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

[j484fan]

Yeah, I've been doing the spurs on almost every map. It's a pain to setup intially, but more fun watching the trains run as a result. Problem with this map is needing those warehouses or ports to actually win. You can't get enough money starting out without them. Problem seems to be learning which cities like what, as a setup I try for one pair of cities seems different from another, even if the coordinating ports/warehouses are the same. Doesn't make any sense. I even followed the suggestions of I think Wolverine on what he posted in the initial map critique.

[RayofSunshine]

Well j484fan,
It has been some time since I played this scenario, so cannot give you any hints, suggestion, but only a comment.

I have learned to save different events while playing. My 1st save is right away, either before or after "starting a new company". THEN thereafter I start saving a notable event as "scenario name - 1" or a or whatever you want to use. And this especially if there are "options". Just save the progress, until you have an idea to "try something". Naturally the next sequence of play would be saved as "scenario name - merged NW" or whatever the new avenue you are experimenting. That way, if it doesn't work, you and go back and reload your "last original save".

It doesn't always work out, as sometime the economy is just the "pits" and then you have to go back in the Main Menu. But I find it of some help.

Good Luck.

[Gumboots]

I'm currently in a bit of a mood to try new and different (for me) maps, and gave this one a bash on Expert. It's totally epic.

I don't think anyone should attempt to play this one right through in one sitting. It's just too much that way, and would be better split into (at least) two or three sessions.

Did not get any medal the first time through, but can see how it could be done. Since it's 1.06 there is always the option of shipping at a loss, which should make a win pretty much a sure thing if used sensibly, but I'll try to do it with only shipping at a profit.

First thing anyone should do is start by writing down the various ports/warehouses and what they all do. This unfortunately has to be done by building them and checking them out, which is a bit of a nuisance. I'll make some notes in a .txt next time I play and will post them here.

This one needs a good combination of industry and rail right from the early years. If you build up both fairly quickly, you should ace all the speed/haulage challenges. Once I knew when the first one was I restarted the game, and after that never found any of them to be a problem. I was meeting the haulage targets in September or October with average freight speeds well over 40 mph (using maintenance spurs, of course). Once the upgrades kicked in, most years averaged around 48 mph. Lifetime average ended up at 43 mph. This is all running standard routes and consists, so you don't need to rely on any tricks.

That brings up another thing. The upgrades available for the locomotives are well worth having and very affordable, but they do tend to blur the lines between locos. When everything has awesome acceleration, fuel economy and reliability you can more or less pick any loco you like for most purposes. I was actually using the different types to split up my locomotive list by visual recognition of routes.

Funnily enough I never got the P-2 Mountain, even though I already had it installed. Not sure what happened there. Will check the coding. (ETA: Checked. See next post for answer.)

The Great Depression is interesting. When this bloke models a depression, he doesn't mess around. Your industry will make nothing for the duration, and will actually run in the red if you are on Expert difficulty setting. This can easily put your company over 70 million in the red within several years, and the prime interest rate is seriously nasty. At one stage I was paying around 10 million a year just in interest on the negative cash balance. Somehow I just managed to get through it with a minority stake and without losing the chairmanship.

There are a couple of ways this could be played. Obviously, since you know exactly when the crash is going to hit, and since it's preceded by the famous roaring boom, this could be used to dump your stock at very high prices just before the Wall Street crash of 1929, and then use the resulting cash to buy up all or most of the company at a relative pittance after the crash.

Another obvious option is to stockpile enough company cash that it wont go into the red for the duration. At a quick guess I'd say 40 million should give a comfortable margin, and this scenario does allow you to generate that sort of amount. Doing it this way would leave the company in much better shape, but wouldn't give you the same shareholding with the same ease and low personal cash.

Or you could mix and match, and do both to a degree. Plenty of scope for fun and games.

Short version: an engaging and massively fun scenario, but too much for one sitting. Watch out for that Depression. The CBV Gold requirement shouldn't present any problems, but the haulage will need some care.

