in transit, simply direct them to a new destination. Those loads are seen as "legit" no matter the clever coding we do. For this reason I always assumed that any "legit" haulage coding was going to use cargoes that had a carefully calculated supply.

[Gumboots]

Ned had a vision of TM scenarios being designed with almost no scope for random seeding, and with every detail being decided in advance by the scenario author. In cases like that you can carefully calculate all cargo supplies (if you can be bothered) but in "normal RT3" the randomness of different seeding makes this less viable. On the bright side, the randomness in "normal RT3" adds extra replay value.

And sure, you can use bait-and-switch in 1.05, but I think most people instinctively see that as cheating. Whereas in 1.06 HAAL is seen as "legit" even though it's effectively the same as bait-and-switch in terms of results. It's a psychological thing, rather than being strictly logical.

(And I would LOVE a version of RT3 that skipped HAAL, but included HAB. That really would be golden.)

[RulerofRails]

I don't think I have seen a TM scenario entirely without random seeding yet. Agri communities in Ned's maps are hand-placed, along with many of the industrial buildings. But seeding of bulk resources, like mining, oil wells, logging, etc. and most municipal buildings (there are many of these) is still randomized. Some people used much more randomization in their maps than Ned has done. For example, thietavu's maps like Great China 4.

It surprised me that we had played all these years before finding out that the game's "randomization" isn't that good if we just start the game and play: https://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4100

Even in 1.05 maps, "telling a story" IMO causes map creation to lean toward "static," even once we ensure that randomization is working. I do think randomization is one of the strengths of the game. Especially if we are talking to people who are playing the more recent Railway Empire or Railroad Corporation. Not having it in those games makes you appreciate it more, and I think there is more potential than in shown on the average map.

---

Micro Demand fix
I have gone through and increased effective demand in industrial buildings where it was at a super low level ("micro"). 0.4 loads per year was my target minimum. Resources are an exception. These are normally isolated, so stack integrity is maintained at lower demand levels. 0.3 or sometimes even 0.25 was ok for these.

Profitability of "enhanced production" chains for resources was checked and tweaked where needed. With good supply of input
and good price of output all recipes should allow production with negligible profitability throttling.

Some other small tweaks were made, including: Production modifiers in the bty were dropped to give the player accurate information about
output capacity. Pharmaceutical Plant output was raised from 1 to 3. Paper Mill output was dropped from 8 to 4 loads per year.
Cereal Company price was raised, 50%+ ROI was imbalanced. ......... (check the included txt file for change notes).

Please leave feedback here. If something doesn't work or seems imbalanced, please speak up.
This is intended to be used together with the small fix on this post: https://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 594#p48594

[Grandma Ruth]

TBH I do love the extra maths that 1.06 will handle, but I do not love the fact that the built-in HAAL option effectively invalidates haulage targets anyway. When you can choose to haul any desired cargo, in any desired amount, from any source location to any destination, regardless of prices, it basically becomes impossible to get a "real" haulage count.

Sure, you can count cargo from the relevant territory, and subtract that from the loads to the territory but, providing there is adequate cargo available at a source outside the destination territory, none of this will help. Any muppet can just load up whatever they want, wherever they want, and haul it to the required destination.

I must admit that HAAL was more to do with industrial production than anything else, haulage targets didn't really figure much. But there is a built-in downside, don't forget - whenever you ship something at a loss, you're losing money by definition; so you have to compensate for that somehow in any reasonably realistic game.

And ingenious as the "real" count is, it does also prohibit the player from shipping something, at a profit, to a destination genuinely needing it. This is apparent in the Warrington Wire scenario. At the moment I'm playing the stand-alone Warrington Wire and it's driving me nuts!!!!! So much so that I'm about to read through the discussions you all had at the time as I'm sure all these things must have been spotted then. I notice that some of them, like the entire Industrial Production bit, have been dropped in the campaign scenario and also the GV4=1 event which has been plaguing me for two days now

[Grandma Ruth]

What a shock - I was reading through the Warrington Wire thread, as I said, and found that I had been testing it in July 2010, when my son-in-law died suddenly. That was a terrible summer and I never got back to looking at this particular scenario till now. Reading these old threads is like looking at your old diaries, you never know what's going to come up and bite you.