Madagascar

[Hawk]

In the future, instead of deleting the whole post, just delete the attachment, assuming that you're deleting the posts because the attachment is still bad.

[Cash on Wheels]

Beta removed.

[Hawk]

It unzipped OK!

[Cash on Wheels]

If you guys are still getting fined for the coffee & carz let me know.

[RulerofRails]

Just finished the latest version. As far as the fines for hauling Coffee and Autos, because I have looked into the editor to study the events and boundaries some I was never in risk of triggering those again. I pretty much said this already: I feel it would be courteous to the player to let him know not to haul any Coffee between Port St. Louis and Antisiranana.

This time I had a seed with few farms. I had one Coffee farm on the map at the start. In light of this I developed differently, less aggressively. I also used only steam engines. I mainly do this for extra challenge, but some players don't play maps without any steam engines. On this map, there is no steam engine available from 1967-1981. I took the liberty of extending the Class A1's life through this period. If you want to do this, setup an event to set the Class A1 availability to TRUE using the trigger of beginning of the year following the engine's normal retirement date. For the Class A1, this event is setup to check at the beginning of 1967.

Bugs I found (didn't record spelling stuff):
Event "MCC m" will cause a normal play to become a loss. The MCC is already dissolved before it stops checking. Probably the last date to check should be 197509.
Event "cncrete ev" will give multiple fines in a year even if there is only one offending train. Also, this fine doesn't end after the power park is built.
Event "kcc done g4t5" isn't setting Company Variable 3 to 6. Needs to apply effects "to the company\territory for which the condition is true."

[Cash on Wheels]

Good stuff.

I was wondering y the ledger would not get rid of the event when it was finished!! Before my next (and last) go around on this map I will give Port St. Louis the big bulldozer!! then Double the demand for at the remaining port.
I discovered that the dude that heads the MCC will take a buyout if you offer it instantly from the start. Then he takes that money and starts another 'business.' So the buyout trigger witch should kick in after the first year will not fire because there are still 3 comps instead of two. So no MCC the entire game! So I wrote another loss event to test for company ID#5.

Any others have comments?! Do you hate the twist i did with gold medal? Are all events firing?

I had 62,000 GWs power, 109 cars & 400 coffee at the end of my last game on expert.


Big boy 1972, challenger 1983..........I did that on purpose.......

[RulerofRails]

With Port St. Louis gone, the Coffee fines wont blind-side people.

Yeah, the instant buy-out tactic works in most maps. The event you plan will take care of people who try this tactic on your map.

I am not sure if I would get the connection for Coal right if I hadn't looked in the editor as that territory is quite small. I mentioned that before. Because I now know where to place my station, I could complete the rest of the story-line so that was more fun this time. Last time I had the notice for the haul come up, but I was never credited. BTW, I had no problem with the YTD requirement on this one.

This time I had 150 loads of Autos, but finished up Coffee at about the same time as the electricity (4 or so years to spare). Part of the reason for this was the seeding I started with which only had one Coffee farm. Of course, the others filled in within the first 10 years or so, so this isn't a real problem. It just meant that I went more industrial. This was necessitated by higher transport costs with the Class A1 steam engine I was using compared to Diesel and Electric (on top of extra fuel and maintenance, water stops reduce efficiency by 20% or more).

I was confused by the wording, if I receive offers of personal cash I will tend to turn them down. I had to re-do a little when realizing that the personal cash wasn't an option (kick-back) but rather a requirement for the story to progress.

I took the twist as the signal that mergers were allowed. I used the cash for stock buybacks. I built the Nuke plant with my original company. Soon I merged for about the same cost as there was cash remaining.

I always play on expert. Any of my comments are about that level, but you probably knew that already. Here's a link to a post with a screenshot comparing the fuel costs for some of these engines: viewtopic.php?p=41157#p41157. Gumboots and I investigated fuel costs in some detail about 6 months or so ago. The Big Boy and Challenger are atrociously expensive to run. Reason: they were given huge weights in the game. The way that the game handles "weight" isn't realistic at all. The map is probably winnable the way it is, but not many enjoy trying to find a niche run or two for the Big Boy and Challenger to be profitable on during the 15 years when they are the only option.

