New Tasmanian Goverment Railways map for RRT3-v1.06

[arop]

This is my latest map. It's covering the Australian Island Tasmania, that once had a large narrow gauge railway system. -Nowadays not very much is longer in commerceal use. Any comments, advice or suggestions are, as always, welcome

[Gumboots]

If I get around to installing 1.06 soon I'll take a look at it.

[Sugus]

arop, be aware that there is already a scenario called "Tasmania" by Paulymorph.
I think it would be nice if you could slightly rename your (anyway welcomed) new creation.

[Hawk]

arop, be aware that there is already a scenario called "Tasmania" by Paulymorph.
I think it would be nice if you could slightly rename your (anyway welcomed) new creation.

Maybe Tasmania 1890

[arop]

I think I'll rename the 1.0 version to "Tasmanian Goverment Railways" The fact is, that in the sparesly populated Tasmania, most privately owned railways never became very profitable, and either closed early or became nationalized when their economy collapsed. By the way: I know the other map, but not to critizize too much: His Tasmania map is out of shape. I think the Author has forgotten to compensize for the satelite angle, example: Vertical X=0.58, horizontal Y= 0.37.

[Gumboots]

Y'know if I'd known you wanted a Tassie map I could have given you a blank one already made up. I had already merged the DEM's, corrected the projection for latitude/longitude distances (so east-west miles matched north/south miles) and turned it into a .gmp with Google Earth satellite image overlay for textures.

[arop]

The 1.0 version has now been submitted to the archives .

[Hawk]

It's now available.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/rt3_australia.htm

[Gumboots]

Just took a look at this, now that I have 1.06, but haven't played it yet. There's a funny bit in the blurbs at the start about how Tasmania had some Garratts for heavy duties, and in this scenario they are represented by the N&W Y6 Mallet.

The biggest Garratts that ever ran in Tasmania were the Australian Standard Garratts, which had an all up weight of 120 tons and a tractive effort of around 34,000 lbs.

The N&W Y6 weighed almost 280 tons without the tender, and about 450 tons complete, with a tractive effort of 166,000 lbs. So, about 4 times the weight of the ASG and 5 times the tractive effort.

A more comparable locomotive, in terms of weight and power, would be something like a basic LNER V2.

[arop]

I know the N&W class A is too big to substitute the Tasmanian Garrath, but at the moment it's the only reasonable articulated loco to represent it until your Garrath is ready to replace it. Many of the locos in the game are too big, while narrow gauge locos were somewhat scaled down compared with their standard gauge sisters. About the locopack V2 (and 2-6-2 Prarie), I can simply say, it's too ugly and unfinished to be used when building my maps, though i miss a 2-6-2 in this game.

[Gumboots]

Without meaning to be rude to whoever made it, I do agree that the 1.06 V2 is a bit of a mess, which is rather a pity since in real life it's such an elegant locomotive.

I'll see how I feel after I get this Berkshire finished. It'll work, but I probably wont really be satisfied with it. Working out how to fit the Garratt together is quite complex. I may tackle a simpler but nice locomotive first.

[Gumboots]

Just got around to playing this scenario. There's a minor bug with the medal conditions. You have 100 PNW and 500 LIP requirements for Gold listed in the briefing, but the code in the editor events sets Gold at 75 and 400, the same as Silver. I know this because I just got Gold after hitting 400 LIP, so I checked the coding.

Also, there are a couple of typos here and there in newspapers, town names, etc, if you can be bothered fixing them. An obvious one (to an Australian) is the town along the coast from Launceston. It's supposed to be called "Burnie".

Anyway, it's quite an easy going and low stress scenario. I had all towns hooked up about 1890, and by late 1907 I was trying to find new things to buy, and trying to think of new things to build. I'd already laid rail everywhere it was worth laying and double tracked the lot. If the Gold had been set at 100/500 I probably would have got it by the end of 1910, since I already owned over half the company with PNW over 100, and industry profits had been consistently over 26/year for the last five years.

I'm not sure it needs a 1940 end year. My 2c is that perhaps somwhere in the 1910-1920 range would suit it. Maybe 1914, to coincide with the start of the war.

[Hawk]

You have to keep in mind us mediocre players.

