1954 Royal Tour (1.05) - now with extra disasters!

[Altoona+BeachCreek]

I have to say, (but odnt think im saying you made a cruddy map) this is some of the most impossible terrain I have ever worked with. Normally, I wouldnte caught dead with anything steeper than 3% grades on my railroads. But here, not even in the Rockies or the alps, but in Australia, I am forced to build not 3, not 4, not 5- but SIX percent gradients for a couple sections of track at a time. The reason this irks me so much is realism, that's all. I don't know of any common carrier railroads with anything higher than 3% grades. Norfolk southern, a major road on the East coast, shut down a short stretch called "the slide" with a little over 2%. The challenge on this map has been real exciting so far. But, those poor cows and sheep can't seem to catch a break! I was glad to get a loading time reduction for delivering beer to Larry, whoever that is :). I laughed to myself when the war paper came out, thinking that Australia proper wouldn't be shot at for another 2 or 3 years, and their misfortune of still being considered a British Commonwealth. I also giggle when, every time I set up a new long distance route, the first thing that fills the whole 7 cars is alcohol I haven't started a second company for Queensland yet because of the darn stock splits keeping me from owning enough. Oh, and to use an overused meme: AUSTRALIA
Y U NO HAVE NATIONAL GAUGE
My face when I saw the meeting point:
I'll be lucky to get away with less than 8% grades there. Oh brother. All told, this is a great and entertaining map, and definitely presents a challenge. Great job!
Update: Sydney connected of Canberra! "Anyone sentenced to Canberra needs some relief." I died

[Gumboots]

Well, in that case you're not being tricky enough with your track laying. You can get in and out of Wallengarra with nothing over 4%, and that will only be for a couple of segments of track.

[Altoona+BeachCreek]

"I'll work harder!"
Jurgis Rudkus
"The jungle" by Upton Sinclair

[Gumboots]

Just a FYI: the run from Sydney to Canberra can all be done with 3% or less, apart from maybe one or two squares of track. If you're running up there with 5 or 6%, you are doing it wrong.

Same with Orange up to Bathurst, and most other places.

And the way I look at it, RRT3 grades are roughly double real life grades. If you look at it that way, the limit of 7% for adhesion would be 14% in RRT3, which is about right. At 14% your locos will effectively be stopped dead in their tracks if they're hauling any useful amount of load. 1% grade in RRT3 would be 0.5% IRL, which is very moderate. The steep 3% real life grade would equate to 6% in RRT3, which is quite a burden on the loco.

[RayofSunshine]

It has been a time in an attempt to play the Royal Tour, and although there is the memory of trying to obtain 51% of stock in initial railroad, I don't remember having a "great" problem with "elevation inclines". There were a few "laid track" which did require the best incline engines, but were navigable, as I would not use a full consist. The availability of engines helped run a fairly smooth operation. Still working at that 51% stock accumulation. LOL

[Altoona+BeachCreek]

I too found the most difficult problem being trying to run two companies. The hard part wasn't getting the stock for me, though, but jumping between companies while the AI tries its absolute hardest to lay horrid track, buy unnecessary engines, build up debt, and ruin stock prices. I don't know the best way to take care of this problem.

[Gumboots]

The trick is to keep ahead of the AI so it's happy running with what you give it. It will always buy extra locos, but there should be enough traffic in Queensland to make the extra locos profitable enough for the limited time they are running.

Apart from that, start the company with plenty of capital ($3 million +) and build good track right at the beginning. Also, take out a bond or two and buy up or build some good industry. This will keep the AI happy for a bit. A while later, build more track for it, etc. If you do it right, the AI will never build track. You should be aiming to get track to all Queeensland towns within three years.

Also, whenever I'm doing anything with the Queensland company I pause the game, so the AI board wont do stupid things to my primary (NSW) company. If you do that, the only thing the AI will do to the NSW company is change priority trains to standard. It wont touch routes or consists or bonds or anything else. Since I never run many priority trains, this isn't much of a nuisance for me.

[belbincolne]

Just downloaded this and played normally saving before I started up in Queensland. Thought it was a very enjoyable scenario so was happy giving it a few tries. First one I rapidly got to what the Almanac said was Gold standard in Queensland so went back to NSW only to find the AI had absolutely ruined the Company. Couldn't even see what it had done because there only seemed to be a few extra trains - no extra lines or businesses and it had taken out 3 bonds despite annual profits being around £3m. Anyway couldn't rescue it so went back to save.

This time I watched NSW after playing there a little longer and with Queensland good for Silver and NSW good for Gold (per almanac) I re-tookover NSW when profits dropped from 3m to 2m and the AI hadn't caused too many problems but at finish although every town was connected, no debt and all other conditions met and so far as I could see only Queensland was a bit short on profit so should have had Silver I was told I'd lost. So thats my first problem if anyones any thoughts.

The other is only a comment really. In my first try a section of line in Queensland was washed away. In the second nothing. So what extra disasters? Maybe a few more trains crashed than usual - Train 2 seemed to crash every 3 years! But nothing exceptional.

