Warrington Wire - Spoiler, only read after playing !!!!!

[Grandma Ruth]

There is potential to refine the mechanism. For example above a certain percentage (say 70%) should the target increase by only 5% instead of 8? Obviously there should be a mechanism that prevents the target being larger than 100. I will fix this.

I replayed that year again and now I've got a 100% target, which obviously can't be met as the AI is bound to have some express traffic, however small. So if I haul 500 loads and he hauls 10, that's not 100%. If I haul 5000 loads and he hauls 10, that's not 100%. If I haul 50 loads and he hauls 10, that's not 100%. And of course you can't literally have 100% as the whole thing is based on there being at least one AI company left. This is very clever, and isn't anything to do with the game events, it's just maths!

I took over the remaining company and let the game run for a year. In that time I was actually getting 100% express as I owned everything. The only thing was that the status page was still there, saying "express market share = 0%, target is 100%" throughout the year and the following years. It ought really to disappear once you are the only surviving company.

I don't think it matters much about the percentage increase. The potential for "cheating" here is to make sure you start with a very low percentage so it will last for more years before it gets too big to fulfil. There's a thin line between "cheating" and "tycooning" anyway.
So, onwards and upwards!

[RulerofRails]

Ok. I put some time into this today. Didn't get everything done, but I will put it up anyway. You can at least try the ledger and see if that's passable. Actually all the event "coding" should be working too. But it needs a bit of testing to be sure.

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June 17, 2022
Known not tackled:
- Testing if some of the effects on territory open events are applying in a useful way.

- Changes to city/region recipes for geographic accuracy.

- Map could benefit from more reserve cells in some places, especially cities using buildings with over-size footprints like Sugar Refinery.


Fixes:
Ledger formatting. Major work including re-ordering events.

Express gauge and Industrial profits: sequences now test uniformly >1841.

Cities 20,30, etc.: now test on screen player only.

Bakewell ledger message now disappears <=1862

Cities 50: "Fifty cities" not "stations"

Rough run on formatting the historic notes. Mainly paragraph separation.

Connection events: Major re-work, including some variable use. Should behave in all cases.

++ undocumented small spelling etc..





Warrington, RoR June 16, 2022:
Iron notice from start... Is it good?
~ Ok

ledger: "Connected to Blaneau Ffestiniog" - Grammar
~ Fixed

$25M PNW bonus is checking CASH!!!!! - should be net worth
~ Ok. Changed achievement event text to match main briefing.

Blaneau connection: check for cities connect. Check for no access to Midland.
Duplicate the open-up event to still reward a point for the connection.
~ Fixed

1837 L&M report: fiddling "the the" stock market - Grammar
~ Fixed

ledger: Express gauge shouldn't be visible till 1841.
~ Fixed, more done as above

Intro for express should be end of 1840, not 1841?
~ Ok

Ruth, June 17, 2022:
Event 1841 - lanc: and Event 1841 - ches: both these events are superfluous if the player (now L&M) has already taken over BR. By now British Rail doesn't exist. L&M already has access to Lancashire & Cheshire due to owning British Rail. Could a test if BR exists be made a condition instead of firing and annoying the player? Otherwise remove or change sub-headline.
~ These are tied to on-screen player comp.. Set them to only fire if player has no access.

Event Stat wales and Event stat - fest should not trigger if the player is playing as L & M as this company already has access to these territories. This is a problem because the notices take up room on the status page needed for other things.
~ Fixed

City no. 43 is Northampton (spelling) And the AI company will be Northampton Eastern
~ Fixed

Available industries: disable non-British industries cotton, rice paddies, oil well, rubber trees, vineyard (historical realism)
--- Not done yet. 

Event 1848: "George Stephenson" continues in post after his death
--- He is "de-activated" in 1840 for gameplay reasons: so that the player can have a chance in the stock market. Think of it as "retirement"?

Event Steel - yorkshire: dialog should say "Warrington Bank Quay" rather than "Warrington" to avoid confusion
~ Fixed

Event stat - steel: something is wrong, it picks up a count for steel before you've hauled any steel at all
~ changed steel counter events so they work for first week in 1860. Probably the issue.???

