TM - Juice Train

Discuss scenarios and strategies for game play.
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Blackhawk
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Might I suggest that you remove the fruit warehouses and instead use a start up event to increase produce production?
I have other other events that can reduce or increase the amount of produce production and I ran across this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=370

I assume the final post there (with the now broken link) is the final word on how it works?
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Hawk
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Blackhawk wrote:I assume the final post there (with the now broken link) is the final word on how it works?
Unfortunately Railroad Tycoon Info no longer exists. There was some good info there, as the link would attest to, and Lama hasn't been heard from in quite some time now.

BTW! I like your avatar. !*th_up*!
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Revisiting the radio station issue preventing a spur track for an maintanence shed/tower:
I'll still likely move the radio station over a little, but looking back on my old games I was able to build out a spur, it just takes some extra effort.

Image
Here I built the track so it would curve towards the radio station, then I bulldozed the last 2 sections of the track I built and added more track on so there would be less curve and it could be built past the radio station.

Image
Here I loaded the scenario new, and if you build the spur first, and then curve around to become part of the main track and then build your station it works.

Image
Finally, in one of my other attempts at the scenario I had the Miami station further south instead of instead of to the north of the city.

On another note:
I read that El Moichi bought a commune in Florida and was able to make 350k a year as well. So that may take care of a cheap and viable starter industry in Florida if you're supposed to be allowed to buy communes.

Any other issues or comments anyone has let me know. :-D

(Oh and Hawk thanks for liking the avatar. I prefer Firefox and Opera over IE, which just seems to be slow and compared to the other 2. For various reasons I've been using IE some lately, of course ended up getting a couple viruses that took advantage of IE. Adblock Plus and some of the other additions you can make with Firefox definitely make me prefer it over IE)
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Hawk
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

I run Firefox as my main browser, along with AdBlock, FlashBlock, NoScript, and Download Helper (you can download videos from YouTube and watch them on your hard drive instead of allowing Flash to run).
I also have Opera but I prefer Firefox. I just use Opera and IE 7 to test my web site jobs.
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El Moichi
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

I had no problem @ Miami.
Miami.JPG
Miami.JPG (16.79 KiB) Viewed 5798 times
My major quest is to build a station in New York which covers both of the harbours.

I haven´t had the time to continue playing, but I will proceed the next evenings.

Blackhawk, you disabled the possibility to build food-producing industries for the player, so he is forced to use those that show up on the map. But, however, the player can still build food processing plants.

And, starting the game at 1970 first, some of the industries (i. e. the mentioned Community) noted they were "built in 1975" and in this case, the industry summary is not displayed. You can buy the industry but can´t see whether it makes a profit or not. As I went back and re-started the game in 1975, everything was displayed properly.
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Blackhawk
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

My major quest is to build a station in New York which covers both of the harbours.
I'm not sure if that is possible. I could get just next to the 2nd harbor, but I was unable to cover it. I suppose I could look at relocating the 2nd harbor, as the New York area is not very flat and has many hills.
Blackhawk, you disabled the possibility to build food-producing industries for the player, so he is forced to use those that show up on the map. But, however, the player can still build food processing plants.
I will likely disable the food processing plant and there was one other food industry I left on... I think it was the cannery. The objectives can be completed using just the pre-placed food industries, however, for the beta testing I left these industries on to see if anyone would use them or actually had to use them. (If I remember correctly they required produce/fruit as an input and the amount of produce available is limited.)
I do know I left the bakery on, and that was intentional, as it's output is not that great. Although I suppose I could also turn that off. (But then it makes the flour mill Northeast of Montegomry and Southwest of Columbia sort of pointless, sorry I can't think of the city name right now).
And, starting the game at 1970 first, some of the industries (i. e. the mentioned Community) noted they were "built in 1975" and in this case, the industry summary is not displayed. You can buy the industry but can´t see whether it makes a profit or not. As I went back and re-started the game in 1975, everything was displayed properly.
I made an error when placing the industries as I placed them in the year 1975 when I should have placed them in the year 1970. So at this point I have 2 choices: 1. go back and replace all the industries and have them build pre-1970. or 2. leave them as it is, and have the initital briefing to the scenario say something along the lines of "As a small railroad you are unable to judge what industries are profitable or losing money as this time, as you grow in size you will be able to afford to higher a Financial Advisor who will do the grunt work of investigating the profitability of each industry. However, you if you invest in an industry you will still earn its profits. And then in 1975 have a game message saying you recently hired .... Warren Buffet or some Financial Advisor, now making industry profits available to your viewing."

