Latvia (beta)

[Gumboots]

Nope. Played v020 through and some of the events weren't right. Meh

So, we haz v021 now. In same post. Zip replaced. You get that.

The v021 should be fine for event scripting. I'm still a bit iffy about some of the port recipes. That Liepaja port really should not be trying to convert paper to aluminium, because that will screw things up sometimes.

Also, had a port seed a Kolka for the first time in forever and that is using the Liepaja port recipe, which is no good at all. Liepaja is enough of a hassle without a duplicate just across the way. I'm not sure Kolka should even get the chance to seed a port. It's only a little town, and I don't think it had any industry at all in the 1930's, but if it does get a chance to have a port the recipe will have to be tweaked to something sensible.

Come to think of it, the whole idea of trying to convert fertiliser and paper to aluminium on a 1:1 basis is dodgey anyway, since it simply won't work most of the time. It may be better to just have small demands for paper and fertiliser, and a small production of aluminium, rather than screwing around with non-functioning conversions.

[Hawk]

Oh, and yes, I am 43 today, though I always think the congrats should go to the mom, lol!

As Gumboots said, Happy Birthday young man.
I wish I could remember being 43. My rememberer don't work so well these days. Must be due to all the chemical, herbal & liquid stimulation of my youth.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Have a look at this one Hawk. I wondered why I can remember stuff so well; now I know.

http://www.labmanager.com/news/2017/12/ ... lXk4LxKsy4

[Hawk]

Well that explains why my rememberer has gone downhill over the past 4 or 5 years, since I quit partaking of the noble herb.
Or maybe it was the 45 years of heavy doses.

[Gumboots]

I've been playing the v021 a bit. Generally I'm liking it. Plays well, and the added incentive for Saaremaa tends to open the map up a bit more.

Only niggles from my POV are the Ventspils paper goal and the Pskov automobiles goal. Ventspils is easy enough if the port seeds there, but if the port doesn't seed it can require some bait and switch to get paper haulage by the deadline. Which I suppose is fine if you take it as meeting a contractual deadline even if it costs you a bit. I generally don't like to encourage bait and switch, but if it's necessary for a few loads occasionally I suppose I shouldn't lose any sleep over it.

The Pskov automobiles haulage is a different kettle of fish. That one works fairly smoothly sometimes, but quite a lot of the time it becomes a case of bait and switch some trains just because you're sick of looking at the Pskov station readout waiting for an opportunity to turn up. That gets boring, very quickly.

I might test it with the Pskov warehouse having a 1 Automobiles > 2 Diesel conversion. That would be a little more profitable than the current 1 Automobiles > 1 Furniture conversion, and might give the warehouse a nudge in the right direction without making it gobble silly amounts of cars.

Edit: Ran some quick testing on this idea. Definitely chews more cars at Pskov, and encourages a bigger price gradient. I think the 1 Autos > 2 Diesel is going to be the way to go, but with maximum production reduced from 6 to 4. That should make them just shippable most of the time.

Also, I've been using multiple stations in Riga and have now pretty much settled on a three station setup, with connections between all three, and with a bypass or two as well (to keep long distance trains out of the Riga stations). This works brilliantly for minimal congestion, and feels like a real major city rail hub.

The three stations fit just fine, but often there will be slight price gradients between them. Usually these are only $3-5 for any cargo, but they can escalate to $20 on rare occasions. So I had the bright idea of running low priority trains with short consists (5 cars max) on a continuous loop between the three stations: A>B>C>B...

This evens out the prices nicely, so they are almost identical on all three stations, and helps to prevent price islands getting stuck in Riga. Not only that, but even though the two trains were set on lowest priority, and were only hauling 5 cars at around $4/load, they were still making anywhere between $100k and $200k per year each. The prices are low, but the turnaround is so fast that it makes up for the low prices.

These trains are effectively shunters, used much the same way as shunters are used IRL: to move stuff around the yards and get it ready for long distance transport. So I'm thinking I should add an event to keep the Camelback available after 1926. It's perfect for the job: cheap to buy, cheap to run, never needs to go up grades in this application, and with default locomotive stats it gets up to a maximum of about 20 mph between the Riga stations.

[RulerofRails]

I started a play-through of this, noticed you had a new version so stopped, then got distracted. I'm glad the map is being refined some more though, it's not a complaint.

