Latvian Republic 1920

[Gumboots]

If I don't find them in a sandbox, I'll find them when playing, and that will irritate me.

And anyway, taking a few train rides in a sandbox is hardly an onerous task. I'm getting pretty good at rivers now, having sorted a fair few miles of them last night. The lake tool is very useful of course, but having done some experiments I'm now finding the terrain up/down tool can be good for doing rivers, in some situations, as long as it is used with great caution.

Say you have sloping terrain with a river drawn on it, and want the river sunk down a bit. You can use the "Change height" option when drawing the river, but that can be problematic if you need to revise things on complex terrain. I find it's generally best to not use that option, and to draw the rivers on top of the terrain without digging them in automatically. So, I figured out another way of tackling it.

The trick is to set the brush size (or area effect if you prefer) to #2, and to go up the middle of the river one click at a time, at even spacings (by eye), overlapping the area effect so the centre of the next click is within the limit of the last one's area (about halfway to the edge works pretty well). This will sink the river a bit, with a pretty natural slope to the banks. If you want it a bit deeper, just repeat the process.

You will probably have introduced some minor lumps and bumps to the river bed. These can often be fixed with the smoothing tool (bulldozer icon in terrain modification menu) set to either #1 size (for dragging along the middle of the river) or #2 size (for discrete clicking here and there).

The lake tool is good here too, because you can quickly use it to level the river bed if you have a dip or a lump in the wrong place. The lake tool only does levels it can grab from another tile, so the smoothing tool can be used carefully to smooth out such changes in level. It's best to check from several angles, using both the river tool view and normal game view, if you want them really slick.

[Gumboots]

Alllllllllll righty then, I haz a beta, which is getting close enough to be called RC. Have just finished an epic play testing the beast, and it's pretty smooth. Various tweaks have been made, such as disabling some of the bonuses on Expert level, or making them a bit more difficult to get, and umpteen other things.

Have a few more tweaks in mind, such as only paying out connection bonuses if you wait for the invitation to do the connection. This would prevent people scamming bonuses early in the game once they know to expect them. It would also mean people didn't get surprise announcements, telling them they'd just been paid large wodge of money for doing something they weren't aware they were supposed to be doing.

Coding them like this makes sense, because nobody would offer an incentive to do something that has already been done. If you went and connected something that someone was thinking about incentivising they'd say "Oh cool, now I don't have to fork out for an incentive". It's very easy to write the code this way. The only catch is spacing them so they don't strangle gameplay, because you wouldn't want to have to hang around twiddling your thumbs for fear of missing a bonus. Although once this scenario gets rolling you aren't really cash-limited anyway, so there would be the option of deliberately forgoing a bonus for the sake of faster expansion. I'll give the timing of them a bit more thought. Off the top of my head I'd say give the invitations earlier in the game, but with a longer deadline.

Anyway, the shiny new Beta 2 in the attached zip is pretty much how I want the overall feel of the thing, and plays without errors. There may be some more fine tuning of variables, but nothing major.

Edit: Tested the idea about the connection invitations. It works well. Just make them a bit earlier, and give people a bit longer to complete them, and it fits in pretty naturally with how the scenario flows anyway. So I'm calling that a success. Also wound back the pax production slightly, and it's now where I think it should be. Enough to be interesting and lucrative, but not over the top stupid.

I'll sort out an RC over the weekend.

[Gumboots]

One RC, ready to rumble. Simplified some of the coding, to cut processing without adversely affecting gameplay.
Tweaked a couple of bonuses. Added some sneaky bits.

One of the changes is that this one has Silver and Bronze reinstated, even on Expert level, for those who like having them. It also has the Suburban Tank and Schools class enabled, for those who have them. I've been running the Suburban Tank for short hops around Riga, etc, just to add some more interest to the locomotive side of things. I'm using revamped stats for it, to simulate how a real suburban tank would be set up: smaller drivewheels for lower top speed and faster acceleration. Apart from that it's the same stats as the default P8, so the P8 is better on longer runs dues to its higher top speed, while the tank wins on short hops because of the better acceleration (even though top speed is lower). The EngineTypes files for this are attached too.

