Hello, I have MADAGASCAR ready for you beta testers, Ive tested it my self a few times so there should not be any glaring holes in this map. I need to know how balanced this map is. Starting cash, cargo etc etc. Ive spent too many hours working on this one!!!!!
Beta removed 08/14/16
*** spoilers below***
This map is intended to play with this fix-
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4014
This stops cargo from moving all over the place.
Madagascar
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Cash on Wheels
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Madagascar
Last edited by Cash on Wheels on Sat Jul 22, 2017 5:43 pm, edited 7 times in total.
Re: Madagascar Beta
Excuse my ignorance but in the text file it says:
What do you mean by high performance or entertainment mode?Please puy you computer in "high performace" or "entertainment" mode.
Hawk
Re: Madagascar Beta
Another thing about the text file. It states that CBV is the goal of this scenario, but loading the map shows no mention of CBV.
Hawk
Re: Madagascar Beta
My guess is that it refers to some laptops having different energy modes you can run them in to save the battery life. For example battery saving mode would run something on an integrated graphics card, where as high performance would use more power but it would run on the dedicated graphics card ideally giving better performance.Hawk wrote:Excuse my ignorance but in the text file it says:
What do you mean by high performance or entertainment mode?Please puy you computer in "high performace" or "entertainment" mode.
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Cash on Wheels
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Re: Madagascar Beta
Yes my ASUS has an office mode & entertainment mode. Office mode can only so much before crashing to the desktop. My entertainment mode will use all of the battery in 90 mins though.
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Cash on Wheels
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Re: Madagascar Beta
The xMadagascar is a version I did not upload. That is a verison stripped down version. Made for those with freedom in mind. Fewer events, restrictions, no stock martet to watch etc etcHawk wrote:Another thing about the text file. It states that CBV is the goal of this scenario, but loading the map shows no mention of CBV.
Re: Madagascar Beta
I don't have a laptop so that explains why I didn't know what you were talking about.
Hawk
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RulerofRails
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Re: Madagascar Beta
I find that this game is harder on laptops than one would assume. Uses lots of resources. Plugged in and full power is best bet for anything but the simplest maps on lower resolutions.
I played this map, but I didn't get a Gold medal. I had to restart a couple of times because I realized that the setup had become impossible to win (or I hit a loss event). I reached the end twice. The former, I had the Tire Port disappear as soon as I first delivered Aluminum there. I have a hunch that this might be because I delivered that first Aluminum right near the end of the year, but can't be really sure if it makes a big difference in the way the game culls unprofitable buildings. No new port appeared in the 20+ years after that. Had the power goal with a couple years to spare, but didn't hustle. Had double the Coffee goal in that time.
The second time I chose something different in the elections. The result was a tax event fired that also included a cargo price drop. However, price drop events only work if they are applied to the game. Tacking them into other events often gives strange results. Here the temporary nature of this event does have an effect because the game automatically creates an unwind event (fires when the temporary effect ends) that is meant to "un-do" this price change which does apply to the whole game. The result in my game was that I was playing the last 15 years at +60% cargo prices. If you have read much of the forum you will see us talking about the game bug that affects all increase price events to eventually cause prices to rise insanely (short term can be usable in moderation, and I believe that this map was meant to use these in this way). In my game some cargoes hit $1,600 per load, including Oil. The AEC made $23.5M in a single year from it's Oil Well! This obviously made money plentiful, the problem was that the Electric Plants were really suffering as the prices rose more and more. They were struggling to hold Coal or Oil and the best were only managing around 25GW per year at the end. I ended up with 38,404GW of power produced and 763 loads of Coffee hauled.
There are 3 ports for Coffee deliveries listed in the ledger, but I only see two on the map (where's the Antosh... one?). I have mixed feelings about the haulage fines, I tend to find them more frustrating than actually challenging (haven't seen one setup that can't be cheated in version 1.06). If one wants to avoid the fines in this game, the player must control everything that leaves those stations. If one sets up service through those places in a normal fashion the game's automatic re-hauling will award fines left, right and center.