Event Stat - bakewell: fires before Event 1860. They should be simultaneous or Event 1860 goes first
~ Fixed

Event 1853: I would delete this. Historically interesting but doesn't match the gameplay, where WBQ exists in 1830
~ This event also increases track cost +20% and cargo prices -10%. But it wasn't applied properly... Can we fix it for clarity? "... Warrington Bank Quay was the first station in the town. Today, it is often overlooked..." "...due to being in the shadow of the huge Unilever..."

[RulerofRails]

Ok. I probably wont get much chance to work on this further in the next few days. Also, you are a local and this should be some help for geographic accuracy corrections. So, if you are inclined, go right ahead and correct this. If you want to tackle the reserve cells as well, go ahead. In what time I have I will look at the 1st item (testing effects on the territory open events). I wont do work on a new version until you are done.

[Grandma Ruth]

you are a local and this should be some help for geographic accuracy corrections.

I'm having a lot of fun with the Yorkshire side of the map! I worked for a while at a Sheffield steel mill, Don Valley Steel, so I've named one of my steel stations by that name and the coal mine station is Elsecar near where I lived. Happy days!

I'm finding different minor things which I will look at: the only major problem is that the "Loss" event fires at the start of the year 1875, where the win events only trigger at the end, so the player will always lose.

I did think it would be better to have the game win as soon as you get the points, but now I've played to the end I see there is a major event in the last year or two which certainly frightened me to death! So leaving it to finish at the end of 1875 is probably best. I'll change the lose event before I send it back.

[RulerofRails]

Good find on the loss event. Feel free to make other corrections if you find them.

When we "fix"/update a map later sometimes we have to guess a little what the creator was trying to accomplish. The reality is that with time and possibly more experience we now know more about the game than back in 2010 or so. People have often used effects that we now know are broken. For example acceleration/fuel cost adjustments, express cargo price adjustments, or temporary effects applied other than game (exception: some work on company). They also played and balanced (some people have put more effort into this than others) the map without realizing that some of their effects were not working. We could of course just leave them as is, the map "works".... Or should we try to get closer to what the author wanted/expected to happen.

On this map, as it is in the campaign, we see "issues" with Warrington actually not being "connected" according to the game (the yellow message that hovers when placing/viewing a station) by the pre-placed Warrington Bank Quay. In the original if the player didn't upgrade Warrington Bank Quay, or place a new station that "connects" Warrington, the events that can open Wales etc. would never fire. Was this a trick, or just an oversight? I have believed that it was an oversight and not a trick. I made some adjustments for that in the fix from 2018. In the latest version I refined this further (my knowledge increased too). Feel free to say if you think this was an intended trick and should be retained.

Then there is the case of the event effects. Some of them are applying to Your Company that I believe would be better applied differently. Here's a list of those: (the ones in bold are bugged/broken so definitely fall under the game not doing what the author wanted.)

"My recommended/instinct" column is showing how I would change these. This is of course based on my perception. My aim with this in the first place is to try to make things better (remove bugs is primary goal) but also true to the author's wishes. If you have an idea how to apply the effects better, or any you believe are better left as is, please speak up.

[Grandma Ruth]

Feel free to make other corrections if you find them.

I'm correcting what I find and keeping a record which I'll let you have. And I will also read your post in full when my mind is a little less bewildered! What's confusing me at this moment is the status events concerning access to Holyhead.

There are two with the same dialogue - maybe a copy error? So one of them ("Stat - bangor") disappears when it should but the other doesn't. This event, "Stat - holy", has the condition that the connection between Anglesey territory and Holyhead city is False. Which it would always be as there's no reason for anybody to connect that territory to that city. There are no other cities in Anglesey and no reason I can see to make the connection. So I don't see the point of this event, but I don't want to delete or change it in case there's something I'm missing (which is more than possible any day of the week!)

