Trouble with State of Germany

[sleepy]

Here's a shot I took of the Beuth 2-2-2 when I remembered that I could hide the HUD. The wheels look circular enough for me.

[Gumboots]

The wheels are circular, but there appears to be some major distortion of depth. The car behind the tender looks as wide as a house. When I first glanced at the picture I was wondering why there was a building across the tracks. It took me a minute to realise it was a heavily distorted view of an express car.

[RulerofRails]

There is some distortion, but your field of view is also wider at 16:9. The dialogs, newspapers, and user interface is where it's obvious. I think those just get stretched. For me, the distortion is better than black lines on either side of my screen. I would be happy playing at the game's natural (is it the max?) 1600x1200, but am not lucky enough to possess a quality 4:3 screen.

Comparison (how off-topic that I used a different map ):

[Hawk]

For me, the distortion is better than black lines on either side of my screen.

That's why I use the square monitor for gaming. No distortion. No black side bars.
I run that monitor at 1280 X 1024, which is a 5:4 ratio. About that same as 4:3.

[sleepy]

The wheels are circular, but there appears to be some major distortion of depth. The car behind the tender looks as wide as a house. When I first glanced at the picture I was wondering why there was a building across the tracks. It took me a minute to realise it was a heavily distorted view of an express car.

Well, this shot was as close up as I could get. Normally I'm never this close and the map is a little stretched, but I got used to it and don't mind inaccurate geography. I can't get black bars in my game - either the display is blurred and stretched to fill fullscreen, or I play in windowed mode (has its benefits as well).

And I hope someone actually read my original post...

[RulerofRails]

I read your post. I have already said a lot about this map. First, I must say congrats on getting the medal!

To summarize the 3 starting locations:
Prussia - lot of resources in the east for industries (with an event that makes them cheaper )
Hannover - few resources, but an ideal passenger location
Bavaria - hilly with a scattering of resources.

As long as one caters to the passengers available from the close towns in Hannover (build Hotels, frequent service, etc.), for me the Bavaria start will end up taking the longest to complete.

I think the map is just following history. For an outsider like me it's also strange that the states of Prussia and Bavaria have land in two different areas of the country.

BTW, the Crampton is fine for the lowlands. If you had started in a different state you might have ended up using some. Though I'm sure the general population would prefer not to see a French engine in their neighborhood.

[Gumboots]

Yup, I read it too. Agree with what RoR said about the various options, although IMO the Beuth is a better loco on the whole than the Crampton. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to run, and actually has better pax appeal. The Crampton is really only worth the extra money if you have a speed goal or haulage goal to meet, on flat terrain, and limited time to do it.

[RulerofRails]

Yeah, until we started testing the engines I didn't realize how little the Beuth and Baldwin types cost to run. I never considered running them for long periods when there were faster options available. I went and dug up the stats for the Beuth vs Crampton.

Express:

Freight:

Notice: Take those fuel costs with a grain of salt because they are based on my testing distance for engines on long runs in the 1930s. These engines aren't fast enough to cover this much ground in a year.

Other differences are -1 passenger appeal (-5% passenger revenues?) for the Crampton, but +1 acceleration level (this particular step requires 19% less time to reach top speed).

On flat ground the Crampton will haul a full load of 8 cars a lot faster. Maximum express speed is up by 70%, while maximum freight speed is also up 62%. The question then is how much ground would each engine cover in a year?

If the Beuth covers 600 track miles per year it will have a lifespan of 10 years at an averaged cost (this includes replacement with a new engine at the end of the cycle) of $24k per year.

If the Crampton covers 900 track miles per year it will have an identical optimum lifespan of 11 years at an averaged cost of $40k per year.

For slow freight the Beuth is a no-brainer, but is the extra speed of the Crampton enough to make a difference when faced with the 6.7% per month decay rate of passengers? I think it may be worth it. What do you think?

On the saved play I found which is a gold medal in April 1861 (Hannover start) I had 72 Cramptons. Would I have done better with the Beuth?

[Gumboots]

Other differences are -1 passenger appeal (-5% passenger revenues?)...

It's -10%. Default pax appeal scale has 10% between ratings. Ugly = 90%, Acceptable = 100%, Looks Sharp = 110% and Ultra Cool = 120%.

For slow freight the Beuth is a no-brainer, but is the extra speed of the Crampton enough to make a difference when faced with the 6.7% per month decay rate of passengers? I think it may be worth it. What do you think?

Not sure. You're getting 10% less revenue from pax, simply because of the appeal rating, but the same for everything else. So my guess is that if you were only hauling pax it'd make no difference which loco you used. Once you factor in maintenance stops, and load/unload times, the higher rating of the Beuth might more or less balance the speed of the Crampton.

All this is assuming grades of 0% or 1%, because as soon as grades top 2% the Beuth is just as fast, so on grades of 2% and up the Beuth would be an obvious winner.

[sleepy]

I think Hannover is quite flat, so the Crampton would've been a viable option, but since I started in Bavaria the Beuth seemed a better all-around option. I didn't even buy rights to Prussia on this playthrough. The east side had Berlin and some small towns but with resources as mentioned, while the west side has some decently sized cities close together. I wonder if starting in the west would be as profitable as Hannover. An 1861 win is very impressive.

Also at 10% the passenger appeal difference isn't as big as imagined (I was thinking 20-30%). I'm inclined to believe a small difference matters though because when I connected to a small town, the majority of initial haulage was passengers and mail. I don't remember if this is a one time thing or not. Since hotels actually produce passengers, I might've benefited from placing more all throughout the map.

