Age Of Steam IV-Blue Streak For Your Comment and Review

[Shamough]

Well here it is ! Days sooner than I had hoped for.

Age Of Steam Blue Streak V3

Edited to delete the file. A newer version is available further in this thread.

[RulerofRails]

Hans, have you play-tested V3? I have started it, but I noticed that none of the loads from Memphis are being counted. I don't know if you know what's wrong. Also one of the ledger events counting loads to Chicago is firing too many times (test against all territories). Don't know if I should keep playing this, obviously there may be other things that I haven't seen yet. I know that this one has been through a few versions, but I think it might be better if you test whatever you change before uploading. Then whoever of us has time can double-check it and hopefully avoid too many reiterations.

[Shamough]

Stop playing and I'll take a lookee see.

Memphis: Left out Force test against Companies.

Chicago: Didn't test against Chicago Metro Territory.

I hope that is all. For now just EDIT your current game:
EVENT: Stuff to/from Memphis: Add to Conditions: Froce test against Companies.
EVENTS: To & From Chicago make sure that the Territory: [Chicago Metro...] is used and not [All Terr.]

I've fixed the two and repost later if you don't find anything else.

Shamough.

PS

I knew that things were progressing toooo smoothly during the EVENT transfer ...

[Shamough]

To answer your question re playing before posting ... No. I was in the middle of another game and just wanted to get Blue Streak out among the living. I had awoken in the middle of the night and found a way to look at an original mao and my V2_5 side by side ... nothing to do but work right on through the night and then post it.

Sorry about missing the two ERRORS ... so far.


Shamough.

[RulerofRails]

Here's a new version.

I fixed those two errors as well as a couple of the medal triggers (mainly YTD). I tested all the medals on Expert with the current scripting. I then did my best to locate and fix spelling mistakes. I also inserted fresh graphics from the original to get rid of map degradation. I have had enough of testing this one. Fingers crossed everything works correctly now. Please feel free to play it and make sure I didn't ruin anything when trying to fix the last few little things. For others who read this, please note that Hans is responsible for the improved programming in this one. I am just a tester. It plays better now. The map is much more enjoyable with proper seeding. Thank-you Hans!

Age Of Steam IV-Blue Streak V3_1.7z

(7.53 MiB) Downloaded 502 times

[Shamough]

Thanks for pointing out I had more YTDs where there should have beeen LTDs in the GOLD, Silver & Bronze tests. (I thought I was sooooo careful to get those right. ) I fixed those on my version V3_1 ... Too tired to check all of the written verbage looking for speelunk urrs. ( I thought I had corrected them all in V2_5 so I DELETED then COPIED and PASTED everything into V3_0. If you remember what and where you found more spelling errors I'll re-EDIT my copy ... OR just DL your V3_1.)

Thanks for taking the time to test this fine game that William Sherrick created and I managed to mung up a little.


Shamough/Hans

[RulerofRails]

There were many spelling mistakes. I would say maybe 30 that I fixed. Most of them were in the steam loco class dialogs. They were in there before you improved the scripting. I thought it easier just to fix them than try to note them all, so best to use the version I posted.

[Shamough]

Will do ... I didn't touch any of the training infos and tended to overlook them while playing.

Thanks.

Shamough/Hans

[RayofSunshine]

Well I have not attempted a trial on the V3-1.7z yet, but have a question to that of V3-1.
All the territories which require a monetary access, the figure is $1,000,000K. NOW, that is a lot of money. Actually, it is $1B, and I have no idea of how a player can accummulate that amount to gain access. SO, I am I missing something in the comments of strategy for such an amount?

[Shamough]

Well I have not attempted a trial on the V3-1.7z yet, but have a question to that of V3-1.
All the territories which require a monetary access, the figure is $1,000,000K. NOW, that is a lot of money. Actually, it is $1B, and I have no idea of how a player can accummulate that amount to gain access. SO, I am I missing something in the comments of strategy for such an amount?

Go back in time.
Give yourself a really large piggybank.
Save every red cent you ever latch onto.
-=or=-
You could simply read the game intro pages.
-=and=-
You could read all of the entries in this thread.

