TM - Juice Train

[Blackhawk]

Might I suggest that you remove the fruit warehouses and instead use a start up event to increase produce production?

I may resort to using a start up event in place of the warehouses in a final version. I'm not entirely sure if I'd want the produce production to increase at the ranches in the Midwest though. And at the time I made fruit warehouses I felt that I needed to give some incentive to connect to Naples, otherwise in my playtests I skipped Naples and just connected to the argi-communities.

Loads of fruit hauled from Florida to the rest of the US counts loads hauled inside Florida as well.

I figured as much when I saw the totals were so high, and later read a forum topic about hauling loads inside a territory. However, I decided against using the loads hauled in Florida for any event. So in reality the yearly update is currently just there to be annoying. I planned on removing the yearly update in the future and probably should have just deleted it before releasing the beta since it would have taken 10 seconds to just hit delete event.

Any chance of relocating the radio station in Miami? It gest in the way of extending the track for a maintence shed and service tower.

I'll look into it. There are a couple other buildings you might eventually request I relocate as well. I initially placed them and didn't realize the effect they would have until later when I was play testing and wondering where some of my cargo was going when it was needed elsewhere. Ultimately, I had to raise the money to act like the big powerful railroad company and use some eminent domain powers and bulldoze these buildings. I suppose it would be easier for the player to not have to bulldoze any pre-existing structures, but in a way I also liked that you had to be observant to the industries input/output and cargo travel and take the necessary actions to change the product demands.
Ex. #1 In one run through of the game instead of having trains go all the way to NYC I had them go to Virginia Beach and drop their food loads. From there a train would bring the food to NYC and then distribute them across New England. However, I forgot there was an military base there and so I had to demolish it, otherwise my food was being eaten by starving soldiers before the connecting train could pick it up.
Ex. #2 I increased the oil output of the NY port to 2 loads, but back when I just had it at 1 load the majority of the oil was being consumed by the shipyard in the NYC area. I think there is enough oil up in the Northeast, however, the player still has an option to consider: If the sand from the shipyard is important to you you'll want to keep the shipyard, but if chemicals and petro are more important to you, you might want to destroy the shipyard and get more oil for the refinery in Philidelphia, or maybe more oil for creating plastics. As TM is largely about the industry chain, for now ,I'll leave it so the player can make minor alternations to the demand chain by bulldozing these types of places. Unless the need to sometimes bulldoze something is not desired by players than I'll make some changes.

EDIT: If you'd like a list of places you'll likely have to bulldoze, let me know or PM me and I'll respond.

[nedfumpkin]

It's not so much the radio station needs to be relocated out of Miami, as much as moved from its current position to somewhere else in Miami. RT3 usually leaves a patch through the towns to lay track, and the radi station just happens to be in that space. Just put it on the outskirts of Miami.

Try using the start up event to increase produce production just for Florida. Also make it so that all the cities in Florida have to be connected before you can win. This will make sure that you connect to Naples. Maybe put a passenger goal on Florida too.

[Blackhawk]

Thanks for the advice. I wasn't sure if you could do just a territory wide increase in production but if it's possible then I suppose that'll give me more incentive to eliminate the warehouses.

As for the radio station, I just noticed where it was placed and I'll likely move it next time I make changes to the map.

I didn't think of requiring you to have to connect all the Florida cities. That's an interesting and fairly easy goal. I'd have to think of what sort of passenger objective I could make. I guess at this point I'm just trying to see what people think of the difficulty of the scenario so far and how much more I should add to it.

[nedfumpkin]

I'd like to see a starter industry in Florida. The only thing is the bottling plant, and if you buy it first then you can't connect it to Miami to get glass, not enough moola.

I'm ending up buying logging camps up north that are making a few bucks and are cheap, just so I have some income.


Edit....another possibility is to create the company, since you're using Menk, go with the BNR, and then set company cash in such a way that the player has almost enough to get a good start from various starting points.

[Blackhawk]

On one start I built from Miami to Tampa and was able to supply the plant, however, I didn't play this start very far and didn't buy the plant. (I made several changes to the map and decided it wouldn't be worth it to continue this game)

In the last couple starts I bought some of the lumber industries in the North and focused on gaining money from industries for a couple years before building any rail. Then in I started building up by NYC first, and bought a furniture factory. In other start after buying a lumber mill, I bought a textile mill (profit from the lumber mill, issuing stock, and I think a bond) and started in Florida, however after I got the bottling plant initially supplied from Miami, I connected to Orlando or Gainsville to sell off the food at a profit, and then again I went back to the north connecting NY to Boston, and then I worked my way down through the cities to Richmond and Virginia Beach. At that point I focused on building up the Florida track again around to Savannah and Charleston, and then Northwest to... I think it was Columbia to be able to bring more textiles to Miami in order to get more glass for the bottling plant.

I think it's easiest to make money starting in the North where the industries and cities are closer together rather than in Florida, despite the scenario actually focusing on shipping food out of Tampa. However you can't put off shipping food out of Tampa for too long as it is important for getting access rights and expansion.

