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Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


Everything is more exciting with the Main Theme!




What is a foamer?
It's a rail industry term. This is a foamer.

Locomotion?
Locomotion is a 2004 Sequel to game developer Chris Sawyer's 1990s classic Transport Tycoon series. After his creation of the smash hit Roller Coaster Tycoon series, Sawyer returned to the world of transportation to make a definitive version of his original game. Unfortunately, after the excitement of Rollercoaster Tycoon series, the world overlooked the re-imagining of his original baby. The cartoonish RCT graphics didn't adapt well to the more muted look of Locomotion, and despite many quality of life features, detailed touches and even a few new features, the game was largely passed over. Importantly, looking from today's viewpoint, Atari did not allow the .exe file to be modified, so the fan patches that extended the life of Transport Tycoon out past 20 years never happened.


How do you play?
If you've ever played the Transport tycoon series, this is the same, but bigger and better. You build roads and railways, and use trucks, trains, boats and planes to transport goods and passengers from towns and factories around the map. The faster and further you transport things, the more you get paid. Simple! The game has a simple supply and demand where every building produces transportables and accepts others. I'll go over the supply chains once we've sorted out a few things and are ready to start.


Why bother with a forgotten game the critics barely noticed?
Remember when all the goons got stoned and played Euro Truck Simulator until borderline malnouishment? I do the same with this game. Despite all the flaws, it remains one of my favourites. I don't know how many times I've reinstalled it, certainly it's been on every computer I've ever owned. The world is immersive, the game is programmed immaculately and runs like a dream on any PC, and there is always a new challenge on the huge maps.


The Transport Tycoon series had crazy mods, are you using any?
As I mentioned above, Editing the .exe was confirmed illegal by the publishers, so the game potential was never really extended like it could have been. However, lots of custom vehicles and the like were created by the small modding community that still exists. I'm going to be using a mostly vanilla game with a few custom vehicles to spice things up. For some reason, most modded vehicles come in real-life liveries instead of in-game company colours, so to many mods looks kind of garish.


How will we play?
This will be an informal Goon-run campaign. You are welcome at any time to suggest routes, challenges or systems. Vehicles can be named, so suggest names on this spreadsheet. Short RPs are welcome. The only thing I don't want is incredibly detailed :spergin: on signals and rail intersections. Let me take care of that part, you guys worry about the big picture!


Let's Play!

Right. We'll be playing this map:

Link to full scale (enormous) map
This is the city of Auckland, New Zealand, (mostly) as it was in 1900. Right now, most settlements are tiny villages which require several days walk to get to the outside world. The exception to this is the Great South Road, a dirt road originally built by the military during the Land Wars of the 1860s to gain access to the Maori strongholds of the Waikato Region. It's now a vital link from Auckland itself (Center of the Map) to several towns to the south. The Great North Road is a later road that runs from Auckland central around the harbour and towards points Northward.

There are opportunities here to use roads, rails, trams and boats, and later aircraft will become available. The scenario goals have been maxed out so we can play a sandbox game out to the year 2000. We can haul passengers, mail, processed food, finished goods, wheat, livestock, grapes, iron ore, coal, wood and paper (No oil on this map). More on how that works in a day or two. Starting credit limit is low and loan interest is high, so the first years might be a struggle. Vehicles are a mixture of UK and US to vaguely resemble what historically operated here plus a few surprises, so if you've played before, don't rely on a particular type of vehicle being there.


Now, What I need from you:

Do we want a computer opponent? They are stupid and annoying and will treat your carefully sculpted map like a sandpit of toddlers on a birthday party sugar rush. It is totally viable to just play to see how well we can do. That said, a computer will delay us from having everything our own way for a while and occasionally steal the best routes from us.


Our company

Pick any or all of the following:
  • Company name
  • Company Livery:

  • Founder's name
  • Founder's portrait:

  • A short and pithy bio or mission statement
  • Strategy or style ideas (British rail style clusterfuck network, A giant one-way dongloop and spur, individual bush tramways, etc. etc.)

Go to it!

Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jun 23, 2016

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Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012



Panorama of the Bristol Channel by Tomanton

Click here to name a vehicle

On this page:

Industry information and cargo rates

1900 Vehicle info and financials

Map breakdown

Updates:
1900-1903: On time in the age of ragtime
1903-1905: Things come unstuck
Status report 1 January 1905
1905-1910: First Blood
Status January 1910
1910-1913: Competition
1913-1917: The Steel Project
1917-1920: Trains of Steel
Interlude: Fowler 4F (Paul.Power)
1920-1925: Lost and Confused
Interlude: 'Jinty' Tank Engine (Paul.Power)
1925-1929: Flying High and Stooping Low
Interlude: Gresley A3 (Paul.Power)
1929-1933:March of Progress
Stanier 5XP 'Jubilee' (Paul.Power)
1933-1940: Steam Based Bovine Perambulation
Interlude: Stanier 'Black Five'(Paul.Power)
Interlude: DC-3 (Spaced God)
Interlude: New Haven S1 (spbwf7)
Interlude: GE 44TON(spbwf7)
1940-1946: External Combustion Engines
Gresley'V2' (Paul.Power)
1946-1950: Postwar Blues
1950-1956: Nothing much happens
1956-1964: Dieselization
Interlude: Stanier 'Coronation Pacific' (Paul.Power)
Interlude: BR Standard 4MT (Paul.Power)
1964-1967: Hardly a Rail In Sight
1967-1974: Tweaks and Hovercraft
Interlude: Concorde/ Boeing 747 (Spaced God)
1974-1980: Back To Trains
Interlude: De Havilland Comet (Spaced God)
1980-1985: Sloggers and Sprinters
North America 1: 1900-1922
1985-1992: From the South of the South to the North of the North
North America 2: 1922-1941
1992-1997: Cruising Speed to the New Millenium
North America 3: 1941-1947
1997-2006: Not with a Bang, But a 5-Chime
Interlude: Convair 880, Martin 2-0-2, Boeing B-17. (Spaced God)
Summary 2006: For whom the crossing bell tolls

Other:
Map and Mod download

Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 00:59 on May 23, 2016

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
No computers, we shall extort this map all by ourselves!



Company name: Egoonomics
Company Livery: Orange

Founder's name: Dick Verithick
Founder's portrait: Tony Terrific

Mission Statement: Egoonomics is the forerunner in amassing profits only to spend them in incredibly absurd ways. Always between crippling bankruptcy and filled coffers, the current owner (A distant relative of Mr. Trevithick) is set on maximizing profits in areas with no competitors under the guise of improving the local population's "quality of life"


Strategy/Style Ideas:
Every railroad must cross a road at least twice, exceptions may only be accepted if roads are too far apart.
If the above is not possible, make the system as convoluted as possible.

Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Oct 24, 2015

TheMcD
May 4, 2013

Monaca / Subject N 2024
---------
Despair will never let you down.
Malice will never disappoint you.

I've always found these games to be interesting to look at from a distance, but never really had the time to sit down and play one. I have enough problems building rollercoasters in Sawyer's game about that, a whole transport line and all that guff would probably have my head exploding.

Computer opponent? Yes. It should be more fun if we have somebody else around to get angry and shake our fists at.

Company name: Phoenix Railways
Company livery: Red and gold
Founder name: Igor Demikhovsky
Founder portrait: Charles Chilblain

Bio: Really, they should have known better than to send a transport expert to Siberia. A few highjacked supply transports (learning all those routes turned out to be a great idea), a stolen boat from Vladivostok and a long trip with an entirely uncertain goal later, Phoenix Railways is ready to rise from the ashes (largely the ashes of the boat after the big crash into the coast) and make a whole lot of money! Maybe even eventually turn into a global corporation to spite the motherland!

Style idea: Central planning will bring efficiency to this inferior, inefficient transport system! Build a massive central line, branch off a few auxilliary side-main lines, then go from there. No idea if this is actually feasible, but the increased amount accidents will surely bring only the best and brightest railway operators to the top, the ones that screw up were probably plotting the company's downfall anyway.

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


Jobbo_Fett posted:

Strategy/Style Ideas:
Every railroad must cross a road at least twice, exceptions may only be accepted if roads are too far apart.
If the above is not possible, make the system as convoluted as possible.

I'll try, it might be awkward at first as there isn't much road around at the moment, but as the city expands it will get easier.

TheMcD posted:

I've always found these games to be interesting to look at from a distance, but never really had the time to sit down and play one. I have enough problems building rollercoasters in Sawyer's game about that, a whole transport line and all that guff would probably have my head exploding.

It's actualy a really easy game to play. There's no requirement to make a complex network, and it's quite easy to make a profit. I've set the starting conditions to limit our starting cash, but once we have a couple of profitable routes, it won't make a huge amount of difference. Construction and running costs are low so a route with a regular payout will often pay back its costs in a year or two. The game could be made a lot more difficult by simply upping the cost of construction and operation.

TheMcD posted:

Style idea: Central planning will bring efficiency to this inferior, inefficient transport system! Build a massive central line, branch off a few auxilliary side-main lines, then go from there. No idea if this is actually feasible, but the increased amount accidents will surely bring only the best and brightest railway operators to the top, the ones that screw up were probably plotting the company's downfall anyway.

