Latvian Republic 1920

[Gumboots]

I have gold on expert on a number of scenarios, but I'm by no means a professional. There are still a few game mechanics I don't fully understand, or struggle with. For instance, I don't really know how hotels and post offices etc work, so I mostly don't build them unless I see the city has a large number of passengers or mail already. This is probably a bad idea.

Hotels generate passengers, and they also demand passengers. This makes them a good way to get express traffic pumping, providing that it hasn't been crippled by an editor event (some maps do this to emphasise freight). If you build one hotel for $100k it may not make much during the year (location dependent) but one load of pax can be worth $20-40k by itself, which changes the equation quite a bit. If you build a hotel in every city you will find that a year later you will be rolling in pax, so if you can figure out how to deliver them it can be a very good earner.

Post offices simply double the time that mail will be held at a station before vanishing. I find this can make them useful at end-of-the-line stations if they are in a decent-sized city, and also at hub stations, but not so much at intermediates if the line is serviced frequently. The post office itself makes a $1k loss every year, but the extra loads of mail can more than make up for this.

And whilst I'm almost certain the economy is random, I still would like to know if there's anything that can be done to influence a boom or not. And I am prone to going bust from margin calls!

I had a theory at one stage that the economy was more likely to tank if the game calculated that this would make you prey to a margin call, but I never tested it thoroughly and it may just have been paranoia.

In my defence, regarding Orient Express, I satisfied gold in the last year but I don't think the check triggers until January so I only got silver. But with that one I only ever ran one train and used industry, since it seems far harder to run a normal railroad as the economy is poor (or so I've found).

There are several variants of Orient Express, but they are all usually lucrative once you get over the initial hurdle. These maps respond well to a sensible mix of industry and rail, although an industry start is often the best option. A paper mill in the middle of the logging camps just south of Zagreb is a classic opening move. Materials cost is zero for several years, there is plenty of it, and paper prices are high. Initial profits can be quite astonishing.

The express speed goal is easy to get if you run express trains on maintenance spurs. This helps their average speed immensely.

I'll check out that Australia map of yours. By coincidence, best I've gotten on the default Australia map is silver, on I think expert. Though I have read that map might have a few bugs in it.

It has some bugs if you are doing things the author didn't think of, but if you are just playing it straight it's fine. Multiple companies can screw it up a bit if you turn them loose under AI management, but I don't recall any other bugs.

[TheBonobo4]

I thought there was a bug regarding the bonuses applied by choosing steam or diesel, but maybe not.

[RulerofRails]

Comment on map: South East Australia
Any event that affects fuel price or acceleration is bugged. There is an Oil haulage goal that will "reward you with lower fuel costs." It does not. Also, the message at year end that tells you how many load of Oil you have already hauled has a setup error, should be <20, instead it uses a > and you will only see it if you have completed the haulage as 20 loads is the target. Not that it matters. . . .

The problem I know of with multiple companies is that engines are only assigned by the one-time-only Steam OR Diesel choice. If there are no engines, the game will pick one which makes no sense like an E-88.

[TheBonobo4]

Comment on map: South East Australia
Any event that affects fuel price or acceleration is bugged. There is an Oil haulage goal that will "reward you with lower fuel costs." It does not. Also, the message at year end that tells you how many load of Oil you have already hauled has a setup error, should be <20, instead it uses a > and you will only see it if you have completed the haulage as 20 loads is the target. Not that it matters. . . .

The problem I know of with multiple companies is that engines are only assigned by the one-time-only Steam OR Diesel choice. If there are no engines, the game will pick one which makes no sense like an E-88.

Right. I prefer steam any way so I'll be using steam in future on that map, hopefully steam isn't also bugged.

[Gumboots]

Comment on map: South East Australia
Any event that affects fuel price or acceleration is bugged. There is an Oil haulage goal that will "reward you with lower fuel costs." It does not.

Oh bother. I hate bugz. I wrote a fuel price reduction into my Royal Tour scenario, so that probably doesn't work either. Not that it matters greatly in that one.