[Grandma Ruth]

Well, I'm more than bewildered now, I'm absolutely flabbergasted !!!!!!!!!! How are you able to sidestep the "special conditions" on not starting multiple companies, or do they only apply to human players? I can't find an event that made it happen, but I'm lost in admiration!

[RulerofRails]

Stat - Holly, I thought this event should work at any stage of the game. We get two points for the connection. No matter how the player obtained access to Anglesey, this message will give him/her a chance to earn these points while also providing some strategy via distraction value. Connecting to Holyhead is not a good value investment.

Why did I think that connect Territory to City can work here? I don't know. I thought that connection to territory was track triggered, not station. . . . thought it was a clever way to check for any connection to Holyhead.

Proposed fix: replace this with test for TV1 = 0. Then in event "Holyhead" add effect "set TV1 = 1."

And, yes, the text got mixed up in my left-justification effort. I went to correct the spelling in "Stat - bangor", Holyhead had an extra "l", but I pasted the correction in the wrong spot. I spent some effort left-justifying the ledger events. The text from this should be on "Stat - bangor". The correct text for "Stat - Holly" is this:

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Connect to Holyhead for two bonus points.                                         `

Notice how I have used a bunch of spaces followed at the end with the ` symbol. This symbol doesn't display in the game. So we can use it in conjunction with spaces to justify text.


PS. If you wondered why the status events are amongst the others at the end of the list, the game did that, not me. As part of the ledger re-do I needed more room. When I work on maps I don't delete events and try not to re-order them because I know sometimes the game does unreliable things as we see here. Thankfully the result here isn't unusable, just confusing to mix one set of events in amongst another set.

---

George Stephenson.
When edbangor set the map up he must have used George Hudson (Player ID #1) to start both companies. Technically George hasn't started a company. He can start ONE without violating the prohibition on starting MULTIPLE companies.

The consideration here: is it a bug or a feature? My instinct is "feature." Keep in mind that if the switch event triggers in late 1840, he is "deactivated" at the same time as being kicked from the L & M so the "hard-core" players will see this. IMO, they can easily deal with him. What do you think?

It is possible to fix that if we want. There should be a flag in the map file we can edit with a hex editor. Or, the crude way would be to sacrifice Company ID #3, by switching to him in editor mode then starting a company, and immediately deleting it. This may take a bit of experimentation to switch him back into chairmanship cleanly. If we decide to change this, let me try to do the hex method first (no rush on doing your edits). I'm happy to fix my mistake with the stat - Holly one as well if you want.

[Grandma Ruth]

On this map, as it is in the campaign, we see "issues" with Warrington actually not being "connected" according to the game (the yellow message that hovers when placing/viewing a station) by the pre-placed Warrington Bank Quay. In the original if the player didn't upgrade Warrington Bank Quay, or place a new station that "connects" Warrington, the events that can open Wales etc. would never fire. Was this a trick, or just an oversight? I have believed that it was an oversight and not a trick.

No, it was deliberate, in fact you can more or less assume that Ed would do the "tricksy" thing every time - this is what he said when he was making the scenario in the first place (viewtopic.php?p=25086#p25086)

"The first point though you get for just having Bang Quay - it counts that as being connected although it's not actually connected to anything at the start of the scenario...

Oh and Ruth well done for not looking in the editor..... although I'm not going to say why.... as you'll find out sooner or later.. ""

The changes to applying effects all look good as you suggest.

[Grandma Ruth]

This is what edbangor said about multiple companies in the original thread "it was always my intention for the AI to only have one go at starting up so that won't be an issue later on."
But I don't see anything wrong with a judicious mixture of re-creating the original and adding new features like this one, which is amazing! I had to go and lie down in a darkened room when I saw the new company! It should be easy enough to deal with I expect, but at this moment I'm not really playing, just testing the status events using cheats and so on.
To me it still looks like magic - I can see that George Stephenson isn't a "real" player but the company is certainly a real company with ID 6. If you keep this in, is it possible to give the new company a name? It looks odd without one but of course I don't know how difficult that would be technically.

