Ape-ri Ski - new scenario

[edbangor]

Yes I've made another scenario and yes, I remember saying I wasn't going to until someone else did but I needed something to do while I was waiting.

This one – originally titled “Monkey Mountain” to tie it to the two campaign scenarios I ‘borrowed’ the characters from “Monkey Business” and the soon to be released (via Ned) “Monkey Motors” – sees the little furry dudes from Chimptopia, discovering a new sport. Skiing.

Of course there’s nowhere to ski in their shared homeland of Monkey World, but they’ve found a nearby island with the perfect mountain range, that can be developed into their long dreamed off resort of “Ape-ri Ski!”. (Après ski - geddit )

This is where you come in. First, you have what is a fairly standard RRT3/TM task of joining up the cities in the green pastures of the Lowlands in the West, and developing your industries along the way. You have nearly 20 years for this (more if you take the earlier start date like I always did), then you can move onto the mid-section of the Foothills.

There are only two cities in the Foothills territory and they only really one cargo each, but they want it EVERY YEAR and before MAY or else they won’t allow you access to the snow capped Mountains in the East. That’s right, there’s no access at all to Mountains, in any year, until May and then only if you’ve made enough deliveries to those two Foothill Cities. If you don’t, then you’ll just have to wait until next year and try again. (Note: You don't loose either track or trains during the inactive months!)

Anyway, once you are on the mountains, get your tracks into the two Labour Camps, one of which is building the outside of the ski resort (Exteriors), and the other fitting out the insides (Interiors). Both want different things and a lot of them.

Once you’ve connected to both Exterior and Interiors cities, you will get the chance to produce the nuclear power needed for any of the victory conditions and to get access to the actual mountain Ape-ri Ski is being construction on and where you have to make the final deliveries for the Train Master title.

More information is in the ReadMe file which I've attached to this message.

The map is available with my others here: http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/xtras/tm.htm

I had great fun creating this, trying out both some new (to me) Events such as the time delayed access, and some sneaky little additions to the map itself which will prevent you from doing some tunnelling, and building suspension bridges right across Foothills. (Come on, where’s the fun in that anyway), while making building tracks in and around the mountains as challenging as possible, without being impossible.

I hope you’ll find the scenario challenging enough especially as, nearing the end, there are a lot of cargos to balance out should you find yourself trying to supply the time conditioned cities, plus the three demanding cargos, and the nuclear power plants as well.

If not, well then you’ll just have to make your own scenario won’t you?

Your starting point looking towards the mountains:

Halfway there, you'll see Mountain Falls

And the view back down from the top of Mount Glacier.

[Hawk]

Now available.

[Blackhawk]

You have to slow down Ed! When I'm finally able to play again in 2 weeks I won't know whether to go back to finishing my scenario, working on a new scenario, or just play all the ones you've released so far that I haven't had the chance to play yet. It sounds like an interesting map, I'm looking forward to playing it.

[edbangor]

You have to slow down Ed! When I'm finally able to play again in 2 weeks I won't know whether to go back to finishing my scenario, working on a new scenario, or just play all the ones you've released so far that I haven't had the chance to play yet. It sounds like an interesting map, I'm looking forward to playing it.

Oh that's easy... finish yours, cos then I'll have something to play and I won't have the urge to start making a new one.

[nedfumpkin]

Uh...just so you know...I am trying to get MM out, but right now I am using it as my base map while I am testing some things out....should be soon, but I want to release the final TM game files first. And then.....and then....I'll be releasing some maps that are almost finished.

But I look forward to playing this map...I'm enjoying MM, but I keep starting over....:)

[Blackhawk]

Well I finally played the map and figured I'd write a review. I'll start with some typos and 1 possible ledger error.

-Briefing - Deliever should be deliver, mhz should be GWh
-Stat no foot - nagotiations = negotiations
-Stat Elec - 1. mhz should be GWh 2. disappears after you hit 11,000 Mhz but you still need to get 25,000 for a TM victory so you don't know how much you have after you pass 11k.
-Allow Foot S - boarders = borders
-Allow Ski - space before a period. Sloopes = Slopes
-Connect Mount - Mountious = mountainous
-Diesel offer2 - You call them EP45's but in the train list it calls them FP45s

I once started playing this scenario back when it first came out, and I had attempted to build a railroad right away connecting Capital City to Middletown but it was a slow process and was barely making money. So when I started to play this map again after I lost the previous saved game, I figured I'd go for a different approach. I created an industrial center in the plains northeast of Capital City. Without building any track I built a Meat Packing plant, and a paper mill. They started to make a profit so the next year I built a cereal plant. I then started up my railroad, while continuing to add to the Industrial Town I created. [Oil refinery, brewery, sugar refinery, glass factory, creamery, explosives factory, pharmaceutical plant.] Meanwhile I used a bauxite mine to built an aluminum mill next to for aluminum to use at the brewery. West of Capital City by an iron and coal mine I built a steel mill as well as electronics and machinery plant, which was receiving rubber from a rubber plant built in Doglegged and another built South of Good Shelter. I largely used my industrial town to take care of the TM victory conditions.