PS. The fuel cost problems are fixable. Biggest part would be to reduce the engine and tender weights in the .car files. Probably be good to edit the .lco file as well. Boost reliability and maybe tweak other settings. Spreadsheets and more info in some threads in the Rollingstock section.

[Cash on Wheels]

I flopped badly on my attempt last week, I had 67 cars, 300 coffees (thanks to the ICEs) and only 38,000gw. The furnaces started acting up so I could not issue that many bonds. Then after force feeding it more rock the furnace returned to normal. By then it was to late, my intrest rates climbed to 14%! Needless to say I spent the next 20 years in front of the Bankruptcy Judge.
The AEC does not have access to its own property! Need to fix that. Those evil handouts your thinking of need to be reduced also. Dispite all of my financial troubles above, I was still able to margin buy the reqiured stock to control both companies.
The worst part is I misplaced my correction notes! So I need to do another playthough tonight.

[Hawk]

This map is now available in the archives.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/r ... Madagascar

[Wolverine@MSU]

I finally got around to trying this one (downloaded from Archive) and got a big surprise when it came time to develop the Nuclear part for electricity production. Throughout the game I had been issuing 2 rounds of stock at the beginning of every year to generate cash for expansion. I built the station in the For Sale by AEC territory and dutifully hauled all the stuff that was needed (and more). Then the instructions said to take control of AEC, but at that point I only owned 10% of the stock in my company, so a takeover of AEC chairmanship was out of the question because I would never have been able to get back to being chairman of my original company. I had bought >50% share in AEC so I took it over, built a couple Nukes with my own money, but Uranium failed to appear on the map even after several years. Looking at the events I see why: in the Conditions, the player has to control AEC (i.e. be Chairman) for the event to fire. A couple of drawbacks with this method: you have to be able to reassume Chairmanship of your original company after the event triggers, and, at least for some finite amount of time, you have to turn over control of your own company to the AI. Am I seeing this right? If so, it would be useful to have said something early in the game (Dialog or something) to alert the player that he will need to resign and reassume chairmanship of his company at some point, so the player doesn't dig themselves into a hole like I did. I've been able to easily make the coffee haul requirement and am well on my way to making the auto hauling requirement, but I don't think the electricity generation quota is attainable without the Nuclear Power Plants. It's a nice playable map, but I don't know if I want to start back at Day 1 so I can get (and keep) majority ownership in my company.

[RayofSunshine]

Well MSU,
Some user scenarios creators do some time "throw a curve" at times for a challenge. NOW, as to our comment on starting at beginning "again", I usually will use a "step" version, usually for each "update" of either a completed challenge, or setting up a "system" to start hauling a specific commodity in order to get a quota or revenue. That way I can "back track" to make corrections of which were not indicated later in play

Everyone seems to have a way of "their" method, but I find mine to be satisfactory for my level of play.

[Cash on Wheels]

I finally got around to trying this one........

whew. I though you uncovered a huge bug in this game. At the time I was unaware how advanced RoR was at this game. So it is not an one easy. I must have tested this game at least 20 times! RoR also tested this one extensively. I have not touched this one scense I released Madagascar to the acrhives!

[Wolverine@MSU]

I did go back and restart keeping in mind that I needed to retain control of my company. I'm most of the way through it (in the 1990's) and although I made the coffee and autos deliveries I probably won't make the electricity generation quota. I built 2 nukes next to the uranium supply depot, and while they were cranking out over 1,000 GW/yr and using all 12 uraniums (6/yr each) during the Boom, when the economy went to Normal, they were eeking out barely 400 GW/yr each. I also built 3 regular electric stations there and shipped coal by the carloads, saturating the area with coal, but each one was only generating <50 GW/yr.