Edit....another possibility is to create the company, since you're using Menk, go with the BNR, and then set company cash in such a way that the player has almost enough to get a good start from various starting points.

I assume Menk is the player choice? I think I set it unassigned so as far as I know there is no assigned manager for the railroad and it just picks one.
I might have to replay the map again in the future to get a better idea of how much money is needed to start in other places. (I have only played the map so far on Medium and Hard difficulty)

[Blackhawk]

Might I suggest that you remove the fruit warehouses and instead use a start up event to increase produce production?

I have other other events that can reduce or increase the amount of produce production and I ran across this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=370

I assume the final post there (with the now broken link) is the final word on how it works?

[Hawk]

I assume the final post there (with the now broken link) is the final word on how it works?

Unfortunately Railroad Tycoon Info no longer exists. There was some good info there, as the link would attest to, and Lama hasn't been heard from in quite some time now.

BTW! I like your avatar.

[Blackhawk]

Revisiting the radio station issue preventing a spur track for an maintanence shed/tower:
I'll still likely move the radio station over a little, but looking back on my old games I was able to build out a spur, it just takes some extra effort.


Here I built the track so it would curve towards the radio station, then I bulldozed the last 2 sections of the track I built and added more track on so there would be less curve and it could be built past the radio station.


Here I loaded the scenario new, and if you build the spur first, and then curve around to become part of the main track and then build your station it works.


Finally, in one of my other attempts at the scenario I had the Miami station further south instead of instead of to the north of the city.

On another note:
I read that El Moichi bought a commune in Florida and was able to make 350k a year as well. So that may take care of a cheap and viable starter industry in Florida if you're supposed to be allowed to buy communes.

Any other issues or comments anyone has let me know.

(Oh and Hawk thanks for liking the avatar. I prefer Firefox and Opera over IE, which just seems to be slow and compared to the other 2. For various reasons I've been using IE some lately, of course ended up getting a couple viruses that took advantage of IE. Adblock Plus and some of the other additions you can make with Firefox definitely make me prefer it over IE)

[Hawk]

I run Firefox as my main browser, along with AdBlock, FlashBlock, NoScript, and Download Helper (you can download videos from YouTube and watch them on your hard drive instead of allowing Flash to run).
I also have Opera but I prefer Firefox. I just use Opera and IE 7 to test my web site jobs.

[El Moichi]

I had no problem @ Miami.

Miami.JPG (16.79 KiB) Viewed 5802 times

My major quest is to build a station in New York which covers both of the harbours.

I haven´t had the time to continue playing, but I will proceed the next evenings.

Blackhawk, you disabled the possibility to build food-producing industries for the player, so he is forced to use those that show up on the map. But, however, the player can still build food processing plants.

And, starting the game at 1970 first, some of the industries (i. e. the mentioned Community) noted they were "built in 1975" and in this case, the industry summary is not displayed. You can buy the industry but can´t see whether it makes a profit or not. As I went back and re-started the game in 1975, everything was displayed properly.

[Blackhawk]

My major quest is to build a station in New York which covers both of the harbours.

I'm not sure if that is possible. I could get just next to the 2nd harbor, but I was unable to cover it. I suppose I could look at relocating the 2nd harbor, as the New York area is not very flat and has many hills.

Blackhawk, you disabled the possibility to build food-producing industries for the player, so he is forced to use those that show up on the map. But, however, the player can still build food processing plants.

I will likely disable the food processing plant and there was one other food industry I left on... I think it was the cannery. The objectives can be completed using just the pre-placed food industries, however, for the beta testing I left these industries on to see if anyone would use them or actually had to use them. (If I remember correctly they required produce/fruit as an input and the amount of produce available is limited.)
I do know I left the bakery on, and that was intentional, as it's output is not that great. Although I suppose I could also turn that off. (But then it makes the flour mill Northeast of Montegomry and Southwest of Columbia sort of pointless, sorry I can't think of the city name right now).

And, starting the game at 1970 first, some of the industries (i. e. the mentioned Community) noted they were "built in 1975" and in this case, the industry summary is not displayed. You can buy the industry but can´t see whether it makes a profit or not. As I went back and re-started the game in 1975, everything was displayed properly.

I made an error when placing the industries as I placed them in the year 1975 when I should have placed them in the year 1970. So at this point I have 2 choices: 1. go back and replace all the industries and have them build pre-1970. or 2. leave them as it is, and have the initital briefing to the scenario say something along the lines of "As a small railroad you are unable to judge what industries are profitable or losing money as this time, as you grow in size you will be able to afford to higher a Financial Advisor who will do the grunt work of investigating the profitability of each industry. However, you if you invest in an industry you will still earn its profits. And then in 1975 have a game message saying you recently hired .... Warren Buffet or some Financial Advisor, now making industry profits available to your viewing."

I suppose I'm looking for some input on whether to go with choice 1 or choice 2. (or if the scenario is too long at 40 years and can be accomplished in 35 I suppose the choice is made for me) I don't mind having to just look and see what cargos are going where, and whether I believe the industry would be profitable or not. However, if the majority of RT3/TM players definitely want to always have the industry profits window available, I'll make changes.