I'll fix up the Holyhead events as you suggest. By the way, I'm assuming that the events you have "discarded" but not "deleted" are the ones with x-x in the names?

You have done a great job with the look of the status page. The centre justification was always an annoyance but I suppose everybody just put up with it as one of the "quirks" of RT. I'm testing that all the status events work as they should and disappear when they should. Now I've got my head round TV1 as a marker I should be able to fix any problems. Of course I'll let you know everything I do.

[Grandma Ruth]

Ready to re-do the game now. Before I do, a couple of things -
1. The new company set up "by magic" was amazing, but didn't actually prove much of a challenge, it was easily disposed of. Obviously up to you whether to keep it or not.
2. This latest map is spawning steel mills - do we want that to happen? I thought it should be just the two placed by event? Let me know which before I do the new one. It probably wouldn't be today anyway, I am in my "research assistant" role today, real life has taken over

[RulerofRails]

Ok. Let me first say how my thinking developed:
As I played with the scenario I developed the idea that the connections into Wales and beyond is a sort of "help" for the "more casual" players. . . . Actually a double-edge sword because of penalties involved in those connections. For example, the Wales one had +25% graded track for the rest of the game, (this is on the list I made, I was going to make it just apply to Wales, with the same philosophy that "more casual" players will be more likely to experience it). The "more casual" players are quite unlikely to takeover L & M before 1840. So they are on that "path." Side-note: maybe we should program in some other events to slow down the hard-core players?

The hard-core players will probably merge with the weakest AI company within a couple of years and open up most of the map through this. On my last play I opened Wales but couldn't justify spending the money to connect to Blaenau Ffestiniog, versus taking out the weakest AI. The way I jigged the events now, I lost out on points (for Blaenau and Bangor) through this. But the player wont know about that without looking in the editor. So I think the instinct will be to takeover the AI versus following the "connection" expansion path.

No, it was deliberate, in fact you can more or less assume that Ed would do the "tricksy" thing every time - this is what he said when he was making the scenario in the first place (viewtopic.php?p=25086#p25086)

"The first point though you get for just having Bang Quay - it counts that as being connected although it's not actually connected to anything at the start of the scenario..."

Hmm. I went back and found this too: https://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... 193#p26193

not triggering because a medium station doesn't "connect" Warrington.

That was done on purpose I'm afraid. The reason I used a medium station for Bank Quay was to prevent the station from 'steeling' all the cargo from the L&M's Central Station (the reverse is also true) so the Human player would have to expand either/both station to make them work better as part of the game play.

Well, .... The way he had done it, we could make quite some progress without connecting Warrington "properly." When we did this later, a lot of messages and/or status messages may be triggered. For example Chester, Crewe, Wales, etc. connection messages. In the process of sorting those and later when trying to simplify for the ledger, I have forgotten this.

Thinking some more, maybe it isn't beneficial to "help" the "more casual" players, at least before 1840. I'm not really happy to see a bunch of messages pop-up at the moment you upgrade Warrington Bank Quay. I suppose the player should get points though, just no info message? Some new events will need to be created for that. As well as some various edits to make sure ledger messages etc.. make sense. When you are finished this round of edits I can make the changes.

x-x events:
You are right. These ones are inactive now thanks to small re-arrange of the ledger.

Ready to re-do the game now. Before I do, a couple of things -
1. The new company set up "by magic" was amazing, but didn't actually prove much of a challenge, it was easily disposed of. Obviously up to you whether to keep it or not.

This isn't something I have tried to achieve on purpose, just a "quirk" of the game (George Stephenson technically hasn't "Started" a company). I don't know why the company has no name. It should have a name just like any other AI company. In your screenshot I don't see any track. Maybe it's a TM bug where a company that is started but fails to lay track will have no name. (Normally the names of the cities it connects are used.) That would be my guess. It may be something Ned did in the TM language file?

Yes. In this scenario I found that it's relatively easy to get the shareholders to accept a merger attempt. Speculation: small company (CBV) with high growth will see high 5-year weighted return figures. I think those figures are decisive for "other investors." Large CBV and slower growth will be detrimental of "other investors" perception of you.