After expanding across the Lowlands I probably could have built it up more than I did, but I only did a minimal industrial expansion that would cover the alcohol and food I'd need to keep the mountains open. Doglegged I built a Candy Factory and Paper mill so I'd have food from there. Plainston had a cereal factory and paper mill again for food. And in Lake Corner I put a Candy factory, creamery, brewery, and meat packing plant. (the brewery was being supplied from an aluminum mill + chemicals across the river/ocean south of Middleton.

That was about the extent of my industrial build up and it seemed to produce more than enough. Although for the TM victory, it's easier to use the lavender farms and any nearby farms that the medicine went to than a Pharmaceutical plant, which seems to produce less than a lavender farm. So making medicine is tough, but growing it is easy, so take advantage of the lavender farms.

The good about the scenario:
-nice amount of time to build up your network. (can vary the years as well by changing your start date)
-the map looks great with the paint job and the mountains
-creative concept with the borders opening and closing and skiing monkeys
-mountains and foothills really weren't that difficult to get over.
-ability to build industry.

The bad: (it looks like a lot but it's really just 1 or 2 things with my explanation of why I thought that)
-opening and closing borders yearly. Having to wait 4-5 months before I could go through the exteriors and interiors. To make sure I got food and alcohol to the Native town/city in time I got the train close to the town and then just stopped it til the next year. I had 3 Food and 3 Alcohol trains whose only purpose was to sit outside the town and wait with the required cargo. (This was probably overkill as 1 or 2 of each would have been fine) It seemed like I really didn't even pay any attention to anything else after the Natives required their cargoes. I'd stop and set up the routes to the Exterior and Interior and set up trains to machinery/explosive to uranium mines and then others to bring uranium to the nuclear plants. But after that I just sped up the game, waited til next year, told one of my stopped trains to go supply the Native town, and then repeat the above. All the while just waiting for 10,000 gwh, so the Slopes would open up. Finally they opened up and I probably bought 10-15 trains and just supplied the Slopes quickly and again at the end I had 20,000 gwh of electricity even though I was shipping in all the uranium I could (a couple mines that were on the foothills had disappeared before I got to them) I really didn't want to have to sit around and micromanage my trains to the native cities for another 5-8 years to get 5,000 gwh more of electricity so I edited the TM victory condition to 20k. So maybe I didn't legitimately win, but it was 3am, and I didn't want to be further frustrated with micromanaging.
-As I covered above, it seemed to take awhile to produce electricity, and it was a slow part of the game. And some uranium mines on the foothills disappeared so it may have taken me longer to get the amount of energy I needed. Although I think I was using 5 mines, 4 of which were supplied with explosives or machinery.

Overall it was a good scenario, except I got frustrated and bored with having to repeatedly start and stop my trains near the Native towns to make sure they got cargo on time. I suppose I could have just continually send several trains there and hoped they'd supply the town by May. Or build a small station near the Native City/towns, and just have a train go from the Native City/Town to the small station and bring with it the alcohol/food it dropped off at the Native Towns and just keep reusing the same cargo, but that's sort of the "cheating" way. I would have preferred there just be a yearly check which sees if enough of a cargo was supplied or not, and I could have just kept sending trains there without worrying if they get there between January and April 30th.
My other suggestion would be that for a TM victory, maybe require something be shipped to the Interior/Exteriors. It might have kept me more entertained during the 7-8 years it took to get up to 10k ghw to open up the slopes. Unless shipping all the requirements of a Stationmaster victory were also supposed to be part of a TM victory? It might have actually been more difficult to get all the SM cargoes than the TM cargoes. (170 loads for TM, 315 for SM)

[aquarian_star]

In this senario it says move alchol to southern native town or city. Where is the pink alcohol? also how do i get food to ship to northern native town or city?

[Blackhawk]

I haven't played this map in a long time so I can't say for certain. I know of lot of Edbangor's maps required you to build your own industries, so you may need to build some distilleries/brewers or some factories that produce food. Keep in mind that the supply chain in TM is more complex than in RT3 so you'll need multiple cargoes to supply these factories.