Call it a cheat if you will (what's your opinion?), but I couldn't be bothered losing Antananarivo as a hub so I set waiting "trains to nowhere" that picked up all Autos I delivered there. Once a train left the station I retired it, taking all the Autos with it. No re-hauling happens and I didn't restrict normal cargo flow through Antananarivo. The Coffee to Oil conversion is great because this ensures that the player keeps a steady supply of Coffee going to those places. So there's great incentive to deliver Coffee even after the haulage "quota" is attained. I don't know if it would make much sense in terms of the "story", but did you think of a warehouse conversion of Autos to Uranium at the Car Dealership? (I never saw Uranium on the map or any events for the Alaotra Resovuior for that matter event though I connected there in both plays).
The port conversions are clever. I don't think I've seen ports setup quite like this before. Just going to point out that the cargo price drop events are perfectly safe to use long term. For example, an Aluminum price decrease could even up the Aluminum vs. Tires price gap. Lowered Coffee prices would even out the Coffee vs. Oil price gap. I can see that effort has been put into balancing the current conversions even though some of them bleed. So, let's just call this thinking aloud.
Don't know what would be regarded as spoilers, but can't help asking if the Queen is looking to end your game? I only looked into the editor just before posting. There's some small stuff like spelling that could be improved. If you want I can PM you what I saw. Some of the topography is quite interesting. I had trouble building some industries where I wanted if you know what I mean. Good map with some unique concepts. Well done!
I played this map, but I didn't get a Gold medal. I had to restart a couple of times because I realized that the setup had become impossible to win (or I hit a loss event). I reached the end twice. The former, I had the Tire Port disappear as soon as I first delivered Aluminum there. I have a hunch that this might be because I delivered that first Aluminum right near the end of the year, but can't be really sure if it makes a big difference in the way the game culls unprofitable buildings. No new port appeared in the 20+ years after that. Had the power goal with a couple years to spare, but didn't hustle. Had double the Coffee goal in that time.
The second time I chose something different in the elections. The result was a tax event fired that also included a cargo price drop. However, price drop events only work if they are applied to the game. Tacking them into other events often gives strange results. Here the temporary nature of this event does have an effect because the game automatically creates an unwind event (fires when the temporary effect ends) that is meant to "un-do" this price change which does apply to the whole game. The result in my game was that I was playing the last 15 years at +60% cargo prices. If you have read much of the forum you will see us talking about the game bug that affects all increase price events to eventually cause prices to rise insanely (short term can be usable in moderation, and I believe that this map was meant to use these in this way). In my game some cargoes hit $1,600 per load, including Oil. The AEC made $23.5M in a single year from it's Oil Well! This obviously made money plentiful, the problem was that the Electric Plants were really suffering as the prices rose more and more. They were struggling to hold Coal or Oil and the best were only managing around 25GW per year at the end. I ended up with 38,404GW of power produced and 763 loads of Coffee hauled.
There are 3 ports for Coffee deliveries listed in the ledger, but I only see two on the map (where's the Antosh... one?). I have mixed feelings about the haulage fines, I tend to find them more frustrating than actually challenging (haven't seen one setup that can't be cheated in version 1.06). If one wants to avoid the fines in this game, the player must control everything that leaves those stations. If one sets up service through those places in a normal fashion the game's automatic re-hauling will award fines left, right and center.
Call it a cheat if you will (what's your opinion?), but I couldn't be bothered losing Antananarivo as a hub so I set waiting "trains to nowhere" that picked up all Autos I delivered there. Once a train left the station I retired it, taking all the Autos with it. No re-hauling happens and I didn't restrict normal cargo flow through Antananarivo. The Coffee to Oil conversion is great because this ensures that the player keeps a steady supply of Coffee going to those places. So there's great incentive to deliver Coffee even after the haulage "quota" is attained. I don't know if it would make much sense in terms of the "story", but did you think of a warehouse conversion of Autos to Uranium at the Car Dealership? (I never saw Uranium on the map or any events for the Alaotra Resovuior for that matter event though I connected there in both plays).