Latvian grain production in the first decade is cut quite hard, since in that period Latvia wasn't self-sufficient in grain and had to import quite a lot of it. The port at Ventspils (if it seeds) now converts the Clothing shipped to it into Grain at a 1:4 ratio, which is enough to make it profitable, and of course Grain can be drawn in from other countries on the map.

Added an event for winter. Most of the year things are normal, but at the start of November and December trains speeds are cut 8% and track building costs increase 8%. Then at the start of February and March speeds go up 8% in two steps and track costs reduce 8%.

Overall result is annual average speed is [(8 months x 1.0)+(2 months x 0.92)+(2 months x 0.84)]/12 = 0.96 of default, which over the course of the year equates to only a 2 or 3 mph reduction on a P8 or Class 500 moving at top speed. The inverse for track costs: an average of 4% above default over the course of the year. So not crippling at all, but the concentration adds another element to tactics. Makes for good nail biting if you're desperate to meet an end of year target, and prevents brainlessly laying track asap in January if cash is a bit tight.

Also tweaked demand for Automobiles at Daugavpils. I was reluctant to make it stronger, but then I remembered that it's a Bronze medal goal, and therefore it is supposed to be easy. I think it was falling down because of the terrain on this new map. Juriko's original was pretty flat around Daugavpils, whereas this one has the city more or less at a dead end in terrain terms, with a steep rise into Poland. Whatever the reason, on this map Daugavpils was always very marginal for haulage of Automobiles and I thought it should flow a bit better.

For the same reason, I added a 1 Meat pure demand to the Riga port on top of the conversion there. This makes things a bit more stable in terms of Meat haulage (always the more difficult one, compared to Lumber) and by tending to hold Meat at the port a bit more it also allows more production of Automobiles without having to get Klaipeda up and running.

Klaipeda has a slightly increased demand for Diesel, which is just enough to tip the balance into making it shippable from the refinery at Mazethingyiki (if that seeds, or if you build one there).

I'll get onto eye candy next. I did play around with the trees and lakes at Riga and Jurmala during an actual test game, and managed to get it looking pretty slick, so I can apply those tricks in a few other places too.

Edit: Zips removed. See a few posts down for the updates.

[RulerofRails]

If you play no-industry, you wont do any "mindless" track laying. The default P8 is a "super" engine, relative to almost all other default engines post 1900, it costs nothing to run. It makes rails play almost like it's still the 19th century.

Actually that winter feature is a gamble if you wait to issue bonds till start of March. The economy might change, whether good or bad, and you obviously skip one interest payment.

Regarding the terrain, yes. I agree, thinking I know the map is a bit of a disadvantage, because the flow is different. Seeding acts differently too. There are two resource "dead zones" In Latvia, where resources seem to hate to seed. One circular area roughly between Saldus and Liepaja, and another larger one roughly between Ogre and Gulbene. Things like this give character, as long as you realize and adapt.

I was trying all kind of starts, but haven't run one through to the end yet. Just FYI, there is a possibility to put the Jurmala (south of river/swamp) station on a water cell with a $0 price. It might pay to use the ghost "block position" trick to stop it. Maybe no biggie, but I did it by accident on the first go. Which tells me that others may "fall into it" too. At least I had a saved game handy.

Swamps are good, I like having the trees there so we can see them. Those make track pretty interesting. Nice work.

[Gumboots]

Well, not mindless as such, but I often lay track in January out of habit, after waiting for a stock split or end of year costs or whatever. So I thought having something to make me think a bit was a good plan.

And with the P8, I'm playing with stats at the moment. TBH I think a lot of the default steamers cost far too much to run, but I agree the P8 is a tad on the low side. I'm thinking it'd be cool to have the P8, 264T and G10 all balanced for this scenario. They fit together pretty well, and kinda suit this era and location.

Speaking of which, I've never been keen on the later Darth Vader livery and prefer the original Prussian one. Apparently Latvian locos in this era were green anyway, so it fits. I had a quick and rough play with the default P8 skin, and in not much time at all I came up with this...

