Gateway to the Midwest

[Blackhawk]

If you like to play beyond the scenario why not just enable the locomotives you want or are appropriate for the region then? When I made scenarios, I'd prefer to only check the boxes for the time period that would be covered rather than the entire of the game. Performance wise it probably doesn't make too much difference, but I always figured, it's one less thing to have cluttered in the editor if I only use a smaller number of locomotives that fit the time frame of the scenario.

[OilCan]

The first one makes sense however the second one you seem to have misunderstood. I mean why do you only choose so few locos when you can tick the boxes that say NA Loco's only, EU Loco's only and WORLD Loco's only? That should make sure no loco's from the wrong region make it in. You can still uncheck it afterwards and drop the loco's you want while keeping the region for them correct. Main reason I don't like that is due to me liking to play beyond the end of the scenario just to see how well I can run the RR.

Yes, I tick the box for NA or EU locos only and, yes, untick it in order to deselect the trains outside the time span of the game. This leaves a small number of trains.
Take this Gateway game for example, it spans from 1870 to 1930. I tick the NA only and that selects 33 of 68 trains. I omit the ones outside the dates of the game and that leaves only 15 locos across 60 years. (And the Duke is one of them.)

This conversation has spurred two thoughts. One that I need to leave trains selected after the ending date of the game and two, that I could select some widely used world or euro trains to fill in the time gaps between NA trains. I did not realize until recently how common it was for train engines to be shipped around the world in the 1800s and early 1900s. I could add some trains like the S3 & the Class P8.

[Hawk]

I figured out the problem with the 5 Cities event. It's all the extra text you added.

Cities Connected to St. Louis:
New Orleans -- [Company Variable 1~~Connected/Unconnected]
Omaha -- [Company Variable 2~~Connected/Unconnected]
Oklahoma City -- [Company Variable 3~~Connected/Unconnected]
Denver -- [Company Variable 4~~Connected/Unconnected]
San Antonio -- [Game Variable 1~~Connected/Unconnected]
Albuquerque (Silv) -- [Game Variable 2~~Connected/Unconnected]

I deleted all that text and now it looks about right. Might still need to delete the space between Year 2 of 60 and 5 cities connected ...

Paper.jpg (75.61 KiB) Viewed 5327 times

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Edit 1: I deleted the space mentioned above. Now it looks right.

Paper2.jpg (101.49 KiB) Viewed 5326 times

You could probably eliminate the text between the parenthesis too.

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Edit 2: Here ya' go. This looks just right.

Paper3.jpg (104.25 KiB) Viewed 5325 times

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Edit 3: Also, wouldn't it be a good idea to mention that you can have up to 6 AI players in the description of the scenario instead of stating it after a player starts the game, as you currently have it in the briefing?

[RulerofRails]

This conversation has spurred two thoughts. One that I need to leave trains selected after the ending date of the game and two, that I could select some widely used world or euro trains to fill in the time gaps between NA trains. I did not realize until recently how common it was for train engines to be shipped around the world in the 1800s and early 1900s. I could add some trains like the S3 & the Class P8.

I didn't realize that the Duke was North American, maybe they were used in Canada? The yellow color doesn't seem quite right for the US to me at least. I can always be wrong though. As an interesting side note, the TM cars have more changing skins, models, and weights introduced throughout history instead of only at 50 year intervals. Even though the hard-coded game messages that double the weight of the cars remain, this gives a much smoother progression of weights instead of all locos dropping a considerable portion of their speed as happens here. I had more of a look at the Consolidation and I think half of it is that the 1900 car change makes it a poor mountain climber. I tend to be lazy with grades generally accepting 3% pretty readily and having 4% as my intended limit (sometimes small sections go over this). I know some players are really careful with their grades. They might not notice as big a difference, please don't change it just for me.

ETA: As far as strategy, having a decent performance engine with cheaper running costs in the post-1900 game could make it easier as the player may avoid buying any expensive running cost engines such as the Atlantic and Pacific. In my personal opinion these engines aren't worth their purchase price or running costs at Expert level pricing. I don't think I would use them either way, and if I did I would cull all 250 or so engines and replace them with less than 100 new ones with revised routes. This would be a little tedious. Even the H10 is really only useful on high-value mountainous routes where it can be running full. I would suggest making an event and maybe choice to import any European engines to give the player a reason for playing with them. As this map is mostly free-form, more engine choices are probably the best thing to allow for many variations of play.

[OilCan]

Hawk: Thanks for the help. What happened was that the text for the status page was inadvertently copied into the 5 city newspaper. Its a glitch in my 1.05V that wont go away. Sometimes when I'm editing the text in an event and then sweep my mouse some certain way, the text is copied into the next event or two. I usually know when that happens: I just didn't catch it this time.

RoR: allowing the player to choose whether to import engines is a good idea. I'll add that.

[Hawk]

I'm not sure if this is any help for you Ray, but I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that you can copy/paste text from and to the text boxes in the editor. Maybe you're inadvertently copying text from one box and pasting it into another box.
I know when I work in the editors, I copy text from Word, after doing a spell check, then paste that into a text box in the editor. It's the same thing if you want to check spelling on text already in a text box in the editor. Just copy it from the text box, paste it into a word program with spell check, correct spelling, then copy/paste it back into the text box, after - of course - deleting the text in the text box.
Maybe you have a combination of mouse clicks that copy/paste that might slip your mind, or that you're not aware of. Just a guess.

[OilCan]

Hawk: I do use the cut and paste. Something else is the cause. It has been doing it for years, off and on. I've learned to be careful when moving my mouse out of the text box while editing events - but sometimes that's not enough.

[Hawk]

That's weird.

[Hawk]

The final version has been added to the archives.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/r ... tm#Gateway

[Sugus]

OilCan, I wish you'd create more maps like this one - it was really great fun to simply play it!

[OilCan]

OilCan, I wish you'd create more maps like this one - it was really great fun to simply play it!

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I agree that a game of simply connecting cities can be very entertaining; especially if one becomes an industry tycoon as well as a railroad tycoon. I will consider making another similar format game. Maybe Alaska or within Canada, or...

[Hawk]

Alaska would be cool.

[RulerofRails]

I like the idea of an Alaskan map also.

[Sugus]

Alaska, Canada, Southern Italy or "Around the Matterhorn" ... doesn't matter!
I'm sure that a map from OilCan will be great anyway!

[AdmiralHalsey]

Russia!

[OilCan]

I have already started on an Alaska map, but Russia would be a great choice as well. I'll work on the Alaska map to a point where it is ready for some test runs and then begin on a map of Russia. I looked through the map archives and found only one game involving Russia: the PopTop games have 2.