Beta test map - West San Diego County

[coruscate]

RT3 version. - Beta 005
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/sd005.rar
Uses *NO* special buildings.
Updated Oct 08th

I'm still working on it, I've added more features since the version Vista denies me, I even ran out of labels!!!

It's San Diego county from as far south as Tijuana, Mexico to as far north as Oceanside, CA, and as far east as Alpine, CA.

The setup is sitll early and there's some spots to ease out, but that's what sharing is for right?

Arbitrary start year, what I care more about is getting the map so it's traversible within reason, and getting a decent economy set up. Since I lived and know the area, I tried to add ////some//// realism in my industry choices as well as city choices. Most cities are in there though, though I admit Redondo, Mexico is a joke. It barely shows on the satellite map. But without it Mexico would look bare.

I've laid out the National parks and I hope I set those and the military base areas off right so that you can't buy access.

Once I get the "art" side done I'd be happy to have some input on scenario creating. I've only just now grasped running the game and got my first gold medal... but it was on easy (British Isles, 2 years to spare).

[nedfumpkin]

I just took a quick look and it appears that this is going to be a fun map to play, and also a challenge with the terrain. As much as I would really like to play it as a scenario right now, I'm going to have to defer since I am trying to make some new stuff for people who can't play the 1.06 patch.

I quck note about the "art side" of scenario writing, every time you save your scenario the image gets compressed so that after every 2 or 3 saves you have to repaint it. It's best to wait until the end when you are doing your last save to do the final paint job.

I did find the industry quite strong in most cities, and a lot of resources seemed scarce for the most part and clumped together close sometimes close to cities. Just something to think about when tweaking the industry balance for the different areas.

[belbincolne]

Gave this two rapid tries.

First one I bought one Industry and built a second. After 6 months they were going fine so I started to lay a line and immediately the line connected two towns (sorry - in North - but can't remember names but one of the required start points - the only one with anything to transport ) with stations in each - for free! Train was mighty profitable too. Then end of year up came a message to say I'd lost! Played on for two more years and everything ran o/k.

Then started another try. This time only railed (same towns) - no free line or stations! Didn't take a bond and was moderately profitable. End of year message up to say I'd lost. Played on and connected San Diego - again no freebie line or station arrived. There were no goods at SD or the third start point on either try.

Something therefor wrong but not sure what. Also the target is $99m company cash - do you mean this or CBV? Map looks really nice by the way.

[coruscate]

Well with the losses I tried to set it up so that you had to go massively into debt, but I discovered that there's only so much money you can put in before the game rolls the money back over to chump change. Just try putting 987654321 in for a cash goal and watch the game chop two digits off.

I just needed something so the crash testing part of the software wouldn't flag me for not having a gold, bronze, loss, ledger, etc.

Odd with the two cities, I think you're thinking of Oceanside and Carlsbad.

Indeed the industries are clumped in some areas, some I over specialized in.

I'll be looking more into building the industries in the area as I go, I'm also experimenting with manually inserting some buildings. San Diego, La Jolla and a few others have buildings I've pre-placed. I'm probably going to populate a few of the "downtown" areas with extra houses. Hoping it doesn't throw the map off but we shall see.

[nedfumpkin]

You can also set events to add industries at particular times and at particular locations.

[coruscate]

Not sure that I would need it just yet, but it wouldn't be a bad thing.

Also, is it possible to create two non-playable rail lines (Coaster & SD Trolley) and set it up so that the computer AI would not try to expand or change the type of service? I think it might add some challenge to the level to have to compete with the services or stick just to freight due to their existence.

Here's the latest beta of the map, I discovered I messed up the loss event, it was set to company cash, as in positive money. Now it's set to either 1 or 9 million in company debt. Company cash for all three win events. I also set it up so that you must expand from your existing rails. Quick question, how do I prohibit a player from purchasing access to a territory?

[coruscate]

These are some images I quickly captured just to show my friends who do not own the game.

http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/01.jpg
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/02.jpg
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/03.jpg
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/04.jpg
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/05.jpg
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/06.jpg

The map, top part
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/07.jpg
The map, lower part
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/08.jpg

[belbincolne]

No - it was Esconido to San Marcos where I got the free line/station - couldn't repeat today! The seed industries/farms etc have been quite different every start so hints on play wouldn't be appropriate - but railing and Tool & Dies are very profitable all the time.

San Diego I've finally connected to - at the moment although it's a large town there's no traffic shown there and the train from it is hugely unprofitable - maybe it will improve. Oceanside similiarly has nothing there so I've not connected yet - neither of these two ever has had on any of my four starts. Again I always get told you've lost at end of 1st year.

Three queries - why do you have to purchase rights to some small areas for Nil? Either give them at the start or charge something. Secondly there's no Ledger - you should add something to show progress. Thirdly in Beta2 there's fewer trains. The cheapest is now the Red D at $400k wheres in Beta1 there was a train at $200k and at least double the number now.

Great care needed in laying lines because of the hills and not being able to afford tunnels at the start so it's a challenging map from this viewpoint.

[coruscate]

Dang, I replied but my internet cut me.