Right. I prefer steam any way so I'll be using steam in future on that map, hopefully steam isn't also bugged.

It has always been fine for me on that map.

[Gumboots]

Cool. I found information on swamps.

Latvia
Wetland types

There are 12,400 rivers, and 2,256 lakes which are bigger than 1 hectare. Together with ponds and reservoirs they cover about 3.7 % of Latvia. Untouched wetlands cover 4.9 % of Latvia. All three types of wetlands – raised bogs, transitional bogs as well fens are represented. There are also flooded and coastal meadows represented in the country. In total about 10.4 % of Latvia are covered by different types of wetlands, including forests on peat soils.

Turns out that they are mostly visible on satellite shots once you know what to look for (have a distinctive colour) and I now have maps of the main ones too. Which might seem nuts, but swamps are interesting places. Apart from anything else they're great breeding grounds for all sorts of birds and fish, and are often important to local economies.

So now I can get on with adding swamps to the map. This will make laying track a tad more challenging, but everyone likes a good track-laying challenge, right?

(And no, I am not, which means definitely not, going to add all 12,400 rivers to the map. I value what is left of my sanity.)

[Gumboots]

Hey this was on the TV last night: Extreme Railway Journeys: Baltic

Haven't seen the rest of the series yet, but enjoyed this episode. It's worth watching if you want to pass a bit of time and learn a few things.

Anyway, it has me enthused about this map again, which is a bonus.

[TheBonobo4]

Hey this was on the TV last night: Extreme Railway Journeys: Baltic

Haven't seen the rest of the series yet, but enjoyed this episode. It's worth watching if you want to pass a bit of time and learn a few things.

Anyway, it has me enthused about this map again, which is a bonus.

I've seen that, the whole series is definitely worth watching.

[Gumboots]

Had an idea about this bug with the latest beta:

4/ For some reason the map is now remembering that stations were placed during testing in the editor, and is insisting on calling ones placed during a game "Riga Crossing" etc, as if they were the second or third station placed at that location during the game. No idea why it's doing that, but it's a bit of a nuisance.

I've looked inside the .gmp in my hex editor, and have found where all the cities are listed. I figure there must be a flag in there somewhere which tells the game if a station has been built there previously, and this must hang around in the coding, even after the test company is liquidated in the editor before saving the .gmp.

I've never seen anyone mention this bug before. I assume this is because most people either just test lay track, with no test stations, and therefore no unwanted remnants of code, or because it's happened to other people and they just put up with it.

Me, being a grumpy mongrel, does not like putting up with anything. I'm thinking if I try a basic test map with one or two cities, save the critter before doing anything to it, then save a copy after starting a test company, building a couple of stations, then liquidating the test company, by comparing the two it should (maybe) be possible to figure out which chunk of code is the memorial to departed stations. If this can be done, in a reasonable timeframe and without going nuts, it should be possible to tweak the finished .gmp so it has amnesia about what was done during testing.

Which would be cool. Less hassles with station names, but also gets around the potential problem that station revenue decreases over time depending on when the first station was built in that city. If the game is remembering stations built before the scenario even starts, that could mean it is also applying the revenue drop before you get a chance to even build to those cities. This would definitely be a bug, and is best avoided if possible.

Edit: Well, tried it. Makes no sense whatsoever. Complete load of indecipherable gobbledegook. Looks like I'm stuck with funny station names.

---

Speaking of station names, I found out where the suffixes for extra stations are defined in the RT3.lng file.

Code: Select all

    ;@gumbootz: Secondary station names.
    578 "Junction"
    579 "Crossing"
    580 "Depot"
    581 "Corners"
    582 "Exchange"
    583 "Point"
    584 "Center"
    585 "Township"
    
    ;@gumbootz: Secondary station prefixes (for repeats of above).
    586 "New"
    587 "Modern"
    ;@gumbootz: End secondary stations.
    ;@gumbootz: Reverts to city name for 28th station, repeats from there.