The port conversions are clever. I don't think I've seen ports setup quite like this before. Just going to point out that the cargo price drop events are perfectly safe to use long term. For example, an Aluminum price decrease could even up the Aluminum vs. Tires price gap. Lowered Coffee prices would even out the Coffee vs. Oil price gap. I can see that effort has been put into balancing the current conversions even though some of them bleed. So, let's just call this thinking aloud.
Don't know what would be regarded as spoilers, but can't help asking if the Queen is looking to end your game? I only looked into the editor just before posting. There's some small stuff like spelling that could be improved. If you want I can PM you what I saw. Some of the topography is quite interesting. I had trouble building some industries where I wanted if you know what I mean. Good map with some unique concepts. Well done!
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Cash on Wheels
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Re: Madagascar Beta
I believe with ports I may have missed a save somewhere. The critial ports should have been pernermenty placed & renamed. Now when looking to name to cities I used google maps & some of the older maps that had the old French names. I did some renaming.
Dumping the fines for coffee sounds like the best idea. On the games I played I had 4-5 dedicated coffee trains and 600+ loads after 30 years before reasigned most of them. That objective looks inevitable.
The others would be too tempting to cheat. The power plant backhauls are easy to advoid.
Retiring the train after you deliver the cars is legal. But there is another way I did it without triggering fines or interupting cargo flow in and out of the city. Im not sure that would work if we go to the cars for urainium model.
The cars for urainum is a better plan than what I had. Though I will need to rename it from "Car Dealership" back to plain warehouse.
Dumping the fines for coffee sounds like the best idea. On the games I played I had 4-5 dedicated coffee trains and 600+ loads after 30 years before reasigned most of them. That objective looks inevitable.
The others would be too tempting to cheat. The power plant backhauls are easy to advoid.
Retiring the train after you deliver the cars is legal. But there is another way I did it without triggering fines or interupting cargo flow in and out of the city. Im not sure that would work if we go to the cars for urainium model.
The cars for urainum is a better plan than what I had. Though I will need to rename it from "Car Dealership" back to plain warehouse.
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RulerofRails
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Re: Madagascar Beta
There actually is a way to prevent most haulage cheating and provide an accurate count of loads actually hauled to a territory. This involves some math and variables, plus making an extra territory where a station can't be placed (it is destroyed as soon as it is placed). I have done a proof of concept test on it.
By subtracting the Loads hauled From a territory from the Loads hauled To a territory, we weed out the loads that are hauled WITHIN that territory, see Oilcan's example of what gets counted here: viewtopic.php?f=66&t=2426#p23524.
The main point of this method is to avoid the station overlap effect. What I am talking about here, is the cheat of using a station just outside the boundary of the territory that is counted and one just inside. Cargo can be dropped off at the station "inside", then the train goes empty to the station on the "outside" and picks up that same cargo for re-hauling over the border again. This can be repeated in an endless loop. Hiding territory boundaries helps some as the player may take some time to find the boundary.
This method is about closing the door to station overlap with an additional territory where stations are destroyed as soon as they are placed (only a $30k refund to stop exploit of free cash by building the Service Tower over and over again) or alternatively hike station build costs there enough that they will never be built (~$100M each). This territory obviously needs to be big enough to create a gap where a large station can't be placed to touch any part of the territory we are actually counting.
Here's a saved game where I mucked around a little with events to do this on an in-progress game so you can test to see how it works. Picked up the load from the port, a second from Port St. Louis, hauled them out to the Coffee Farm (showed -2 loads) then hauled them back with an additional load that actually came from the Coffee Farm.
I only wrote up the Coffee events, but the others are just mostly copy-paste with the same principles. Did a quick job on the new territory, and have the "disappearing stations" event active. Making the stations expensive is easy, just use +1000% Stations cost. Probably that's better, because the disappearing stations would probably need a visual clue on boundaries. With expensive, price is a great clue and visuals stay the same.