Should be a ledger, I'll re-look.
Not sure why San Diego and Oceanside aren't working, I'll look again.
Don't see how you free connected Esco and SM @_@
I want to block off those tiny territories, all of them, but don't know how yet.
I'll dig back into industry but what are the worst offenders as far as no profit?

[coruscate]

Okay!

http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/sd003.rar

Beta 3 of the map.

Ledge works.
Fail doesn't fail you until your company is nine million in debt.
Wins work right.
Set up a connection bonus with a factory boost in it.

And if the coding worked right, an add industry and locomotive available icon.

I also reworked the living hell out of the industries. You'll find an explanation in the opening text, basically there are four warehouse / port routes you need to use to get all the resources onto your map. Some industries, such as auto (National City) are limited on purpose. But I think that's the only industry I was okay with there being only one of. Rubber has to come through the San Diego port. Some of the warehouse / port items have to be exchanged at a different point on the map. Not sure if this will work out with time frames @_@;;

All in all, it should be a much more playable map now.

[belbincolne]

O/K I've downloaded this and will give it a try tommorrow. The only Industries that make a real profit were Steel and Tool & Die - the others barely return more than 10% in boom years and less than that in normal and poor. Trains also rarely make a profit because the hills make them so slow but once you can afford the more expensive faster in the grade 4+ and 6 coaches area then they do make money. I also have a huge number of train crashes.

[coruscate]

Well everything should pan out now, if things still don't pan out profit wise I'll manually tweak prices with an event just so the scenario makes economic sense. Obviously it's a real world are with a real world economy and demands, no reason I can't cheat a little just to make it work on a micro scale. ^^;;Oh I did play it a bit last night too, I was able to get decent money winding from Escondido to San Marcos and Rancho Bernardo. Sometimes though I had to manually skip the train over to San Marcos because it was generating more sellable loads.

[coruscate]

Good news is I got the 5 and 6 patches working right, so I will be creating two different versions of this map to take better use of new buildings and goodies.

[belbincolne]

Well this plays fine. Still only tool and dies make a huge profit but other industries are better than they were. Bigger selection of trains also helps greatly with their profitability. My only comment is that there isn't a final date to achieve the goals.

You've now upped the cost of the other territories - so high that you simply cant buy in. This is particularly annoying for Mexico because there's lots of iron and coal down there. I'd suggest putting them at more reasonable levels though not as low as they were originally. Course you probably don't want the Military areas to be built over.

I'm 26 years in and have got more or less everything connected and Industries wherever there looks like a good chance of profit so now I'm just going to let things run to see how much cash I can get to. Usually when you get to some figure cash seems to stop coming in for some reason (and your directors get annoyed with you as well). Personally I always like more than one goal - e.g. also say two of PNW, CBV, IP etc.

[coruscate]

Thanks for the feedback, here's number four which I just finished up.

Link updated Oct 03rd.
Beta 004
RT3 1.5 compatible.
Requires all three of WP&Ps yards. Ice, Stock and Ore(forgot name).
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/sd004.rar

I manually upped the price of iron and coal by 10 percent at the start of the game. The other industries are more spread out, and the warehouses I mentioned in the briefing all show up like they are supposed to, and go up to 20 loads of production. I'm considering switching them to producing instead of demanding, but am curious to hear feedback.

WP&P's yards smooth out the transition from one point of the map to the other for goods, and I've smoothed out some of the areas in the map. One thing that was bad was that I had entire areas of the map I had not put any non-city industry in the regions with, part of the problem.

As there is still some last minute tweaking, I expect iron, coal, logs and wool to be slightly off. The others should be fine.

The buy in prices were also put within reason. Except the state parks, I don't want anyone in there.

Tijuana is *NOT* a gigantic hill, but I'll save those edits for last, Mexico's not important to me.

I'll tighten up the goals after the map functions the way I want it, then I will finalize this map for 1.5 and create a 1.6 version of it.

Ned's offered to help me put together a vineyard so I may be adding a building mod to my map with release, which would be neat. Wouldn't be a high profile item even in my own map, but it would be neat and Napa valley and other wine related stuff could be done.

[belbincolne]

Phew anyway played on and got Bronze after 2 more years (1942) Given the award. Took to 1951 to get up to Silver - didn't get it. Then speeded up (built a few extra industries and bought ranches as they appeared on map) and got Gold in 1955 - didn't get it. Looks like you need to tweek the Medal position.

Only other extra comment (and you may have sorted this now) is that many Industries on map can never be profitable because the appropriate raw materials never appear. Tires, chemicals, plastic, autos at least.

Shall give it a rest for now but will try new map (or version 5 if that appears) some time next week.

[coruscate]

No problem, I beta tested it myself earlier and I will again later today with the new settings.

[belbincolne]

Aha - can't load v.4 because I don't have all the new buildings installed. I did at one time but some of them seemed to cause problems so I uninstalled them. Think this applies to several players. Perhaps you'll need to make 2 versions one with and one without them.

[Hawk]

The problem you might be having is using that V-1.04 beta. The Coast to Coast is the official V-1.04 patch final version.

The only thing you need installed is the original RRT3 V-1.00 to install the Coast to Coast Expansion.

[coruscate]

Hawk I assume you mean me, but I went from the 1.4 beta to Coast To Coast right after.