LA & L.A.

[Stoker]

Hi JF, thanks for the feedback. This scenario is intended for the fixed period from 1870 - 1900, and not only the locomotives, but all of the later year cargoes are disabled. This is intentional, as having unused items in a scenario can bog it down and perhaps even cause crashes. If you intend to play it beyond the stated years, you can hit "Shift + E" while playing, which puts you in Editor mode, go to the settings and enable the locos and buildings/ cargoes that you wish to use.When you have selected the items you want, hit "Shift + E" again and you will return to regular gameplay mode and the save games from that point forward will keep these new items.
I hope that you are enjoying this scenario. I am interested to know if you were able to meet any of the medal requirements before the time ran out.

[JFMarvelous]

Hi again Stoker, I had to go check where I had stopped on this scenario. It was 1956, and as I mentioned before one of the AI's I merged with had a DD-080 X loco, which should not have been availible at all, let alone in 1956. The electric track issue I think I've seen on other scenario's I've played. I think once you use or take over a company that has electric track, it is on by default.
BTW, I like the scenario.
Jules

[Stoker]

Hi again J. I suspect the game may have substituted that train for another because the one it intended to use was disabled. Again, the later day stuff I intentionally disabled in this scenario to clean things up, and enabling the ones you would prefer to use when playing beyond the 1870-1900 scenario years might remedy this.

Edit: I enabled all NA trains - and industries in the final version. Most later date industries are not set to spawn , but you will be able to build them when they become available. This will allow you to play this map to any era, after the medal events. !

[belbincolne]

Very odd - posted a reply but its not here. Anyway only query was on PNW. I'm getting something like $2m every year for nothing so can afford to buy stock and go $6m (say) in debt and know it will be paid off rapidly. I've now discovered this is because the AIs are paying incredible dividends - far more (ten times?) than in any other scenario I've ever played, hence I've never had PNW problems. It's also why after (say 15 years) there's no stock left to buy. All the chairmen are rich as Croesus. Maybe this needs fixing despite it being the only part I excel at In same period I've carried 3 passengers to LA - its beyond me!

[Stoker]

Hi again Bel. There is nothing to "fix" in the dividend payouts. The reason you are getting paid large sums by the AIs is because when all stocks of an AI company are bought up, it will pay out ALL of its yearly profits as dividends. This is a hardcoded aspect of the game and has nothing to do with any part of this scenario. HOWEVER, as I already stated, the fact that you are not using this wealth to your advantage is certainly one reason why you are falling short of the scenario goals.

[belbincolne]

But how do you use PNW to your companies advantage?

[Stoker]

You should use your personal cash to buy up stock in other companies, then merge them into yours. Reading your posts in this and other scenario comments threads, I have gathered that you dont have a good grasp of how to manipulate stock in your company (and others) and merger prices to your advantage. You comment here about buying up "nearly all" of an AI companys' stock but are unable to merge because you dont have enough company cash. You are missing at least two things here.

First, when you get a large enough advantage in your purchasing power to withstand issuing stock, DO SO! Issue stock at every opportunity, and immediately buy up the newly issued stock at the lowered price, which injects cash into your company, and increases your PNW even further because you get to buy new stock at low prices. Doing this every year (especially early) increases the percentage of your company that you control(unless you own it 100%, in which case you are just adding to your PNW, which is never bad)

Secondly, when you own a large portion of another company, but cant raise enough cash for a merger, you can do a SELL OFF of the stock in that company- right up to the point where you have 51% of the other companies stock. You can drive the stock price into the toilet this way, and it allows your company to then merge at pennies on the dollar. You take a beating in your personal cash- but according to you, you are swimming in it! SO USE IT! These are basic monetary strategies in this game , and I don't mind discussing them (although they are covered in many posts on this forum already), but the purpose of this thread was really to identify any specific problems in this particular scenario that I might have missed in my own testing.

[belbincolne]

Oh good - I thought there must be some other way.

Presumably you've done this yourself and its worked. I've only tried it a little and found that in the early stages when I was desparate for money (i.e. before 12 years) issuing stock didn't bring in enough to be worth doing. Must admit though that I was only thinking on traditional lines not for the specific needs of this scenario.

Again I didn't try to sell off stock to ruin the AI and when I did sell off $25k in two the price scarcely moved down at all.

Still I'll give it another try thinking out of the box.

Look forward to the final version.

[belbincolne]

May have found an error.

Payment for share of IP isn't right ever. Some examples:
Year 1 half of 566 = 260
Year 1 half of 467 = 213
Year 2 1/3rd 779 = 221
Year 2 1/3rd 839 = 252

Year 3 similiar 10 to 20% lower than it should be. I always have enough cash in hand so nothing to do with that.

[Stoker]

That is not an error, but a product of the games limitations. The test for the Industrial Profit is made monthly, and the ledger shows the up to the minute Industrial Profit, which changes continuously and is slightly higher as more profit has been made since the test to derive the sum used in the calculation. The ledger readout of your " projected bonus" is exactly that," projected", and the amount shown as the payout at the end of the year is indeed what is paid out.

