Scenario/Free-play date range?

[6000 Chipmunks]

I've recently recieved this game as a Christmas gift, and I of couse had to get all the available DLC once I saw how it looked. :)

There are a few nagging details that have me stumped however. One being the obvious lack of ability to play from different starting dates to the end.

I've made numours attemps at various scenarios and free-play for many hours, and have yet to get to the late game locos in most of them, if I play from the very earliest starting date. So...I figured, I'd solve the problem of using the early trains, that - lets face it, were only prototypes, and never actually made a run on a comercial railroad, and skip ahead to a date with more mass produced trains available. Upon trying to do that however, I'm faced with choices like 1830-1930, 1850 - 1870, 1890-1910, 1910 - 1930.

What happened to 1850-1930, or 1870-1930?
Why can't you play from different(even fixed), starting points to the end?
Have I missed something?
Am I the only one who thinks this should have been a feature, from say - day one? ;)

[heervandering]

Not me anyway, I think that there are already enough time periods and robust trains were not available in 1850 nor in 1870, so what 's the point?

[NetPCDoc]

Free mode & Sandbox mode (year) options:

1. 1830-1930 (100 years)
2. 1830-1850
3. 1850-1870
4. 1870-1890
5. 1890-1910
6. 1910-1930

Somewhere it does say that the powers that be decided to have one (1) hundred year option, then break that down into five (5) twenty year options (for those that - for whatever reason - just don't want to play an entire one-hundred years at one go).

And, as there is always an option to continue playing after the timer runs out, the ending dates on those ranges are not exactly set in stone.

[jhughes]

@NetPCDoc hit the nail on the head .. you can continue to play ANY of the freemode games as long as you want .. so the thing is just .. do you want to play the full time period .. OR .. do you want to start at a different time. You can pick your end time.

Granted, the objectives "checklist" will be tailored to finish in either 100 years or 20 years .. but you can absolutely start in 1870 and play for 60 years if you want to.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Originally posted by heervandering:

Not me anyway, I think that there are already enough time periods and robust trains were not available in 1850 nor in 1870, so what 's the point?

I guess your definition of "Robust" differs from mine.
I was refering to trains that could be -and were, used comercially and could typically make more than one delivery before a major meltdown ... in reality - not gamewise. Random breakdowns in the game, are fine...it happens.

All three of the original 1830's prototype trains depicted in the game, were so bad that the firebox (if it could even be seen), would choke on its on waste byproducts in less than 30 miles...if they could even make it that far... and two of the three, not only suffered the same choking firebox issue but, also caused such severe smoke/carbon-monoxide problems that the crew would be forced to stop after only a mile or so, to recover.
I can point you to the relevant facts should you care to see them.

Originally posted by NetPCDoc:

Free mode & Sandbox mode (year) options:

1. 1830-1930 (100 years)
2. 1830-1850
3. 1850-1870
4. 1870-1890
5. 1890-1910
6. 1910-1930

Somewhere it does say that the powers that be decided to have one (1) hundred year option, then break that down into five (5) twenty year options (for those that - for whatever reason - just don't want to play an entire one-hundred years at one go).

And, as there is always an option to continue playing after the timer runs out, the ending dates on those ranges are not exactly set in stone.

Thanks NetPCDoc, and Jhughes.
Does this mean that I can keep researching updated equipment past the stated end-date?

[rff1]

Originally posted by Out-There Dave:

Does this mean that I can keep researching updated equipment past the stated end-date?

Unless things have changed in recent updates, when you play on after completing a scenario you get no more research points.

[gardlt]

The five 20 year eras were all that came with the original game. The 100 year mode that combined them all was an addition thanks to community request, released along with the Full USA map, also heavily demanded. And yes, I also once requested that there was a second "50 year" option starting in 1880. Reasoning that the idea with tasks is 20/20 or half time completion so a 1830-1930 game is really more like 1830-1880 for most players. Also, there are a few cargoes, for example Autos, that never make an appearance in the typical game.

There are a couple current limitations with modding, the automatic tasks aren't random. Also, the Trainiac provision of increasingly expensive stations to sop up a bit of extra cash is not available. Regardless, this can sort of be done with mods. I gave an attempt at 1880-1930 in Davisland by starting the combined tech tree half way. Of course that was one of the minor things done, and I didn't re-work the tech tree.

@rff1, that bug was fixed some time ago.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Thanks rff1 and Gardlt.

That is great news. Sans some later more modern tech. However, there are many games in this genre that deal with the later stages of RR developement. I'll take a few lumps to have the option of playing in the steam era exclusively. The one diesel train being the obvious exception, that I will avoid using like the plague. :)

It looks as if things have improved over time.
Hopefully, they will get around to implementing some of these requested features in future as well.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Originally posted by jhughes:

@NetPCDoc hit the nail on the head .. you can continue to play ANY of the freemode games as long as you want .. so the thing is just .. do you want to play the full time period .. OR .. do you want to start at a different time. You can pick your end time.

Granted, the objectives "checklist" will be tailored to finish in either 100 years or 20 years .. but you can absolutely start in 1870 and play for 60 years if you want to.

