This is both a review and a discussion of strategy for Burma. The scenario covers a period of British colonialism in the first half of the 20th century. You must construct a railway connecting as many cities as you can, and fulfilling haul missions to key cities. Goods must be carried inland, or military cargoes to Lashio, the end of steel and the beginning of the Burma Road; and tea, oil, and iron or bauxite must be hauled to Rangoon for export.
Track is limited. You start with some track allowance, which is augmented in small amounts weekly. You get additional track allowance for transporting troops. Limiting track construction is the governor of this scenario because although it is a rich map, you are not at liberty to fully exploit the country’s resources.
There is only one company in the scenario, which seems historically accurate. Also, the railway was never connected to any other so there would be no other players.
First thing was to start in Rangoon, and lay track as quickly as possible to connect Mandalay, the first city needing goods. I proceeded towards the northern terminus of Myitkyina, and began the second goods mission. Along the way I connected cities that had barracks, and ran the track lines close to tea farms. Lashio was an easy two way mission, with goods coming and iron going.
I began with hub and spoke mentality, soon started the lumber and goods hauls on P8s which are very economical to run. However I soon got into trouble because the single track was getting congested. P8s have poor acceleration so transport was getting sluggish. I was making good money with industry ownership, so cost was not an issue. As quickly as I could I replaced the P8s on flat routes with Class 500s because of their better acceleration. It became apparent that I was completing haul missions quite rapidly, but was short of new track, so I diverted most trains to troop transport. Their consists were set to 2 troops, 4 any cargo, 4 minimum, then run for every possible pair of cities that had barracks.
I started in 1900 so there was no Burma Road mission. In the end, my map looked almost exactly like the rail map that comes with the scenario, because the track limitation affects how the connections are made. I got Gold on Hard in 1919, after 19+ years, a little too easy for a first go.
Back to the review:
- Great art and a great interpretation of the period.
- The map is a little too rich, too easy. I would lower the density
- I would look for more historical stuff. Maybe some headlines, maybe a bit of interaction with the army could explain context and lead to a troop haul offer.
- Your fate seems a bit too laid in stone, with little chance to vary playing strategy. A few more cities not connected historically would help. I believe there is a secondary port across the bay from Rangoon. That city could be added, and could have similar warehouses to and be in the same territory as Rangoon.
Burma
Re: Burma
Burma is a great game. This is a pure track laying and cargo hauling game. JayEff (above) covers the strategy very well. I would add to watch for the appearance of oil wells and farms to help build your industry base. And..to not wander around the map with track too much at first. After your first 500 tracks are laid the rest trickles in. So, be efficient with your track. AND, get those cities with barracks connected early on so you can haul troops and get more track. Rangoon will get crowded with trains about mid way through the game, so plan on a two station rail link in the city. The haul requirements were not difficult to meet, but more than a couple of train loads would take care of.
I give Burma two thumbs up. Its a low anxiety, high satisfaction RT3 game.
I give Burma two thumbs up. Its a low anxiety, high satisfaction RT3 game.
Re: Burma
I feel like I've played a Burma map before... but maybe not this one. Fresh and easy. Set all consists to custom 1 troop 6 any cargo and caboose, all P8's. Wasn't too hard to manage growth, though stock issuing make profitability a bit moot. Mostly just following the well-paced issuing of track. Connected the 24th city in 1920, and completed haulage goals in April 1921 on Expert. Nice terrain.
Re: Burma
Haven't tried this one yet, but spotted it yesterday when I was checking for other maps by Lama after enjoying the Guatemala one. The briefing on the archive page gave me an idea too.
Apparently tea has to be hauled, but for game purposes is represented by the standard RT3 coffee cargo. As a result of our experiments with pax appeal ratings and other things, it's now known to be easy to use the default RT3.lng language file to make any of the default text strings say anything you like. This is easy to implement, and requires no actual coding as such. Anyone who can edit a normal text file would be capable of handling it.
The upshot of this is that a very easy way of getting scenario-specific custom cargoes would be to simply provide a customised RT3.lng with the scenario. That way Tea could be called Tea, and the game wouldn't mind at all.
The only glitch would be the cargo icon itself, but that is a simple edit to a DDS to add a custom icon in the same location, and the customised DDS can then be dropped into UserExtraContent temporarily. For example, Coffee is position #13 on CargoIcons_A.dds and could easily be swapped for something else (like a teapot).
So if anyone wants some custom cargoes, and doesn't want to recode half the game and do lots of testing for economy balance, it could be done in about an hour with one text file and an image editor.
The other thing is that it got me thinking about 1.06's cargoes that have borked cargo icons. There are 45 default icons on CargoIcons_A.dds, and of those #8 is not used in 1.05 (it was Beer during development) and #4 is used for "Any cargo", #5 is used for "Any freight", and #29 is used for "Any express".