[RayofSunshine]

Okay. I guess I did not play the scenario far enough to get the offer of hauling 50 hauls, which then opened up 1 of the 4-5 non accessible territories. LOL Always some thing in the hidden until it gets triggered.

But I did get a surprise of obtaining access to DAL. I had to lay track from MEM to DAL. I would believe that being that the territories are of a goodly distance from each, that there would not be a "no unconnected track" penalty or requirement. Just a comment.

[Gumboots]

I just dragged this one out, since I felt like actually playing a game instead of just modelling locos. Have only played to 1918 so far.

I'm finding it a bit limited. One problem is that with vast majority of the terrain being as flat as a pancake, and with every locomotive upgraded to bulletproof rocketship status, although there is a good variety of locomotives available there is no incentive to use them. They all accelerate the same. They all have the same fuel economy. Pulling power is irrelevant, because there are no grades. Distances are large, so the only thing that counts is speed on the flat. I'm looking at the list of available locos, and end up picking a Pacific all the time just because it's the best option for freight or for express. There's no need to use anything else. It's just Pacific-Pacific-Pacific-Pacific-Pacific-Pacific-Pacific-Pacific-Pacific all the way down. I understand that the upgrades were meant to go with the history of technical advances in steam locomotives, but the effect is so extreme that it renders the differences between most locomotives meaningless.

I think this is a bit of a waste of a good locomotive options. This is a map that could really use a far more definite difference between freight and express weights, and between freight and express locos, to give the freight locos something to do.

Another thing is that although fuel economy is upgraded by one or more events (can't remember if it's superheaters or valves or what) water usage isn't changed. This might be a good one to look at. Superheaters didn't just save fuel. By making the steam more effective they also saved water. This is one of the reasons why fuel was saved: you had to boil less water to get the same power, which meant you needed less heat, so you burned less fuel. If the events were changed to include a decrease in water consumption this would be good for the map's long distances, and would also mean you could drop some of the upgrade-everything-to-infinity stuff elsewhere while still keeping the story of technical advances. Oil consumption is another aspect that could be looked at. Again, good for the map's long distances, and would allow dropping some other upgrades.

Then there's the haulage challenges for free territory access. These really are far too easy, IMO. Rather than 50, 100, 200, 300 loads with a 25 mph required freight speed for all four, I think it would be better to go 100, 200, 400, 600 for the loads, and 25, 30, 35, 40 for the speeds. I was getting these loads and speeds easily anyway, without trying. Every time a challenge was on I'd clock the loads sometime in May, but have to wait until the end of June before getting access to the new territory. If it's mean to be a year-long challenge, make the loads high enough so that it'll take you most of the year. If the locos are constantly being upgraded in speed and pulling power and reliability, make the speed tests mean something.

[RulerofRails]

Gumboots, were you playing the version 3 as modified by Shamough and available for download a few posts up? IIRC, he increased at least the overall speed needed for the medal and CBV target. I like all your suggestions. Seeing there was some work done by Shamough to mainly fix the event coding already making a second version already, if you are motivated enough to try to implement those changes, I think that would be welcome.

[Gumboots]

No, I haven't looked at Shamough's version. TBH I find Shamough's posting style, with the extravagant use of BOLD and ALLCAPS all over the place, to be so irritating to read that I take the easy option and simply never read it. That way everyone is happy.

I was playing the original. The only changes I made were to allow some of the US locomotives that W Sherrick had left out. It seemed a bit odd to have a US scenario that disallowed Mikes and Berks and Mountains and Hudsons, so I changed it to allow them. No point though, since I ended up with all Pacifics anyway.

I'll take a look through both versions of the map and see if I can think of a good balance.

Edit: I just found what was up with the territory access. It's checking for loads and speed at the end of each month, so if you clock it all up halfway through May it won't check until the beginning of June. It'll then allow you to pick a city straight away, since this is checked at the beginning of the week and that fires straight after the end of the previous month. However, the catch is that the actual access event isn't checked until the end of the week. So you pick your city, but you still can't lay track into it until another week has passed.