I also noticed that in the year rollover from Dec. 1989 to Jan. 1990 that my company cash went from about $3.8M to a negative ~$1.5M. I searched through the events to see what might be causing this, but couldn't come up with any smoking gun. I did however uncover a few anomolies in the events. For instance when the bauxite mine is connected, there is an event to increase production, but it's chemical production, not bauxite production that's increased. Also, there was a check on back-hauling concrete (I think), but the event was checking for electronics. I was also getting back-hauling fines for coffee and autos well after the quotas were met.

[RulerofRails]

I built 2 nukes next to the uranium supply depot, and while they were cranking out over 1,000 GW/yr and using all 12 uraniums (6/yr each) during the Boom, when the economy went to Normal, they were eeking out barely 400 GW/yr each. I also built 3 regular electric stations there and shipped coal by the carloads, saturating the area with coal, but each one was only generating <50 GW/yr.

That's strange. I never had this problem with the Nuke plants. They might be more sensitive to price/economy than I realized. I built only one originally, only upgrading it once it had a large enough stack that this wouldn't hike local price too much. During all this time I was shipping in all the Machinery I could and enough Coal to keep the Uranium Warehouse as fully supplied as possible. It upgraded after some 6-7 years, allowing me to build a second Nuke Plant.

Power Plant output is quite dependent on price of the input. Also, it's important to use the Oil coming from the Coffee exchange at the ports, as with two inputs Power Plants produce a fair bit more Electricity. But I'm sure you know that.

I did however uncover a few anomolies in the events. For instance when the bauxite mine is connected, there is an event to increase production, but it's chemical production, not bauxite production that's increased. Also, there was a check on back-hauling concrete (I think), but the event was checking for electronics.

These anomalies were not present in the versions I tested. I didn't test the version that was shipped as final. Checked that now and, yes the errors are there.

In the version I tested, the player would lose the game if more than 9 Auto loads were counted as leaving Antananarivo. I can see the event "carz100 c1t1" which as the name suggests sets Company Variable 1 to "1" which disables the current fine (presents in the final version). Or did you find a conflict with Company Variable 1 that causes this to fail? This was working correctly in the version I tested.

The Coffee fines were always permanent. I complained about the setup of this event in the first beta, and it's considerably less sensitive now.

As to the switching companies thing, well it's no secret that I don't play this way in a regular game. Therefore I don't feel I have the expertise to make a comment about the way it should be done. It made sense to me that an event would have to check for my chairmanship of the AEC so I couldn't just do the whole procedure on-pause.

Also, I have said before that I don't do the stock-issuing as a general practice (sometimes do it once at the start of the game) and it's a regular theme in my games to maintain a 50%+ ownership stake in my companies even if it is not required for the goals. Therefore, I didn't feel that this was a "trap." Although in terms of what could go wrong, I can see how it could be thought of as such.

In trying to determine how far an engine may travel on average per year, I came to the conclusion that this figure varies based on the way an individual player sets up his rail lines. What I am saying is that my testing efforts as to what is acceptable are biased in some cases by my play-style. So hopefully nobody assumes that just cause I try to test something that everything is ok.

[Cash on Wheels]

Wonderful, it looks like my final patch did not successfully save. So I need to do a revision.

Free AEC cash needs to be looked at agian, tires will be less annoying. Plus I've soured on the use of fines. So the power plant fines will go away

[Cash on Wheels]

I built 2 nukes next to the uranium supply depot, and while they were cranking out over 1,000 GW/yr and using all 12 uraniums (6/yr each) during the Boom, when the economy went to Normal, they were eeking out barely 400 GW/yr each. I also built 3 regular electric stations there and shipped coal by the carloads, saturating the area with coal, but each one was only generating <50 GW/yr.

That's strange. I never had this problem with the Nuke plants. They might be more sensitive to price/economy than I realized. I built only one originally, only upgrading it once it had a large enough stack that this wouldn't hike local price too much. During all this time I was shipping in all the Machinery I could and enough Coal to keep the Uranium Warehouse as fully supplied as possible. It upgraded after some 6-7 years, allowing me to build a second Nuke Plant.

Power Plant output is quite dependent on price of the input. Also, it's important to use the Oil coming from the Coffee exchange at the ports, as with two inputs Power Plants produce a fair bit more Electricity. But I'm sure you know that.