As far as the remaining possibility of cheating by "fishing" out of the oceans by placing stations near the coast line to capture cargo "at sea", I don't have a solution for that except for extending a similar no-build or expensive stations territory along the coasts where there are no cities.
PS. I tend to only allow myself to build stations in cities, and then only one per city as a challenge thing. With an Uranium supply, I think I would have to break that rule which obviously helps a lot if your main station is placed so that it doesn't cover the Car Delearship.
By subtracting the Loads hauled From a territory from the Loads hauled To a territory, we weed out the loads that are hauled WITHIN that territory, see Oilcan's example of what gets counted here: viewtopic.php?f=66&t=2426#p23524.
The main point of this method is to avoid the station overlap effect. What I am talking about here, is the cheat of using a station just outside the boundary of the territory that is counted and one just inside. Cargo can be dropped off at the station "inside", then the train goes empty to the station on the "outside" and picks up that same cargo for re-hauling over the border again. This can be repeated in an endless loop. Hiding territory boundaries helps some as the player may take some time to find the boundary.
This method is about closing the door to station overlap with an additional territory where stations are destroyed as soon as they are placed (only a $30k refund to stop exploit of free cash by building the Service Tower over and over again) or alternatively hike station build costs there enough that they will never be built (~$100M each). This territory obviously needs to be big enough to create a gap where a large station can't be placed to touch any part of the territory we are actually counting.
Here's a saved game where I mucked around a little with events to do this on an in-progress game so you can test to see how it works. Picked up the load from the port, a second from Port St. Louis, hauled them out to the Coffee Farm (showed -2 loads) then hauled them back with an additional load that actually came from the Coffee Farm.
I only wrote up the Coffee events, but the others are just mostly copy-paste with the same principles. Did a quick job on the new territory, and have the "disappearing stations" event active. Making the stations expensive is easy, just use +1000% Stations cost. Probably that's better, because the disappearing stations would probably need a visual clue on boundaries. With expensive, price is a great clue and visuals stay the same.
Madagascar No Cheat Scheme.zip- (3.16 MiB) Downloaded 282 times
As far as the remaining possibility of cheating by "fishing" out of the oceans by placing stations near the coast line to capture cargo "at sea", I don't have a solution for that except for extending a similar no-build or expensive stations territory along the coasts where there are no cities.
PS. I tend to only allow myself to build stations in cities, and then only one per city as a challenge thing. With an Uranium supply, I think I would have to break that rule which obviously helps a lot if your main station is placed so that it doesn't cover the Car Delearship.
Re: Madagascar Beta
What Loco's does one use in Madagascar. The only trains I have seen in Madagascar is of the narrow gauge track.
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Cash on Wheels
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Re: Madagascar Beta
Does anyone want to create this for the add on section?AT41B wrote:What Loco's does one use in Madagascar. The only trains I have seen in Madagascar is of the narrow gauge track.
https://www.google.com/search?q=madagas ... gB#mhpiv=5
As a combimed passenger car & locomotive?
I didn't think so!
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Cash on Wheels
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Re: Madagascar Beta
I forgot, cars for urainium conversion would give the player a source of urainium on the map. yellow cake only comes after an event is triggerd, Yes I have modified how YC arrives.
I have removed the fines backhauling the easy to find loads (steel, lumber, & coffee)
That coffee real count model will be used elsewhere in the game.
The issue with using the too-minus-from car count is that it punishes the few innocent loads that can leave Antananarivio on a profit. So I have bumped up the amount of cars that must leave before the punishment kicks in.
I have removed the fines backhauling the easy to find loads (steel, lumber, & coffee)
That coffee real count model will be used elsewhere in the game.
The issue with using the too-minus-from car count is that it punishes the few innocent loads that can leave Antananarivio on a profit. So I have bumped up the amount of cars that must leave before the punishment kicks in.