Thanks for all the feedback so far. =)

[El Moichi]

"As a small railroad you are unable to judge what industries are profitable or losing money as this time, as you grow in size you will be able to afford to higher a Financial Advisor who will do the grunt work of investigating the profitability of each industry. However, you if you invest in an industry you will still earn its profits. And then in 1975 have a game message saying you recently hired .... Warren Buffet or some Financial Advisor, now making industry profits available to your viewing."

I like your sense of humor...

Don´t forget the Confectioneries, but I think they produce a very small amount of food like the Bakeries, so they need not to be regarded. I don´t remember whether a Cannery was available. But, if you will turn off the Food Processors, I will try to meet the food goal without using them.

[nedfumpkin]

I opt for choice 1 where the buildings are replaced with the start year, or, go back a year or 10 and place them then. Just seems more professional that way. JMO

The Commune is not suppsed to be for sale. That's something I thought I already fixed but obviously I didn't. So don't count on it for strategy.

[El Moichi]

My solution for a Manhattan station, covering both harbours:

BUT, you have to bulldoze the Grocery Store, the Department Store and the Retail, and still another house. To make your way out of Manhattan, you have to build a bridge with a sharp left turn next. AND the station must be Japanese style because other stations "don´t fit".

I prefer another solution for this quest.....

Instead, thanx Blackhawk. I like this map. It´s tricky, and I like the conception.

[Blackhawk]

That's a lot of bulldozing and the NY grocery store is the only grocery store I make make sure not to bulldoze. I never thought of building a station out on in Manhattan. I always just tried to put the station on my main rail line and just go through the middle of the city, even though it does not cover both ports. I could try to rearrange some of the buildings there, and possibly have a pre-positioned station and reduce the size of the New York territory to prevent someone from building multiple small stations in the territory and just shipping food between the two stations.

As for the food processor, feel free to use it if you need to, however, I think the goals are attainable without using it. (Just be sure to check in on the food industries to make sure you're getting all the food out of them that you can, and that the city isn't consuming it before you transport it out)
With the demands of the food processor, it requires fruit which is in a limited supply and requires meat, which requires likely requires connecting to the middle of Texas. Although if you built a plastic factory in Texas I suppose the food processor would be a viable alternative, although that's a long trip for the food to take to New York. Hmm I suppose I should likely disable it as an industry then.

[Blackhawk]

El Moichi, I was looking at your picture of Miami and I'm curious is that a building you bought in Miami? if so what building is that?

[El Moichi]

I bulldozed the Retail because it was sucking up the glass supplied by the harbours. Then I built a storage shed to "collect" the glass there.

With two loads of glass per year, the upgraded Bottling Plant at Tampa supplies > 10 loads of food and makes > 1 million profit.

[Blackhawk]

I completely forgot about the Rail Yard Structures.
Eventually I think I was able to get the bottling plant producing around 11-13 loads a year. I think the highest I got it was at 13.5, although I don't think I was able to sustain the 13+ loads of food for many years in a row. And I was using more than just 2 loads of glass.

[edbangor]

Finally I got enough train time together to have a go at a Trainmaster scenario that I didn't make
and then I totally messed it up, not once, not twice, not even three times, but FIVE times...
Guess I'm too used to playing my own maps and have come to be set in my train ways. so will now read this entire thread and see just how many mistakes I'm making although I do know I'm rubbish at average spped goals despite being talked through it by Ned (and others).

Anyway, I'll have another go, and then another, until I get somewhere...

BTW: Loving the map, although having all the those messages popping up at the end of each year, gets a little annoying especially as they are just before the ledger... Is there a reason why they aren't on the ledger.

[Blackhawk]

BTW: Loving the map, although having all the those messages popping up at the end of each year, gets a little annoying especially as they are just before the ledger... Is there a reason why they aren't on the ledger.

I assume you're referencing things like the Produce shipped in Florida, and the food shipped out of Tampa updated at the end of the year. The produce update is deleted in future versions. As for why it isn't in the ledger, I was not sure how or if it is possible to get the information about different territories in the ledger. Ex. LTD Food Loads hauled to Territory (New York) while also putting LTD Food Loads hauled from territory (Tampa) since it concerns different territories to test against.
Edit: I suppose I could also remove the loads of food shipped out of Tampa. It's largely used just to give you a general idea of how much you are shipping out of Tampa, and it is used to unlock access to other territories, but I could just have the territories be unlocked as you ship enough, without giving a yearly update on how much you have shipped out of Tampa.

I may have to add more start up money if it's a problem to get started and build in the map. I think buying an industry and collecting profits the first couple years might be the best way to start. The Lumber mills in Hartford and Syracuse or the textile mills in Columbia and Atlanta are usually pretty profitable, of course I'm still working on replacing the industries with earlier start dates so you can see its profits/losses.

As for average speed some later events make it easier to meet the speed goal although it would still take some work to get the most you can out of your locomotives before and after these events. I think currently with the speed requirement at 50mph you'll likely have to take advantage of these event choices to have a fast enough speed.