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Hullo! As part of having an immense amount of fun playing with friends on our own daylength server, I've decided to try writing an After Action Report (AAR) about it. In some games such as Europa Universalis and other PE games this is a common thing, but I haven't really seen one on this forum before. So whether or not this will get any fond reception or response remains to be seen. Also I may bore of it, so no promises given. I will try to add many pictures, which means lots of posts. But since this is the screenshot forum, I'd guess that isn't such a problem.

It will be a gameplay AAR, where I try to explain my plans and thoughts that went into them.

The report is notably after the action, so even though our game was non-stop, I may take a lot longer actually writing this up

The game Yes, you lost.

Our server runs a daylength patch (this one, to be exact). It's set to 10, which is as far as it would go. This means the length of a day is 10 times longer than normal, and a game year takes about 3 to 4 hours.

We have a number of grfs installed: It's basically a Wild West theme, except with the 2cc set, since the NARS set wasn't properly filled out according to our taste (boring end-game).

• daylength 10
• Tropical climate
• North American city set
• 2cc train set
• NuTracks
• start in 1870
• 1024×1024 map
• Low vehicle limit per company (100 trains, 100 busses, 100 planes, 100 ships)
• FIRS industries, set to lower in production, but no closing
• no cities (city factor off)
• hard settings, loan at $300k
• increased costs from pb_build
• Specific increased construction costs:
• Terraforming 64 times more expensive (but foundations halved from default)
• Clearing houses 64 times more expensive
• Aircraft running costs 4 times higher (concorde runs at half a million dollars per year)

We also have a house rule:
ONLY transport passengers and mail from desert towns. This is an added challenge, and some of our more novice players may disregard it if they're having too hard of a time. Note that this is only from desert towns, players may transport to any town they want, as long as they don't pick up passengers and/or mail there.

Since we're playing FIRS, Goods take the place of Water in making desert towns grow. This means players have to set up the entire food and goods production chains before thinking about getting more passengers out of the towns.

There are 6 other players in the same game, and more may join later, so there can be plenty of competition. With daylength 10, the whole game from 1870 to 2050 is expected to last 3 to 4 weeks (we didn't do the math). On 2050 we'll stop competing, sabotage the crap out of each other, and move on to the next round (if we still want to at that point).

When we started the server, this was our map (tile type to show deserts): That does look like an insane amount of industries, but it's the normal setting. FIRS has such a variety that it really tends to spam things up. We'd play on low industries, except with 6 players that just doesn't leave enough viable starting positions for it to be fun.

So much for the information, next up: Setting up the company.

Deadliest Catch

Our company, founded in January 1870, will be called 'Deadliest Catch' (to be explained later), and will most notably be red. (notable because you'll see it a lot )
Meet our manager: A third generation american from Italian heritage, Tiger Marchioni founds our company with a bright dream of the future. As can be seen by the image of a quite futuristic bus! (remember, this is 1870, the world only just got its first steam bus last decade). Worth all of 2 dollars we'd have left once the bank is done with us, there is much work to be done.

As any hooked TTD player would, we have grand plans for this company.

The plans
1. Generate enough money to be able to build up a supplies chain (engineering / farming supplies)
2. Pick two towns somewhat to the edge of the map and not too close to each other.
3. Set up the supply chain near one of them
4. Set up food and goods chains at the same place
5. Grow up the city

6+ Grow up the other one

X. Connect the two by high-speed passenger rail

X+1. Profit!

Reaching these goals would be the over-arching plot of this AAR. I don't know if it's doable in our setup, but we'll find out!
I'm naming the company themed to the latest phase of the company, and the manager will be replaced to reflect this.

Now onto actual gameplay! These settings are hard, very hard. Construction costs are horrid, and will be the main problem for many, many decades to come (yay). Starting out properly is the hardest bit, and I experimented a bit in private sped up games before deciding on a starting tactic.

We will start off with ships. Reasoning: low infrastructure investment, medium returns. Drawback of ships: buoys cost about as much as an entire vessel! So the aim is to avoid placing those as much as we can. FISH has no introduction dates, so we can just pick one that fits our demands. True to FISH, our first cargo for a long time will be fish. We settle on the Banquereau utility Vessel. Average speed, small hold but low running costs. Fishing grounds don't produce much, so a bigger ship would just go to waste. Fishing grounds are plentiful, although the margins aren't as high as we'd like them. Scouting the map before time started rolling gave us two good starting positions for fishing. If we can get away with it, we'll cover both of them. The only interesting name I could think of to do with fish is the show I watch occasionally, hence the name.

on january 3rd, our first boat leaves the dock: We immediately start spending our hard loaned money on more ships for our fishing fleet, and cover the nearby fishing grounds. At this point, we check the other player's progress and what they're doing. We're in luck! They've all started with land-based transport, some carriages and a couple of short rail lines. Since we have the opportunity, we rush to spend all the rest of the money we can use to cover the secondary fishing spot too.