2. This latest map is spawning steel mills - do we want that to happen? I thought it should be just the two placed by event?

My vote: just the ones placed by event. If I dare to suggest that ed could have spent a little more time on the economy. This seems like a tiny oversight.

[Grandma Ruth]

I'll do the revised map today, except I have a problem I can't resolve so I'll have to leave it up to you.
The problem is the "change" to GS. Immediately before it, the status page shows this:

After the change it shows this:

It's the same "2+ points" status event that's picking up TV1 and TV2 variables. So although the number of cities has changed, that note in brackets hasn't.
I can't see what could/should be changed to make it work - it should ideally revert back to the "cities <5" event but I can't get it to work I even tried disabling the "2+ points" event and just copying the "cities" events a couple more times. That seemed to confuse the issue completely - as soon as I had over 30 cities the status disappeared altogether.

One more thing about the "second" AI company emerging is that it will prevent the industrial profits sequence from happening, as that depends on there being only one company - unless and until the player gets rid of the "second" company, of course. I don't know about this as I'm not actually playing at the moment, just testing with cheats so I don't know how hard it would be.

When I first played this, in my innocence, I went the "Wales" route as you suggest a casual player would do. Then I started again and deliberately made BR as weak as I could so it was cheap to take over when the inevitable happened. Then, later again, I tried keeping BR going and realised that, as you said, it's cheaper to take over one of the AIs and get access that way. My normal strategy for a connection game is not to connect till the last year and concentrate on making enough money (by fair means!) to make that possible, so on the game I won I never even thought about connecting Wales till the last minute - and I never upgraded Warrington Bank Quay. I finished with 50 cities and the rest of the points on haulage, etc.

And here's something I learned "in real life" yesterday - the correct way to abbreviate the United States is U.S. and the correct way to abbreviate the United Kingdom is UK - who knew? Who thinks up these things? Worse than trying to get these status pages right!

[Gumboots]

And here's something I learned "in real life" yesterday - the correct way to abbreviate the United States is U.S. and the correct way to abbreviate the United Kingdom is UK - who knew? Who thinks up these things? Worse than trying to get these status pages right!

Meh. Correct according to who? Seems silly to me. In practice everyone just uses US (or USA) and UK, and doesn't care about the periods. You'd have to be a quite extraordinary sort of pedant to insist on their inclusion. I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi myself, but even I am not that fussy.

[Grandma Ruth]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ - we're preparing an article for publication, but I think we'll be inclined to look somewhere else if they insist on stuff like that. I'm waiting for them to confirm that they even accept British spellings. If not, their loss will be somebody else's gain - I'm not going to revise the entire document with an American spell-checker!

[Gumboots]

Translating to American is easy. All you do is delete every instance of "u", and change every instance of "s" to "z".

IOW, in American the correct abbreviation of USA is ZA, and obviously the correct abbreviation of US is Z.

[Grandma Ruth]

You're WUTY again!

[RulerofRails]

Points for city connections:
I was going to make a simple notice where TV1 (L&M) was # of points for next target, and TV2 (L&M) was # of cities for next target. Getting "fussy" about length for the formatting alignment meant I ended up with 4 events instead. Maybe that helps you understand why there are so many. This however is not a logical consideration as these are just status messages for information.

The events that award points are called "Cities 5, Cities 10, etc.." These were always one-time-only events (check the campaign version for yourself if you like). In other words: you can only earn the point for connecting 5 cities ONCE.

If you feel that we should reset the count at the surprise, I'm ok with that even though ed didn't design it like this. Maybe that could be incentive to make more connections early on....

How that might look:
Event: "1840-mess"
Tack on the reset for TV1 (L&M) = 0 and TV2 (L&M) = 0.

Then for all the point awarding events we need to remove one-time-only test, then add a test for TV2 to each.
For example,
"Cities 5" will test for TV2 < 10
"Cities 10" will test for TV2 < 20
.....

