Bermuda Triangle for 1.06!

[Cash on Wheels]

My Second release is ready 4 beta. This one covers the Florida/Caribbean area. Starts 2020 in Georiga and work your way down to Cuba. Then you find out Castro is still in charge. So you need to build in Florida before gaining your passport! No suspension bridges allowed.

***spoilers below****

BETA removed, Map renamed from Caribbean to Bermuda Triangle & submitted to archives.

[Stoneman]

Thank you for all of your work on the second game.

I have downloaded it and that worked fine. Now, I am playing it but, so far, I am still in GA and FL.

The holiday weekend is in conflict with my Railroading!

I am looking forward to hours of fun with your project.

Thanks again. Ed

[RulerofRails]

Gave this a test run. Took the buyout help. Used my stock as bait and then a short-sell cascade to shake Castro out of majority control. Nice concepts and challenges in the scenario, and utilizes the ports well.

I saw a good handful of spelling mistakes, even some names on the map: "Jamica" and "Putro Rico". Happy to proof-read the event text if you like, as long as this is still the current version. Also, the ledger has different levels of Paper haulage for Gold and Silver than what the briefing says.

Is it intended that I needed to use a little bridge building trick (center over the island) to avoid a suspension bridge out to Nueva Gerona? Also what is the city named "aaa" far out in the Atlantic for? On my play I dozed an Electric Plant to facilitate Coal passage, not sure if that's a "cheat".

Something that may not be ideal: if the Key West port is flattened, as it was for me, then it's a lot harder to send Coal south. I had already shipped 50 or so loads south at that point, so I still made it. Trip time from Miami is longer perhaps 2-3? extra years making this task more difficult for any players who haven't started on it yet.

I played with 3 AI chairmen. The third "competing" one's performance was abysmal. I waited until his company went bankrupt, then merged. Also, why are the AI chairmen allowed then allowed to start new companies? They only have rights to GA and Cuba. The chances that there are two free cities to allow them to lay any track are very low.

ETA: I played this with your modded 1.06 exe that has 1.05's price islands reinstated. For that it may matter that Paper haulage at the medal (beginning of 2053) was 3,374. This seed wasn't initially (filled in with time as most seeding differences are equalized) very good for Paper and I didn't push it too much (70 trains), with little effort/expansion designed to increase Paper haulage in the early years.

[Stoneman]

Well, I had fun with this but was clearly not as smart as the earlier poster.

I missed the whole part of having to buy out the other two railroads and never discovered how once does shipping in this game. A good idea, but I still dont know how to do it.

I got as far as connecting all of FL AL and GA.

Soon after I got to Key West, I was hit by the very lengthy depression and hurricane. The hurricane knocked out everything south of Homestead, including all of my STONE bridges. Gee, I thot that preferring stone over wood would be a good idea. Hmmm. (In reality, almost all of Flagler's cement bridges still exist today, the 1935 Hurricane notwithstanding!).

Anyway, I had hardly made it to Key West when the hurricane hit so if one is supposed to learn about shipping after getting to Key West, I guess I was just not lucky! I am still wondering how one does shipping in RRT3!

I survived the depression and hurricane, although only barely, but I was finally done in by the recession which followed the good conditions which followed the depression, briefly. Sigh.

The earlier poster had a strategy for dealing with Castro, involving stock sales strategies. I did not understand what he meant, but he is clearly on a much higher plane than I. Whenever I try this stuff I usually end up bankrupt. Ha!

There were a number of minor missspellings (the Puerto in Puerto Rico fared badly) but they did not detract at all from a really fun game, even though I did not do so well on my first major time in it. Actually, in my first effort I started in Savannah building RRs and soon went under. The second time, I started in Mobile and mostly bought businesses in AL and GA

Thank you for producing an excellent game. Hope I see some further comments which enhance my future play.

[RulerofRails]

The key word on the shipments is "float." You need to let the tycoonatrons carry your Coal across the Straits of Florida, and have a train on custom consist waiting to pick it up once it reaches Cuba for further shipment. Cargo can cross the water/land barrier only at the Ports.

Cash on Wheels likes surprises in his maps. That's why I try not to say everything at once to give other people a chance to be surprised as well. Agree that having the Key West potentially flattened can be a major setback. Hurricanes have random consequences. Next time you play, Key West may survive.

---

Shaking the AI - A stock strategy to wrest control of an AI company in which the chairman has a majority stake:
You need two things: a large purchasing power and at least 50% stake in your own company. On this map, the buyout help choice makes achieving this easier/quicker.

I recommend saving the game before trying this trick. This is an assault method where we are actually throwing away a lot of PNW, but we may get some of it back at the end.