This is actually how the railroad in the area has worked historically. The North Island main trunk runs from North to South in this area with industrial sidings, a central loop serving a few inner city suburbs and two small spur passenger lines. When a 500m of new line was put in a year ago, it was the first new way laid since 1930s. If you didn't live near the line,(Such as the entire north shore of the harbour) you were stuck taking the trams (until they were closed) or the bus.

Thanks for the ideas so far, feel free to vote for the ones you like best.:) I'll do a rundown of the industries and haulage tomorrow.

ultrabindu
Jan 28, 2009
How does this game stack up against OpenTTD?
I remember playing this for a while back when it first came out, but not really getting into it very much. Growing the towns into cities and making intricate tram lines was fun though.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

I remember building tracks to be horrible and wearing out my mouse left click like nobody's business. Especially trying to build two tracks alongside each other like a proper train system. In OpenTT you just click and drag but here you have to manually click each piece?

Computer opponent: Yes, we need someone to antagonize.

Company name: McDuck Enterprises
Company livery: Red and blue
Founder name: Scrooge McDuck
Founder portrait: Wodger Wamjet

Mission Statement: To amass a huge fortune in cash and swim in it.

Style/Strategy: All rail has to be connected and be at least moderately overcomplicated.

Supeerme
Sep 13, 2010
poo poo I remember playing the Demo of this. No wonder I couldn't find it in the stores.

ashnjack
Jun 8, 2010

FUCK FLOWERS. JUST...FUCK 'EM.
I remember playing this after rollercoaster tycoon and being so disappointed. On the other hand I was a little unused to playing these kinds of games so I look forward to seeing how it's done properly.

Also basically this. You must post photos of ducks as people.

Poil posted:


Computer opponent: Yes, we need someone to antagonize.

Company name: McDuck Enterprises
Company livery: Red and blue
Founder name: Scrooge McDuck
Founder portrait: Wodger Wamjet

Mission Statement: To amass a huge fortune in cash and swim in it.

Style/Strategy: All rail has to be connected and be at least moderately overcomplicated.

Bacter
Jan 27, 2012

Nie wywoluj wilka z lasu, glupku.
I don't understand how we can be a portrait other than Reginald Rottenfish

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


ultrabindu posted:

How does this game stack up against OpenTTD?
I remember playing this for a while back when it first came out, but not really getting into it very much. Growing the towns into cities and making intricate tram lines was fun though.

I've never played OpenTTD but I played the versions of TTD (And the original Transport Tycoon) with the fan patches. The graphics are upgraded a great deal, from pixel art style sprites to renders of 3d models. Depots are gone (Actually a really good move) in favour of placing things directly on the track. Lots of the fan patch functionality was incorporated, like multiple engine trains, with no length limit, but signals mechanics remain unchanged. I feel vehicle selection could have been more creative. (Why no service cars, water taxis or Rotodyne?)

Poil posted:

I remember building tracks to be horrible and wearing out my mouse left click like nobody's business. Especially trying to build two tracks alongside each other like a proper train system. In OpenTT you just click and drag but here you have to manually click each piece?
Yes, this is true. It uses the Rollercoaster tycoon style building controls (Sadly no tilt or vertical drops), so building long straight railroads is rather annoying.

Supeerme posted:

poo poo I remember playing the Demo of this. No wonder I couldn't find it in the stores.
I believe it's available on steam now. There's also a mobile version recently out under the transport tycoon name. I understand it's more of a locomotion port underneath.


Let's have a look at how we make some :20bux:. You get paid for taking stuff from where it's produced to where it's wanted. Your payment is basically the amount of cargo hauled times the distance carried. This is then modified by a rate based on the cargo type and the time it took to get there.

Passengers and Mail:

Passengers are produced by all town buildings. Large ones also produce mail. Any station put within 4 squares of a building will receive a small stream of passengers from it that can be picked up by passenger vehicles. However, to deliver them, you need to take them to a place that will accept them. You can see that the big building below only accepts a fractional amount of passengers, so to get a workable station, you need to put it near multiple buildings that add up to more than one 'passenger'. You can also see that the building accepts small amounts of other cargoes so if there's enough buildings around, a station near the center of town will be a good place to deliver mail, food and goods to. Once the station accepts a type of cargo, you can deliver as much of it as you like.

Unfortunately, many of the towns in our region are more like this:bahgawd::

We'll need to wait for them to grow before they are usable passenger options. Passengers pay well if they are carried fast but the pay rate drops off rapidly if they are delayed. Mail has a similar pattern but at a lower rate, so it's usually only a sideline.