Which could obviously be improved here and there, but ain't much rougher than the original and is ok for the moment. And since all three of those locos use the same skin, it fits them all for no extra work.

And yes about the seeding. Usually I ignore Poland, but while testing last night I got an unusual seeding which ended up making Poland important. I'm really liking the way this map seeds. There are standard things it does, but it can also throw out surprises which end up being totally workable with a different approach.

I know about the Jurmala thing, but it's so hard to do it on purpose (almost impossible) that I'm not sure it's a problem, nor exactly which cells would fix it, but I'll keep it in mind anyway.

[Gumboots]

Found a bug in RC1. The Silver and Bronze events weren't firing, since I forgot to remove the "Game difficulty level != 3" condition from them. Fixed that one, and haven't seen any other bugs.
And yes, this means I didn't get a Gold. This map is frankly not that difficult if you are lucky with the economy, but a full depression in the mid-1930's (echoing real life, funnily enough*) meant I didn't keep on top of some of the key haulage. Having reviewed it, I think it would have been possible to get a win anyway if things were managed differently. Progress on this map would probably benefit from use of all three train priority levels. You end up with a lot of trains (usually at least 100) and some of them are more critical than others, so maximising use of priority settings would make sense.

This time around I was also testing customised stats for the Class G10, Class P8, 2-6-4T Suburban Tank, and the Schools class. The default P8 is really a bit too good in terms of running costs, as is the default 1.06 Tank, so I've tweaked those a bit to make them more expensive and bring them more into balance with where I think they should be. The same applies to the earlier Schools beta. The G10 has been matched to this bunch as a slower but cheaper freight hauler. It's mainly good for short hops or low priority cargo, but is not really optimal for the main long distance haulages on this map (namely, meat and lumber to Riga).

*Come to think of it...

[Gumboots]

Had a look at a couple of saves, because I was curious as to how much benefit is actually gained from the dining car.
Results shown in the screenshot (trains that were not hauling anything at the time of the save have been removed to save space).

So it looks like even under fairly crappy conditions you can count on a 6% boost to overall revenue from express trains, and easily get up to 11% under better conditions. Although this was with locomotives that have a 120% pax appeal rating without getting a speed record, which by increasing pax car prices will also increase the dining car bonus.

For locos with 100% or 110% pax appeal, you could probably assume around 5% at least, and up to 9 or 10% increase in revenue.

[RulerofRails]

Yes, I think that with dedicated express trains, express is concentrated which is why I was thinking that they were worthwhile in general.

[Gumboots]

Got even more curious, and ran a couple more checks. Same system, but I reversed the event which had knocked pax production and cargo prices, so things were back to the usual "Hey I connected to Saaremaa look at all the pax!" situation for this map.

Although, I have noticed that even though pax production is nominally the same, the actual amount of pax being hauled seems to decrease slowly over time. This appears to be independent of economy state and in this period there is none of that Boeing 707 stuff to knock pax around. I have an inkling (not sure if it's correct or not) that maybe the game reduces pax production from cities as their stations age, the same way it reduces revenue from old stations.

Anyway, leaving that aside and just looking at what was being hauled, I reset all 15 trains to 1 car "Any cargo", 6 cars "Any express", plus the dining car. The idea here is that since this system isn't always inundated with pax at every station, allowing them to haul one car of anything that is most profitable might not be a stupid idea. Results from a point during September 1944 look like this:

The apparently large subtraction for "possible extra cars" is because the three trains that were hauling full consists also had quite large prices on the non-pax 7th cars, and it was possible the dining car could have been replaced by haulage of similar worth to Car 7. But still, the dining car is giving some overall revenue advantage.

The last test was from December 1944:

This has a better return from the dining car, around 8%. For this one I also thought of tallying up the revenue from freight, if the single "Any cargo" car happened to be freight (it usually was). Obviously most of these trains were not fully loaded at this instant, with the result that freight accounted for 23% of the total revenue on the rails at the time. This is a much bigger effect than the dining car. It's clear that if you aren't absolutely swimming in express cargo, allowing your express trains to haul one car of anything going makes a lot of sense.

