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

[Gumboots]

This one is just for fun.There's a lot to do, but it's set up so a proficient player shouldn't have too much difficulty with it. Play this for laughs (and just because you like trains) while you're knocking back a few beers.

I liked the South East Australia map (home territory and all), but it bugged me that some aspects of it didn't feel right. The outback does not have dirty great cactuses all over the place! Nor is it completely bare of trees. River banks, and particularly river junctions, are often fairly heavily wooded in patches. Some bits of the geography weren't right either. So, I revamped the scenery a bit so it actually has the right feel to it now. Brewarrina looks like Brewarrina, instead of looking like a nuclear testing site in Arizona.

I may still play around with the scenery a bit more, but most of it is pretty good (IMHO). I also changed the story, and tweaked the economy to suit. The economy seems to give a good range of options, so you have a choice about how you want to tackle it.

Since the original PopTop map tried to use a bit of Australian slang, I figured I should do the job properly with that too. I've only used the clean bits, so it's still safe for small animals, but some parts of it may having people reaching for a dictionary.

[Gumboots]

And just for fun, here are some shots from the game. It's quite a good one for train rides.

The river junction between Carinda and Brewarrina:




Northern 484 out at Weethalle, on the way to Griffin:




P2 approaching Dubbo:




Y6 heading down the range towards Sydney:

[Hawk]

I don't see how you folks with those wide screen monitors can stand to play RT3 with it all stretched out.
That would drive me bonkers having to look at it like that.

[Gumboots]

Well the thing is that the world isn't limited to 1024 wide, so if you want to simulate the world you need a wide screen. A 20" screen is nice. Anything much over that is, I agree, getting a bit much, but I'd hate to have to play on a 15 or less.

I think I will still tweak this one a little bit. It's not quite Beta and not quite finished. Bit of an RC. I just realised that I should have used Comp. connects City to City, instead of just City to City connected. May also tweak the personal cash requirements for Gold, Silver and Bronze. If you play the second company fairly well (and have a little bit of luck with the AI) then I'm thinking perhaps >=0 cash for Bronze, 500k for Silver, and $1million for Gold. Should add a bit more interest (more stockmarket shenanigans, etc). Plus the scenery could do with a bit more touching up here and there.

[Gumboots]

Update: just replaced the zip in the OP. After checking things more carefully, I realised there were some minor errors in some of the events. Things like applying effects I wanted globally as part of a company effect (d'oh) and testing some stuff yearly when it should have been monthly. Fixed those.

Also changed the basic connection conditions to Comp. connects City to City (as mentioned). Haven't messed with anything else yet. Still contemplating what other personal stock/cash/whatever conditions are worth adding (if any).

[Hawk]

Well the thing is that the world isn't limited to 1024 wide, so if you want to simulate the world you need a wide screen. A 20" screen is nice. Anything much over that is, I agree, getting a bit much, but I'd hate to have to play on a 15 or less.

I play on a 19" CRT at 1280 and the horizontal stretching of one of those wide screens just drives me crazy.
Circles are eggs. Squares are rectangles. Not real world to me.

[Gumboots]

Might be a resolution problem, due to limitations of the game settings. On my screen it's fine (wheels are still round). I run the game res on 1440x900, which is the same proportions as my screen (1680x1050) if not the same pixel count. Both are 1.6:1. If you had something like a 1366x768 it could be a problem.

Anyway, after playing this through again to check for bugs (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) I had a brainwave. The final condition I'm going to add is that the second company you start, which will end up being controlled by the AI most of the time, has to make lifetime profits in excess of $2 million.

This is really cool, because it means you can't play tricks like starting a second company at the last minute with ten bucks capital. You also don't want to start it too early, because once the Artifical Idiots get hold of it there's no telling what they'll do (except you just know it will be really stupid).

You can't run the risk of them killing it, because the medal requirements don't allow for it to go into liquidation. So, you have to set it up early enough to make you significant personal cash, and late enough to last to game end, and with a solid enough base so that it can withstand being run by the AI for the required time ansd still generate a total of more than $2 million profit.

Oh, and of course you still have to have no personal debt, and connect every town for HM's tour, and run a train to every station.

It sounds worse than it really is. The game's still a lot of fun (IMHO anyway). Much more interesting than just chasing basic haulage or PNW targets.

Will upload the new (hopefully finished) version once I double check a few more details.