Farm based:

There are a few kinds of Farm. Some produce Livestock that can be taken to a food processing plant. Livestock have a low pay rate with a slow tail off. Livestock is usually carried in a special type of carrier.

Grain farms can deliver to a food processing plant, but can also deliver to a brewery. Grain pays and tails off ever so slightly more than livestock. Grain is carried in hopper trucks, bulk ships or covered hopper rail wagons.

Food plant:

Brewery:

When the produce arrives at the processors or breweries, they produce food that can be taken to towns that have enough food receiving buildings.

Vineyards produce grapes that go to Wineries to produce food. Grapes pay a little less than mail and tail off to nothing very rapidly.They are carried in general goods vehicles or boxcars.

Winery:

All farms tend to produce relatively small amounts of goods, and tend to close down if the fields around them are eaten up by developments

Mining based:

Coal mines produce coal that is carried in hoppers. They tend to cluster in a few areas of the map. Coal pays fairly well for a non-perishable good. Well serviced coal mines will often increase production.

Iron mines are like coal, but pay a significantly lower rate.

Both iron and coal get transported to a steel mill. (Coal can also go to power stations that produce nothing, but there are none on our map) If a steel-mill gets regular supplies of coal and iron, it will produce steel, which is carried on flatbeds and pays very well.

Steel is transported to factories, which then produce goods that are accepted by office buildings and shops. Goods are carried in general cargo vehicles and boxcars and pay more than coal but less than steel.

Plantation forest ('Managed forest' in-game) supplies lumber in similar quantities to the farms. Lumber pays about the same as coal.

Lumber can be taken directly to a sawmill to produce goods:

Or to a paper mill to produce paper, which pays less than goods but more than coal. Paper is carried on flatbeds to the printing works to produce goods.
Paper mill:

Printing works:


Other
Oil is a common commodity that isn't on this map. It pays well, is produced in large amounts and is carried in tanker cars from oil wells (land and sea) to oil refineries:

Chemicals are also missing from this map (You can only have so many industries in a scenario). They pay lousy but in bulk, and ship in tankers directly to factories. Flour mills work with the same cargoes as breweries, and Ski fields that accept and produce passengers are also available.


Finally, here's a reference to the payment rates. They stay the same relative to each other, but the prices go up over time due to inflation.

Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Oct 25, 2015

Zyrden
Mar 25, 2012

Climbing gear.
It's also on GOG for slightly cheaper if you're a euro person.

Do we want a computer opponent? No. Since this is a long map, and the game will likely go on for a long time, the ai will eventually do some pretty jarring stuff. Say there's a train route between two cities, the ai wont hesitate to build the very same route, but elevated with a bridge someplace to cross the other line. A third ai might then want to get in on the action and build another route on top of the others, again elevated. Which leads to stuff like this:


The entire map will fill with this poo poo.
Unless you plan on doing only 1 ai, in which case it's probably ok.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
This looks interesting, and I'd love to see how you make it shake out.

If you don't have a computer opponent, are there other sorts of challenges you can set for yourself? Like, have X money by X date or whatever?

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010
I have only one request/challenge:

Develop the island towns (Okiwi, Tryphena, Oneroa, Onetangi) to the maximum level possible.

ArchWizard
Mar 27, 2009

There's the Roy I know and love.


Is it possible to make AI opponents start significantly later in the game than us? It would be neat to see how the computer acts and I'd like you to show off ways to clown on other players, but we should give ourselves a head start.

Speaking of which, are there still fun ways to clown on other players? My favorite in TT/TTD was building rails over roads and blocking/smashing enemy road vehicles with trains, but that was so egregiously unfair that I can see Chris Sawyer removing that at some point in the series.

oystertoadfish
Jun 17, 2003

do you run ferries in this game? i took the ferry to devonport once, really pretty area with easy hills to hike over it for great views. maybe you can turn it into a hellhole of suburban sprawl and industry?

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Jaguars! posted:

Yes, this is true. It uses the Rollercoaster tycoon style building controls (Sadly no tilt or vertical drops), so building long straight railroads is rather annoying.
That was a dealbreaker for me. Way too much effort and clicking for just a straight line across flat ground. The controls were great for bridges and tunnels however.

ArchWizard posted:

Speaking of which, are there still fun ways to clown on other players? My favorite in TT/TTD was building rails over roads and blocking/smashing enemy road vehicles with trains, but that was so egregiously unfair that I can see Chris Sawyer removing that at some point in the series.
My favorite thing was to build a depot at the end of a station of another player, buy the cheapest locomotive, make it go and then stop it as it did a magical 180 degree turn. It doesn't work in OpenTT but it used to be that trains went halfway outside the edge of the square at the end of the line with an appropriate hitbox detection for collisions.