More demand for Autos in Pskov isn't a bad idea, but having a 1:2 conversion to Diesel with a maximum output of 4 will mean that only 2 loads of Autos can can be consumed per year. I don't think this is what you want? Consumption isn't everything in this game, which is why the current solution can be managed without any bait-and-switch. I use these tasks to keep me occupied while waiting for CBV and the bigger Lumber and Meat numbers. This is fun and I have some years so I don't have to stress if I do something that mucks up a flow (or waiting for price island to disappear). Another one of my "experimental" (no controlled testing has been done) ideas is that if you have a train routed between two stations, but stopping somewhere else on the return journey, (for example Riga->Pskov stopping at Ainazi on the way back) this can reduce the chance of a price island forming to "freeze" price between Riga and Pskov.

One comment here is that the Chemicals supply at Pskov probably (haven't watched in an actual game) is inconsistent (depends on location of Muntions Factories and Fertilizer Plants) in giving revenue that can pad the small loss that the Autos->Furniture conversion might run at. Diesel is a sensible cargo to supply. What could be done is add a Diesel supply to the warehouse, but disable Diesel production there via event until the player connects.

So I had the bright idea of running low priority trains with short consists (5 cars max) on a continuous loop between the three stations: A>B>C>B...

This is the recipe for re-hauling, if you do this your Lumber and Meat haulage can go very quickly (haulage within Riga territory is counted in both TO and FROM haulage numbers). Probably fitting if playing robber baron style with extra companies, but it's an exploit that IMO ruins haulage task challenge. Occasionally I will use two stations in one city, but hauling between them is a personal no-no.

[Gumboots]

More demand for Autos in Pskov isn't a bad idea, but having a 1:2 conversion to Diesel with a maximum output of 4 will mean that only 2 loads of Autos can can be consumed per year. I don't think this is what you want?

I ran it for some years with the 1:2 conversion edited into a 1932 save. It seemed to be a little bit too keen to chew cars and ship them with max production set to 6, which is I why I was thinking of reducing it to 4. I only wanted to give it a slight nudge into barely profitable.

I've tried all sorts of tricks with Pskov. I've even had three trains set to Automobiles only at Pskov, with 4 car minimums (ie: need 4 cars on the consist before they will leave the station). These trains are permanently waiting in Pskov, and set to run direct to the city with the highest price for Automobiles. That should move things, but I still can't get the price at Pskov to budge. It stays resolutely stuck in bait and switch territory.

And obviously I have other trains running to and from Pskov with normal settings. Pskov > Tartu > Viljandi > Pjarnu and back is a standard run, and these other cities all usually have a higher Autos price than Pskov. Ditto Pskov > Oskov, and Pskov > Aluksne > etc. Pskov still stays stuck in bait and switch territory, a lot of the time, so I'm not sure what else I can do.

One comment here is that the Chemicals supply at Pskov probably (haven't watched in an actual game) is inconsistent (depends on location of Muntions Factories and Fertilizer Plants) in giving revenue that can pad the small loss that the Autos->Furniture conversion might run at. Diesel is a sensible cargo to supply. What could be done is add a Diesel supply to the warehouse, but disable Diesel production there via event until the player connects.

I don't find the Chemicals supply to be a problem once I connect to Pskov. It usually (always?) has trains running to places that will draw Chemicals anyway. But this, while padding the warehouse profit a bit, doesn't do anything to encourage Automobiles to flow.

How would you only start Diesel production once you connect? Have it set to -100% in the whole of Russia until you connect to Pskov, or make a separate Pskov territory and set Diesel to -100% in that? Those could work if you wanted to do that, but I don't think it's necessary. I'm not trying to encourage Diesel production as such. I either run oil trains to Mazeiki anyway, or build my own refinery. The only reason I was suggesting Diesel production is because, out of the range of cargoes in this scenario, 1 Autos > 2 Diesel seems to be the best way of getting a slightly more profitable conversion at Pskov.

This is the recipe for re-hauling, if you do this your Lumber and Meat haulage can go very quickly (haulage within Riga territory is counted in both TO and FROM haulage numbers). Probably fitting if playing robber baron style with extra companies, but it's an exploit that IMO ruins haulage task challenge. Occasionally I will use two stations in one city, but hauling between them is a personal no-no.