Anyway as I said a nice scenario so dont mind playing again if anyone has any thoughts.

[Gumboots]

The disasters bit was just a joke about the floods and droughts when I put those in. All they do is depress wool and livestock production for 6 months. They don't affect your railway at all, so if some track went missing it wasn't anything to do with the scenario events.

If you still have the save that should have given you Silver, I don't mind taking a look at it if you attach it to a post. I may have missed something in the coding.

[belbincolne]

Ah yes. Remember seeing lots of wool and livestock depressions but didn't seem to have much effect. I haven't got the final save but will give it another try from the NSW/Queensland switch and send it you if same thing happens.

[RayofSunshine]

Bonds are a help to help your revenue. However, I find it to be a hinderence, as it also requires an 'interest payment", but is only that hinderence if your company does not have a good cash flow of revenue.

Usually my bonds issued are at the high end of the normal 11%. I will continue issuing bonds when necessary, but will pay the off when I am able to issue bonds at 5%.

But the next time, I will try your suggestion of maxing out the 20 bonds to see what type of result I can get. although I usually will not issue bonds if I can even "limp or struggle" along with a bare amount of revenue for my operations. Not the best of Tycooning. LOL

[belbincolne]

Finally managed to play it through to get to the Silver position again with no medal. Quite incredible how the game changes. First try the AI ruined my NSW company by changing every locomotive - even if they were only a year old and running them 0 / 7. It also chose locos totally unsuitable for steep gradients so several were queuing up behind each other - and it took out bonds to do it so even though the economy was good it was impossible to rescue it. Second try the economy crashed so could get nowhere and took a third try which I cant convert to a zipped file without buying Winzip. I can unzip files using Windows but not zip them! Not my day. I had lots of bonds in Queensland - could that be why?

Later - thanks Stoker - done that and I hope it's downloaded here o/k. Nice to hear from you - my absence has been because of my inability to play 1.06 scenarios in Windows 7.

[Stoker]

Long time no see Belbincolne!

I use Jzip. It is free and you can get it here. Just watch for the toolbar addon's and junk as you install it (as with all software these days). 7zip is another option, but it seems that it makes zip's that are not quite universal.

[Gumboots]

Ok, I'll take a look at it. Should be an easy fix, if something is wrong with the coding.

ETA: Umm, maybe not. When I tried to load that map it caused my 1.05 to crash to desktop. After that RT3 always crashes to desktop whenever I try and start it. Looks like that map has borked my entire 1.05 installation and I'l have to reinstall from scratch. Needless to say, I have just lost interest in testing it.

What exactly, did you do to that map? It seems to be a hazard to people's installations and should probably be removed from the post.

Anyway, I did use my 1.06 to check the event coding in the editor. If the status page is showing you have met all the Silver goals (text should update to tell you this) then as far as I can tell it should work.

[Gumboots]

AHA! Got 1.05 running again. The problem was that when I used one of the batch files to open it in windowed mode (was after crash error messages) it apparently reset the engine.cfg file to default, thereby wiping out the "Vista fix".

Result: game always crashes. Solution: paste in Vista fix again. Result: 1.05 works again. Beware of those batch files if you're relying on the Vista fix.

However, I still can't get Belbincolne's map to load without crashing the game.

[AdmiralHalsey]

AHA! Got 1.05 running again. The problem was that when I used one of the batch files to open it in windowed mode (was after crash error messages) it aparently reset the engine.cfg file to default, thereby wiping out the "Vista fix".

Result: game always crashes. Solution: paste in Vista fix again. Result: 1.05 works again.

However, I still can't get Belbincolne's map to load without crashing the game.

He might be using different engines then you.

[Gumboots]

Yeah could be. Or he may have played it under 1.06 or something. Need more info.

*ETA: Just noticed the game crashes when it comes to the "Loading player database" bar, so perhaps he's running custom players. If so, I'd need to know which ones.

By the way, after having to go through all the game settings and put them back to my preferences again, I have noticed a couple of things. I disabled the coloured/accelerated cursor, which I had been using, and am just going with the basic black and white one. Seems quicker and cleaner in operation, and since the RRT3 cursors are rather ugly anyway it doesn't (IMO) look any worse. Also disabled the discrete steps on the mouse, which I had been using for some reason, and that's an improvement too.

[belbincolne]

I'm afraid that these technicalities are beyond mem My guess is that it's something to do with my inability to patch to 1.06 working in the opposite direction but I haven't a clue why that is.

[RulerofRails]

Error.jpg (7.17 KiB) Viewed 29041 times

This is the error I get when trying to open the zip. The game loads until the car databases, then hangs and gives this message. Is their any chance you are using custom cars?

Fact is, I am so thankful that there are new cars, buildings and engines available. But they can be a headache when trying to load others saves. One missing file that the map uses and you wont see it load. This happened to me when I tried to send a saved game to Stoker awhile ago.

[Gumboots]

Yup, it must be down to custom stuff. What custom bits are you running, Belbincolne? Any custom engines, logos, players, cars, etc? If you know what you have installed I can throw it into my 1.05 for testing.