Poil fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Oct 25, 2015

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


Zyrden posted:

...

The entire map will fill with this poo poo.
Unless you plan on doing only 1 ai, in which case it's probably ok.

This is a very common sight with many AIs! it also shows how cheap bridges are. I wonder if making bridges cost more would make the AI hug the ground better, but on the other hand the computer doesn't terraform very well.

You can also see some progression from the older games here: you can see small and large radius curves and a chicane near the green station.

Glazius posted:

...
If you don't have a computer opponent, are there other sorts of challenges you can set for yourself? Like, have X money by X date or whatever?

TBH, in a decade or two we'll be as rich as Croesus (Which suits the robber baron vibes I've seen in the submissions so far) so most challenge will be engineering related. Anyone's welcome to suggest one at any time.

Pierzak posted:

I have only one request/challenge:

Develop the island towns (Okiwi, Tryphena, Oneroa, Onetangi) to the maximum level possible.

Can definitely do! Goodbye pristine native bush! :v:

ArchWizard posted:

Is it possible to make AI opponents start significantly later in the game than us? It would be neat to see how the computer acts and I'd like you to show off ways to clown on other players, but we should give ourselves a head start.

Speaking of which, are there still fun ways to clown on other players? My favorite in TT/TTD was building rails over roads and blocking/smashing enemy road vehicles with trains, but that was so egregiously unfair that I can see Chris Sawyer removing that at some point in the series.

Yes, you can delay them by up to about 5 years, IIRC. I think trains just pass through trucks stuck on the crossings now. There used to be an exploit where you could build a tile of rail connecting to your opponent's station, build a train engine and start it for a second, making it overlap the opponents rails and blow up any train arriving in the station. I think that one may still exist.

E: This is the same exploit Poil mentioned above.

oystertoadfish posted:

do you run ferries in this game? i took the ferry to devonport once, really pretty area with easy hills to hike over it for great views. maybe you can turn it into a hellhole of suburban sprawl and industry?

Yes! The earliest type is in one of the pictures in the OP. I think it comes about 15 years after the start. At the moment, we're stuck with the clipper for sea transport, which can only carry 30 passengers.

Devonport is a fun area to visit! When I was a kid, I loved to climb North Head and see the disappearing guns.


Next up, I'll get the info for the vehicles we have available, and then we'll have a better look at the map so that you can decide what to build. Hopefully I'll be able to play the first few years later in the week and write the update next weekend.

Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Oct 25, 2015

thedaian
Dec 11, 2005

Blistering idiots.
I wanted to love this game so much, since it had some really nice improvements on Transport Tycoon, and even now, OpenTTD is missing a lot of said improvements (mostly in terms of building on multiple layers instead of flat ground, or straight tunnels and bridges). And the trains looked really nice and long.

But the demands for clicking thousands of times to build a long track got tiresome, and then I discovered the AI "reserving space" while it was building. At that point, I stopped playing and never touched it again.

ultrabindu
Jan 28, 2009

Jaguars! posted:

This is a very common sight with many AIs! it also shows how cheap bridges are. I wonder if making bridges cost more would make the AI hug the ground better, but on the other hand the computer doesn't terraform very well.

You can also see some progression from the older games here: you can see small and large radius curves and a chicane near the green station.

On thing I remember you could do was floating stations and elevated railways.
AI got the best catchment area in a town? No problem, just raise a piece of land 5-6 blocks high above the town and build rail bridge right over to it, and build your station floating above. For some reason the game wasn't to bothered about the station not actually being attached to the ground. Bridges and elevated stations were ridiculously cheap.


Yikes.

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010

Jaguars! posted:

Can definitely do! Goodbye pristine native bush! :v:
BTW, by developing I meant stimulate the towns' growth through regular transport services and possibly invest in industrial complexes (I forgot if you can buy those in Locomotion?), not just "build a bunch of poo poo and call it a day" :v:

Also, no mass leveling (in that area at least). Huge engineering projects and land reclamation efforts are OK, but it's more fun if you work organically along with the landscape you're given and not just plonk a 100x100 building field of sea-level flatland.

Pierzak fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Oct 25, 2015

tomanton
May 22, 2006

beam me up, tomato
This brings back fond memories of griefing OpenTTD, which to the best of my recollection had no AI. One AI would be cool just to see what happens. That payment graph also seemed to suggest that some types of cargo are worthless if they take too long in transit, is that a common hazard?