[Gumboots]

If anyone is wondering: this map is still being fine-tuned by RoR and myself.

The plan is to make rail-only starts more feasible, while still allowing industry or mixed starts, and with industry-only starts being not quite so easy as they were. In other words, better all-round balance and more replay options.

I'll make it public as soon as we've done a bit more checking.

[TheBonobo4]

If anyone is wondering: this map is still being fine-tuned by RoR and myself.

The plan is to make rail-only starts more feasible, while still allowing industry or mixed starts, and with industry-only starts being not quite so easy as they were. In other words, better all-round balance and more replay options.

I'll make it public as soon as we've done a bit more checking.

The map is very pretty, but I only played for about an hour on medium and it still feels very tough. So this will be welcomed by me.

[Gumboots]

RoR and I have been testing this a bit more, and I think we have it sorted. The latest version plays very nicely.

Naturally RoR did his usual trick and played the thing with Planets and no stock issues and no bonds and no industry and got gold in three years flat. He always does stuff like that.

I played a bit more like an actual human (allowed myself stock issues and bonds and industry) and got a Gold in March 1939.

The only coding tweak it needs now is something on the status page to keep track of the early haulage bonuses (these are to encourage rail before 1925). I've coded the bonuses, and they work, but if you don't know about them you'd miss them. I'll do the status page so they only display in the early years when they're relevant, and vanish after that for less clutter. I'll probably add a note about them in the initial briefing too.

Apart from that it's just a case of finishing the eye candy, and it should be good to go.

[Gumboots]

Ok, this one should be the final version. I think. (If nobody finds anything horribly wrong with it.)

It still doesn't have the eye candy finished, but I'm happy with the scripting now. Eye candy will come next.

The goals should be self-explanatory, but read to the end of the briefing because there are some notes there. These notes describe the bonuses for haulage in the early years (before 1925). The bonuses are given for revenue (not loads) to the Latvian port territories. Revenue is used because you can't cheat it with bait and switch tactics, so if you want the bonuses you'll have to get them honestly.

Riga/Exportosta yearly revenue >$200k: bonus of $100k company cash, credit rating +1 for 6 months.
Liepaja yearly revenue >$100k: bonus of $50k company cash, credit rating +1 for 6 months.
Ventspils yearly revenue >$100k: bonus of $50k company cash.

As I said, these only apply before 1925. As soon as you get to January 1925, they will disappear from the status page. The idea is to encourage early rail, and discourage years of nothing but industry. Industry buy/build costs across the whole map are 10% higher than default, so industry starts will be trickier than usual, although you can still use an industry start if there are good opportunities. Later in the game you should be rolling in cash, so the 10% higher industry cost shouldn't be a problem.

Soviet Russia wouldn't have allowed outsiders to control its industry anyway (in Soviet Russia, industry owns you) so Russia has a further 100% increase in industry buy/build costs. However, all industry costs will reduce by 10% once you connect Panevezys to Mazeikiai and Klaipeda.

Polish industry costs reduce by 50% once the trade deal is signed in 1929, if you wait for the deal to go through. If you wait you will also get free access to Poland. If you buy into Poland before the trade deal you will have to pay the access cost, and you will not get the reduction in Polish industry costs.

Like Juriko's original map, this one has various bonuses for connecting cities. It mostly uses the same ones, but there's a catch. On the original version you can scam a lot of them pretty fast if you know what these connection bonuses are. So, with this map you have to wait for the bonus to be offered if you want to cash in on it. If you connect the relevant cities before the bonus offer is made, you will not be paid any bonus. This makes sense, because why would anyone offer you an incentive for something you have already done?

However, there is some good news. Three of the big connection events have the original cash bonus, but now also have 5% track cost reduction associated with them. These event are: the Riga-Parnu connection, the Daugavpils-Liepaja connection, and the Tartu-Klaipeda connection. If you wait for these to be offered, and connect them within the time limits, you will end up with track 15% cheaper than standard.

---

Ok, the stock market. Personally I tend to get bored with games that have a stock market that does nothing. You can buy and sell shares for something to do, but it has no effect on the game and I find it a bit of a waste of time.