1. Launch the assault by buying up all the shares in your rivals company at once. The price will go sky high, and he will sell some at the beginning of the next month.
2. As he sells stock, buy it up, keeping the price high so hopefully he sells more.
3. Repeat. You may not achieve 51% ownership in his company before he stops selling. If not, proceed.
4. Now start selling your own stock. Use one Ctrl-click to sell 25K shares at once, really hitting down the price. This will attract him to your stock, and he should buy some at the beginning of the next month.
5. Repeat each month until he runs low on margin. Each time sell enough to keep the price in the range where he is buying strongly. Hopefully he racks up a large margin position before you run out of your own stock to sell.
6. With the game paused, hit his stocks (ones you bought in steps 1-3) with a Ctrl-click to sell 25K to hit down price. You may need to do this a couple of times. You will know when he has been margin called because price in both companies will take a nose-dive even lower. He should now have less than 50% stake in his own company.
7. Finally, buy stocks in both companies all at once up to almost the pre-trick levels to avoid losing too much PNW with this maneuver.

There are other factors that may help or hinder this process including economic state (AI chairman more likely to buy in depression, sell in boom times), and the economic health of your company (higher "5 Year Weighted Return" makes your shares more attractive to the AI chairman). AI chairmen have personal character traits. Those with better stock market savvy will fall for this trick more easily.

[Stoneman]

Thanks for these tips. This is very helpful.

I must say that I really do like SURPRISES in my RRT3 games. But the floating trains had me puzzled!

Last time, I tried the discount for FL with the advertising firm. This time, the buyout scheme.

Oops, and here comes someone wanting me to do a Honey Do! project.

Thanks again. Ed.

[Gumboots]

Well, I had fun with this but was clearly not as smart as the earlier poster.

I missed the whole part of having to buy out the other two railroads and never discovered how once does shipping in this game. A good idea, but I still don't know how to do it.

This works: New steam (not electric) locomotives: Aslaug and Biarritz

Good stock market strategy from RoR too. I'll have to try that. You may also want to try this one: Tycooning 101: making mergers fun and profitable.

[Cash on Wheels]

Thanks all!

Anyways the port for key west works fine. It was when I was doing the final touch-up for KY I decided to make room for a user built hotel. If you move land/water cells around a port it is a good idea to remove & replace it after you finish! (forgot)

Not sure what to make about the flat port.

Now the orginal Gold medal objective was to move the coal to puerto rico. I got coal to D. republic ready to cross to PR. But the PR port was too far away and the coal went back to Haiti.

The paper goal amounts should be 3k/2k/1k. I have no clue what the paper amount should be because during my testing it was set to YTD loads. I did give a boost to logging camps ,but removed it at the last minute. So my amounts will need to be adjusted. If you RoR got 3,300 loads 3000 is good for the DM.

[RulerofRails]

To be clearer: the Key West port worked perfectly until a hurricane flattened it (deleted off the map).

Now the orginal Gold medal objective was to move the coal to puerto rico. I got coal to D. republic ready to cross to PR. But the PR port was too far away and the coal went back to Haiti.

I built an upgraded Steel Mill and an upgraded Electric Plant in Puerto Rico to get some strong demand going. In my game there was no natural Coal demand in D. Republic/Haiti either. Built an upgraded Electric Plant for that.

[Cash on Wheels]

Is it intended that I needed to use a little bridge building trick (center over the island) to avoid a suspension bridge out to Nueva Gerona? Also what is the city named "aaa" far out in the Atlantic for? On my play I dozed an Electric Plant to facilitate Coal passage, not sure if that's a "cheat".(1)

Something that may not be ideal: if the Key West port is flattened, as it was for me, then it's a lot harder to send Coal south. I had already shipped 50 or so loads south at that point, so I still made it. Trip time from Miami is longer perhaps 2-3? extra years making this task more difficult for any players who haven't started on it yet.(2)

I played with 3 AI chairmen. The third "competing" one's performance was abysmal. I waited until his company went bankrupt, then merged. Also, why are the AI chairmen allowed then allowed to start new companies? They only have rights to GA and Cuba. The chances that there are two free cities to allow them to lay any track are very low.(3)

ETA: I played this with your modded 1.06 exe that has 1.05's price islands reinstated. For that it may matter that Paper haulage at the medal (beginning of 2053) was 3,374. This seed wasn't initially (filled in with time as most seeding differences are equalized) very good for Paper and I didn't push it too much (70 trains), with little effort/expansion designed to increase Paper haulage in the early years.(4)

(1) dead on, I have not found a way to disable Suspension bridges. This game has a counter for Overpass pieces, switches, & tunnel pieces, but non for SSbridges! You could build SSbridge if you wanted so long as it does not go over 250 br. pieces. That 250# is not set in stone.

(2) from Miami? And I rag on game developers for pushing out games with serious bugs.

(3) I have not paid much attention to the AI in this game. I did have 3 optional AI before changes. Changes & a second beta are on the horizon.

(4) Castro before the fix was abusing the rehaul he had 40 trains running to/from havana to nearby towns. It was so bad I had to remove the station in Barbato! Thats what caused me to look for answers.

[Cash on Wheels]

To be clearer: the Key West port worked perfectly until a hurricane flattened it (deleted off the map).

