Cold War Colorado for v1.06

[Cash on Wheels]

Revised. Not going to bother posting another beta.

Here are some of the notable changes.

$4.5M grant to player's company in 1955 to build from Denver to Glennwood Springs via Moffat route.

C̶o̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶c̶e̶s̶ ̶+̶2̶5̶%̶, troop prices +35% throughout the game.

250% troop production in USAF facilities.

Ski resorts no longer use troops. Instead I placed barracks nearby the Ski resorts. Plus in oth3r locations throughout the game.

P.S. I need the hawk spell checker bad!

[RulerofRails]

As an express cargo, raising the price of Troops will work fine. However, raising the price of Coal long-term will almost certainly result in the price break-out bug: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3981#p41136. Unfortunately those ruin the game a little.

You could try with a yearly event that sets to price +25% for 10 months. With normal price for the last two months of the year. This may be enough to prevent serious break-outs. An un-tested idea. Since you already have a mod file for this map (Electric Plant, with option of Big Boy/Challenger tweaks), if you mod the base price of Coal in the .cty file, that will be sure-fire.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Finally finished it. Made all haulage requirements easily, some 2-3 x what was needed. Only got ~550 troops even though I had many dedicated trains for them; they just didn't show up in quantities that allowed me to make the goal. Hopefully your adjustments will help in this respect. I did run across spelling errors, but can't remember them offhand. If I have time I'll go through event dialogues and try and suss them out in time for the final release.

[Cash on Wheels]

As an express cargo, raising the price of Troops will work fine. However, raising the price of Coal long-term will almost certainly result in the price break-out bug: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3981#p41136. Unfortunately those ruin the game a little.

You could try with a yearly event that sets to price +25% for 10 months. With normal price for the last two months of the year. This may be enough to prevent serious break-outs. An un-tested idea. Since you already have a mod file for this map (Electric Plant, with option of Big Boy/Challenger tweaks), if you mod the base price of Coal in the .cty file, that will be sure-fire.

I read this a little to late! Yep there was Dark green all over!

[Cash on Wheels]

Finally finished it. Made all haulage requirements easily, some 2-3 x what was needed. Only got ~550 troops even though I had many dedicated trains for them; they just didn't show up in quantities that allowed me to make the goal. Hopefully your adjustments will help in this respect. I did run across spelling errors, but can't remember them offhand. If I have time I'll go through event dialogues and try and suss them out in time for the final release.

Had silver in the bag but lost this one only because I failed to remember the city connection goal. Plus I had a brain lapse. I margin bought the remaining 40% of outstanding shares in my company during the height of a Boom. (expert no AI)

Decided to try using shell companies this time to build into the harder parts of Colorado.

It took them a while to die though!

Troops seemed to be harder to come by this go around. Then again I have like 100 by the sixth year and lost interest for the rest of the game. One more game, rewrite the intro, Find spell errors & off to the archives!

[Cash on Wheels]

Lost again.... Last time it was because I did not notice a train (pile) west of Glenwood Springs. This time I did not keep a close eye on my steel production. Plus I was without an auto plant for a few critical years!

Gumboots' 80s era autoracks in action!

Troop count for gold will be 650 instead of 1000, $30M PNW instead of $40M for gold.

No more test runs, off to the Archives tomorrow unless my job gets in the way!

[Hawk]

This map is now in the archives.

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

[low_grade]

Okay, frustrated by my first attempt which was mostly pretty solid, looking at what I'd need and anticipating the increased coal and bauxite production. Sadly didn't get increased rock quarry production. Especially as at some point I'd forgotten that electronics go from ceramics and ingots to crystals and ingots and the 1 crystal/year limit now makes gold unattainable, with ... uh, edit, I guess I've got 14 loads of electronics on the map, all must be on trains which I could now reroute to Roswell, so I guess I could still win. But really a challenging scenario to figure out, and I bet a 2nd attempt would be much smoother. Kinda annoying but it looks like to meet weapons I need to make autos on the one tire warehouse south of Pueblo and try to keep it awash in Alcohol (Coors?), build a weapons factory or another auto plant on the Grand Junction cars for tires exchange to create demand for tires there (but supply no steel so the demand for tires wanes and they can be shipped to their ultimate destination, your weapons factory near your steel plant (which unfortunately also has to supply steel for cars.)

A twisted supply chain to work out, lol! Made me take the near unprecedented step of writing out all the resource needs to meet the goals and how to get them. Looks almost impossible to begin with, went for alcohol for chemicals and tires, discovered a major profit center by building a distillery by two sugar farms west of North Platte with a fertilizer factory there (bought all those, too) and then alcohol drifts to the warehouse in North Platte, chemicals drift back, and your sugar farms are pumping out 6 a year in production, $200k+ in profits/year on a $140k investment, sick! That distillery and a lumber mill in Trinidad were my first investments, along with many seeded farms and mines. Oil Refinery in Boise City in 1941, then a Textile Mill in Lamar, then a Brewery in Syracuse, buying up related feeders. Only alcohol directly related to meeting goals, but I realize, this map does actually have a fairly easy industry start... but will I be able to meet goals in time with what may be a delayed start?? Well, in this somewhat sloppy 1st try, 13 years to go, PNW $50M, 535 troops, and even sloppy 5 machinery, 1 electronics, 21 ammo, and 9 weapons. So, a bit tighter, and 13 more years, totally doable. Heck I should probably keep going, I can probably even win this still, FP45's all the way.

[RulerofRails]

. . . auto plant on the Grand Junction cars for tires exchange to create demand for tires there (but supply no steel so the demand for tires wanes and they can be shipped to their ultimate destination, your weapons factory near your steel plant (which unfortunately also has to supply steel for cars.)

Don't forget: this is 1.06, you can ship things at a loss by using a custom consist. No need to be too fancy with demand management. Just haul the Tires to the Weapons Factory with a custom consist train. IIRC, I built an Auto plant near Grand Junction but didn't upgrade it. Since it takes only 1 load of Tires to make 3 loads of Autos, there's plenty of excess Tires for Weapons production. IMO, the production and distribution of Steel is the strategic call.

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When playing this map and seeing the excellent idea to make a lower pulling power for the mountains I thought of a different way to use this idea. Bridges in the game (if scale is followed) must be a couple of miles above the rivers and the suspension bridges are way up in the clouds! Those ramps are insane. Some map makers have gone to great lengths to make maps with more realistic bridge ramps. This is nice for the visuals. I have also gotten in the habit of finessing bridges to have lower ramps, but it's a fickle proposition. The average player would probably get frustrated if this was a requirement.

So, here's the idea: use a special territory running in a strip along the edges of rivers and/or oceans with boosted pulling power. This would allow pulling power to be decreased across the rest of the map to make "proper" track grades more important everywhere. Which is basically the same idea, just slightly different application.

[low_grade]

I like flipping things on their heads, can't recall an application of an "advantage on the flats" event. Also, yeah, kept going, and custom consisted as needed but most just a few reroutes in the last 2 years, gold here on Expert 1983.