[To be continued next post]

Over the course of the next month we build up our fishing fleet: Two main fishing lanes, 11 vessels in total.

The first is around Tipton, the second around Whitewater: Red is the dock, Yellow the fishing grounds we're servicing, and the orange arrows indicate waypoints. It's too far for the ships to make it in one go from the grounds to the docks, except for those servicing the closest grounds. The yellow dotted circle shows a planned expansion as soon as we have the money. Other fishing grounds are also in reach, but would require placing more buoys.

We're using a simple trick to avoid placing buoys (which, as said before, are very expensive). Ships don't actually need buoys to path, they need a waypoint. Bouys are the standard, but any visitable industry point will do. As such, we can route the ships servicing further fishing grounds along other fishing grounds on the way. Using this technique, we only need 2 buoys to service 11 fishing grounds where otherwise we'd need 6 or more. That saves enough money to buy 5 whole extra ships!

in july, the first two casualties fall, two players are warned about bankruptcy and have no means to save themselves.
These settings really aren't a joke!

We're doing fine: That's a healthy surplus, but as you can see running costs are about 1/3rd of our recurring costs. That's the downside of starting with ships. Trucks (or rather, carriages) would be an alternative, but the required investment in infrastructure is massive compared to ships.

[To be continued next post]

In august we can buy our 12th boat! it's added to the fleet at whitewater. Overview first year - we're doing best out of all companies, awesome! A third player goes bankrupt - a railway line turned out to be too short to be profitable. Ships were a good choice, it seems. The bankrupted players start afresh - with ships. Big surprise there.

In the mean time, we're working on our next plan - a railway. So far only one player has a profitable rail line, and it's not by much! Mostly that's because the starting funds isn't really enough to build a proper railway. Our first line will be coal to a lime kiln. A line that should be long enough to pay for itself (which will take decades), and will start off the industry chain we need to get a proper supply feedback loop. The plan is centered on the Parisiene hills, illustrated below: After we've linked up the coal mine and the coal mine + quarry combination behind it to the lime kiln, we'll hook up the three forests just east of here to the sawmill below. We can boost the forest production with the farm supplies from the lime kiln. We'll take the lumber to the lumber yard in the far bottom left, which will give engineering supplies we can feed back into our mines and quarry. To the right of the lime kiln is a cluster of 15(!) mixed farms, which for our purposes are the best kind: They produce livestock which is processed into food, and plant fibres which process into goods! Boosting and servicing these farms is the ultimate goal of our production loop.

Westwood is circled because that will be our end target town for the area. It's desert, and has a shop!

[to be continued next post]

So this would be the planned first line: Unfortunately, by estimate using the shift button, we're looking at about a $250k-300k cost for the entire line. By august of 1871, we've paid off 180k of our loan, and we make about 20k per month, soit'll be half a year or more before we can start on it.

It takes until april 1872 before we reach a total of $300k and paid off our loan. Time to spend it all again before leaving things for the night.

Using very low speed rail we build the planned track, making sure we avoid a patch of stone, and as much rough land as possible. Normally a ttd player wouldn't look twice at those terrain bits, but at our cost levels they add an extra $800 per tile in construction costs! The locomotive is a 4-4-0 'American', which is one of the two more expensive trains. The cheaper locomotives are not a good option, they are very under powered and the server is set to cargoweight 5, which makes them go up hills at 1 mph even with 1 or 2 loaded wagons.
This construction has left us drained, but not as much as we'd expected! We're in pretty good shape, and the added income of this new train line should help with funding our next construction projects. But that will have to wait till next time, because we're not there yet

Looks interesting. I'll be sure to follow this one closely. Keep going!

Looks interesting indeed! I'm looking forward to see more!

Arexander wrote:Looks interesting. I'll be sure to follow this one closely. Keep going!

Interesting indeed! I think this is the hardest game of ottd I've ever played.

jacke wrote:Looks interesting indeed! I'm looking forward to see more!

hi jacke! good to see you're still around here. There will be plenty more. Until I'm bored and the next shiny is on the horizon.