I suppose I'm looking for some input on whether to go with choice 1 or choice 2. (or if the scenario is too long at 40 years and can be accomplished in 35 I suppose the choice is made for me) I don't mind having to just look and see what cargos are going where, and whether I believe the industry would be profitable or not. However, if the majority of RT3/TM players definitely want to always have the industry profits window available, I'll make changes.

Thanks for all the feedback so far. =)
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El Moichi
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Blackhawk wrote:"As a small railroad you are unable to judge what industries are profitable or losing money as this time, as you grow in size you will be able to afford to higher a Financial Advisor who will do the grunt work of investigating the profitability of each industry. However, you if you invest in an industry you will still earn its profits. And then in 1975 have a game message saying you recently hired .... Warren Buffet or some Financial Advisor, now making industry profits available to your viewing."
^**lylgh !**yaaa {,0,} I like your sense of humor... :lol: :-D :twisted:

Don´t forget the Confectioneries, but I think they produce a very small amount of food like the Bakeries, so they need not to be regarded. I don´t remember whether a Cannery was available. But, if you will turn off the Food Processors, I will try to meet the food goal without using them.
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nedfumpkin
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

I opt for choice 1 where the buildings are replaced with the start year, or, go back a year or 10 and place them then. Just seems more professional that way. JMO

The Commune is not suppsed to be for sale. That's something I thought I already fixed but obviously I didn't. So don't count on it for strategy.
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El Moichi
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

My solution for a Manhattan station, covering both harbours:
NYC.JPG
BUT, you have to bulldoze the Grocery Store, the Department Store and the Retail, and still another house. To make your way out of Manhattan, you have to build a bridge with a sharp left turn next. AND the station must be Japanese style because other stations "don´t fit". :arrow: :mrgreen:

I prefer another solution for this quest..... :shock:

Instead, thanx Blackhawk. I like this map. It´s tricky, and I like the conception. !*th_up*!
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

That's a lot of bulldozing and the NY grocery store is the only grocery store I make make sure not to bulldoze. I never thought of building a station out on in Manhattan. I always just tried to put the station on my main rail line and just go through the middle of the city, even though it does not cover both ports. I could try to rearrange some of the buildings there, and possibly have a pre-positioned station and reduce the size of the New York territory to prevent someone from building multiple small stations in the territory and just shipping food between the two stations.

As for the food processor, feel free to use it if you need to, however, I think the goals are attainable without using it. (Just be sure to check in on the food industries to make sure you're getting all the food out of them that you can, and that the city isn't consuming it before you transport it out)
With the demands of the food processor, it requires fruit which is in a limited supply and requires meat, which requires likely requires connecting to the middle of Texas. Although if you built a plastic factory in Texas I suppose the food processor would be a viable alternative, although that's a long trip for the food to take to New York. Hmm I suppose I should likely disable it as an industry then.
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Blackhawk
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

El Moichi, I was looking at your picture of Miami and I'm curious is that a building you bought in Miami? if so what building is that?
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

I bulldozed the Retail because it was sucking up the glass supplied by the harbours. Then I built a storage shed to "collect" the glass there.

With two loads of glass per year, the upgraded Bottling Plant at Tampa supplies > 10 loads of food and makes > 1 million profit.
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

I completely forgot about the Rail Yard Structures.
Eventually I think I was able to get the bottling plant producing around 11-13 loads a year. I think the highest I got it was at 13.5, although I don't think I was able to sustain the 13+ loads of food for many years in a row. And I was using more than just 2 loads of glass.
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Finally I got enough train time together to have a go at a Trainmaster scenario that I didn't make ::!**!
and then I totally messed it up, not once, not twice, not even three times, but FIVE times... *!*!*!
Guess I'm too used to playing my own maps and have come to be set in my train ways. so will now read this entire thread and see just how many mistakes I'm making although I do know I'm rubbish at average spped goals despite being talked through it by Ned (and others).