[Gumboots]

Updated version uploaded (attached to the OP). Earlier version removed.

Tweaked the scenery a bit more, and added that diabolical $2 million profit requirement. It all seems to run smoothly and without bugs. I'm satisfied with it now.

[Gumboots]

Heads up: although I think it's fine for gameplay and general look, I was just reading up on mapmaking and reskinning, etc and noticed this.

I think there is a valid point to the idea that multiple saves cause some degeneration. I change the name of my scenario every time or 2 I save it, and I've made over 50 saves. I haven't yet started terrain painting, but I notice that the blue color of the rivers shifts onto the land. I had fixed all that up in stage 1 when I laid and smoothed the rivers, but I will have to redo the river bank coloring again. It is not hard, but time consuming, so best left for the very end I think.

I did play with adding beaches a couple of days ago, and noticed they were blurry, so left them out. It may be related to this. I've saved the map umpteen times during debugging. I'll cross check it with the original PopTop map and see if I can get it better. I want to learn more about the visual aspects of modding RRT3 anyway (and would love to get rid of the alpha channel problems in some of the extra steam locos).

ETA: Bother. Ok, so I just compared this map side by side with the original, and the edges of rivers, etc have degraded in patches. Most of the scenery seems fine. It's the water/land boundaries that are a problem. I'll remake the map with better gfx. Live and learn.

Oh and re this:

Well the thing is that the world isn't limited to 1024 wide, so if you want to simulate the world you need a wide screen. A 20" screen is nice. Anything much over that is, I agree, getting a bit much, but I'd hate to have to play on a 15 or less.

I play on a 19" CRT at 1280 and the horizontal stretching of one of those wide screens just drives me crazy.
Circles are eggs. Squares are rectangles. Not real world to me.

Had another look at the game settings and I've now gone with the 1600x1024 resolution option, instead of the 1440x900 I was using. This is not quite right for my screen proportions, but the error is only 2.5%. This is close enough, since circles and squares are often seen at an angle during gameplay anyway. The slight eccentricity isn't noticeable, and the sharper quality is a nice addition.

[Hawk]

Oops! I thought you knew about the texture degradation when saving.
That's a hard lesson to learn.

[Gumboots]

Surely you don't expect me to actually read instructions before I land in the crap? Where's the fun in that?

TBH I had read about the degradation problem while making the map, but I hadn't read closely enough. I just checked the scenery in general and it looked ok, but I hadn't noticed the water edges were getting worse. When I read about that little trap and checked the map, sure enough they were looking pretty rough in places.

That's ok. This is the debugging stage anyway, and I am still learning about modding RRT3. I've sorted gameplay and events so they work well. I know what I want to do with the scenery. Now it's just a matter of going over the map carefully and prettying it up, and copying events over from the test map. I'll sort that over the next few days. I'll try that "save as a different name" trick while working on it, and keep an eye on the results.

In the meantime, the current map works and is still fun to play.

Oh and I think I'll tweak the medal requirements slightly. I'll just change it so that Bronze requires the second company to earn $1 million in profits, Silver requires $2 million, and Gold requires $3 million. All other requirements will stay as they are. That should give a playable and satisfying game for all skill levels (and be a good tutorial on playing with second companies for fun and profit).

[Gumboots]

This map has given me an idea. I'll still tweak the gfx up on this one and just finish it as the basic, fun, non-serious scenario that it was meant to be. I had an idea about the second company thing though.

What I'll do is make another scenario that requires managing (somehow) three companies. The plan is to model the disaster known as "The evils of break of gauge" or "The Great Gauge Muddle", or other less complimentary names.

Y'see, in case you didn't already know, Australia never really sorted the gauge wars. Different states run diferent gauges, and have done for over a century and a half now. Having a scenario where "you can't run those trains there, mate" really is an accurate reflection of the way things were for far too long. It's only in the last few decades that some standard gauge trans-national lines have been put in. It's still only a partially done job.

So the rough idea that is bouncing around inside my skull is to have a need to put rails all over the place, but with the restriction that it has to be done in an equally stupid manner to the way it really was done over here. IOW, every state will require a different company, and no company's trains will be able to access other states. The player will be required to start and run all of them, which should make things interesting. To give some capability for cross-border connections, it may be necessary to build in some small neutral territories at key points on the borders of each state. That's pretty much how the break of gauge is handled in real life (more or less).