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


thedaian posted:

I wanted to love this game so much, since it had some really nice improvements on Transport Tycoon, and even now, OpenTTD is missing a lot of said improvements (mostly in terms of building on multiple layers instead of flat ground, or straight tunnels and bridges). And the trains looked really nice and long.

But the demands for clicking thousands of times to build a long track got tiresome, and then I discovered the AI "reserving space" while it was building. At that point, I stopped playing and never touched it again.

I never minded too much, possibly because I like to build rails that follow the contour of the terrain closely and therefore curve frequently. But I seem to be the exception, apparently :smith: And it would have been such an easy fix, too.

Pierzak posted:

BTW, by developing I meant stimulate the towns' growth through regular transport services and possibly invest in industrial complexes (I forgot if you can buy those in Locomotion?), not just "build a bunch of poo poo and call it a day" :v:

Also, no mass leveling (in that area at least). Huge engineering projects and land reclamation efforts are OK, but it's more fun if you work organically along with the landscape you're given and not just plonk a 100x100 building field of sea-level flatland.

No worries mate, Ya didn't think I was gonna clearcut the lot, did yer? :)

There's a couple of areas of forest that I'm thinking of a soft ban on development. If you know the real life area, Little Barrier Island (Island with entirely forest) and the Waitakere and Hunua Ranges (The two largest forests) will be off limits to excess developement - Only routes to towns/industries in those locations, perhaps.

tomanton posted:

This brings back fond memories of griefing OpenTTD, which to the best of my recollection had no AI. One AI would be cool just to see what happens. That payment graph also seemed to suggest that some types of cargo are worthless if they take too long in transit, is that a common hazard?

Yes, all types of cargo eventually pay nothing if they've been delayed too long in transit. This normally only happens when the network jams or the train pathfinding can't find it. Train pathfinding sucks and last time I played it I realised that will always take the branch closer to the destination, even if that branch doesn't lead anywhere near it. Think of a car staying on the motorway instead of using the offramp and crossing the motorway on a bridge.

The AI has improved over the old transport tycoon versions. It doesn't have the same tendency to have a design board aneurysm every kilometer or two like the old ones:

(From the gallery of AI quirks at The wholly-holy Church of Transport Tycoon)

Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Oct 26, 2015

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

One of my favorite stupid things the AI did in TT was if they decided to go with airplanes and built the airports at realistic distances from the cities. Meaning they never accepted mail and only produced the tiniest trickle of passengers. The planes were of course set to full load so after half a year or more they usually had filled all the passenger spots but mail remained at 0. The AI just took more and more loans to expand their non-profit airline until they went bankrupt.

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

I think a limited terraforming rule might keep you on your toes.

Tiles can only be raised (or lowered) 1 height. per project. I'm not expecting you to remember what you did to a tile 39 years ago

Also have you given much thought to how you'll handle the inevitable need for bi-directional rail?

I also forget, did Locomotion have waypoints or was that purely an OpenTTD thing?
Speaking of, Transport Tycoon veterans will be happy to know that trucks aren't an exercise in frustration and inefficiency in Locomotion!

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010
gently caress you Jaguars, I reinstalled Loco and lost an hour just because I wanted to check something :colbert:

BTW, someone remind me how I can switch cargo on multi-cargo car orders (e.g. I have coal/ore hoppers and a full-load order says load coal, how do I switch that to load ore?).

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

Is there a dropdown in the Load cargo option?
Edit: yes. If you hold down the button when you click the full load, you can choose what kind of cargo it is waiting for.
I forget bnecause I got lazy and would just add dedicated trains for each cargo type.
(This is a secretsuccessful plot to make me re-install, I know it.)

Veloxyll fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Oct 27, 2015

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


Poil posted:

One of my favorite stupid things the AI did in TT was if they decided to go with airplanes and built the airports at realistic distances from the cities. Meaning they never accepted mail and only produced the tiniest trickle of passengers. The planes were of course set to full load so after half a year or more they usually had filled all the passenger spots but mail remained at 0. The AI just took more and more loans to expand their non-profit airline until they went bankrupt.
You can often see something like this in Locomotion if you bar the computer from buying roads or rail. The early aircraft and ships are hard to make a profit from.

Veloxyll posted:

I think a limited terraforming rule might keep you on your toes.

Tiles can only be raised (or lowered) 1 height. per project. I'm not expecting you to remember what you did to a tile 39 years ago
...

That's tough alright, but I'm willing to take it on. The only exception might be some tunnel portals, although I most of the time I should be able to cut/fill without any problems.

