Creating cities and some other details

[kenb]

Hello group,

Another noob here! My name is Ken, and I've been playing RRTycoon on and off for several years now. I've decided to try out some map-building with my copy of RRTycoon3, but it appears that I'm going to need some help working out some problems I've encountered in the early stages.

I guess this would be a good time to mention that I've misplaced the documentation for the map building section, as I can only find the beginners guide and the locomotive chart, neither of which make any reference to map building issues. I've been making some progress just by going in there and trying things out, but I seem to have reached a brick wall on a couple of issues, and I was hoping you folks might be able to point me in the right direction.

The first problem I'm having is figuring out how to tell the software that I want to create a city as opposed to a region. When looking at maps created by others, I can see that cities are defined in white text in the City/Region list, while the regions appear in pink text. The pink text appears to be the default when viewing the list for the first time, and I'm guessing that there will be a keyboard command or something that will allow me to toggle between creating a city or a region.

My second question concerns the grade of the land. So far, I've only been experimenting with maps that are flat, and it's occured to me that some difference in grade level might be required when adding lakes or oceans. I'm thinking that ports might require a minimum depth of water for the shipping functions to work, so I was wondering if there is anything I should know about before I get too far with my creations.

While I have your attention, I guess I should also ask if anybody knows where I might be able to find an on-line copy of those missing instructions.

Thanks group, have a great day.

Cheers,
Ken

Are you sure there was documentation on map? I have never seen any. I just used the editor to look at the maps that came with the game, or at other fan made maps.

[kenb]

Are you sure there was documentation on map? I have never seen any. I just used the editor to look at the maps that came with the game, or at other fan made maps.

Hi JayEff,

I can't say for sure if there ever was another booklet included when I bought it, as I picked up the program about 18 months ago and my memory isn't so good, so it's quite possible that I have everything that came with it.
In any case, I'll probably be OK without instructions once I figure out how to get a city created that shows up on the map! I've got that funny feeling that I'm missing something really obvious here, and that I'm going to feel a bit silly when somebody points it out.

Cheers,
Ken

Placing Cities
The place cities and place label buttons are in the place station group. Scroll up to see them.

To Make an Image for Importing
1. I get a source map from RT3 Mapbuilder. I select Output: Grayscale scaled to selected area, uncheck the Snap-to 64+1 box. I choose the highest resolution my image software can accept. I select the boundaries for my map, going a bit outside to make sure I have caught everything I want. I make note that the latitude and longitudes of the corners to help me know where they are. I press Create Map, and confirm that I want it really big. Then I make note of the exact east-west and north-south scales.
2. In image software, I adjust slightly for the curvature of the earth by reshaping the rectangle to a trapezoid.
3. The image is cropped clipped to remake a rectangle to exclude areas I don’t want.
4. The image is resized, compressing the east-west dimension so the scale matches that of the north-south dimension, and arriving at the final map dimensions (in pixels). The recommended scale is 1.5 miles per pixel, which I try to achieve, though it also depends on the story I will be trying to tell with the map.

Ports
I can't answer your comments about ports because I have never made a flat map, but I have learned a few things about ports.

1. If your scenario has a haul mission for a specific cargo, make sure there is demand for it by placing on in the destination city using the editor. There is no point in leaving the mission open to chance seeding.
2. Within a few squares of a port, cargo is able to move onto lakes and oceans. If you want movement on the water but don`t necessarily want a demand or supply port, you can include a blank port in your recipe book.
3. You can use low consumption ‘collector’ warehouses or ports to initiate cargo movement. For instance they can represent rail construction camps along the route players are expected to ollow. They might consume 1 log, 1 meat and 1 steel. The logs would wander in "on spec". The small stack of logs encourages players to follow that route, and they can either haul the logs or build their own lumber mill. Once a station is set up where cargo is hauled away, a yellow or green patch will start around the station, allowing that cargo to be drawn to that station via the ordinary game mechanics, if you have reliable service. Edible crops will gravitate to a city anyway, but such a warehouse could be useful to draw in cotton, iron, bauxite, logs, pulp, and wool to places where the scenario designer wants them to be.