[RayofSunshine]

Okay, I don't see any comments of the "playing" of the challenges. I have a CRT of 19" as well, and seems to be adequate for viewing.

I don't see how the challenges are to be completed. And not being a great Tycoon, I know that there are a number of challenges which have to be completed by 1963, which is fine. However, they seem to clash in the requirement.
e.g. The #1 company stock splits faster that a 51% seems to be acquired. And that, if I recall, a player must have to regain chairmanship. That seems to be a biggest problem.

With the challenges as stands. The 2nd company has to be able to stand alone for its operation. I suppose that both companies can operate into the same cities, as the Gold requires it.

With the requirement of regaining the #1 company, a player has to generate a considerable amount of revenue into dividend, so the player can obtain the 51% of stock. That being the case, a goodly amount of bonds will have to be procured. Hence a player will have to initiate such bonds before such stocks can "split" right from the start.

A very interesting concept of challenges.

[RayofSunshine]

I went back to a 2nd attempt, with the idea of accummulating 51% stock, so as to ultimately be able to regain the Chairmanship after making the 2nd Company profitable. I had mentioned in the prior thread about the need for the 51%, so this time I some what limited the expansion of my original railroad, and increased the "dividend" to the max. It took 5 years before the stocks were doubled. A large figure in trying to obtain 51%.

What I did notice this time, of which I believed that the stocks had split in the 1st attempt, was that the initial stocks available was 4 per player, and 36 for other stockholders. If I remember correctly, "most" of scenarios which I have played, the "other stockholders" were set at 16 and the player at 2. This would make it more in a reality of a player being able to obtain 51%.

[Gumboots]

Ok, taking your points in order:

Bonds: yes. Lots of them. Don't be scared of bonds. Bonds are your friends, providing you can get them at a reasonable interest rate. In general I will rack up the full $10 million worth of bonds as soon as I can, and keep them for the entire game.

I know this is contradictory to some advice you may have seen elsewhere, but it's a great way to get things humming. Usually, I will draw the line at 12% interest for any single bond, and even that is pushing it. I prefer to keep the average interest rate under 10%. Any industry I build should generate a profit of 20% of build cost per annum, which means the bonds are making me a profit even after I pay the interest.

Given how the credit ratings and economy cycles go in the game, what happens in rough terms is that I'll spend the first few years gradually upping the number of bonds. I'll stop when the interest rate starts climbing too high, and wait a little for better terms. I'll use the cash to build strategic industries and/or connections, carefully chosen to generate lotsa moolah. Once I'm in a good position and the economy is booming, I'll have an AAA credit rating so I'll refinance all bonds at the minimum of 5%. After that, I ignore them.

They're just money in the bank from then on, because everything I have used to them to pay for is making me way more than 5%, so repaying the debt would actually cause profits to drop. It's better to keep paying the 5% on the bonds and use your capital for expansion, because anything you build with the money will make at least 10%, so that will generate greater profit.

Short version: as long as the stuff you build with the money can make more than the interest rate you pay on your bonds, you are better off NOT repaying bonds. At all.

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I think people get game finances a bit confused with household finances. It's not like a home mortgage. With a mortgage, you're usually paying an interest rate that means the payments are a fairly nasty chunk of your income, and your income is fixed. Added to that is the security aspect, in that once you own the house you're out of potential trouble with creditors. There's the possibility of foreclosure, or of losing your income, or of it reducing, due to circumstances. Obviously, you'd like to get rid of the debt ASAP. Makes sense.

Game finance is different, because you are not on a fixed income, and the creditors will never call you out. These are critical differences. You can rack up as much debt as you like, as long as it's profitable, and use it to constantly expand your income.

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Some people say that repaying bonds increases your company book value. It doesn't. In fact, the initial result of repaying a bond is a decrease in CBV. Why?

If you repay a bond, your company cash decreases by $510k (bond's nominal value + 2% early repayment fee). Since CBV is company cash + company assets - company debt, decreasing company cash by $510k means your CBV drops by $510k. Your debt also decreases, but only by an even $500k. So, the initial result of repaying a bond is that your CBV decreases by $10k.

Of course, the argument will be that this is only the initial result, and the lack of interest payments means your CBV will soon catch up and start looking better. That brings me back to what I said earlier: the stuff you build with the capital will make you more.

Say you're in the middle of the game. Your company is looking solid and the economy is booming. You have a good credit rating (A or higher) so the most you should be paying on any bond is 7%. You think "Hey I can pay off some debt and make my company stronger". You take $1 million worth of company cash and pay off two bonds. Congratulations. This will save you (at 7%) $70k per year.