This one has player cash bonuses, given when certain historical events occur. I was going to leave these as Easter eggs for people to find themselves, but that's probably being mean to less proficient players.

If you are finding the scenario too hard, you can wait for one or more of these bonuses before starting your company. This means you will have more player cash, so will be able to get more investor cash, so your company will start with more cash. The player cash bonuses are:

$30k at the end of January 1920 (Ceasefire newspaper). This will give you $120k player cash if you wait for it, meaning you will be able to start your company with $1,320k company cash.

Another $60k at the beginning of August 1920 (Peace treaty newspaper). If you wait for this one you will have $180k player cash, and will be able to start your company with $1,980k company cash.

There's another $120k at the end of January 1921 (International recognition newspaper) and another $240k at the beginning of February 1922 (Latvian constitution newspaper). If you wait for the last one you will be able to start your company with a ridiculous amount of company cash,
namely $5,940k. That should allow just about anyone to mess around on Expert level and have some hope of getting some sort of medal.

Me? I don't want to do that. I like starting with the default $990k company cash for a bit of a challenge. This is where the stock market comes in. The player cash bonuses mean I can buy a stack of stock pretty quickly. This has no effect on scenario goals, but does allow me to keep stock price up, and get more stock splits than I normally would. Naturally, this can be good for overall stock value, and can be handy when you want to do a stock issue after a split. The high level of ownership also means you can margin buy like crazy providing you aren't actually dumb about it. I was running personal debt levels of up to $25 million while owning around 90% of the stock, without needing to pay any dividend to stabilise my debt. Once the CBV goal was in the bag the stock market was getting to the point of being a bit wobbly, and my personal debt was looking a bit wobbly too, so I started paying a large dividend to keep things on an even keel. This was fine, since I was already sorted for CBV.

---

Edit: Map zip removed. See next post down for the latest version (with trees and everything).

[Gumboots]

Ok, this one is mostly eye-candied. Has trees, and various other bits and pieces.

I may play with obsessive detailing a bit more (if I can be bothered) but I'm calling it 99.9% done.

Next step is to get into finishing off pax cars and locomotives to go with it. And windmills.

Before I get carried away and declare it ready for the archives, I would appreciate feedback from anyone who can be bothered playing it. I find it massively entertaining and a lot of fun. It also seems to have a good variety of seedings at the start, which add to replay value since they require a range of approaches. I cannot find any bugs with the coding. Everything seems to work perfectly.

If anyone thinks otherwise, now's the time to pipe up.

Edit: Tweaked scenario zip available here.

[Gumboots]

Just finished another run on this. Gold in mid-1939 (seems to be about where I get it every time).

CBV ended up at $152 million, with no company debt (Expert Gold requirement is $120m). This was after I bought back probably $10 million of stock, just because I could. Also replaced a stack of locos just because I could, even though realistically there wasn't much point at that stage if only playing until the end of 1940. I also hadn't optimised all trains, due to getting a bit lazy when there were 140 of them running around, and more were running at a loss than really should have been. If I had gotten serious with saving all of that expenditure and investing it in something good I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been hard to push CBV over $170 million.

PNW ended up at $12.7 million with no personal debt, and could easily have been pushed higher if anyone wanted to. I was just messing around with that, even though it's not a scenario goal. Loads of Meat and Lumber were both over 280, and all the other haulage goals were met comfortably. This was with a normal economy cycle, that went into Depression at one stage but didn't get stuck there for long.

So yeah, it's all quite playable.

[low_grade]

Gave Latvian Republic v2 a spin, maybe 6 hours over the past two days. Gold on Expert in March 1939.

First try was rail only, didn't get more than 4 years in before starting over with industry. Placed 3 lumber mills in the first couple years, then in the next few years issued massive bond debt to expand rapidly across the map. Though uncomfortably over-extended, I felt the urgency of getting to work on those haulage goals, and fortunately the economy didn't crash until the last 5 years of the game, so the risk payed off. Had some trouble regularly supplying the Russians with their vodka as I was paying more attention to getting Diesel going and Fertilizer across the map, etc., and ouch! Those fines just keep doubling! Paid $3.1M total in fines while working towards meat and lumber production...