Veloxyll posted:

...
Also have you given much thought to how you'll handle the inevitable need for bi-directional rail?

I also forget, did Locomotion have waypoints or was that purely an OpenTTD thing?
Speaking of, Transport Tycoon veterans will be happy to know that trucks aren't an exercise in frustration and inefficiency in Locomotion!
Well they won't be once we're past 1900 model trucks.:v:

Lomo has waypoints, you can just click on the screen while you're setting the vehicle orders to create one.

My usual style is to create an up and down line that are next to or quite close to each other. Usually it's just the two lines, even on quite busy networks. I quite often make stations unidirectional loops as well. I try and keep the footprints of my routes light.

Pierzak posted:

gently caress you Jaguars, I reinstalled Loco and lost an hour just because I wanted to check something :colbert:

BTW, someone remind me how I can switch cargo on multi-cargo car orders (e.g. I have coal/ore hoppers and a full-load order says load coal, how do I switch that to load ore?).

I just checked and yep, exactly as per Veloxyll's post.

Vehicles

I'm going to set one opponent with high intelligence, low aggresiveness and competitiveness, with a start delay of 5 years.

Financially, we're going to start with a loan of $10,000 and a credit limit of $30,000, with 10% interest p/a. This should be enough to just build a single line railway from one side of the map to the other if we avoid excessive engineering.

Here are the vehicles that will be available at the start. There are three predefined vehicle sets available - US, UK and Central Europe. I'm using a customised mixture of each designed to represent what actually operated in NZ but also keeping some of the more outlandish items that never made it down here.

Road:
Unpaved road currently costs $22 a square, the maximum speed is 48km/h. Paved road is $44/square, not speed limit AFAIK. We can also build one-way roads for $44/sq if we want to get into dual carriageways.
Not much choice. For passengers, we only have one type of bus, whose main alternative is a tram car.
WMC Bus:

The WMC is about as good as you'd expect a 1900 vehicle to be. One big advantage of the bus is that we can use existing roads to save on construction. It's quite a good bus for doing the rounds of small towns a bit too far apart for trams.

Various Trucks:


Current trucks aren't very capable and we'll need dozens to hande the output of a single industry. That's not to say that they can't turn a profit, they'll do just fine for short and medium haul jobs.

Rail:
We're still in the railway age, so the serious money at the moment lies in rail.
Tram tracks cost $32/sq, whether over existing roads or new ground.
Rail costs $22/sq.

Ce 2/2 Tram:

This tram is more efficient than the WMC bus, but slower. They'll be able to handle the traffic generated in our largest towns early on.

Special 2-4-2

A good workhorse engine for the early years. Reliable and with a good mix of top speed and power.

US 2-6-2

Our first mod vehicle, so it will always look like this, no matter what the company colours. (I'm thinking of going with filthy coal black steam engines anyway) Ever so slightly more powerful than the Special.

SLM C3/3

A European model thats lighter but less powerful than the others. I held my own little version of Stephenson's locomotive race and it accelerates significantly faster than the others with two light cars but struggles to start with five heavy coaches.

Rail Wagons:



Not much to say here, they'll haul the various types of cargo. Our only choices are in the passenger department, where we have large US style car, or smaller UK style cars that can also carry a little bit of mail. Rail is the best method of long distance passenger transport. [edit:] Can you tell that these are the first GIFs I made? The price of the mail car is $256.

Ships:

Clipper

The clipper can carry 30 passengers, or refit to hold 12 units of mail, food, goods or grapes. We can't carry the other raw materials by sea yet!

Air:
The sky is only good for falling out of hot-air ballons just at the moment.


I did the final tweaks to the scenario tonight, but I'm still open to company suggestions and vehicle names for the next day or two.

Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Oct 27, 2015

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

I wasn't setting the condition to be EASY :p

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

I wasn't aware that the technology for carrying goods by sea wasn't invented yet. :psyduck:

NewMars
Mar 10, 2013

Poil posted:

I wasn't aware that the technology for carrying goods by sea wasn't invented yet. :psyduck:

I wasn't aware that this game actually had you start off with sailboats.

xelada
Dec 21, 2012
When I saw the Passenger Carriages I first wondered why you would ever use the smaller one, then I noticed it was about half the weight (and slightly cheaper, 6/7 the price of the larger one), after running the numbers it still seems like a bit of a raw deal, it might be useful for the last spattering/very small trips, but for anything bigger the large ones seemed better... then I saw the kind of scale we're talking about (seriously fractions of a person), which now makes me wonder when you would be able to fill the large one.
So either I'm not understanding the mechanics or some of those carts are already useless.

