Crystal Cotton Revisited

[Orange46]

There's always someone. I had a great tax system in one of my other scenarios and someone figured out how to beat that one too. Such is life.

GM - I don't think my wording was great, so if you or someone else has better wording for the opening instructions, go for it.

As for the 500 vs 250, lets see if anyone else comments. It could have beeen a bad initial map, as I didn't have problems with grain. But, if someone else has problems, then ... I never intended that even I could always get gold, and I couldn't. I just want it to be possible at least half the time. I'm really concerned about the game length. Is anyone bored? And, if its not fun trying to get to 500 (or failing to), then maybe I'm wrong and we'll lower it. My actuarial side wants 500, my marketing side wants to please everyone.

I see no reason to try to prevent recycling for corn and produce as they're easier and it can be beaten by the too sharp minds playing.

[KevinL]

I'm going to play it again tonight starting from a fresh map. We'll see how far I get.

But just from my first playing, I vote to cut everything in half. 250 loads of everything, 25 million in dividends, and cut the dividend payment each year in half as well.

Edit: Oh, and give us something for the investors stealing our money. Say they're going to reinvest the dividends into the railroad, and we have the option of 10% faster trains, or 10% less overhead, or 10% cheaper rail building, or something. But that's just me being greedy. :)

[Grandma Ruth]

That's capitalism, Kevin!

[Wolverine@MSU]

There's always someone. I had a great tax system in one of my other scenarios and someone figured out how to beat that one too. Such is life.

Since the terminals are pretty well isolated, you could make their territories bigger, such that a large station's footprint will not be able to encompass the terminal station (or put another territory around the smaller territory and test for loads hauled away from both territories).

GM - I don't think my wording was great, so if you or someone else has better wording for the opening instructions, go for it.

You could also get rid of the references to meat. cotton, and grain in the Ledger

As for the 500 vs 250, lets see if anyone else comments. It could have beeen a bad initial map, as I didn't have problems with grain. But, if someone else has problems, then ... I never intended that even I could always get gold, and I couldn't. I just want it to be possible at least half the time.

It wasn't so much a problem of not having enough grain (or meat), it was that the warehouses didn't turn it into ammo and weapons fast enough. By the end of the 50 years, there were fewer than 300 loads of each created by the warehouses, despite the fact that there was always excess raw material (wheat,meat) stacked up at the warehouse/port.

I'm really concerned about the game length. Is anyone bored? And, if its not fun trying to get to 500 (or failing to), then maybe I'm wrong and we'll lower it. My actuarial side wants 500, my marketing side wants to please everyone.

I was bored for long periods of time while trying to recoup from the dividend taking. I don't know if it would help, but perhaps taking the dividends in monthly installments would give a chance to have cash to use throughout the year. I think they should be lowered a bit, as I was only able to connect to one eastern terminal (until I built my "Pirate Line" to the other one).

It's an interesting scenario. I did restart many times to get enough cargos to haul at the beginning (I started between Chicago and Milwaukee). Other areas on the map didn't seem to have enough cargo available (when looking at ALL cargo in the overlay) to be able to ship between two cities.

[belbincolne]

Really I should put this in a new thread but as it's already in here I'll carry on.

I can't play this - it crashes every attempt at end year one.
I couldn't play Caucasus either but since its revision its o/k.
Two old threads have just come back to life - Utah & James Hill and Southern Pacific. I unzipped them and had a go - they both crashed just before end year 1.

The question is why? U&JH & SP could be because they were written before patch6 and it would have to be uninstalled tho' that doesn't explain CC. I've also installed the Cereal Company buildings and things have only been going wrong since I did this. Quite a job to remove them all so before doing so I thought I'd see if anyone has any views.

[Hawk]

I'd try removing the cereal company and see if that helps.

[Orange46]

GR, Wolverine is probably right to get rid of cotton, grain and meat in the ledger and just leave the ammo, weapons and crystal. Sometimes one tries to be cute and adventure gamy, but then you create confusion.

I've thought of building a barrier around the easern warehouses (hotels, bars, etc), and of Wolverine's idea of a 2nd territory, and rejected them as not worthwhile, especially since I'm not doing the editing and someone else has to do the dirty work. If someone wants to reship, who am I to stop them. They can always go into the editor to undo anything we try, anyway. But, Wolverine did hit on something easy that I hadn't considered - just make the eastern territories big enough so that a large station can't overlap the warehouse. The only problem with this is that the scenario generates extra warehouses every 15 years or so. We could kill that, but then are we risking the warehouses disappearing. The whole idea of trying to stop reshipping is more like a small lock on a door - something to keep the honest honest, but that won't stop a determined crook. And hey, I've done most of the cheatin things myself to win a scenario, especially if the scenario wants me to do things I don't like to do, such as monitor each cargo being shipped in and out of a territory (Cousin Elmo).

I don't think monthly dividends is an option, since all of the game counters are yearly or lifetime.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I don't think monthly dividends is an option, since all of the game counters are yearly or lifetime.

you could calculate the dividend as now, divide the result by 12 and have a monthly event that would subtract that amount from company cash each month in the following year.