Used P8's exclusively, did nothing special for Pax. Only micromanaging was adding 8-10 new trains each of the last 6+ years to deliver the specific goods from where ever I could find demand, force loading first even if price was only $5k/load, then switching back to auto-consist and ignoring. Really no attention paid to any trains after I bought them and launched them on their initial routes. Did some double tracking but somehow with 152 trains at the end the track didn't get too crowded.

In hindsight, it would have been more efficient to establish rural production of meat and lumber with dedicated trains hauling exclusively to Riga...

Didn't connect the Livonian coast because $300k wasn't enough incentive for me to turn away from other priorities. Now, throw in a 20% increase in Pax generation and 20% boost to hotel, restaurant and tavern revenue, and I'd likely have gone for it. I also didn't try to connect all cities. Maybe a connect all cities in Latvia for -10% overhead would have worked for me, though. Ach, didn't realize Tavern and Restaurant revenue went up after connecting Saarema, maybe make that explicit, I only was motivated to build hotels from the announcement... Maybe something about "The island celebrates by passing out crates of vodka, tavern revenues soar and restaurants see their business pick up, too!" And oof, maybe a better warning in the 4th Russian fine newspaper about one more strike and you're out of Russia, I didn't realize I was so close to getting expelled!

Still not sure how I would even approach the start going for rail only, though, let alone manage the resources to meet the hauling goals, but I'm sure RulerofRails can show us how it's done, just to prove that it's possible, lol! The terrain made me pause and look for better routes on occasion, but especially with P8's I wasn't concerned with a few 3's and 4's here and there. Still, enough variety that I didn't run very many straight routes, so the map has a nice, natural look to it. I didn't get any lumber mills seeded at the start except off to the north and east, was that an intended possible seed? Made my industry start rather obvious and profitable. Overall a very well sorted, well paced scenario. Kept me on my toes until the final year!

Oh, and why not enable the P2? It would be expensive to buy and run, but okay reliability and acceleration and decent Pax appeal and speed, appearing in 1923 it would seem to be a desirable pax alternative and probably would have seen me diversify my fleet. The Class 500 has not enough to offer for the added fuel expense and breakdowns for me to justify using one over a P8 under any circumstances.

[Gumboots]

Didn't connect the Livonian coast because $300k wasn't enough incentive for me to turn away from other priorities.

It's handy if you're going for the early (pre-1925) haulage bonuses, as it allows more cargo to Ventspils and Liepaja. It can be pretty lucrative, depending on the seed, so I deliberately kept the connection bonus low. But it's meant to be optional, so there's no need to do it.

I also didn't try to connect all cities. Maybe a connect all cities in Latvia for -10% overhead would have worked for me, though.

That goal is just for the heck of it. The 20% reduction in overhead allows you to do all the connections, without your company getting slogged to death by overhead while you brag about connecting all cities. It's not really a rational thing to do, but I've done it on test runs.

Ach, didn't realize Tavern and Restaurant revenue went up after connecting Saarema, maybe make that explicit, I only was motivated to build hotels from the announcement... Maybe something about "The island celebrates by passing out crates of vodka, tavern revenues soar and restaurants see their business pick up, too!"

Ok, will change the newspaper.

And oof, maybe a better warning in the 4th Russian fine newspaper about one more strike and you're out of Russia, I didn't realize I was so close to getting expelled!

Where would be the fun in that? If fines are doubling, and newspapers are getting grumpier, and Strugi calls the Kremlin, I figure that's enough warning that things are getting serious. But really it doesn't matter past a certain point. Once you have a pile of Oil underway towards the refinery you don't need access to Russia for anything else. The fines are nasty, particularly the last one at $3.2 million, but you could, if you felt like wearing the fines, just let yourself get booted and not worry about it.

Still not sure how I would even approach the start going for rail only, though, let alone manage the resources to meet the hauling goals, but I'm sure RulerofRails can show us how it's done, just to prove that it's possible, lol!