    ;@gumbootz: Next string appears to be deprecated.
    588 "Renaissance"

By testing a stack of small stations in a city, I found that it repeats the list every nine stations. So the first one is the city name ****, then you get **** Junction, **** Crossing, etc, etc until you get to ****Township. For the 10th station it goes to **** New, then **** New Junction, etc, etc.

If you're nuts enough to build more than 18 stations in a small area it goes to **** Modern for the 19th, and then down the list again.

"Renaissance" was presumably there during alpha and beta testing, in case anyone went and built more than 27 stations in an area, but doesn't appear to be activated in the finished builds. In 1.05 the 28th station just reverts to the original city name ****, then the whole journey starts all over again (**** Junction, **** Crossing, blah blah blah).

Which is not likely to be a problem for anyone, but I thought I might as well test it while I was looking at a couple of things.

[Gumboots]

Got that last river added to the map, and have marked out the swamps with sub-Arctic sorta swampy trees (stunted pine and bushes in that area). Still needs the water patchwork and a few tweaks to vegetation to finish them off, then I'll get onto the forested areas. Trees first, then match the .bmp painting to RT3's available trees so it all hangs together.

[TheBonobo4]

Got that last river added to the map, and have marked out the swamps with sub-Arctic sorta swampy trees (stunted pine and bushes in that area). Still needs the water patchwork and a few tweaks to vegetation to finish them off, then I'll get onto the forested areas. Trees first, then match the .bmp painting to RT3's available trees so it all hangs together.

Will this map be available to download as a 1.05 map when finished?

[Gumboots]

Yes, of course. It has always been a 1.05 map.

I did idly consider making it 1.06, but honestly can't see any advantage in doing that. Not for this scenario anyway. The additional 1.06 industries aren't necessary, and would require a lot more work to integrate effectively. It's pointless just turning everything on and hoping for the best. It would all have to be tested thoroughly for balance.

I don't need 1.06's extra scripting capabilities for this scenario, since I can get the result I want within 1.05's limits. Coding is mostly done, apart from some slight tweaking here and there. I don't consider the extra 1.06 locomotives to be a relevant for this scenario either. So, it's 1.05 and will be staying that way, unless someone else wants to make a 1.06 version.

[RulerofRails]

Interesting investigation about the station naming. As you said who would. If you want to edit the .lng file, maybe you could make an empty string? Then purposely build stations in an earlier year to ensure that rail revenues are lower on your map. Some pre-built networks such as One Korea make use of this. Leads me to idly wonder what happens if you build the station in the future. I would assume a standard revenue (100%), but who knows, it's possible that bonus would be "permanent". These ideas can be interesting to affect rail revenues without touching the cargo pricing which obviously affects industries as well.

In regards to looking at the hex, I assume that lots of things were changing? I was looking at something else a long time ago, and have a faint recollection that this was the way of the beast. Hexedit has a compare function for Before and After. But I'm sure you do too. If it was me, I would try to look at the city record after a single station is built, then after you delete and replace in the same spot with another. I would bet on it being tied to the city and not a company record, because say the AI has a station there already, if you build one also it will be * Junction.

PS. Did you try to re-do the cities? Delete and setup again in the same spot. That's probably just as easy as fiddling with the hex, unless you have to do it to heaps of cities.

[Gumboots]

Umm, I really do not want to get into deleting and rebuilding cities on this map. There has been enough work done on creating and balancing them and I'm not keen to repeat it. I'd rather just finish what is really necessary.

I was thinking about the possible effects, and I think it's best to just live with them this time around. The affected cities are major ones which will probably be connected fairly early, and the scenario only runs for 20 years, so I say just make sure the whole thing plays well and don't worry about the stations this time.

I have been considering overall balance though. The greater resource production of this map does need a bit of compensation. I think I'll try a permanent adjustment to all industry production in Russia. Soviet industries were notoriously inefficient, so if all industry production in Russia is permanently 30% down on the rest of the map that would be a good simulation. It's also easy to set up with one line of code at the start of the game, and should stop Russia being flooded with resources without requiring a lot of region tweaking. For non-Russian regions I'll just adjust the existing temporary production reduction to make things a little leaner at the start of the game.

