Adventure Island - why won't Killer Bee let me give it more trains?

[dunbaratu]

Playing the Campaign. On the Adventure Island map you are given a park with a pre-made coaster called Killer Bee. It can't handle the customer throughput because it has a very short station that only holds 2 "trains" (trains are really single cars in this type of coaster, so that's not much.

No matter how I edit the length of the station section I cannot set it to have more than 2 trains running. It doesn't matter that I make more station section behind the starting station section, and YES I know I have to stop the ride to change the number of trains.. but no matter what I do it acts like it still has a short station and won't let me do more than 2 trains, making the ride not really profitable. What's going on? Why won't it let me extend the station in a way that it will actually recognize properly so I can put more trains on?

I have made this type of ride myself by hand before and it definitely can do more than 2 trains normally.

[Wai]

You need a break segment for each train. A train will not leave the station until the track ahead is clear to prevent accidents. So, in this case train two cannot move until train one has cleared the break just prior to re-entering the station.

[dunbaratu]

Originally posted by Wai:

You need a break segment for each train. A train will not leave the station until the track ahead is clear to prevent accidents. So, in this case train two cannot move until train one has cleared the break just prior to re-entering the station.

It's strange that you can have "too few" brake sections when "zero" is already a valid number to have. So is the rule "Once you have at least 1 brake, make sure you have a long enough length of brakes for the whole queue of cars?" So the longest queue of cars you can have is decided by the longest length of station OR of brakes, whichever is smaller?

I'm asking because this mechanic was never taught to the player, and players making their own coasters will probably not use brake sections if the coaster functions without them, so the game mechanic is never explained. Thus my confusion here.

[Wai]

If there is a risk that a runaway train will crash into the train in front then you need to use breaks to separate them. Many coaster types have only single carriage "trains". So, you will probably want to have multiple trains. Your station, in all cases, must be long enough to accommodate one train. If you have two trains then usually you need to break at the entry to the station and you want a station long enough to take two trains to increase passenger throughput slightly. (It does depend on the type of coaster being built though.) The station it's self seems to act as a "brake" for some coasters, but you will definitely need brakes on the faster more intense ones. I really can't be definitive as coaster types vary. Ordinary transport railways use lights to separate trains approaching stations in order to prevent crashes. This is much the same principal. One train only per rail segment. But, this does not mean all segments must be evenly spaced, only that the train behind cannot crash into the train in front.

Adding more trains to this particular ride may not have the effect you desire. Either you will need to find a way to divide the track to allow more trains to use it which would change the dynamics or might even "break" the ride; or, all you will achieve is one more train waiting at the station. I have never bothered to try to modify this ride, - it makes money so I work on building the park rather than tweaking the existing ride.

[dunbaratu]

Originally posted by Wai:

If there is a risk that a runaway train will crash into the train in front then you need to use breaks to separate them. Many coaster types have only single carriage "trains".

Correct. This is one. Each "train" is just one car and you can't make it longer.

I've built this one myself many times and I could make it have 5, 6, 7, or 8 "trains" (cars), purely by just having a long station.

But in this scenario you are given a pre-built coaster that only allows 2 'trains' (cars), even though there's plenty of room to make the station longer to support more. A key problem with the park that you have to fix is that this ride is not profitable with so few cars because customers aren't funneling through it fast enough, and it has a LONG track able to handle many more than this.

My confusion was that no matter how much I edited the ride to lengthen the station I still was only allowed 2 'trains' (cars). Even though I've made this coaster type myself and a long station alone, with the station's own braking, was sufficient to support more cars than this.

But unlike anything I'd made myself, this one comes with a small braking section pre-built too. And I think that may be the problem - that once you do choose to add a braking section before the station, THEN both the braking section AND the station have to be long enough to support more cars. Making the station long has no effect if it's the braking section that's actually the limiting factor.

[Wai]

I have checked, and, you can safely, and easily increase Killer Bee to 3 cars. It does improve income too.