[RulerofRails]

. . . when I connected to a small town, the majority of initial haulage was passengers and mail. I don't remember if this is a one time thing or not. Since hotels actually produce passengers, I might've benefited from placing more all throughout the map.

The first connection has a buildup of passengers. After connection passengers will trickle in, but your trains must visit fairly frequently.

On pax heavy maps I tend to make the initial run after connection a special running to a more distant city. Generally to whichever moderately distant city (mostly among those within 5 or so cities on my network, but it's a profit vs. distance consideration) will provide highest delivery profit on that stack of express.

Supposing that "A" is the city in question and down the line is B-C-D-E ... etc.. If I make the train run A-E, when setting it up I will put A-D as the next route for a pattern A-E-A-D. This means the train stays useful throughout it's life. After this train is loading as I desire I will buy one or more other trains for the local traffic (cities B and C in the example). Main point is that this train should load before them.

I will also load the special train with Any Express, then once it is "Loading" with all the express available, switch to it to Any Consist (will remain at this setting). If the train isn't full, freight cars will be added to fill the train. (Advantage to this: freight isn't competing over express in terms of price to deliver which as far as we can see is taken before the passenger appeal rating is applied). Sometimes I bung on a dining car making it a one-time 9-car configuration. I will definitely do this when the train filled with 8 cars of express.

Definitely build a Hotel in every city. Some of us have experimented with building more than Hotel in major cities, but didn't find clear evidence of increased total Hotel revenue. To my knowledge no exhaustive test has been undertaken.

A second Hotel is said to be like building a new house in terms of passenger supply/demand. Whether that's worth $100k in your situation you will have to figure out. I'm inclined to think it's not worth it most of the time, but it's just an assumption.

[Gumboots]

Definitely build a Hotel in every city. Some of us have experimented with building more than Hotel in major cities, but didn't find clear evidence of increased total Hotel revenue. To my knowledge no exhaustive test has been undertaken.

Stoker claimed to have exhaustively tested it, and claimed good results, but I never saw the results of his tests.* However, IIRC the benefits were more in number of passengers than in hotel revenue as such. Which makes sense. The game manual says multiple industries (hotels, restaurants, etc) in the one town will tend to eat each others' profits, but you'd still get the bonus of extra passenger production for increased traffic.

I did try a brief test on the Chile map, by putting hotels in all the towns of the southern plains, on a developed network. Passenger numbers went through the roof, so I assume increased express revenue would be possible, but I didn't continue the test to find out for sure.

Edit: Come to think of it, why haven't I tested this more thoroughly? It seems an obvious and lucrative thing to do.

*Another edit: Come to think of it, I did see some screenshots ages ago. The images are offline now, but I remember that they did show the results he claimed. See posts here and here.

@sleepy: If you want to try for increased passenger revenue I think testing Stoker's ideas would be worthwhile. It's probably best to save them for later in the game, when the network is fully developed and you are running out of other opportunities for expansion.

[sleepy]

That is an insane number of cities for a map! I usually check the cargo map for high passenger areas and put my hotels and restaurants in big cities, but I can see how the "snowball effect" of putting hotels in little towns can be made to work. I will try it in my next campaign, given I remember to.

[RulerofRails]

I forgot that Oilcan did a big test on passengers in the game. This is the relevant part.

• 7. Placing numerous hotels in a cluster around a single station can notably increase passenger traffic at the station (and map wide when applied to multiple stations). Hotels both attract passengers and generate passengers. They become destinations and they also supply passengers to the map.
  • Restaurants and taverns also attract passengers, but do not have as strong a draw as hotels.
  • Clustering multiple hotels around stations does not change passenger fares.

On Oilcan's map "Canyon Lands", the goal was specifically Hotel, Restaurant and Tavern profits. That's the last time I thought about the multiples. It's a unique map with great scenery. It has bonus events that you can choose that will increase their revenue. I played it once without those: at the default revenues. I remember strategizing to only build one set of Hotel/Restaurant/Tavern per city.

---

On my 1861 run of this map I was only using 1 Hotel in every city (no matter the size), each built within about a year of making the rail connection there. In that game (and in many others) I never reach the condition of a "large, well established network" before a medal. My experience is that passengers like the short trips most, that's where you'll find the most volume. I'm happy to provide them with short haul service as long as they will stay in my Hotel. So, profit per Hotel does matter in the way that I use them in the expansion stage of the game.

By the quoted figures on passenger price that Stoker gave ($30k per load, whereas I'm happy with $8-14k), it seems like he might have been more focused on the long distance trips. When starting out a company, long distance is mainly out of the question. By going for the early short trips I take better advantage of the higher passenger volume available when track mileage is lower. The evidence of this early advantage is here:

From RT3's History.rtf, under Version 1.03 patch (applies to all higher patches):

Single Player Balance and Gameplay Tweaking
15. Reduced the amount of passengers and mail in the middle and later stages of a game (i.e. when the map is built up with lots of track) by 15-30%.

So I conclude, there IS evidence that building multiple Hotels can help in more mature games. I generally recommend things that are good strategy for strong company growth, as that's what I look out for when playing myself. I'm still not convinced that this is a strong strategy, but that doesn't mean that it isn't worth consideration.

PS. In my previous post I forgot to mention that when setting up the first train from a newly connected city I consider volume as well as price.

Also, I think I misunderstood Sleepy's comment of "placing them all throughout the map." I just realized that it probably means one per city.