[Gumboots]

That's why I said maybe 1914 instead of 1910.

[arop]

To Gumboats. Maybe you could help me to mention which misspellings you have found (English isn't my native langue, I'm Danish). Concerning the difficulty level: Super Experts could make their own version of a map by changing the win conditions themselves, -it's fairly easy to do so. We are some players. who likes to build. buy industries, to run a railway system and have fun, -winning the game (by all means) comes second for some players. Sometimes I even give myself some time to take a ride on some of the trains by clicking on them to enjoy the ride, -scenic RRT3 landscapes can be found in many maps.

[Gumboots]

I can't remember all the typos. When I play it again I'll try to remember to make a note of them as they come up.

Here's an idea: you could make the time limit tighter as the difficulty level goes up. So say 1940 for Normal/Medium, 1928 or 29 for Hard (in before the Crash), and 1917 or 18 for Expert (finished before silly people start shooting at things).

[arop]

I'll take a look at your suggestion about changing the difficulty levels, when Building my NeXT map, but I am not yet sure if it's possible to do it in in the editor.

[Hawk]

I think the way you set events based on the players difficulty level choice is to create a trigger condition of Game difficulty level of 1, 2, 3, or 4.

1 = Easy
2 = Medium
3 = Hard
4 = Expert

Then set Effect of a Game variable.
Then create a new event using whichever game variable you use for a difficulty level and an effect for whatever you want that to be.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Take a look at the "Drums of War" scenario set in Africa. Haulage requirements of Weapons to Zanzibar to quell the uprising is linked to difficulty level.

[Gumboots]

Ok, got you a list of typos, Arop. I know it's easy to miss things in among all the coding, even if English is your first language, so this isn't meant as a criticism. I may still have missed some myself, but here's a list if you want to take a look.

----------------------------------------

TOWN NAMES:

1/ The town on the north coast should be "Burnie", not Burney".

2/ "Roland" should really be "Mount Roland".

3/ Cannot find Toronna anywhere, but nobody will notice.

4/ If you want a town on Macquarie Harbour, southeast of Strahan, Farm Cove might be a better choice than Pillinger.
The only Pillinger in the general area is Mount Pillinger, which is some distance north and inland.

5/ "Dunally" should be "Dunalley".

-------------------------

EVENTS:

1/ Scenario adjustments - Should read "All cities except Bothwell and Dunalley once had a railway connection." Also, there is no event to make the N&W Mallet available, and it isn't checked in the locomotive list, so it's not playable anyway. Suggest removing it from the event text.

2/ 1876 Last Aborigine - this one is a bit of a cultural and political minefield in Tasmania, and Australia in general.

Although it is true that Truganini was the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine, there have always been mixed blood people around who were raised as Aborigines, and who were regarded and treated as Aborigines by the non-Aboriginal population.

These people tend to get annoyed if anyone tries to tell them they aren't really Aborigines. It's a bit like trying to tell African Americans that they're just ordinary Americans because they aren't all full-blooded Africans, if you see what I mean.

So, although it is true and fine to have an event about Truganini's death (and the circumstances were pretty bad, if you want to have some history added) I would refrain from calling her the last of her people.

3/ 1888 Launcheston - needs to lose the "h" from the text.

4/ 1890 University - Queen's Domain really should have the apostrophe.

5/ 1892 the air brake - Better wording would be something like "You now have the option to install the Westinghouse automatic air brake system on all your trains."

6/ 1893 Hobart tram - Should be "builds" instead of just "build".

7/ 1899 Boer War - Should be "leave" instead of "leeve".

8/ 1912 Mount Lyell - "Fire in the North Mt. Lyell mine in a shaft 700 ft below level on October 12th, as 170 miners were working underground in six levels." would be better.

Over here we'd usually say "on six levels" rather than "in six levels", but that's getting really picky so don't worry about it. It may be a regional variation in English anyway.

9/ 1914 World War I (1) - Assassinated has four s's, and Sarajevo is usually spelled with a v.

10/ 1918 peace - A very minor point, but things are usually referred to as being "in a shambles" rather than just "in shambles".

11/ 1922 Miena Dam - The power station's name is actually "Waddamana".

12/ Events "1934 new flight route" and "1938 new bridge" have the same dialogue text.