Coal Grubbers

I slept in on the weekend, we're in 1976 now. Looking at the finances, we made a bunch of money, yay! But we're no longer first, booh! You can see from the train costs and income that our coal train didn't do so well. It appears the distance is just too short for good money. The current number one did the smart thing and kept investing in more ships. But that would be too easy

First off, we're letting go of our company founder. While Marchioni was a good fisherman, trains were obviously over his head. A new Irish-american is hired that has worked on railways up north, and the company rebranded to show what we're currently doing. [continued next post]

First we extend the coal line out from the previous mine up to the next one, next to a quarry. We'll use the same train, but just change its orders up a bit so it'll full load at the end, and only visit the other mine en-route. This extension costs another $190k, but it should significantly increase our train earnings, hopefully. This leaves us with enough money to start construction on the next line in the plan: the wood delivery.

The problems with this line are its immense size, height levels and most of all: Our source forest is in farmland. Farmland easily doubles the cost of track construction. Well, no risks no glory, so we give the order and start building.

[continued next post]

Construction up to the farmlands has spent all our cash reserves and puts us $180k into debt already. This means we only have $120k to spend on the last part, which we might not make. We'll definitely have to skirt the farms where we can. In the mean time, we micromanage our coal train for maximum profit. After its first full load at the new station, there's a 90% load waiting at the old mine. So after picking that up we make it skip back to the lime kiln and make a quick extra cargo run. We're not permanently loading at our old mine anymore, so the rating will drop. But the added income makes that a secondary concern.

on September 25th 1876, our wood train leaves for the station. We've opted for a straight track instead of evading the farmlands even more, since it would only avoid 4 tiles of farmland but add two ramps next to the station. That wouldn't be good for our poor trains. The locomotive is another 4-4-0 American. We could only afford 3 wood wagons, so we'll have to add more after its first trip. After about a month I realise we never refitted the train to wood and it was still trying to load sugar cane. Derp. Back to the depot it goes.

Loading three wagons takes about three months. Perhaps we should stick to three wagons for the forseeable future. We consider extending the wood line to another forest higher in the hills, but it's all farmland. The line also passes a forest a lot closer to the sawmill, but that distance is so short that it might not be profitable enough. Perhaps after we've built our lumber train.

But perhaps the smartest thing right now will be to add a horse-and-wagon to drop farm supplies off at the forest. Building road through farmland is incredibly expensive, so this may have to wait a year or two.

Our micromanaged coal train is doing a lot better. [continued next post]

In April 1877 we've earned enough to construct the road link. Or so we thought. As you can see there, the depot isn't actually linked. whoops. May should bring enough funds to finish the line.

In May, our truck is built and set to loading farm supplies. For those who don't know FIRS, farm supplies and engineering supplies are the bread and butter of the set. Without supplies, primary industries can't grow, and will eventually decrease down to minimum production. It will take long, long years, but eventually our first forest should increase to much higher production. in August, forest production has already gone up by 2 tons. Would be awesome if this is due to the supplies already, but I think that's just the fluctuating economy. in October it's up to 99! It looks like this is already having an effect.
In December it drops back to 88. Bah, seems I was right the first time.

[continued next post]

extending to the second forest will be the next project. Estimated rail costs: $160k. And the train plus wagons and signals required would add another $40k.

While waiting and paying off our loan, we hit 1878, and a warning from the IRS that we lack monetary backing. Whoops, a bit overzealous on the repayments there. I'll have to take care not to do that again or we might get auctioned off! Our finances look good. a $20k increase from shipping boats for no apparent reason. I think one of the grounds had a bump in production. Our trains are doing swimmingly, especially the wood train. It has raked in $39k last year, and that wasn't even a full year!

You can also see the vast amount of money we've poured into construction for the wood line - $700k!

In August 1878 we start construction of the second wood extension. Paris Heights gets a set of points, and the new track leads off to the north. We also start using the second platform at the sawmill. The track is all single line so far, so if both trains are full at the same time, one of them will have to wait. The new train uses the just introduced 2-8-0 'Consolidation'. It's very expensive to acquire ($60k), but the running costs are slightly lower than the American, while it has 300 more horsepower. Only three wagons, we couldn't afford more. After the first trip, we'll extend that to four.