I may be missing something, but offhand I can't see why the granting of access couldn't be done in the same event as the picking of a city. So if you pick Choice #1 or whatever, it not only sets company variables but also sets territory access. These events could also be set to fire weekly, just so you can get access asap when you have the loads and speed.

[RulerofRails]

I forget exactly what Shamough changed in his version. He did find some genuine bugs including one to do with the city-territory choice dialogues. He also changed the medals to a weekly check and fixed some of the random investment returns stuff and haul counts by using territory variables. IIRC, he didn't change the territory access checking frequency.

W Sherrick did include "extra" engines in the zip for the map. Do you have those installed? (Mastodon, J1, G5, USRA080). I completely agree with you that there needs to be some differences between engines to make it a smart move to use various engines. You can use some others for fun, but when I buy an engine to do some work I always try to pick the best one (will make the most money) for the job.

PS. Something to consider, maybe not here but somewhere else would be a fuel price modifier run on a random event. I prefer a short time frame - say 6 months - because the critical company building times are when things matter. For most players maybe that's the first 10 years. For me it tends to be the first 3-5. Perhaps players will at least choose to buy more efficient, slower engines when the short term fuel costs are higher. Maybe their roster will end up more varied while still having the satisfaction of playing to a good strategy.

[Gumboots]

Yes, I have all the custom engines installed, but they still weren't ticked off in the locomotives section of the editor. He may have left them not ticked on purpose, just so people could play without requiring the custom engines. I ticked them off, but I just don't have any reason to use any of them, apart from a few Mastodons this time. I'm having fun going over the Ozarks just for the heck of it, so Mastodons are good for that. The rest is just Pacifics again.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm actually using half a dozen Camelbacks too, just for short-haul-no-profit freight slugs in the Dallas area, but apart from them and the dozen mountain-climbing Mastodons it's all Pacifics now.

I'm at the stage where the USRA schemozzle has just finished (January 1921) and am in a bulletproof position. Freight speed is still sitting on 38. Should easily be able to nail the CBV before the '29 crash. The only real challenge is to get all the haulage goals before then. The haulage is the tricky bit. Obviously I could just haul heaps of stuff backwards at a loss and sort it that way, but that doesn't feel satisfying. The problem is that this time around the Dallas area just aint making many moos, so getting moos to leave Dallas means getting them there first, and the price is higher elsewhere, so hauling moos backwards at a loss may be the only way to do it.

Incidentally, I'd be much happier with the Mastodon if it had the same sounds as a Connie. The frantic sound it inherited from the Atlantic just doesn't suit it. It needs a slower and deeper sound. Of course if I get into fixing that, I'll probably convince myself several other things need fixing. That way lies madness.

[RulerofRails]

In the course of testing various things for Shamough I played this quite a few times. The most difficult way to play is to foregoing building industry except for a couple of key ones that are necessary for the goals. In amongst the thread is a post about that I made if you can stand to look: http://www.hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopi ... 669#p38669.

My go-to tactic near Dallas was to haul Livestock to Dallas before it jumped (was forced . . . poor moos) on the train to Chicago. I had my connections setup carefully enough that both it and Oil were flowing in at a low profit without ship-at-a-loss. (Mainly this involved not connecting to the nearby towns so I didn't provide them with a stronger demand and upset the price map.) On the play with minimum industry I had to route trains through the Kansas city territory so that they picked up Grain straight from the farms, hauled it there, and then other trains would haul it out to the surrounding cities. As the screenshot on the other post shows, Fertilizer was hard to do seeing there wasn't a single demand in Kansas city territory which is why I ended up building one warehouse for a Fertilizer demand. The Fertilizer ended up being sent out to the Grain Farms to help their production. As I said in the other post, the only haul-at-a-loss I elected to use was to pickup Fertilizer from the warehouses that produced it. That's the hardest way I chose to play this map. Obviously, with the game's haulage counting snafus, it's really at the player's choice what "rules" he will follow to put at least some challenge into haulage on a 1.06 map without highly specialized coding to prevent cheat hauls.