If you don't repay the bonds, and use that money to build yourself something tasty that generates a 20% return, that's going to bring in $200k per year. Subtract the $70k interest you'll still have to pay and you're $130k ahead. Every year. Compounding. That means after eight years you are far enough ahead to have an extra million of cash available for expansion/dividends/whatever.

This is money that would have been lost to you if you had repaid the bonds, because you wouldn't have been able to use the capital to build the profitable industry or whatever. So, over a period of eight years, repaying those two bonds would have cost you $1 million.

Extrapolate that to the full 20 bond/$10 million limit and it's fair to say that, as long as you are playing the game the right way, holding $10 million of debt in bonds will increase your company profits by $1 million per year.

That might be a surprise to some people, but it's true.

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PS: Refinancing bonds. Taking out a bond incurs a 2% fee, and repaying a bond early also incurs a 2% fee. So, if you refinance an existing 9% bond in favour of a new 5% bond, it will break even after 1 year. After that, it's making you more. If you refinance a 9% bond at 8%, it will take four years to break even. Usually I wont bother refinancing until I can gain at least 2% advantage on interest rate. If the economy is on an upswing I'll sometimes delay refinancing, just because I know that in another year I'll get a better interest rate, so it's better to refinance once a bit later.

Also, if your credit rating is not quite where you'd like it to be, it's often better to save up $600k of cash and then repay one bond before taking out more. This can be enough (under some circumstances) to bump your credit rating an extra notch, so you get the new bonds at a lower rate.

In situations like this, I might have say $5 million worth of bonds at an average of 9%, but I have a good enough credit rating to get quite a few more bonds. Instead of just grabbing more, I'll repay as many as I can and then get one new bond. Then I'll repay another old one, then grab another new one. Keep doing this until all the old ones have been refinanced at the lowest possible rate, then keep grabbing new ones until the interest rate gets to your preferred limit.

Obviously this can't be done all the time. It depends where the game is at, but it's a handy trick to have up your sleeve.

[Gumboots]

Well that ended up a bit long.

Ok, stocks (or shares, as we Australians like to call them). Obviously you can't issue many in this scenario. In fact, you need to buy them back to some degree, and it's best to start early.

What I do is tweak the amount I put into the company at the start of the game. I haven't played this scenario for a while, but by reducing how much "other investor" cash you allow at the start, and sometimes by holding back a little of your own cash, you can put yourself in a position where you have a higher initial shareholding than the standard 10%, and enough personal cash to buy a wodge of more shares. This is good.

Problem: company liquidity. You need to have enough moolah in the company so it can hit the ground running. That means credit rating as well as basic company cash (remember, bonds are your friend). You'll have to play around with the options a bit, and see what balance kicks things off nicely.

Anyway, buying shares for yourself early costs less than trying to catch up later. Buying back shares costs the company less than trying to catch up later. So, the early game means hocking yourself up to the hilt ASAP, and hoping you don't get walloped by a margin call. Take on as much personal debt as you think you can get away with. Buy back shares as soon as you can, bearing in mind the company has to keep growing if you want to survive.

Don't worry too much if interest means your personal debt is increasing in the early stages. You can make it up easily a little later on. Just concentrate on getting that critical 51%, and on keeping the company healthy. It's a balancing act.

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For the second company: given that it will be run be complete idiots most of the time, you have to give it a good start.

Best way to do this is to use all your own money, and no money from other investors. Put in whatever you can afford (should be a handy chunk by this stage) and then grab some bonds (yay!). Spend it all on some industry that you know will make a pile of money. Rack up the dividend as high as it will go. Since you own 100% of shares, all that money goes to you.

The plan is to keep the second company profitable, solvent, but broke. This will stop the AI board doing stupid things for long enough to make some decent money. Eventually, their persistent stupidity will win and the company will start going down the tubes. This doesn't matter, as long as it has made enough profit before then to meet the game aims (bearing in mind that the lifetime profit has to meet the game aims at the end of the game).

When it starts irreversably going down the tubes, just dump all your stock and pocket the cash.

You'll need the money from this company, because as soon as you start jumping between companies the boards of both companies will decide that you're a shameless hussy and a menace to society, which means they'll cut your pay to almost nothing. From the time that you start the second company, you can assume that your only income will be via dividends.

