Age Of Steam IV-Blue Streak For Your Comment and Review

[Gumboots]

I've been in the mood to maybe play RT3 again, but honestly cannot be bothered with any scenarios that have excruciatingly slow starts. I want something rip-roaring and entertaining. So, I've been thinking about modifying this one a bit. Off the top of my head:

1/ Make the warehouses less insane (ie: tweak production recipes and/or .bca).
2/ Make the locomotive events less insane (ditch non-functional "upgrades", de-tune some of the others).
3/ Change it so you have to play through the whole of the Great Depression (probably ditch "Instant Gold").
4/ One master event to switch off all educational dialogues.
5/ Fix any known bugs.

Which would require finding bugs first.

[RulerofRails]

#5, If you didn't remember, the edit by Shamough had a lot (at least a week in total) of bug testing by yours truly. Although I was a bit green in the editor at that stage, so I'm sure there are some things still not right.

I can't promise a lot of time, but if you want a 2nd opinion on warehouse recipes/profits I could look over your figures or look over the originals with a certain intention in mind (I don't know what function you see them for your game).

[Gumboots]

Before changing anything I would go through all events, and make a list of anything that looked screwed. The events in this scenario aren't terribly complex. There are quite a few of them, but it's all simple enough. As far as I remember, it generally played well.

Minor bugs like typos in the educational pop-ups would just be fixed as I go, since I want to re-code those pop-ups to have a master switch anyway (which should be just a basic variable change). I did notice a couple of other points already, like one event having the incorrect freight speed entered (the status page and the actual requirement contradicted each other).

I did read most of your posts, and Shamough's posts (with the latter being rather like trying to have a conversation with someone who randomly picks words to yell at maximum volume). I noticed you mentioning random number events that were apparently meant to fire every year, but didn't. The thing with random number events is that if you really want them to fire every year, you need to assign a 100% probability. IOW, you need 0 <= RNG <= 100. Anything else allows the possibility (however slight) of not firing in that year.

If you want to have random number events with less than 100% probability, and you still want to guarantee a hit in that year, you will need a 100% event to back up the <100% event. IOW: if 0 < RNG < 80 out of 100 then *fire event* else *definitely fire backup event*. That's the only way of doing it with random numbers. The only other option is to use a basic if month/year then... which is what your backup event would need to be anyway.

But, since the game seemed to play well even with the original logic, I'm not sure all the random events really need to be fixed. They may have been intended to fire every year, but if it plays well with them only firing occasionally then do we have to worry?

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Re the warehouses: I'd be keeping them largely as they were, just because they are something different and unique to this scenario, but I do think they could be toned down to be not such an obvious source of free money. But yes, that would require carefully checking inputs and production recipes to make sure they still worked. Personally I'd be fine with using a custom .bca to increase warehouse build price too, just for this scenario. That's fail safe, because if someone leaves it out they just get cheaper warehouses. If they use it for this scenario, and forget to replace it with the default for other scenarios, that's probably not going to be fatal either (although it would make other scenarios slightly more difficult). It can have clear instructions with it (ie: make a backup of the default) so it shouldn't mess anyone up.

[RulerofRails]

Our discussion about "probabilities" are probably not particularly useful in hindsight. I would suggest you take a look at the solution that was used in that version. One roll of Random 1 to 100 saved to a variable, seems to approximate the intent of the events, and it should be much better at giving mixed results. IIRC, what happens with the archive version is that a couple of the events are common and the rest you will probably never see. The game is doing two random rolls for many of them, so it's like a dozen random rolls, and some are clearly favored tons more than I'm sure the author intended.

I did think a bit about the warehouses. If I would do something I would think hard about restricting where they can be built. Suppose they were only affordable to build in the 4 "special" city territories?

Another thought, Ports can only be built on the rivers. It's also hard to put multiple ports on the same square. Suppose that players could build Ports and not warehouses? That would put a practical limit on how many the player could build. They would also need to use rail to supply them.

[Gumboots]

Ok, fair enough on the random stuff. I'll take a look.

I'm not sure restricting where warehouses could be built would be practical. The problem is that you'll only have the "blunt instrument" option of increasing/decreasing all industry buy/build costs by territory, which is likely to render all industry purchases or builds impractical in most locations. That would be fine if you wanted to restrict the scenario to rail-only plays, but I don't want to do that, so offhand I can't see how it could be made to work. I'm open to any suggestions in that regard though.

Also, does 1.06 allow you to build ports but not warehouses? I thought RT3 (any version) effectively rolled ports and warehouses into the same category.

[RulerofRails]

Those were ideas. I had a closer look and it's easy in 1.06 to specify if the player can build a certain recipe as port, warehouse, or both.

I unchecked the warehouse versions and I can now only build ports. Saved and reloaded the game, appears to work great.

The map would actually work better with more ports. We can see when starting that Livestock etc. during the 3-year pre-game economy simulation would really like to cross some of the large rivers which on this map are really seas. So the base economy would actually be improved by the player trying to capitalize on their potential.




Only being able to build the warehouses in certain locations is, as you surmised, less elegant in practice. You mentioned adjusting the warehouse bca potentially. My thought was along the lines of significant raise for base price of warehouses, maybe x5 (I would aim for a 50% ROI best-case scenario, need to check how the new price affects profitability via boosted Labor & Overhead and adjust accordingly), then a discount on all industry in the 4 special city zones. For example 50% reduction. Which will let players build the normal industries for half price there.

But, let's remember that these areas are off-limit at the start of the game. Furthermore, the best normal industry opportunities, build on the same cell as a farm, are IIRC unlikely to exist in these zones. Most often resources for these industries would also have to be hauled in. Building next to an established industry and using/stealing it's stack can be an exploit of sorts. However, at present warehouse ROI levels, a 50% sale on normal industries everywhere on the map is actually not that attractive, suppose we see some 80% ROI industries while present warehouses are 200%+. I feel like this "scheme" (if you will) has potential to provide interest and strategy, while keeping intact a lot of the warehouse's existing cargo multiplication behavior.


And of course these are just ideas, with the potential to curb some of the maps ridiculous excess.

[Gumboots]

Ok, cool thing about the ports vs warehouses. Could be handy. Re the other stuff: I'd be inclined to just jack the price of warehouses via a custom .bca, and leave general industry prices alone. Target the thing that needs fixing, not everything else on the map. Makes sense to me.