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ETA: Minor quibbles. The lessons on steam locomotives are interesting and informative, and generally very well written, but the formatting is too dense for comfortable reading. Basically it's good content but bad typography, IMHO. A bit more spacing here and there would greatly improve things. There are a few typos here and there too, which isn't surprising given the amount of editor coding required.

Another point is that the transition between dialogues isn't obvious. You have to switch between using the big-and-obvious "OK" button and small-and-not-so-obvious "More" link at different times, and if you get it wrong you miss a chunk with no way of going back. This is not great GUI design. I realise the formatting is somewhat difficult because of the limitations of the game's text editor, but I think it could be improved a bit if anyone wants to tackle it.

Also, I'm not sure I can agree with the author's claim that early compound Mallets were slow because they were compound, and this was the reason railways gave up on compounding. As I understand it, US railways gave up on compounding not because of speed but because of economics. Simple expansion locomotives were cheaper to build and maintain, and after the development of superheaters were found to be quite adequate.

There have been fast compound locomotives (the French used a lot of them for express) and compounding per se does not seem to imply any particular limit on speed. From what I understand of locomotive history, it seems the early compound Mallets were slow simply because that was the mindset for building large freight engines during the drag freight era. All of them were slow - simple or compound, articulated or rigid.

However, none of this detracts from the general enjoyment of the scenario as a whole.

[Gumboots]

Aha! I dove into the editor and found out why the P-2 Mountain never appeared. It's because not all NA engines are allowed. Only a specific few are checked off in the locomotive availability list.

This is rather odd, because the author makes a specific point of including engine/tender files for the P-2 and telling people (in his readme file) what a great engine it was and how they should install it. You can install it, and I already had, and it is a great engine, but unless you change the scenario coding in the editor you'll never see the P-2 during the game anyway.

The Hudson is a similar case. There's an informative dialogue in the game about Hudsons in general, but even if you have the J1 model installed you can never use it.

This doesn't seem to be what the author really intended. A possible solution would be to allow any NA locomotive in the availability list, then use one of the scenario setup events to specifically disallow any engines you don't want to appear. This would still mean the scenario was playable without the custom engines (ie: default 1.06 locos only) but would enable them to appear if they are installed.

[Gumboots]

Here you go. Reference image and .txt file for the Blue Streak ports and warehouses. Grab em if you want 'em.

[Gumboots]

Had another crack at this one. This time I got Gold in March 1937, and was only delayed that long because of the haulage. Once you know how it all works and give it a bit of thought, it's not actually very difficult. Still lotsa fun though.

[bmheron]

Ahhh, great scenario! On my 2nd try I achieved Gold on Expert in 1939 with 6 years to go. Thanks to this thread. The key is the industries and placing them. Nice work on this one!!!

[RayofSunshine]

Thanks Gumboots,
for your inputs for the 'ports" It will make for a more interesting play of the scenario.

[Shamough]

Nice map and game on Expert is giving me fits getting my Co. off the ground. (getting enough YTD loads is painful at present.)

There is an EVENT typo:
City Choice-3-12: Option 1 lists the wrong city. It should be: We pick Dallas-Fort Worth. (The logic is correct for Dallas-Fort Worth.)

• STATUS YTD values are all messed up.
  Current Game Year Lists Year + 1 (Date when the STATUS ledger is being displayer)
  YTD Co. Av Freight Speed = 0
  YTD Co. Loads Hauled = 0
  
  I've patched my map to correct and expand these.

I noticed that YTD Loads Hauled ... Don't count cars and expect the value to be the same ... IT'S either FULL loads or something very close ... and the stations will ship cars that are only 51% full.

Hans

[Gumboots]

Yes, that's standard RT3 logic. The trains will ship cars once they are 51% full, but in the game's tally for event purposes this is registered as 51% of a load. You won't get the game to register one car in YTD loads until you have shipped 100% of a load.

I found the key to getting a good start on Expert was cunning use of the warehouses. Once you have a handle on how those work, you can leverage good growth very quickly.

[Shamough]

I found the key to getting a good start on Expert was cunning use of the warehouses. Once you have a handle on how those work, you can leverage good growth very quickly.