Yes it can boost your haulage stats, but that's not the primary aim. The primary aim is to even out prices between the stations, which in this application are just like a large city's central station that has a series of yards and platforms. It's bonkers to have prices between adjacent economic cells in the same territory getting stuck on large differentials. In a real life situation you wouldn't have a shortage of cargo at Platform 1, and a surplus at Platform 8, and just sit around wondering what was wrong. You'd shunt the cargo.

I think multiple stations in one city is fine in RT3. People often do it just to handle congestion, which is the same reason multiple platforms are used IRL. It makes sense in this situation, where you need to run a lot of trains to and from Riga. I'm happy to add an event to increase station building cost in Riga by 50% every time a station is built in that territory. That makes some sense, although personally I'd still build them. If people actually want to cheat the haulage goals they can do this anyway. If using shunters in Riga boosts the haulage too much, even when you aren't actually using it for that purpose, one obvious thing to do is to simply increase the haulage goals.

Incidentally I did have an idea about cargo management in this scenario. If you take the (entirely optional) Saaremaa connection then you get a lot of pax traffic, and that will tend to shut out freight to some extent. Obvious thing to do is to start splitting your roster in some areas, and run dedicated freight and express trains for better management. Given the haulage goals here it could make some sense to do things differently to a normal game, and to set your freight trains (or at least some of them) to higher priority than the express trains. If the freights are running P8's for maximum reliability and minimum running cost, the Poor acceleration rating of those means it's better to not stop them often. With the Express trains running S3's or Class 500's, their much better acceleration will make them recover from stops more easily and they should still be decently profitable. If they aren't decently profitable, simply don't run them and just haul freight.

[low_grade]

You can edit the territory of Riga down to a single cell (obviously notifying the player exactly where the station needs to be placed.) Or just preplace the Riga station and reduce starting cash a bit (still reducing the territory... everybody starts out of Riga, right?) I definitely noticed some stupid price behavior at stations in this one. Station is orange with all neighboring cells green was all too common. Tempted me on occasion to simply build another station on the line in the neighboring cell.

[Gumboots]

Pre-placing is a problem if the other city buildings seed in the wrong spots, although I suppose you could get around that with reserved cells (haven't used them before, but I suppose they do what it says on the tin). And no, sometimes I don't start in Riga. Sometimes I want to start somewhere else, depending on what seeds for haulage.

The other point is that often I want to do an industry start instead of a rail start, so I think that further reducing starting cash is not going to make for happy campers. IMO, imposing a cost penalty for extra Riga stations makes more sense for general playability. Although TBH unless it was something like 400% I wouldn't even blink at it, because once you get rolling in this one CBV is never the limiting factor and the extra stations in Riga are very handy.

It's a pity that there's no way of deducting haulage within a territory from haulage to a territory. If anyone can think of a way to script that I'd be right into it. But I'm quite liking the idea of shunters between Riga stations anyway, as long as they aren't going to screw the haulage goals. The price islands getting stuck thing is more a bug than a feature.

Edit: Hey I just had an idea. How about we leave things as normal for station cost, etc, but tie the haulage-to-Riga goals to number of stations in Riga? So if you have one station in Riga the goal stays at 200 Meat and 200 Lumber. If you build a second station, goals change to 240 Meat and 240 Lumber. If you build a third station, goals change to 280 Meat and 280 Lumber.

Come to think of it this would probably have to be tied to game year as well. If you build a third station in Year 18 because the congestion is driving you nuts, it'd be a bit rough to suddenly get slugged with the requirement to haul an extra 40 loads of stuff in two years.

So the scripting would have to be something like:

(20 - (Years elapsed since game start))x(Fudge factor)x(Number of stations - 1))+200 = How much of da stuffz you needz to haul.

At a rough guess, fudge factor of 2 feels about right for this scenario. That way if you have three stations right from the start, you'd have to haul 280 Meat and 280 Lumber.

If you started with one station, then built a second one in Year 5, then a third in Year 15, you'd have to haul 200 + 30 + 10 = 240 of each.

[RulerofRails]

It's a pity that there's no way of deducting haulage within a territory from haulage to a territory. If anyone can think of a way to script that I'd be right into it. But I'm quite liking the idea of shunters between Riga stations anyway, as long as they aren't going to screw the haulage goals. The price islands getting stuck thing is more a bug than a feature.

