Ok so here we go! 2048x2048 map (I have a lot of memory and processing power), no trees to save some RAM and improve performance (also because you can expand the map and it won't look ugly). Also extra elevations to make the terrain more challenging. Employing 21 bits per month, so costs might be a bit different from a 19 bit game.
Big map is big:
To start I picked a cattle farm-dairy route. Good, clean, one-hop hauling that shouldn't cause much difficulty. Due to the continental scale of this map, our two industries are quite far apart. I started by figuring out what transport I'll use.
Our two candidates are a 2-pack of the nabe-JNR which packs good horsepower and speed, and the vastly more expensive RVG runner (it's 100k more expensive). However milk is a cooled good and has a 15% speed bonus (one of the highest %s. Passangers are 18%, the highest). For this the runner, even if hauling slightly less, has a higher speed (highest possible with the current milk wagon), greater horsepower (which means acceleration we sorely need in this hilly map) and is cheaper per kilometer. Runner it is. The extra 100k cost can be mitigated and I'll explain why later.
So I bult my line and...
Oh nose the pathfinder is stuck, something is wrong! After checking my rails I found two mistakes:
Contigous ways don't autoconnect in simutrans. Be specially mindful of tunnels and bridges, those rascals!
Choo Choo! We are off to cocnhita valley or whatever is that city. My USA namepack has some amusing city names, I wonder what pearls I'll uncover with time.
And here we go, one trip, clean, tidy 10k profit. However we have a problem. Our infrastructure costs a grand total of 16k per month - the black "This month:" beside maintenance shows how much it'll cost on the current month, good to monitor construction projects. Our solution is to add more trains. But how to make them not collide and spew milk all over the countryside?
Ta-da!. This is the simplest, cheapest kind of overtake, it divides the whole track into two huge segments that meet each other here. This works for two trains, however is not very good because if one of them reaches the overtake first it'll have a lot of idle time. The more overtakes you add on a simple line like this, the more trains you can fit. Things can get a bit more complicated if you have a midway station but I'll cover that in another moment.
With the overtakes built, I duplicated that train twice for a total of 3 convoys running on the same line.
Our accountants approve. But how did I manage to build all this and spend so much without cheating or going bankrupt. Here's the catch of simutrans economics - you have an "assets" component which is calculated essentially by your rolling stock. Buying a vehicle is not a expenditure, it is an investment which adds to your total asset. Your
net worth = assets - bank balance - and bankrupticy is calculated solely on
net worth (thankfully interest is not modelled yet). So buying new vehicles doesn't actually decrease your net worth so long you don't
run them. Whenever you
start a convoy an instant -15% depreciation is applied which can't be removed anymore. So think wisely before launching a convoy. In essence, each one of those 400k trains actually cost me only 64,5k of my
net worth allowing such an agressive investment gameplay. Keep in mind
terraforming, laying tracks and roads and maintenance are effective lost money, they don't turn into assets.
Another thing to be watchful is the
first-day-of-the-month plunge (can someone come up with a better name for this?). Maintenance is charged all at once on the 1st day of the month, so your operational profit of that month starts on negative. This is specially important on large bit-per-month games because the monthly maintenance can be a huge hit on your budget.
If it exceeds your net worth it will instantly make you go bankrupt. This trap has caught me several times, so be very careful with new investments and always watch your net worth.
So that's it for our first episode. We are left with a good, stable and profitable line which still has room for expansion. I'll cover that on the next post. Here's a sequence of pictures showing the incredible length of this line - 2048x2048 maps are insanely big indeed.
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Topic: Let's play Simutrans Pak128 - A song of beer and milk. (Read 10888 times)