In my current game I dropped 2 of the new Warehouses and upgraded them for over $1M./yr the first yr. 2nd year 2 more upgraded warehouses ... then connect cities and run trains. 1915 now and am moving over 600 loads per yr.

Hans

[Shamough]

I made the following changes to Blue Streak to create Blue Streak V2.

Corrections and additions:

Added INSTANT GOLD goals to Status page after 1918. (No space while the City tests are being run.)

Corrected test for City Access STATUS page YTD reports.

Corrected City Choice 3 12

Corrected Lost Game logic so the game correctly reports a lost game at the end of 1945.

Corrected No Instant Gold

Added message for CBV >= $1,000,000,000

Allow for the personalization of the Co., and Co., CEO.


Hans

[Shamough]

Hawk, I just finished my V2 and got an INSTANT GOLD. Two of the requirements are WAY TO LOW! I had $1B+, 80,000+ Freight hauled, and an avg Freight speed of 40. New INSTANT GOLD goals are $1B+, 75,000+ Freight hauled, and avg Freight speed of 35+. I never had to buy accass to any of the four Cities. (I kinda ignored the City haul needs as I was lacking game seeded resources to meet them.)

I'll post a new Blue Streak V2_1 with higher Avg Freight Speed and total Freight loads hauled. I'm leaving the $1B goal as is.

Testing now.

Hans

[Hawk]

You should have other people beta test your work before I add it to the archives.

[Shamough]

You should have other people beta test your work before I add it to the archives.

As soon as I have a GOOD run through I'll post the new V2_1. Just had a minor gotcha ...

Hans

[Hawk]

Is it safe to assume your version is going to be more difficult than the original?

[Shamough]

Only the goals for INSTANT GOLD.

[Shamough]

Here's a pix of my current game:
Note I didn't upgrade my engines quick enough AND once I had connected to the 4th city/territory I removed all of the spurs I was using and started using in-line service facilities ... this RUINED my LTD Avg Freight Speed.

As you can see I will make GOLD before INSTANT GOLD all because I fiddled with my maintainance routes. (The values for INSTANT GOLD LTD Freight Speed and LTD Loads Hauled I increased from what William used ... I would also have added Player OWNS 100% of Company if it were available, (In 1913 I had a personal debt of over $8M and my Co., owed $5M in bonds. I owned the Co., had $0 personal debt and the Co., was debt free by the end of 1915.)

IMHO the new Warehouses, as they are now are way too powerful.
1938

1942 (I set one of the delivery requirements to an impossible level ... I never could get my speed up)

I'm going to back the game up to where I just gained the final City Territory and still have spur maintainance and then play it out to test the LTD Freight Speed. I have 108 trains to reconfigure IF I want to use WAYPOINTS at the end of my spurs. Maybe next time I restart the game at year 1920 LOL.


Hans

P.S.

I'm still messing with the STATUS page layout.

Hans

[Shamough]

This is my current test game: (by using spurs I've congested a lot of the stations for my long hauls, and it caused my load count to decline by over 30k.) i'LL DROP THE LOAD COUNT REQUIREMENT FOR instant gold TO 100k. I could have upped the load count by adding more cities in another E/W route, but didn't because my current train count is 216 and I didn't want the game to become crashville..

Note: I've munged the delivery count of one of the delivery items so the game will progress past a GOLD. I'll span another pix Dec 1945.

Note my income for 1942!

Jan 1944! 2 years to go.

Game over ... note values for INSTANT GOLD. The INSTANT GOLD should happen before the deliveries gold ... about 1940.

This is what I had at the begining of 1940: CBV >= $1B, Loads hauled >= 75K, & avg Freight Speed >= 40 is reasonable for the INSTANT GOLD. Note: the deliveries are still below 200 for some items.

Comments welcome Except for my gaming name ... it's pronounced Far-thard from an old D&D game. When you're character is an OGRE people are very careful about how they address you.


Hans

[Shamough]

A V1.06 game

This game is William Sherrick's. I have made several modifications and additions that I hope meet with his aproval. All of William's files are included except his .gmp, which I replaced with my V2_1.

Please test and give me feedback.

All comments welcome.


Hans

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Edited to remove zip file.