2 Test Maps

I just uploaded two maps in the Test Maps section. You may or may not have seen them before. They are Of Men and Seals v1.0 and Athabasca beta 0.05. You may have to tweak them a bit or write some events to get them the way you want them.

http://www.railroadtycoon.info/users/JayEff.php

[PJay]

What are the differences with the previous versions ?

Of Men & Seals is as posted elsewhere. It needs repairs to the events concerning ice opening and closing. Also the game is unbalanced because early success depends heavily on what gets seeded at St. John's. Somewhere, I forget where, someone has posted a sequel - Of Men and Oil.

Athabasca beta .05 is little changed from the beta .04 version that was posted at The Terminal. The most important change was placement of the toys4us warehouse at Fort McMurray, which is needed for the mission, and one should not have to gamble on whether or not it gets seeded. The start date is 1965 or later and has very few events. It would be a fun open range map but you would have to write your own anti-tycoon coding to put limits on it. And bring me some furniture. I just moved to Fort St. John :wink:

I am leaving Athabasca alone for a while, maybe a long while, to work on another map of this area, set in the time the 1900s immigration boom and when the northern railways were first built. This one will pay a lot more attention to history of the region and the Northern Alberta Railways and its precursors, and there will be a lot of attention paid to physical geography and famous historical dudes and babes.

[bc]

Well I tried both the new versions out. Afraid I still didn't much like Athabasca and packed it in when I couldn't make enough money to let me extend the railroad - probably my fault and I'll try it again sometime.

Men & Seals though still baffles me. I can run one profitable train off the ice and just about get to the nearest town and back in time to run it onto the ice the following year - but (and I'm only playing on normal) it made no profit the second year and the run to anywhere but the ice just loses money. The overheads are still so great that after that its all downhill. So how are you supposed to get cash rolling in? I'd like to be able to progress because its nice to have a map which is out of the ordinary.

You could have had a bad seed, which makes it very tough. If it is not a bad seed...

1. Keep an eye on the cargo display views and make sure the local market is not flooded. You have to keep product flowing out of there or you will be hamstrung. Low prices will imprison you if you don't plan your expansion. What is in demand at the nearest ports - St. Pierre, Channel-Port aux Basques, Sidney etc?
2. Can you afford to buy or build a meatpacker or textile mill at St. John's?
3. Be careful about buying too many ships. You will need to add one to make sure that if you lose one in a disaster, you still have one. Don't worry about having to use your track to make money: it was bought cheap and has a very low maintenance cost.
4. Oil buildings are evented at the start. Look at them because they could become profitable and inflate in value very quickly.
5. Micromanage! Manage the first couple of ships very carefully, planning each haul. Avoid having all ships on the ice at the same time.