Now the orginal Gold medal objective was to move the coal to puerto rico. I got coal to D. republic ready to cross to PR. But the PR port was too far away and the coal went back to Haiti.

I built an upgraded Steel Mill and an upgraded Electric Plant in Puerto Rico to get some strong demand going. In my game there was no natural Coal demand in D. Republic/Haiti either. Built an upgraded Electric Plant for that.

Okay the hurricane should not wipe the key west marker & port off the map. Thats a territory issue then. But I could leave it like that.

yes there were placed EPs/steel mills in those regions. Not sure why I removed them.

[Cash on Wheels]

Stoneman, do u remember your total paper & city counts for the games?

I'm going to need more input for the paper count.

Bridge count is also up for debate.

[RulerofRails]

(4) Castro before the fix was abusing the rehaul he had 40 trains running to/from havana to nearby towns. It was so bad I had to remove the station in Barbato! Thats what caused me to look for answers.

Ok. So this map is meant to be played on the patched version of 1.06 with the price islands from 1.05 in effect? Or should I play again with a default 1.06? I suspect the AI will make a fair bit more money in general with the default 1.06, but it's easier for the player to make money too.

There will be a difference with the Paper count between default 1.06 and your patched versions with the price islands. In the default 1.06, expect to see more hauls when trains are left to run on auto consist as I ran all trains carrying Paper.

[Stoneman]

In my first game, in which I was obliterated by the Hurricane/Depression/Recession, I went back and looked.

Although the Hurricane abolished A LOT, including all the STONE bridges, it did not abolish the PORT. The PORT in Key West was NOT damaged.

[RulerofRails]

Key West after the hurricane on my play. I re-connected it for it's count towards the "cities connected" goal. I used Steel bridges the first time.

My thoughts on the bridge limit? Personally, I prefer under-sea territories that insanely hike bridge costs or even simply forbid the player access to prevent building bridges across those places the creator wants to restrict. This has been done before on some other maps. With the current limit on bridge pieces, the Bahamas seem out of bounds. I saw that the access cost was expensive and bought it just for fun near the end of my game, but it's just eye-candy IMO.

Also, I thought it might be a planned feature, but will mention it just in case. I was granted access to Cuba without any notice part-way through the game. I didn't make use of it even to buy/build industries, but the story-line texts lead me to believe that I shouldn't have had it without taking over the company there.

[Hawk]

Ok. So this map is meant to be played on the patched version of 1.06 with the price islands from 1.05 in effect?

If that's the case, what about the other 10,000 plus registered archives users that don't read the forum? How are they going to know it needs a special installation, and what to do to set that up?

Arop, who was a prolific map maker, and is no longer with us - RIP, had similar issues with some of his maps that wouldn't play as intended because he used custom locos and built his scenarios around them.

[Cash on Wheels]

This is for the regular 1.06. Ive had this map ready before the fix.

Ok. So this map is meant to be played on the patched version of 1.06 with the price islands from 1.05 in effect?

If that's the case, what about the other 10,000 plus registered archives users that don't read the forum? How are they going to know it needs a special installation, and what to do to set that up?

Arop, who was a prolific map maker, and is no longer with us - RIP, had similar issues with some of his maps that wouldn't play as intended because he used custom locos and built his scenarios around them.

This has been made for the original 1.06. I made the 1.06 exe adjustment After I completed this map.

[Gumboots]

Ok. So this map is meant to be played on the patched version of 1.06 with the price islands from 1.05 in effect?

If that's the case, what about the other 10,000 plus registered archives users that don't read the forum? How are they going to know it needs a special installation, and what to do to set that up?

Arop, who was a prolific map maker, and is no longer with us - RIP, had similar issues with some of his maps that wouldn't play as intended because he used custom locos and built his scenarios around them.

I think it's fine as long as the relevant information is included in a readme.txt. There's little point trying to expand the game's capabilities if we are never allowed to use any of the custom stuff.

I've even had problems with maps that demand default stuff. Since I never play diesel or electric, if a map demands a default diesel or electric loco it will crash on my box. I've removed all of those because it keeps things simpler, both during gameplay and when I'm working on custom assets.

Frankly I think all maps should include a list of which locomotives they require, and that applies to default or custom. If a readme is available, then the map author made it for a reason. If anyone still refuses to read it, that's their problem.

[Hawk]

I think it's fine as long as the relevant information is included in a readme.txt. There's little point trying to expand the game's capabilities if we are never allowed to use any of the custom stuff.

I agree. Whatever custom work is done, a simple read me included with the zip is great.

I guess I was making the point that there's a lot more folks using stuff for RT3 than those on the forum. I know you know that but maybe some folks new to the forum don't realize how many people download stuff.

[Cash on Wheels]

This works: New steam (not electric) locomotives: Aslaug and Biarritz :mrgreen

Gumboots could this be used for the map? I'm just asking, I don't even know if your 'ships' are complete.