Yeah, it's not possible, but there is a workaround which gives something similar. We can do: Loads hauled "TO" minus Loads hauled "FROM." The caveat is that this method weeds out natural re-haul totals, so numbers may need to be reduced a little to suit.

1.05 doesn't have good math. There is no ability to manipulate variables in the Effects except +/- with integers. But Conditions can do comparisons between variables and game data like loads hauled, CBV, PNW etc.. This means that "counters" can be used. Here's a basic method.

Counter events:
Conditions:
Territory Variable 1 (Riga) > LTD Meat hauled TO territory

Effects:
Territory Variable 1 (Riga) + 1
Territory Variable 2 (Riga) + 1

Need a copy of this event for loads hauled FROM Riga using TV3 and TV4.

Subtraction event:
Conditions:
Territory Variable 4 (Riga) > 0

Effects:
Territory Variable 2 (Riga) - 1
Territory Variable 4 (Riga) - 1

TV2 is our "fairly accurate" corrected haulage figure.

I would probably run these weekly, and they could all be doubled up for better accuracy since carloads can arrive 8 at a time.

The only way to cheat this is to "catch" the loads in Riga with a station outside Riga. If they drift naturally away over land/water I think it's fair play. Therefore, for total effectiveness the player needs to be prevented from placing stations that overlap the boundary from the outside. Using a new hidden territory there are two solutions: make them vanish into a black hole with an instant destroy event, or jack the price of stations in this territory way up like I did in the Scenario version of Warrington Wire for TM. Like anything there is a price: this also prevents a few legitimate possibilities for service towers/maintenance shed placement.

PS. Personally, I found the price islands on this map business as usual. Because I have mainly been playing without industry, there is less on the map for me to haul so I may have had less trains. Less trains = less likely for price islands to form. Maybe I'm actually having an easier time managing the haulage trains.

[Gumboots]

Possible about the trains. I usually end up with around 70 of them. I had thought that perhaps I should try doing Pskov early in the game, when a usual initial run would be Tukums > Jurmala > Riga > Sigulda and back the other way. This is often a good starting run because there can be lots of fairly cheap Livestock out at Tukums and the usual Meat Packing Plant at Sigulda.

So that run works well because you get good haulage payments going to Sigulda, then you get Meat to Riga on the way back, along with more payments for hauling Meat out to Jurmala and Tukums. This is a natural rehaul based on distribution of resources, and I don't regard it as a cheat. So the time to try Pskov may be soon after this, when Automobiles are being produced but there are few places for them to go. That should, in theory, drop the price at the Riga end enough to ship to Pskov. Whether it will work in practice is another matter. I haven't tried going into Russia early because I prefer to get things well established before taking on the hit from that access payment, but it may be worth a shot.

Anyway, that brings up another matter: natural rehauls. There is no way that I want to impose a blanket penalty for Meat or Lumber from Riga, I think that would be far too draconian. Apart from being draconian, it just doesn't make sense to me either. Ditto for destroying things just outside of Riga. That's a useful spot for sheds and towers, and I often use it for that purpose (I run inline facilities on this map).

Edit: Just ran some quick testing. Started with a January 1940 save. Fully-developed system across the map, approx. 70 trains, three stations at Riga, three Camelbacks doing auto consist shunting, 0 cars minimum, 5 cars maximum. I figure given the tight spaces and need for quick loading, it makes sense to not run shunters with 8 car consists.

Anyway, result was that over a 6 year period they did not haul any Lumber at all. Obviously some of this is due to the fact that there are 30 other cargoes available on the map, and most of them go through Riga sooner or later. It would also be partly because by this stage I had an upgraded Toy Factory and Furniture Factory sitting on top of my central Riga station. Lumber demand at Riga was good and was even. It would probably be patchier (meaning more auto hauls by shunters) earlier in the game when only the ports were doing the demand.

Over the same 6 year period, 12 loads of Meat were hauled. So it's looking like a 2 load/year/station average for both cargoes would be about right to balance the haulage goals, pending further testing.

The shunters were making a fairly consistent S80-120k/year each, which is a useful addition to the kitty.