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RulerofRails
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Re: Madagascar Beta
First play, most of my fines came from hauling Coffee from Port St. Louis to Antisiranana. There was no port at Port St. Louis until the latter part of the game. I had setup a train to take a load or two of Coffee from Port St. Louis (custom consist for force load) to capture the natural flow of Coffee from the close farm. The same train had a consist of 50% Express/50% Oil for the return trip. That was the only train that was allowed to leave Antananarivo with freight cars. I wasn't looking in the events at that point and after half a dozen or so fines I figured out what was happening.
This haul is a WITHIN the territory count. As Oilcan's illustration shows, the WITHIN count swells both the TO and FROM numbers by the same amount. This is a bogus amount. It gives a bluff count on the haulage goal and also makes it easier to hit the limit of the fine. This is naturally part of the game. That model is a workaround for that. Not sure how to get an accurate "FROM" count which would be nice for the fines.
Coffee is also very likely to be "innocently" hauled from Toamasina if traffic isn't controlled. Especially if one connects north along the coast.
One last thing, I mentioned it really obscurely (hopefully it's not a spoiler), but the first scam is subtracting cash from all companies including the MCC. The MCC takes out a bond, goes bankrupt, and eventually you lose the game from no fault of your own.
This haul is a WITHIN the territory count. As Oilcan's illustration shows, the WITHIN count swells both the TO and FROM numbers by the same amount. This is a bogus amount. It gives a bluff count on the haulage goal and also makes it easier to hit the limit of the fine. This is naturally part of the game. That model is a workaround for that. Not sure how to get an accurate "FROM" count which would be nice for the fines.
In my game, if I didn't control cargo flow/use the trick I did to dispose of the cars "safely", almost all loads of cars would leave again on a profit. I must run more trains than you do. About half were supply trains leaving with mostly dedicated consist, but I had 32 trains that stopped in Antananarivo even though I didn't reach full Coal production. I worked out why. What I feel is a natural cover-the-city/catch-cargo for the coal mines is outside the proper area. Maybe this is on purpose. If I had looked in the editor while playing I would have corrected this immediately.Cash on Wheels wrote:. . . the few innocent loads that can leave Antananarivio on a profit.
Coffee is also very likely to be "innocently" hauled from Toamasina if traffic isn't controlled. Especially if one connects north along the coast.
One last thing, I mentioned it really obscurely (hopefully it's not a spoiler), but the first scam is subtracting cash from all companies including the MCC. The MCC takes out a bond, goes bankrupt, and eventually you lose the game from no fault of your own.
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Cash on Wheels
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Re: Madagascar Beta
Mostly done, I've just done some modifying & prettifying the revised Map.
Changes:
Modified events & dialogs to make objectives more transparent
Reduced building density in cities and regions
Reduced some output for mines.
Adjusted Punishment for cheesing objective loads
Added a >$1 amount of PNW for gold.
GOLD MEDAL reachable when playing on EXPERT.
Added permanent PORTs, and another tiny source for tires.
****REMOVED to page 3****
Changes:
Modified events & dialogs to make objectives more transparent
Reduced building density in cities and regions
Reduced some output for mines.
Adjusted Punishment for cheesing objective loads
Added a >$1 amount of PNW for gold.
GOLD MEDAL reachable when playing on EXPERT.
Added permanent PORTs, and another tiny source for tires.
****REMOVED to page 3****
Last edited by Cash on Wheels on Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Cash on Wheels
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Re: Madagascar Beta
12.5 MB to high. It werid how I make a few adjustment & it jumps 6MBs!
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RulerofRails
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Re: Madagascar Beta
I am unable to do anything with that zip file, so hopefully the bloat is just down to a corrupted zip.
Re: Madagascar Beta
I can confirm. It won't open for me either.RulerofRails wrote:I am unable to do anything with that zip file...
Hawk
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Wolverine@MSU
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Re: Madagascar Beta
Won't open for me either. Try rezipping/uploading.