That's what the early haulage bonuses are for. He thought they would be just enough to nudge the thing into being doable with rail only. In testing I have managed to generate yearly profit of over $1 million for the first two years, but it's highly dependent on seeding and I wasn't able to sustain that level of profit in the third year.

I didn't get any lumber mills seeded at the start except off to the north and east, was that an intended possible seed? Made my industry start rather obvious and profitable.

It's very variable for seeding. Just turned out to be like that. I've left it that way on purpose, and have not tried to restrict it much, as I think this will make for better replay value. I find it usually plays nicely with a mix of industry and rail in the early years, which is what I wanted. It's often possible to go industry-only for the first five years or so, but I find that boring.

Overall a very well sorted, well paced scenario. Kept me on my toes until the final year!

Good. This is what we want.

---

Oh, and why not enable the P2? It would be expensive to buy and run, but okay reliability and acceleration and decent Pax appeal and speed, appearing in 1923 it would seem to be a desirable pax alternative and probably would have seen me diversify my fleet. The Class 500 has not enough to offer for the added fuel expense and breakdowns for me to justify using one over a P8 under any circumstances.

Personally I don't like the P2 (stats are over the top, glows in the dark, etc) and IMO it doesn't fit the scenario. That's why I've been playing with a custom stats pack and with the G10, 2-6-4 Tank and Schools locos. The P2 isn't default 1.05 anyway, so if I'm going to run third party locos I'd prefer to run ones that I think work fairly well for pre-WW2 Latvia.

That setup makes the Class 500 a better bet for express haulage (increased reliability, acceleration and pax appeal). The P8 becomes less of a super engine, while still being useful for freight and mixed traffic, and the G10 becomes the cheap option for basic drag freight. The Suburban Tank works well around Riga for general haulage, but the higher fuel bill and lower top speed mean it's not as good as the P8 over longer hauls.

I'm seriously thinking I should fix the 1.06 G4 as well. A small 0-6-0 would be the European equivalent of the US Camelback, and could have a useful niche on this map.

[low_grade]

I played on default 1.05, so Class 500 is not fuel efficient, not appealing to pax, and not reliable. For folks playing on default 1.05, it's P8 all the way, and I think the P2 would add a possibly useful tool to the mix. It's fast, but thirsty, yet not entirely unreliable, expensive to purchase and maintain. I might have looked at it coupled with the P8, separating out routes into freight and express, and doubling more track. The P8 is just so cheap to run that I can't even look at the Class 500, but the P2 would have made me think a bit. And just my thoughts, but if the early incentives for hauling were to make a rail-only start both possible and attractive, the rewards need to be boosted a bit. But what do I know, if balancing for replay with a variety of styles, I've only played this once. It certainly feels very hard to achieve, and it's rather amazing that the goals are so well tuned than winners generally get the gold in the final year.

[Gumboots]

I played on default 1.05, so Class 500 is not fuel efficient, not appealing to pax, and not reliable. For folks playing on default 1.05, it's P8 all the way...

Yep, I'd agree with that if you're playing default 1.05. The default P8 really is the Euro super engine of that period.

...and I think the P2 would add a possibly useful tool to the mix.

And the P2 is not default 1.05 anyway so straight away you're saying "Don't play this as default 1.05". Which I don't, of course. But I'm not fussed if someone wants to use the P2. Anyone can hop into the editor and enable any locos they have installed and feel like using.

And just my thoughts, but if the early incentives for hauling were to make a rail-only start both possible and attractive, the rewards need to be boosted a bit. But what do I know, if balancing for replay with a variety of styles, I've only played this once. It certainly feels very hard to achieve, and it's rather amazing that the goals are so well tuned than winners generally get the gold in the final year.

The idea was to make rail-only possible, but not attractive. RoR likes playing without industry sometimes, and wanted it to be just doable that way, for him. It should be now (I'm waiting for him to have a chance to test it) but it's not intended to let just anyone win without industry.

[low_grade]

Hrrmmm?? I'm just playing on my vanilla 1.05 install AFAIK, but in the editor I get the option to add the P2... Did I forget about modifying the install when downloading a map that requested me to add some loco files?