Anyway, I'll have another go, and then another, until I get somewhere...

BTW: Loving the map, although having all the those messages popping up at the end of each year, gets a little annoying especially as they are just before the ledger... Is there a reason why they aren't on the ledger.
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

edbangor wrote: BTW: Loving the map, although having all the those messages popping up at the end of each year, gets a little annoying especially as they are just before the ledger... Is there a reason why they aren't on the ledger.
I assume you're referencing things like the Produce shipped in Florida, and the food shipped out of Tampa updated at the end of the year. The produce update is deleted in future versions. As for why it isn't in the ledger, I was not sure how or if it is possible to get the information about different territories in the ledger. :?: Ex. LTD Food Loads hauled to Territory (New York) while also putting LTD Food Loads hauled from territory (Tampa) since it concerns different territories to test against.
Edit: I suppose I could also remove the loads of food shipped out of Tampa. It's largely used just to give you a general idea of how much you are shipping out of Tampa, and it is used to unlock access to other territories, but I could just have the territories be unlocked as you ship enough, without giving a yearly update on how much you have shipped out of Tampa.

I may have to add more start up money if it's a problem to get started and build in the map. I think buying an industry and collecting profits the first couple years might be the best way to start. The Lumber mills in Hartford and Syracuse or the textile mills in Columbia and Atlanta are usually pretty profitable, of course I'm still working on replacing the industries with earlier start dates so you can see its profits/losses.

As for average speed some later events make it easier to meet the speed goal although it would still take some work to get the most you can out of your locomotives before and after these events. I think currently with the speed requirement at 50mph you'll likely have to take advantage of these event choices to have a fast enough speed.
Last edited by Blackhawk on Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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El Moichi
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

edbangor wrote: and then I totally messed it up, not once, not twice, not even three times, but FIVE times... *!*!*!
This is exactly what happened to me while trying to play your "TheHub1-Pirates" map.
Therefore, I don´t have pity on you... :mrgreen:
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Blackhawk wrote:I assume you're referencing things like the Produce shipped in Florida, and the food shipped out of Tampa updated at the end of the year. The produce update is deleted in future versions. As for why it isn't in the ledger, I was not sure how or if it is possible to get the information about different territories in the ledger. :?: Ex. LTD Food Loads hauled to Territory (New York) while also putting LTD Food Loads hauled from territory (Tampa) since it concerns different territories to test against.
Edit: I suppose I could also remove the loads of food shipped out of Tampa. It's largely used just to give you a general idea of how much you are shipping out of Tampa, and it is used to unlock access to other territories, but I could just have the territories be unlocked as you ship enough, without giving a yearly update on how much you have shipped out of Tampa.
This is what I meant.
To solve it is easy, as everything you want on the ledge doesn't have to be in the same event but you can have as many different events as you want, set to display in the Ledger, and the game will place them on the ledger in the order they appear in the events table.
(if you need to see how this works, just look at my "Thehub3: Civilian" scenario and you'll see I have numbers ledger events, some of which are time delayed to come on when they are relevant tothe game, and others will turn themselves off (ie they stop being displayed) after they have been reached) this prevents the ledger from becoming too cloged.)
This is done by setting up a CONDITION as you would for any other sort of event (Ledger events don't have to be ALWAYS TRUE)
I would suggest you do this with the cincinatti targets as well as you can see from the screen shot below. (don't laugh at the numbers and YES I did THAT badly!) although that would be cleared up in a finished game as all I did was change the display from YEARLY to STATUS. The Pepsi count would have to be done seperatly

Some other things I noticed while playing (sorry if these are repeated elsewhere in this thread)

The LOSE event doesn't trigger correctly (unfortulantly I found that out the hard way :oops: ). Given you already have the LTD FOOD TO TERR. BY COMP condition, you don't need the CITY connects CITY one. As in order to deliver the Food you, obviously have to be connected. This means that if you've connected the city, but still not reached the loads of food, the event won't trigger.
This, of course, is also true for the other Win events.