[WPandP]

I just saw the Belbincolne's post about problems showing up after installation of the Cereal Company; I'd like to pay attention now, to see if we can figure out what is going wrong. One thing I am thinking of right now is that the extra buildings tend to show up at the end of the industry list in the editor, but ahead of the additional warehouses. Maybe, there's something going on where the game attempts to build a Warehouse #2 but finds a reference instead to Cereal Company, which has not been enabled for that scenario... Just a brainstorm, I have no idea if this is the case.

Belb, are you able to use the Cereal Company in other scenarios or in the editor? In other words, does it work properly ever, or does it only seem like certain scenarios cause crashes with it installed?

I hope we're not seeing an across-the-board problem which will prohibit the development of add-on buildings generally.

[Orange46]

I don't think you can divide in the editor.

I got around the problems by just not spending all of my money each year, unless it was for something important. You never pay more dividends than you make, and usually the dividend is between $500,000 and 1 million less than what you made that year.

[Hawk]

I just saw the Belbincolne's post about problems showing up after installation of the Cereal Company; I'd like to pay attention now, to see if we can figure out what is going wrong. One thing I am thinking of right now is that the extra buildings tend to show up at the end of the industry list in the editor, but ahead of the additional warehouses. Maybe, there's something going on where the game attempts to build a Warehouse #2 but finds a reference instead to Cereal Company, which has not been enabled for that scenario... Just a brainstorm, I have no idea if this is the case.

Belb, are you able to use the Cereal Company in other scenarios or in the editor? In other words, does it work properly ever, or does it only seem like certain scenarios cause crashes with it installed?

I hope we're not seeing an across-the-board problem which will prohibit the development of add-on buildings generally.

Maybe this topic would be better in it's own thread, just to keep all the discussion of the cereal company together.

[belbincolne]

I agree about that but seems a bit late now! Uninstalled all the Cereal Company items - it made no difference all three games crashed just as before. I never tried the CC in a scenario because I couldn't find a suitable one. If the crashes happen on other scenarios looks like I'll have to uninstall and reload everything - very annoying.

[Hawk]

I agree about that but seems a bit late now!

Yep! Since it doesn't seem to be a problem with the cereal company, no need to start a new topic.
It's good it's not that but it would be good if you/we can figure out what exactly the problem is.
What graphics card and sound card are you using?

[belbincolne]

Graphics is NVidea GEforce 7300LE and sound is Realtek HD with Legacy Auto Driver. All appear to be up to date and no problems elsewhere. I deleted Cr Cot too to see if that had caused the problem but no. Southern Pacific still crashes BUT I then played the original PopTop SP instead of the revised one and this plays o/k so I deleted both SP(2) and U&JH and then re-installed SP(2) - this is now playing perfectly.

My conclusion is that the problem lies in Cr Cot so that anything installed whilst it was on my computer is affected - but why only mine is affected goodness knows.

[Hawk]

That's strange!

[Grandma Ruth]

I think this map is based on Germantown, which seems to be the same as Mississippi Valley. Do you think you could load one of these and see how it goes, then we would know it's the modifications that have been made and not the basic map - for some completely inexplicable reason.
It might help or it might not, but I think it would be worth trying.

[Grandma Ruth]

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/n ... ton_v2.zip
I've done a revised version changing the win conditions to 250 each and I've just changed the wording a bit - link above for testing.

[belbincolne]

O/K I've downloaded the new one - but not installed it yet - will try that later

However if you've got a NVidea driver a new version 169.1 has just been released. Downloaded it a few minutes ago and tried a couple of scenarios on it and (at least on my computer) it plays very well. I say this because a couple of years ago I updated my driver and all my trains went white (old b....s might remember there was a lot said on older forums about that problem) and this wasn't cured until another update came along.

[KevinL]

Ok still no dice. I even created an ammunition depot near Cleveland and started hauling steel and chemicals to it, and the ammo to the warehouse. I still had only about 100 loads of ammo at the end. I started later, in 1870, so I could get the faster trains sooner, too. Its the dividends that are the killer. Especially if a train derails at the beginning of the year, you're screwed. I had three trains crash one after another one year, so I reloaded the autosave and then they were fine. I think you need to enable the buying of bonds so we can have some money.

Also, what is up with the passengers? After about 20 years each station has 20+ loads of passengers available. My trains (on auto-consist) start picking up nothing but express cargo and I have to reroute a few to freight only to keep the meat, lumber, and grain flowing where it needs to go.

Lastly, a non-specific gripe: Why is it a steel mill will have 20+ loads of coal or iron, but the other needed item is all the way across the map, or non-existant?

[Grandma Ruth]

Well, I finally got silver, but it was a struggle! Going for the gold now. I quite like the dividends as I was making loads of money and no reason to spend it. I had paid $45 million without really trying and company cash was about $11m at the end.
I went for ammo and the crystals, of course. I was absolutely concentrating on making the ammo, dedicated grain trains to a small station that just fed the ammo warehouse. I found the train crashes were a lot less once I cut down on the number of loads per train to four.
The thing with passengers I think is a feature - or fault - of the basic game itself, the way RRT3 was programmed to begin with. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think one of the (official) patches was meant to calm down the production of passengers a bit.
Don't know what's wrong with your coal and iron, there should be an equal chance of either or both appearing in the coal/iron regions. Do you go into the Editor at all, or are you more of a player? If you look in the Editor, you can see where the different regions are and what should be in them.