Unfortunately, the continuation of "inovation/research" before and beyond the stated dates of the scenarios - in Free-play mode, does not seem possible. All indications are that this no longer is allowed(or may have never been allowed), ... in Free-play mode, as many options prior to and ALL research options beyond the stated end-dates are greyed out, and indicate something like "this [option/inovation] is not available in this scenario." Due to the latest beta update, I cannot confirm this 100% as I did not make the cut-off date in the current scenario, but as I've stated, research and inovations options were grey-out and indicated that it would not be possible...at least in free-play mode. It may be possible in the scenario play, however that option seriously limits flexibility and re-play-ability to a level that may be detrimental to users who wish to play this game, or senario for more than a few hours. This has yet to be determined by me, as I find the state of the desired goals of most of the scenarios...surprisingly even the very first one...to be so ambiguas that I had to restart several times because I could not understand the stated goals sufficently, and as such, have wasted few hours trying to play them. If this remains the case, I refer to my original statement that this will seriously curtail the shelf-life of this game, for me.

Hopefully, this will be addressed sometime in the near future, as I believe it would greatly increase replay value, and save many hours of tedium, just to reach later stages of the game...by which point, the player(me), already has more money than God, and has already connected every city/industry/and out-house...and has no further motivation to keep playing that scenario other than the prospect of new trains.

I still cannot help but feel that I, or somebody has missed something.
Being able to start at a date other than 1830 and continue until the end date of the game, with the ablity to resume research from whatever start date they choose, seems like a basic desire of any idividual who has played the game for more than a few hours. I cannot help but feel, some "beta" testers either raised that point, and it was "postponed" for reasons, or they failed to raise this question, which then begs the question.."How long did they play?" and "How many times did you have to start over?" or "How much fun was it to have to start in 1830 repeatedly, to be able to use/test all the available options/trains?"

Certianly there must have been an option, if only for in-house testing, to be able to start at dates other then 1830 and play till the end.

[chsalpha]

I agree. They should add options to play from 1850 - 1930, 1870 - 1930, 1890 - 1930 and still get the option to continue research and so on. Just having a 100 year scenario or 20 year scenarios feels a bit limited.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Thank you, chsalpha!
I was begining to feel a bit alone in this. :)

[gardlt]

The reason why is that back in public pre-release, players were demanding what we currently have: a continous game with all trains available in the game. The most common request was this: all trains in one game. The 1830-1930 Free Mode wasn't shipped with the game originally.

Of course everyone was very happy when the first update included this new mode and the Full USA map for free.

I dream of this too. But other things like signal-controlled stations were heavily demanded. I don't believe those to add too much to gameplay myself. Democracy is fun sometimes!

PS. The old argument of, do it yourself with a mod is still relevant but less so since DLCs can't be edited. Something that also puts more pressure on the scenario/s of a DLC.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Thanks Gardlt.
I guess I'm a little late to the party. :)
Again, it looks like the developers are keeping an eye on the community's request, so I'm optimistic that some of these things we be worked on and/or added into the game given time.
This is a very nice change to the status quo. IE: Developers who still listen and make changes to what could have been concidered a completed game.

[gardlt]

Yes. I'm impressed with the way they listen too. It may seem like slow turn-around, but if patient good things happen. In the latest hotfix there is mention in the Tips & Tricks that finally Enter will confirm things like track building, confirm buy train, confirm upgrade industries etc., etc.. This doesn't seem to be implemented yet, probably is part of 1.8 patch. I was waiting for this for a long time.


PS. Actually, I discovered this as I had finally decided to make an auto-hotkey script. I went to look at the existing ones. With it as an upcoming feature I feel I'm not gaining an unintended advantage.

I have $20M freight revenue goal on my UK Free Mode map. And with the default Belfast start, the AI with Normal (AI) track setting are more difficult than anywhere else I remember. What I mean is that I made defeating them the priority instead of the 20/20 on the tasks. I suppose that the score rating modifiers the AI give reflect this.

Once I finally got rid of them from the map, I had $100M of cash to build out as needed by $20M freight revenue and 2.5M passengers haulage. I'm experimenting here: no maintenance sheds in cities. All maintenance on city-city is done at Signal-controlled warehouses built into the route. Also, at all resources where there is room I'm using signal-controlled stations, so that trains can maintain there. This avoids the need to double up tracks for access to 2 platforms at the resources and the corresponding selection in route setup.

When building-out a map, each train line gets on average 5+ trains, and also each industry is instantly upgrade to Level 5, including the resource at the source. Having Enter to confirm these things saves 15 trips to the middle screen: per connection. I connected Ireland with a regular system in the early game. But for the rest of the map, 30+ new cities, this will easily be 50+ repetitions. I estimate that I'm saving at least 1,000 said useless mouse trips to the middle of the screen in such a game!

[6000 Chipmunks]

Wow, that will be a real time-saver.

Now to get the train details and the "follow" buttons to sink.(For some reason it is difficult to get the actual train details(left side pop-out), you are interested in or following, to show by itself. Sometimes it will, and other times it will not.) Most times, they are two different trains entirely.

Perhaps a bit smaller sized train-info screen(Left pop-out), as I have quite a few trains, and with no way(that I have discovered yet), to sort them. I'm doing quite a bit of scrolling.

I must say, I switched over to Night-mode a few mins ago, and it still blows me away. It is worth playing this game for days, just to switch over to night mode and see the cities, and all the trains going.

Well, I've been up for about 36 hours, and so I hope most of this makes sense. I will probably come back and "revise and extend" my remarks. ;)