[Gumboots]

Was looking a finishing this one up, just so Ray has something to play with.

Found a couple of minor glitches I had forgotten about, and they have me stumped. The events all work as they should. The problem is that status report. Although the game is keeping track of numbers correctly, some of them aren't showing up in the status report.

The two glitches are with personal cash and city to city connections. The status page always says both of these are zero, regardless of the actual value.

I'm using the standard [Player Cash] and [Comp. total cities connected], which should work, but don't. Any ideas?

[Wolverine@MSU]

I think that you need to add a condition of "Force test against Companies" for your city connection events, and for the Status event. Even though you have chosen "On Screen Player's Company", you still need to do the force against companies.

[Gumboots]

Got it sorted. Seems to work well now.

I decided to change the scenario a bit. It bugged me that the second company didnt really have a purpose, so I've given it one. What I've done is combine the Royal Tour idea with the break of gauge concept I mentioned back here:

Y'see, in case you didn't already know, Australia never really sorted the gauge wars. Different states run diferent gauges, and have done for over a century and a half now. Having a scenario where "you can't run those trains there, mate" really is an accurate reflection of the way things were for far too long. It's only in the last few decades that some standard gauge trans-national lines have been put in. It's still only a partially done job.

So the rough idea that is bouncing around inside my skull is to have a need to put rails all over the place, but with the restriction that it has to be done in an equally stupid manner to the way it really was done over here. IOW, every state will require a different company, and no company's trains will be able to access other states. The player will be required to start and run all of them, which should make things interesting. To give some capability for cross-border connections, it may be necessary to build in some small neutral territories at key points on the borders of each state. That's pretty much how the break of gauge is handled in real life (more or less).

This seems to play well. You start in New South Wales, but have to form a separate Queensland railway company later to get complete networks in both states. I've added another small town up in the hills on the border. This is Wallangarra, which was where the break of gauge was handled.

Wallangarra lies in a valley between two ranges of mountains, which each are branches of the Great Dividing Range. It is 878 m above sea level. There is a gap between the more Westerly range at Wyberba, about five kilometres north of Wallangarra. This gap has made Wallangarra the major inland border crossing for the New England Highway and what was the first railway line between Brisbane and Sydney.

The town was created to service a break-of-gauge between Queensland's narrow gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) and New South Wales's standard gauge of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) when the two systems came together in 1888. The railway was the only rail link between Queensland and New South Wales until a standard gauge track was completed in 1932, with the completion of the bridge at Grafton. From that time on, the Wallangarra station lessened in importance.

The standard gauge link mentioned there is the one that runs through Richmond's Gap, on the eastern side of the main range. However, it only goes from Casino (in NSW) to Brisbane. The rest of Queensland is still narrow gauge, so still requires a separate network, even today.

I'm tossing up whether to provide a narrow corridor through Queensland territory to simulate the Richmond's Gap line, but since this scenario is partially fictional anyway (both state networks were built before this scenario's timeframe) I'm inclined to leave it, and just have Wallangarra. Wallangarra is fun, for me at least, because it requires going somewhere on the map that I otherwise never would have gone. To my mind, this adds a bit of interest.

I've moved the timeframe back a bit too. It now starts in 1930, right at the start of the Great Dperession (lovely time to start a company) and runs through to the first Royal Tour in 1954. This makes it a 24 year and 3 month scenario, which is closer to the standard 25 years. This timeframe runs through the war of course, but I'm not inclined to make a big fuss about the war. Wars are nasty things. RRT3 is supposed to be fun.

Will do some more play testing, and see if I'm still satisfied with the final balance.

[Gumboots]

Ok, this was (well, still is) shaping up well, but I've run into a scripting glitch.

I've used up the four game variables to handle tracking connections for the various medals. I need to use all four of them. I'd love to have eight or twelve. Anyone want to get me some extra game variables?

Anyway, I wanted to add some more conditionals into the mix, so I started playing with company and player variables. These are used purely to keep track of company profits. This seems to have created an odd problem. Not sure what else could be causing it.

What is happening is that RRT3 creates a company (ID #1) as soon as the scenario first loads, instead of the usual way of letting the player create the company. I have looked through the scripting several times, and cannot for the life of me figure out why this is happening. There doesn't even appear to be any option to create a company without player input.

Zip is attached. Would appreciate any suggestions.

ETA: Removed zip. Not required any more.