I did however uncover a few anomolies in the events. For instance when the bauxite mine is connected, there is an event to increase production, but it's chemical production, not bauxite production that's increased. Also, there was a check on back-hauling concrete (I think), but the event was checking for electronics.

These anomalies were not present in the versions I tested. I didn't test the version that was shipped as final. Checked that now and, yes the errors are there.

In the version I tested, the player would lose the game if more than 9 Auto loads were counted as leaving Antananarivo. I can see the event "carz100 c1t1" which as the name suggests sets Company Variable 1 to "1" which disables the current fine (presents in the final version). Or did you find a conflict with Company Variable 1 that causes this to fail? This was working correctly in the version I tested.

The Coffee fines were always permanent. I complained about the setup of this event in the first beta, and it's considerably less sensitive now.

As to the switching companies thing, well it's no secret that I don't play this way in a regular game. Therefore I don't feel I have the expertise to make a comment about the way it should be done. It made sense to me that an event would have to check for my chairmanship of the AEC so I couldn't just do the whole procedure on-pause.

Also, I have said before that I don't do the stock-issuing as a general practice (sometimes do it once at the start of the game) and it's a regular theme in my games to maintain a 50%+ ownership stake in my companies even if it is not required for the goals. Therefore, I didn't feel that this was a "trap." Although in terms of what could go wrong, I can see how it could be thought of as such.

In trying to determine how far an engine may travel on average per year, I came to the conclusion that this figure varies based on the way an individual player sets up his rail lines. What I am saying is that my testing efforts as to what is acceptable are biased in some cases by my play-style. So hopefully nobody assumes that just cause I try to test something that everything is ok.

I was fooling around with cargos about the same time I submitted this map, this was fixed but apparently it did not get saved..... thats y everything was outta wack.

@w@msu 15% of the time the game will not spawn both uranium warehouses like it should. If you upgrade both NNPs, one of the two WHs will upgrade itself. In my last game I had 3 NPPs, (2 upgraded) and I built 2 additional upgraded EPs on that same spot. Hence the need for the new KCC coal shaft eailer in the game.

[low_grade]

Okay, I've tried this one 6 or 7 times now, a few times running all the way into the late 1980s, and I just can't start fast enough to get anywhere near a medal on Expert. Once I went electric for the great cheap VL80-T, other times I use the diesels, mainly running auto consists. The last several tries I've also focused on getting majority ownership early, which has slowed things down with stock buybacks and starting with less than the $3M in investor cash (taking $2.4M so I can get a Lumber Mill in Antananarivo and a Textile Mill in Beloha after restarting until I get a good seed for them.) As quick as I can a Concrete Plant in Ranohira. With so much cargo tracks get busy so I eventually double track everything. On my best tries I'm earning $7M in 1971 while cargo prices are inflated, then down to less than $2M in the years after 1972. Not enough to keep laying track and to build the necessary industries before 1982, and by then it's too late. My first try I got autos going but then I realized I'd need majority share in my company and had to restart, haven't gotten autos going since. My last try I had 18 locos going as of 1988, and had only completed the route from Beloha to Antananarivo, down to Toamasina, and back down the coast to Tolanaro. Never got to the Bauxite or Chemicals, let alone Oil.

Do I need to control price gradients? I hate micro-managing but if it's only 20-30 trains that's doable. More industry? On this last run I've got the Textile and Lumber Mill I started with, the Concrete Plant, another Lumber Mill and Paper Mill in Fianarantosa, A couple Furniture Factories and a T&D in Konrad's, Steel Mill in Masomeloka (also built a Fertilizer Factory there and sold it off to help the farms to the south.) Plus an extra Furnace in Beloha and a Meat Packing Plant in Adabozato.

Any suggestions??? I feel like maybe building up really fast to take advantage of the crazy prices in 1970-1972 somehow may be the best bet, anybody get to over $10M in profits in those years?

[RulerofRails]

My strategies on this map always involved starting with rails. In truth it was a mix because I built a Distillery also, but more money went on rails. Granted the map was still in beta phase, so it may not be representative of the current version.