[continued next post]

A view of the new points: In february 1879 we add a passing siding about halfway between the forests and the sawmill. Our new train is doing great, 14k per trip, and a healthy profit. in June of that year we add an extra wood wagon to the first wood train, as the forest has increased to 117 tons production, yay! By november we start laying out some tracks for the lumber train going west. The lumber yard creates engineering supplies given lumber, which we will (eventually) feed back to our coal mines. It's quite a distance, and after spending $140k estimates say we will need to spend another $250k for the tracks alone. At our current rate of income, that will take about one and a half to two years of saving.

I might do a smallish update later tonight, if I manage to finish the lumber line.

In January 1881 we have enough funds to finish the lumber line. The first estimate was spot on, it takes all of our funds and loan to finish the lumber line tracks. Unfortunately we don't have enough left to purchase the train. That will take another couple of months.

It takes until June before we can buy the train.

The sawmill now has three platforms, and becomes quite busy. the other end of our rail lines has finally reached the lumber yard. We've added the second platform in preparation of the supply lines back north, but it will go unused for quite a while yet. [continued next post]

It's not until January 1882 that we notice that our horse and wagon is gone! It must have been run over by the second wood train somewhere during the long waits. We redesign the area to make sure that doesn't happen again. Our rating for farm supplies has plummeted, it will take time to restore. The lumber train adds another chunk of revenue which will help with our later additions. in April 1882 we spend the saved money after the big construction to add a third forest to the wood line. Not the one I mentioned earlier, but one a little off to the east of the line. The build is relatively cheap, and after buying the train we have enough money to add a second passing sidings closer to the sawmill. This concludes our activity for the day. Here is an overview of our little train empire after 12 years: Total construction costs are over $3M by now!

The plan for next time will be to add a line from the lumberyard northeast towards the coal mines. Theoretically we could make the supplies go back along the existing track, but we'll need these lines in the future anyway, and we don't want to gung up our rails with too many trains just yet.

Supplies 'R Us

We get back to our empire in 1885. We've made a bunch of money, and are doing okay compared to the competition. Our supplied forest is doing good, but our unsupplied mines are falling. Our new goal is to supply all of our serviced primary industries. To reflect this, we hire new management. [continued next post]

While planning our new tracks, a recession hits! This has quite a drastic effect on production, cutting our profits by 3/4 or more. To be a bit more conservative with our spending money, instead of placing down all new tracks we decide to extend the existing tracks and run supply trains back up the line. In preparation for this, we build an unloading station near to our mining operations. From here, trucks will ship the engineering supplies over the last stretch, spreading out the deliveries to maximise coverage. We add an extra platform and train to the kiln, and finally start shipping out the chemicals it was producing. They're shipped to the lumber yard to create yet more engineering supplies. this also shows the newly doubled up tracks in the area, to reduce the waiting times at the junction.

[continued next post]

in 1887 the recession ends. It had pretty serious consequences. Apart from a lot less income, it also meant no supplies arrived for a long time, dropping our supplied forest by several levels.

After construction on the extensions is done, the total costs add up to a million dollars! We've slightly changed the consist of our coal train, so it will also ship stone from the nearby quarry. It won't be much, but as it'll arrive at the same time as the coal, it will boost production at the kiln. The supply delivery will be done in the bottom right corner. We need two stations to ensure supplies arrive at both industries (ottd will only deliver the supplies to the industry closest to the station tag). And here you can see the other end of the operation, where we've relocated our HQ to the most vital area, and added the all important engineering supplies train. By November 1887 we are servicing all our primary industries with engineering / farming supplies. The next year was spent doubling up the track between the sawmill and lime kiln, which is the busiest part of the network.

[continued next post]

By 1889 we can really feel the effect of the supplies kicking in. Our first forest is at 297 tons, our second at 171. At the second forest, we have to add another train to keep the ratings up.

To balance out lime production and make use of another handily placed industry, we link up another Quarry south west of our sawmill. It requires extra platforms at the lime kiln for trains coming the other way, but it will be worth the investment. Ofcourse, a new primary industry serviced means we need to supply it. Since this quary is reasonably close to the lumber yard, we set up a direct wagon to supply it. When that is done, we use the same road to deliver sand to the glass works on the route. In the shot you can also see the new sand train platforms we've linked up to our network, which is visited by a sand train from our first quarry up north. And you see the manufacturing supplies train, which drivers over a new route shown further below.

We also add extra roads to link up some of the farms close to our forests. We have way too many farm supplies now, so we start shipping them to the farms in preparation of gathering materials for food and goods. [continued next post]