The Casualty
Sep 29, 2006
Security Clearance: Pop Secret


Whiny baby
I've never tried Locomotion before, but I've played TTD off and on since my childhood. It's still a fantastic time sink after all these years, and the modding community has been quite creative.

Zyrden
Mar 25, 2012

Climbing gear.
You're able to make a profit with the early trucks? How? Anytime I've used them no matter the distance or product I've been losing money. Seems weird now that I think about it, but maybe there's something I'm missing.

Boats are cool, though they sometimes require terraforming to make a proper harbor and lots of waypoints since the pathfinding is :downs:

Crowsbeak
Oct 9, 2012

by Azathoth
Lipstick Apathy

Poil posted:

I remember building tracks to be horrible and wearing out my mouse left click like nobody's business. Especially trying to build two tracks alongside each other like a proper train system. In OpenTT you just click and drag but here you have to manually click each piece?

Computer opponent: Yes, we need someone to antagonize.

Company name: McDuck Enterprises
Company livery: Red and blue
Founder name: Scrooge McDuck
Founder portrait: Wodger Wamjet

Mission Statement: To amass a huge fortune in cash and swim in it.

Style/Strategy: All rail has to be connected and be at least moderately overcomplicated.

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


The clipper is definitely an anachronism. Based on my cursory research, it seems like typical ships launched in the 1890s looked like early 20th century steamers, but usually still had masts, some were still being built fully rigged. Some passenger ships were being built for pure steam, and looked like little :kimchi: ocean liners. There were still a lot of sail barges well into the 20th century, and lots of ships left over from earlier in the 1800s that all seem to look the same with flat lines, sails and a funnel.

Early trucks are best at short hauls over very easy terrain between industries that produce a steady flow of goods. Except mail trucks. I don't think I've ever made a profit with an early mail truck. Anything done by a 1900s truck can be done better by a train.

The small carriages are useful at the moment because our engines have no power and a light engine/carriage combo will handle hills better.

E: xelada, the fractional passenger numbers are only used when determining if a station accepts passengers or not. So if there is a '½ passengers' office building and two '¼ passengers' houses within 4 squares of a station, then the station will accept passengers and you can deliver as many there as you want. All buildings also produce a small amount of passengers for pickup. Sorry about that, even when I wrote that I couldn't find a way to explain it clearly.

Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Oct 28, 2015

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


Alright, the last thing to go through before we start is a proper rundown of the map so we can plan some projects. The map roughly represents the Auckland city limits and is about 90km x90km in real life.
Here's the in-game terrain map.


Luckily, I have a map from before I put the trees on which shows the hills better:


Here's the industry map. Note that there is no difference between the two types of wheat farm - it was an oversight on my part where I selected both the UK and US styles during scenario creation.


One reason why I chose a real life area is because we can grab a real map when necessary. If you find the in game map a little crowded, here's an industry by industry breakdown. First up, here are the towns that are big enough for a station that accepts passengers.

Only two towns - Auckland CBD and Pukekohe - will accept mail and food at the moment. Auckland CBD is the only town on the map that accepts goods.

Here's wood and paper. The arrow represents large paper mills in the central North Island. In game, it's just a paper mill on the edge of the map, nothing special about it.


Iron, Coal and Steel.


There are a lot of places that will accept wheat, livestock and grapes. I haven't shown the farms themselves because there are so many of them. Most of the wheat farms are on flat land to the South, vinyards are to the Northwest, and the livestock farms are all over.



Link to full scale (enormous) map

Hopefully that makes it a bit easier to plan some routes. Where shall we focus on?


Here's the challenges received so far:
  • Each railroad must cross two roads
  • Build a massive trunk and branch rail line
  • All rail must be interconnected
  • Develop the Island towns
  • Turn Devonport into a sprawling, polluted hellhole of the pacific
  • Tiles can only be moved 1 level per project
The two rail network related ones if taken together will have a very strong influence. Can I build isolated routes and link them up later, or does it all have to be one network from the start?

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

That's a pretty nice map. Looks good. :)

Jaguars! posted:

Can I build isolated routes and link them up later,
Of course not. :colbert:

Pierzak
Oct 30, 2010

Jaguars! posted:

Can I build isolated routes and link them up later, or does it all have to be one network from the start?

Yes, as long as they're full, town-based networks, and not "just link all the most profitable industries to start with".

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IAmTheRad
Dec 11, 2009

Goddammit this Cello is way out of tune!

Jaguars! posted:

Can I build isolated routes and link them up later, or does it all have to be one network from the start?

Nope. It will make it more interesting this way, instead of just going for a way to make the most money more quickly.

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