In terms of cargo available, the plain on the upper western coast is probably the most reliable. However, the quarries can give you a decent resource stream. There is the opportunity to even build a second Furnace and even upgrade it (if the original isn't auto-upgraded first). In fact I tend to do that to keep price high enough for good production of Rock. Then go for the Coal which can also be a good earner. Then head for the high cargo density area on the upper western coast, which conveniently ties in with Bauxite.

I rely on margin buying to get majority ownership. I certainly don't sacrifice growth for that. This could put you behind throughout the rest of the game. I didn't check, but is there a time limit on when you need majority ownership? I think the big goals are electric output and the Coffee hauls. These are sort of "wait" goals, perhaps you can expand fast and then when you are "waiting" tackle the ownership problem (as long as you get at least 30% near the start of the game).

I do manage prices of Rock, Coal, Bauxite, etc. on the map, but I don't call it micro-managing trains. Some of it is done on the industry side (for example a new Electric Plant), some is done with trains. I'm definitely not pausing the game to endlessly manipulate routes (I had about 80 Red Devils on my last play). An example of what I might do: trains carrying Coal may ship to one destination for some months or years. When I have access to a fresh full-price demand (for example my tracks reach the Coal->Iron port), I will try to satisfy the new demand in such a way that the current demand will be recovering. So trains will ship from the current demand to the new demand at better preference than from the source to the new demand. After all the fuel cost is likely to be less, and revenue is likely only slightly lower. It's maybe a little simplified, but maybe it makes sense?

PS.
My saved game is on the other computer, so I can't give exact figures on the revenue right now.

[Cash on Wheels]

Okay, I've tried this one 6 or 7 times now, a few times running all ...

I build an upgraded concrete plant @ the start. Then ran a shortline between the quarry & Behola. Big $$$. Sometime later I build a new line from the coal mine to Antananarivo to Tosamina. Then add a steel mill somewhere on the map.For all of this I use bonds, and its done before the 1961ish resseion.

[low_grade]

Well things went much better this last time. Fell well short of the coffee hauling goal, just 190 loads. I even put some effort into keeping the plantations supplied with fertilizer and tried to haul the coffee directly to the ports, though a fair bit did get hauled around the map. 546 coffee generated total, so getting gold would have meant delivering 60% of those loads to one of the two ports.... 45GW electricity generated, so almost had that, and 113 autos delivered.

Switching routes rather than adding more trains when coal got saturated in the Capital and I connected down the hill to Toamasina saved a bit of money, and making the connections separately instead of trying to have all connected rail also improved early profitability. Started with the Concrete Plant next to the furnace rather than trying for a 3-city combination by placing it in Ranohira, and then focusing the first years on developing the two-town route from the Quarry to Beloha, building another furnace and a textile mill in Beloha by 1957, then in 1959 another Concrete Plant in Beloha and Lumber mills in Fianarantosa (now had 5 nearby logging camps) and the Capital (which shortly after lost one of its 3...) Paper mill in Fianarantosa in 1960, make that connection now that concrete is saturated and price gradients are steep, and connect Konrad's with the Capital. Furniture factory in Renohira in 1961. Run down to Toamasino in 1963, Steel Mill in 1964.

From there the pace was set, fairly easily connected most of the rest of the map in a Recession after a few years of $8M-$11M profit in 1969-1972, and stayed profitable throughout. Managed to get half+1 ownership of both companies in good time without coming close to a broker's call. I may go back to an early-ish save and try again for a better ending, but I'm discouraged by the Coffee...

Sooo many combinations to connect on this map it was hard to keep track of everything, lol! Had a hard time getting he port to produce tires since there was no profit in it... And having to build something in Konrad's to demand machinery and steel is a bit annoying, but I even upgraded the T&D I built there eventually, since a steady supply of steel was guaranteed by the trains hauling coal to the Steel Mill. Same thing with the Nuclear Park, had to build (expensive) furniture factory and T&D to crate demand so I could meet the hauling goals...

Oh, and I couldn't figure out why, but something like $10M was taken from my company at the start of 1992.