Edit to add: It would be possible to show the "old" number for profit that was used to derive the projected bonus, but that would require using another variable , which I was short of in this scenario.

[Stoker]

The finished version is now available for download in the map section of this site.

Good Luck & Happy Railroading!

[Hawk]

Not quite yet. It will be soon though. Give me a couple of hours. I'm starving and need to make some lunch.

[Hawk]

Now it's available!

[Stoker]

LA & L.A. is a large scenario based on the Poptop Southern Pacific map and it utilizes all of the 1.06 cargoes for the time period from 1870-1900. It requires using most of the different skills of RRT3 in order to win a Medal.

Here's a few tips for playing LA & L.A. :

1. You can let the AI's build track(they are set to expand fast in beginning) for a while before merging with one. But dont wait too long, or you are in danger of not meeting the 12 year connection goal. Merging after about 5 years seems to work out the best. It is possible to take over one of the weaker AI's after 1 year, and I have waited and managed to get all 6 in 11.(I dont think it is possible to merge with one the first year, but I could be wrong) I have also managed to lose a few times by getting greedy and trying for all 6 and falling short. After you merge with the first railroad, the AI's slow their expansion, and merger costs increase (in hard and expert levels the merger costs continue to increase annually).

2. Decide on your first industry carefully, as your first year income is important, as it gives you the largest bonus. Buy the most profitable existing one that you can find on the map. Usually it is a textile mill. Sometimes a furnace with good profits exists, but not always, and some of the really profitable ones are too expensive to buy the first year. A meat packing plant is sometimes a good choice, but not really the best, as they cost more to upgrade, and profits are about the same as a textile mill. The industry discount lasts 2 years and 2 months- so try to make one last buy after the new bonds are available at the start of the third year.

3. If you get a railroad early, make the L.A. to San Diego line first. It makes good money and starts the passenger haulage to L.A. right away. If you get railroad after 9 or 10 years, you usually need most of your track (purchase all you can if you buy railroad late) to complete the LA-L.A. route in the required 12 years for Gold qualification. Also, making the connection to Bakersfield early starts the lumber count early on. After you acquire a railroad, keep in mind that you must have the cash on hand ($800k for the maximum 400 sections) to purchase track at the start of each year. No Cash= No Track.

3. Steel is the hardest haulage quota to meet. Start it early. Check the warehouses to find which supply steel. Utilize the Coal & Iron available to make more. There is lots of Coal in the high desert area- making a steel mill where it is accumulating there and shipping in the iron from the east makes the trip to L.A. with the steel much quicker.

4 Make Hotels Restaurants and Taverns a lot as they are set to make good profits.

5. There are several passenger generating buildings available to build. Commercial buildings-Churches-Stadiums-etc. Putting some of these in key cities (especially in L.A.) will really help you meet the 200 passenger goal. Most are money losers so build them and then sell them.

6. Make sure that in the years before you have a railroad, that your company has the cash on hand to pay your personal bonus.The bonus is based on a fraction of the years industry profits-using the difficulty level +1 as the base # then adding 1 to the divisor each year. Example: on expert the first years bonus is 1/4 or 25% of YTD industry profits - 1+3+0---3 being the # for expert level. The second year would be 1/5 or 20% - 1+3+1- then 1/6 and so on until you acquire a railroad- on easy the first years bonus is 1/1 or 100% of YTD industry profits- 1+0- zero being the # for easy level then 1/2-1/3-etc. Check the Ledger, it tells you how much you have coming so you can have the cash ready at years end to pay it. Missing the bonus payment in one of the early years makes it tough to merge early.
Good Luck and Happy Railroading!

[Stoker]

Thank ya kindly sir!

[Grandma Ruth]

Hi Stoker!
Nice game. I know you've already uploaded it but I'm afraid I've found a mistake on the ledger pages. They need to test against territories and don't. I'm surprised no-one else noticed it. I've attached a screenshot.
Another odd thing that I don't know how to resolve is the fact that this game thinks it's a campaign, though you've clearly not marked it as such. Was it based on a campaign map? Though I don't see why that should make it still persist in behaving like one. We've had this problem before with other maps - or to be more accurate, I've had this problem before and the boys didn't believe me!!!!

[Stoker]

The fourth condition on the page your showing says "Force test against Territories" and Los Angeles is listed as such. This is correct. The part about the campaign aspect is yes, this was based on a campaign map . For whatever reason it still thinks it is a campaign when you are in Editor mode only(More accurately it thinks it is a campaign when you try to EXIT editor mode). During gameplay it behaves as a normal scenario.

[Grandma Ruth]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. In the original map this was not so - this is the way I've altered my map to be right.

[Stoker]

Let me check that- I had added the hard ledger at the last moment before posting.

[Grandma Ruth]

and the easy ledger page too!