Note: "Cities 50" needs to also get a new effect "Set TV2 to 51." The logic: we are testing for a value that will be changed (in this case increased) after the event fires. This will prevent the event from firing multiple times (5 cities connected will check TRUE at any number above 5 too).


2nd company prevents Industrial profits sequence.
I'm inclined to think it's not a real issue. The player will have a solid earning base from mergers already. 3-5 years would be maximum IMO.

Touching on something you mentioned previously, I really don't like to be "forced" to continue playing to earn a medal. That's boring. I think we should allow the player to take the Trainmaster victory without waiting. You mentioned the late events.... But what real impact will they have on the game? There is no penalty for debt. Even if we had negative cash and the company was in a debt spiral.... our points are invincible. We could try to make something of it with some new logic, but late game is extremely hard to balance for different levels of players. IMO, it's not worth the effort for something that will very likely still be "boring."

[Grandma Ruth]

The events that award points are called "Cities 5, Cities 10, etc.." These were always one-time-only events (check the campaign version for yourself if you like). In other words: you can only earn the point for connecting 5 cities ONCE.

Yes, that's the problem - those events only work when track or station is placed, so they don't pick up cities that have been acquired by take-over. This only applies to the higher numbers and by then I suppose the player won't much care! The whole thing is so complicated I'm inclined not to change it.

2nd company prevents Industrial profits sequence.
I'm inclined to think it's not a real issue. The player will have a solid earning base from mergers already. 3-5 years would be maximum IMO.

Touching on something you mentioned previously, I really don't like to be "forced" to continue playing to earn a medal. That's boring. I think we should allow the player to take the Trainmaster victory without waiting. You mentioned the late events.... But what real impact will they have on the game? There is no penalty for debt. Even if we had negative cash and the company was in a debt spiral.... our points are invincible. We could try to make something of it with some new logic, but late game is extremely hard to balance for different levels of players. IMO, it's not worth the effort for something that will very likely still be "boring."

I agree with the thing about the second company, it won't make that much difference.

And on balance, I think I would prefer it to end, as you say, when you get the victory conditions - the massive crash didn't actually have any effect on my win. I've changed it on the version I'm attaching now.

These are the changes I've made:
Industry (overall) removed rice paddies, oil well, rubber tree plantation, steel mill, vineyard
Port - Liverpool Docks added supply only oil 2
Spellings and typos - various changed
Events:
Industrial Bonus added Force test against companies
Loss changed triggers at year-end
YS victory offer added condition - connect Warrington to Sheffield
TM victory offer added condition - connect Warrington to Sheffield
Bangor changed condition - connect Warrington to Bangor
New event Access to Wales if company has access to Wales, set Warrington TV1 to 1
Wales offer added condition TV1 != 1 (Warrington)
Wales offer changed <= 184011 to < 184011
Seaforth added condition - connection Warrington to Seaforth is FALSE
Duplicate event Seaforth -connected condition - connection Warrington to Seaforth is TRUE
183211 added condition - connection Warrington Territory to Chester is FALSE
Duplicate event 183211 - connected condition - connection Warrington Territory to Chester is TRUE and text is changed appropriately
Stat - comp added condition #of companies > 1
Duplicate event Stat - comp-1 condition #of companies =1 [this is just to change the text, pedantic, I know!]
Stat - holy delete condition for connection
Stat - holy added TV1 = 0 (Anglesey)
Stat - holy changed text as appropriate
Holyhead added effect - TV1 = 1 (Anglesey)
Duplicate event Midlands offer Anglesey no text, effect to set TV1 to 1 (Anglesey)
Trainmaster Win delete game-year condition

Warrington Wire Stand-aloneR9.zip

(1.15 MiB) Downloaded 73 times

[RulerofRails]

I followed all those changes except one.

Seaforth added condition - connection Warrington to Seaforth is FALSE
Duplicate event Seaforth -connected condition - connection Warrington to Seaforth is TRUE

Maybe there is a way to get access rights to Seaforth that I missed? As far as I can tell none of the AI have that access. I thought the event: "Seaforth" was the only way to get that access, so it was impossible to already be connected there beforehand. What am I missing?