Close the ride and delete the straight track before the station. Replace with block brake track and then increase the carriages to 3.

Have fun.

Illustration:-
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2052000669494583951/B93D0775F0AC118ECD639656C0CC02BF85B36752/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

(You can, increase the number of cars to 5, but, this will not improve throughput. However, by using the method (below) you will be able to have passengers leave the ride faster which may make them happier.

Remove the last (3rd section) of the station and the preceding 3 rail sections (the straight track leading into the station). Replace with two new station sections and a block brake between the original and new station sections. Delete the Exit from the original station and place a new Exit on the new section. You now have two stations one for Entrance and one for Exit with a block brake separating them. Increase the number of cars to 3. (there is no point in having the 5 available cars, the extra 2 do NOT increase your throughput.))

[Wai]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2052000669509937349/881C8E701B5E2C57D837DF2A4F224284D21ECB0B/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Killer Bee, patched, after adding ONE additional car and Rapid Exit. It works well and brings in extra income. See method in brackets at the bottom of my previous message.

[dunbaratu]

Thanks to all for the help.

Indeed the problem was a mix of the following three things:

1 - Apparently the rule the game uses is that if your coaster has both a station AND a brakes section, the max length of train (or max # of cars in a one-car-per-train coaster type like this one) depends on whichever of those two, the station or the brakes, is shorter. If you have no brakes section other than the station's own brakes, then the station length is the only limiting factor. But if you have a brakes section added, then it also becomes a limiting factor and if it's short, then lengthening the station makes no difference, as the station isn't the bottleneck point of the coaster that's capping the length.

2 - The coaster was pre-built as part of the scenario, so it wasn't built the way I would have done and I was unaware of the braking section it comes with.

3 - At no point prior had I made a coaster with a braking section other than the braking you get from having a longer station than necessary for the train lengths. At no point prior was this necessary so the game mechanism of braking sections hadn't been "taught" to me yet by prior scenarios. So the above game mechanic wasn't unknown to me.

So the reason for the limit of 2 cars was (A) a mechanism I didn't know about, and (B) caused by a feature in the coaster that it "came with" that I didn't put there, making it harder for me to notice it.

One thing about the scenarios I don't care for is when there's a scenario that says, "We built a park for you already, but we made some mistakes. Spend ages figuring out what we did wrong and fix it." It's a lot easier to know what's there when everything in the park was built by me. (Instead of hoping I can discover everything that's there by fiddling with the camera a lot, knowing that failing to see a vital thing may make it impossible to pass the scenario.)

[Wai]

Actually, reading the requirements can give you a clue to what is the best way to approach the scenario even more than the "given" infrastructure.

What I dislike is all the fiddly rubbish which gets in the way. My pet hate in this is fences, especially the ones which are half buried in the ground.

From my point of view, I generally pause the game right at the start and destroy all the "wonky" paths. If there is a ride which I need to keep, such as Killer Bee, then I rationalise the paths. In the case of Killer Bee, I destroy them all, but in other cases I retain some if it fits with my needs. There are a couple of scenarios where, in spite of their value, it is for me a better option to destroy the rides too. I like a clean slate. But, sometimes, the "prepared" rides are needed. I rarely bother to edit them though, just their paths.

Be careful when borrowing money if the scenario requires no loan debt to win. You probably will still need a little extra cash. Check for cash rewards they will help to offset loans.

Going back to Killer Bee, editing the coaster is not needed, but, the paths are a visual mess and the ticket price is ridiculous. Without alteration, it makes a profit if set to £9.90, though you could probably get a bit more. You need a lot of visitors and you need them happy so I think the ticket price needs to be reasonable. You will bleed money, however, if you try to maintain that free ride and the shops at the back of the park - so, I don't and I use path signs to bring the customers back to the front end of the park.

I enjoyed the challenge of modifying Killer Bee though, so thank you. I now have the modified version working in a repeat of that scenario.