[Gumboots]

Yeah minimal industry would slow things down. This time around I tried maximum exploitation of the custom warehouses, just because I hadn't done that before. Those things are a license to print money. I knocked off the CBV requirement in 1923 or 1924 (CQR) and have stupid amounts of cash lying around. Have paid off all company debt, just for the heck of it, and easily have enough reserves to ride out the Depression if I play that far. I should spend it on expansion but I'm running out of useful ways to expand. Anyway I tend to lose the plot a bit once I have over 150 locos and track all over the place on a large map.

Only just made the first speed/haulage trial this time around, because I was slow off the mark on rail. The subsequent ones were no problem at all. I was clocking them in March this time and getting access in April. On the last one had about 1,600 loads hauled by the end of the year, instead of the measly 300 required. This was entirely due to the rapid expansion that exploitation of the warehouses allows. It's just insane when, for the price of a textile mill, you can build stacks of things that will consistently give more than 70% ROI.

I've found that the moo situation at Dallas sorts itself after a while if you use the warehouses in a cunning manner. There's a Southland East seeded there, which will make moos if its inputs are restricted to corn, so I plonked my own different warehouses on the borders of Dallas to soak up all the other inputs. The seeded S/E then started making moos and ended up turning a nice profit, so I added another S/E of my own and upgraded that. Instant moos, just add water. Instant profit too.

I played to the start of '27, and now only have to deal with a bit of haulage to and from Memphis and Kansas City. Since I want to finish before the crash I'll probably go with haulage tricks. If I use enough of them it'll obviously be easy. I suppose I should try another run without any custom consists right from the start, just so everything has to be hauled at a profit. If I did that, and also paid more attention to strategic tracklaying instead of sometimes throwing out lines because I can easily afford it, it would probably make for a more interesting game overall.

If you go for unrestricted use of industry it does end up being only a haulage goal game. There's no need to touch the stock market (although I played with it anyway, just for something to do). There's no concern about PNW or percentage ownership. The CBV goal is laughably small. Money is just stuff that grows on warehouse-shaped trees. This puts the whole game a bit out of balance IMO, since ideally all the goals would work together so you get a sense of involvement right to the end. I find that if I've knocked off the other goals, which are trivial, and am just waiting years for haulage to roll in it all becomes a bit ho-hum. I can see that I'll easily get it sooner or later, and in the meantime there's nothing much to do. It'd be good to find a solution for this via different game goals.

[Gumboots]

Really 70,000 loads.jpg

I decided to limit my train count to 400. I always wondered how people said they always put maintenance spurs at the end of the line right near the station. Well this time I made it work. Essentially most cities aren't connected here. Whether or not this is the cause (it's definitely something I haven't done before), the neat thing is that the game is running normal speed at 60fps without a stutter with 400 trains!

The way I am using the stations is limiting each station to 3 connections.

Saw this earlier in the thread. Interesting stuff. We were speculating in another thread that routing calculations might be the performance bottleneck for RT3, and this seems to confirm that. It'd be good to do some more testing on this. Can you remember how many stations you had on that play?

[RulerofRails]

Assuming that the 1.06 status page isn't bugged for stations the way it is for industries (doesn't show them all, and even crashes when I try to sort above a certain number of trains be profit for example), I have 19 full pages except the last one that is missing one. That makes 170. So more than 2x the cities on the map. I have the save and can zip it up for you if you want to take a closer look. I was trying out new ideas for routing since I was using the free-money warehouses on that play, while trying to haul as much as possible no matter the profit at a good speed. All the track is still connected in a round about way, so the routing is the thing left. The other train games I have played like RTII all are limited by their routing algorithms. Who knows what an insatiable curiosity and some experimenting might discover. I did try to separate my network in two in a subsequent game, but I think this needs pure testing as games with that many engines get really unwieldy. I lost interest before the game got large enough to matter.

I guess you saw that I managed to reach almost 100M profit in the fourth year using warehouses. Those things are insane . If you read more of my posts you will see the ones where I was discovering that supplying a warehouse with a cargo it simply consumes (demand only) causes it's overhead to drop. Worth knowing especially when you are building hundreds of the things.

Are you playing for Instant Gold (CBV of $1Bln and 15,000 loads in the original)? Was increased to 75,000 loads and made more visible to the player in the newer version. Even that can be reached fairly quickly with the warehouses.