[Gumboots]

Ok, I have just finished a 10 year test. This was done by taking an existing January 1931 save of a v21.9.01.whatever.test.beastie, and editing the Pskov warehouse to do 1 Autos > 2 Diesel with max production of 4. I then played it through until the end of 1940 (Gold before that, of course) to get some solid 10 year stats.

At the start of that save I had just connected up Saaremaa. Poland and Liepaja and Ventspils had been connected for some time, but I hadn't gone into Russia. I made Russia the next priority, and got it hooked up later that year. This seemed to work. Pskov was still dropping in and out of being shippable for Automobiles, but wasn't stuck on being out. It's still a tad challenging to get all 20 loads of Autos to Pskov, but it's possible to do it without bait and switch. That's the effect I was after, so I think the new conversion is the way to go.

Regarding internal Riga territory haulage, with triple stations, and two Camelbacks as shunters: I kept a tally of all Meat and Lumber hauled by the shunters over the entire 10 year period. Internal Meat haulage came to a total of 33 loads, and internal Lumber haulage was 56 loads. Add them together and you get 89 loads. Split it to an average and it's near enough to 4 loads of each per year.

So at the moment I'm guesstimating that an extra 2 loads each, of Meat and Lumber, per year, per extra station, is still looking about right for a compensating factor.

The shunters were quite lucrative for what they were. Purchase cost was $80k each, and both used about $152k of consumables and maintenance over the ten year period. That works out to a yearly running cost of just over $23k for one decade. Profits over ten years were an average of $150k/year for each shunter. This makes for some spectacular ROI on those little chuggers.

I used a few of the modified Camelbacks on branch lines too, just to see how they went. They were useful there too. As long as the terrain is fairly flat, and the distances are short, they appear to be a viable unit.

[TheBonobo4]

I've only played this map once in full, on expert. Brutal start, came close to bankruptcy and being sacked. Maybe I played it wrong, but it seems I'm the only one not finding this simple. I might have to try it again on medium though and see if I can gain some tips. I got bronze by the way, close ish to silver and nowhere near gold (and I'm aware gold is tougher on expert).

[RulerofRails]

First, let's make a distinction. There are a lot of comments (most recent ones) about the revamped version where Gumboots has been re-doing the map from scratch to fix the warped projection. What is in the archives is the original version. You will have to go back a few pages (went to archive on page 9) before finding other comments about that version.

Economically, the original one has lower cargo density than the working beta "re-do". Also the warped projection bunches some of the small towns and rivers closer together, resulting in lower than normal price differentials (and rail profits). So the original is trickier in some aspects especially at the start.

I almost exclusively played this (original) without industry. For that the Meat packer at Siguda is of importance. Often there is some Livestock that you can haul there from Riga with Meat returning. It's not a super start, but it's the most reliable I remember. Sometimes there are other opportunities (depending on the seed) but Livestock is a reccurring theme in my starts. There are also some specific connection bonuses which later on ease the path of rail expansion. Also, don't forget to build Hotels. Night and day difference in express volume.

If you are into industries, look for opportunities to build a Lumber Mill (will need to issue stock). Normally there are plenty of Logs around. Sometimes you might see a good place to build a Textile Mill. Later in the game a Steel Mill can be a good investment. Same story as normal, look out for new farm/mine spawns. These are cheap and if in a good location will give a good ROI.

There is a list in the game of all industries that can be navigated back and forth with PgUp/PgDn. The trick is to find the Earliest entry in the list. Here it is the 1st windmill in Ainazi (can save camera position: shortcuts Shift+1, Shift+2, etc.). Then you can use PgDn to go through the list from newest to oldest. Don't need to go far through the list. Can check at start of every month (new ones only appear at the start of the month), but don't need to. Check more frequently in Boom times (seems to be even a little more activity just after Boom ends).

[TheBonobo4]

First, let's make a distinction. There are a lot of comments (most recent ones) about the revamped version where Gumboots has been re-doing the map from scratch to fix the warped projection. What is in the archives is the original version. You will have to go back a few pages (went to archive on page 9) before finding other comments about that version.

Economically, the original one has lower cargo density than the working beta "re-do". Also the warped projection bunches some of the small towns and rivers closer together, resulting in lower than normal price differentials (and rail profits). So the original is trickier in some aspects especially at the start.

Ah right okay. I was playing the original (archived) version, is there a link to the revamped version? The original seems too tricky for me, though granted I was on Expert.