I'm also thinking that the old Automobiles to Pskov medal requirement could be ditched. It has never been fun or interesting, and can easily be beaten by bait and switch if you get annoyed enough with it. It was only ever included to give Russia a purpose, but the Strugi Krasnye booze trains and the Diesel to Klaipeda in this version mean Russia already has plenty of things to do, and things that are much more fun, so I don't see a need for a Pskov/Autos requirement any more.

What I will introduce is a requirement for no personal debt for Gold. This should not be difficult to meet, and will give the stock market some purpose without taking over the game. Just a bit of a sideline to keep an eye on, without actually making things significantly more difficult. It'll mean the existing player cash fines for failing Estonian pax or Strugi booze hauls will have an actual effect, whereas at the moment they can be completely ignored. If you fail those haulage targets you'll obviously be able to compensate for personal debt in other ways (sell stock, increase dividends, etc) so it will just require a bit of thought and attention, but won't ruin anything.

[RulerofRails]

Had a quick look. Search for the city name. Then go 244 (decimal) places back from the city name. It's a simple integer. Aka, a "junction" will be built if 01, "crossing" if 02, etc.. Set this to 00 for normal names.

BTW, the date is the same format (IDK the name) as in the other files (bca, car, etc.) and located at 63 (decimal) places back from the city name. I suspect this needs to be set to 00 00 in order for the normal revenue bonus calculations.

[Gumboots]

Aha! Cool. I only took a quick look last night and threw it in the too hard basket. I'll check it again.

Edit: Just looked. Ok, found the integer stuff for Junction, etc. That should be easy to fix. However, I went back and checked the first city (Abrene) and going back 244 doesn't work for that. So, I'm assuming the relevant chunk will be after the city name, not before it.

The date is a different kettle of fish though. Take Riga in the current beta .gmp, as saved from the editor. The date is given as 08 07, which is 1800 in decimal format. IOW, it's the minimum game year date, not the date the first station was built in that city.

Now this may or may not be relevant. The game might just put 1800 if you build during testing, and put 1923 or whatever if you build during play. Will have to check.

[RulerofRails]

I don't think I have your latest beta. The one I see here
http://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=45150#p45150

has clean city info in Riga. Both places are 00. The location for Riga in the CITIES there is 10,763,537 (decimal).


One note is that searching may obviously find something else with the same name in the file. We are looking for the CITY section. You may have other results in the briefing, Station/Service Facility section, or perhaps some territories/ ports etc.. For a major city like Riga there are lots of other places it is mentioned. If you hit the events you have gone too far.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I looked around a bit more. Bookmarked the start of the regions, and each city, and worked backwards. You're right about the date and station integer being before the city name. Which on reflection makes a certain amount of sense, since they do a similar thing with loco names in their .imb file.

I'm finding that the station integer is usually 228 places back from the station name though, not 244. And by checking minor cities that I never bothered to test with a station (station building was only for testing reserved cells in tricky spots) I've found that they do indeed have all zeroes in the same locations.

So what must be happening is that the game is recording 1800 as the build date of any liquidated stations. This could be highly significant, since if it is calculating the revenue reduction from 1800 that will have a substantial effect on 20th century scenarios. Looks like we might have found another bug, but the only way to be sure would be by tediously checking revenue on some example maps.

Anyway, I'll fix 'em before the final version.

(That Beta 3 you have was before I tested reserved cells.)

[RulerofRails]

I'm finding that the station integer is usually 228 places back from the station name though, not 244.

I see a different value at 228. I looked back at my open files and it seems to be 05 in the couple I checked no matter what the station count integer is. Idk what this value does if anything. Maybe you can decipher it too.

[Gumboots]

Ok, got it now. I don't know what the 05 is. It's not architectural style. It's not always 05 either, which is what was confusing me before. But anyway I have all the relevant stations marked now, so I can fix them easily.