A minor point... The event you use to place the Bottling Plant etc and Price adjustments... doesn't need a trigger condition as it will be triggered when the company is started.

Another minor piont, is that by the latter years of the game, the Florida is getting very crowded with Cotton Plantations so you may want to either turn down the building density (in the respected Region) or lower the overall desities in the gobal BUILDING DENSITIY tab. This latter will also cut down on the number or RETAILS being spawned that suck up the limited Glass around.

I think this is covered elsewhere, but some of the cities make it difficult to place startions without getting the bulldozer out - this could be intentional in some - but New York is a real problem. You can use the PAINT menu in the editor, to re-do the defaul RESEVE CELLS so the game won't build anything in that spot.

Another prefernace of mine would be to hide the boarders for both New York and Tampa (just uncheck BOARDER IS VISIBLE on the Territories tab of the Editors Control Panel. It doesn't effect game place but just looks nicer. (well I think anyway.)

Anyway, that's probably enough to be going on with, just hope I've not put you off making TM maps completely as I found this really challanging... if not too challanging. ^**lylgh
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Blackhawk
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Thanks for all the editor advice and help Edbangor. I'll definitely improve the ledger and get rid of the yearly updates. I'm currently working on that now and it should hopefully look better.

The territory lines around Tampa and New York and Florida will be gone in the final version as well. They were initially there so I would see where I was building a station and if it was in the zoned territory. And in Tampa I had to expand the zone to be large enough to cover the range of where the Bottling Plant may spawn. Thanks for reminding me to turn those off.

I'm unsure of what to do with Cincinnati though. Ideally I'd like to have that territory open along with the rest of the country, but if Cincinnati access is given at the same time as the Central Plains there is nothing preventing you from shipping food there before you are required to. And then if I used the LTD Food hauled to territory condition, it would include all the food hauled there, including the years before the 1997 event requiring food be sent there, correct?

Scenario advice:
As you probably saw in the editor, you gain access to Louisana and later the Central Plains by shipping food out of Tampa. So the faster you get food out of Tampa the better (even if it's just early on shipping it throughout Florida). This way you can start supplying the Candy Factory near New Orleans and later the creameries in Madison, Wisconsin. (These are useful in helping to supply Cincinnati). I think there is a grocery store in Tampa that might eat up some of the food which you might want to bulldoze.
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Blackhawk
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

I hopefully took care of the problem of NYC becoming too crowded and have two decent locations for placing a station. Option 1 is on the main rail line, and next to the furniture factory. Option 2: would be in Manhatten. The advantage of option 2 would be that it covers some extra commercial buildings and a hospital, as well as being a spur station instead of a stop on the main line. Although you'll have to build a bridge to get there and the slight advantages are not likely worth the extra costs involved.
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Re: TM - Juice Train Unread post

Blackhawk wrote: I'm unsure of what to do with Cincinnati though. Ideally I'd like to have that territory open along with the rest of the country, but if Cincinnati access is given at the same time as the Central Plains there is nothing preventing you from shipping food there before you are required to. And then if I used the LTD Food hauled to territory condition, it would include all the food hauled there, including the years before the 1997 event requiring food be sent there, correct?
That is correct. The game will count any food shipped there, during the game, no matter when you add that to the ledger.
Blackhawk wrote: Scenario advice:
As you probably saw in the editor, you gain access to Louisana and later the Central Plains by shipping food out of Tampa. So the faster you get food out of Tampa the better (even if it's just early on shipping it throughout Florida). This way you can start supplying the Candy Factory near New Orleans and later the creameries in Madison, Wisconsin. (These are useful in helping to supply Cincinnati). I think there is a grocery store in Tampa that might eat up some of the food which you might want to bulldoze.
There shoud probably be some mention about how the amount of food ships counts towards access to other territories not that I ever shipped enough to find out. :-?
Or it could be done with in game hints if at a certain date they haven't been connected but that's up to you.
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