The funny thing here is that if you load up a train with Dye in 1.06, it will have cargo icons that show a tall glass of beer. Beer is #8 on the cargo icons image, and it turns out that Dye is defined as 08 00 00 00 in the last four bytes of the ~4475Dye.cty file in Data/CargoTypes. So, it's obvious that if the 1.06 cargo icons image was edited to have a Dye icon in position #8, it would show the correct icon in the game.
That led to me wondering what else could be done. Some of the other 1.06 cargoes are possibly fixable too. Ceramics and Concrete are 04 00 00 00 and 05 00 00 00 in their .cty files. They are obviously not fixable, because those positions are taken by "Any cargo" and "Any freight" and we need to keep those as they are. This means Ceramics and Concrete will never show a cargo icon in the game, since those positions are not hooked to the coding for CargoIcon.3dp files and only display in the consist settings.
However, if we are lucky and the devs didn't do evil things (fat chance of that) it is possible that extra custom icons after the default ones might just show up in the game. This would be cool, because the other 1.06 cargoes (Crystals, Electronics, Ingots, Machinery, Medicine, Ore and Rock) are defined as numbers 46-52 inclusive in their .cty files. Those positions are currently vacant on the cargo icons image, and only have transparent pixels. Obvious thing to do here is throw in some extra icons and see what happens when those cargoes are loaded.
I'll run a test on this soon.
Edit: Tested it. It works. I'm bloody amazed. I even got Ceramics and Concrete to work.
Zip is attached over in Blackhawk's Small 1.06 fix thread.
Apparently tea has to be hauled, but for game purposes is represented by the standard RT3 coffee cargo. As a result of our experiments with pax appeal ratings and other things, it's now known to be easy to use the default RT3.lng language file to make any of the default text strings say anything you like. This is easy to implement, and requires no actual coding as such. Anyone who can edit a normal text file would be capable of handling it.
The upshot of this is that a very easy way of getting scenario-specific custom cargoes would be to simply provide a customised RT3.lng with the scenario. That way Tea could be called Tea, and the game wouldn't mind at all.
The only glitch would be the cargo icon itself, but that is a simple edit to a DDS to add a custom icon in the same location, and the customised DDS can then be dropped into UserExtraContent temporarily. For example, Coffee is position #13 on CargoIcons_A.dds and could easily be swapped for something else (like a teapot).
So if anyone wants some custom cargoes, and doesn't want to recode half the game and do lots of testing for economy balance, it could be done in about an hour with one text file and an image editor.
The other thing is that it got me thinking about 1.06's cargoes that have borked cargo icons. There are 45 default icons on CargoIcons_A.dds, and of those #8 is not used in 1.05 (it was Beer during development) and #4 is used for "Any cargo", #5 is used for "Any freight", and #29 is used for "Any express".
The funny thing here is that if you load up a train with Dye in 1.06, it will have cargo icons that show a tall glass of beer. Beer is #8 on the cargo icons image, and it turns out that Dye is defined as 08 00 00 00 in the last four bytes of the ~4475Dye.cty file in Data/CargoTypes. So, it's obvious that if the 1.06 cargo icons image was edited to have a Dye icon in position #8, it would show the correct icon in the game.
That led to me wondering what else could be done. Some of the other 1.06 cargoes are possibly fixable too. Ceramics and Concrete are 04 00 00 00 and 05 00 00 00 in their .cty files. They are obviously not fixable, because those positions are taken by "Any cargo" and "Any freight" and we need to keep those as they are. This means Ceramics and Concrete will never show a cargo icon in the game, since those positions are not hooked to the coding for CargoIcon.3dp files and only display in the consist settings.
However, if we are lucky and the devs didn't do evil things (fat chance of that) it is possible that extra custom icons after the default ones might just show up in the game. This would be cool, because the other 1.06 cargoes (Crystals, Electronics, Ingots, Machinery, Medicine, Ore and Rock) are defined as numbers 46-52 inclusive in their .cty files. Those positions are currently vacant on the cargo icons image, and only have transparent pixels. Obvious thing to do here is throw in some extra icons and see what happens when those cargoes are loaded.
I'll run a test on this soon.
Edit: Tested it. It works. I'm bloody amazed. I even got Ceramics and Concrete to work.
Zip is attached over in Blackhawk's Small 1.06 fix thread.
Complete express car and caboose packs - Custom double tankers (Alternative F era) - Pennsy H3 Consolidation
Слава Україні! Героям слава!
Слава Україні! Героям слава! Re: Burma
Tried a couple of starts on this, but couldn't get enthused about it. It's a slow starter. You'll need patience.
Complete express car and caboose packs - Custom double tankers (Alternative F era) - Pennsy H3 Consolidation
Слава Україні! Героям слава!
Слава Україні! Героям слава!