Strategy, not tactics

[Bento Boy]

Hey everyone!

I have created a minor page on strategy. Please view it and give me some feed-back. It would really be appreciated.

The reason I made this site is that I felt there was a lack of this type of strategic analyses. This is a very crude analyses, but I hope it will spark an interest in this area. The site was created quite hastily, please forgive me if the text isn't perfectly clear. However, it was my goal to swiftly get this page published, rather than spending eons of time trying to get everything perfect.

Sadly, I have a very limited account so I cannot upload any screen-shots or save-games to my homepage. If you wish to have any specific save-game or similar, please make a request in this thread.

You can access the page here.

Thank you for your time!
//BentoBoy

[Lordmwa]

That my friend is amazing.

You have clearly spent a very long time on that and it is very interesting. As you say most of the advice and results are not unpredictable but it is still good to see it.

Thank you very much for your time

[andythenorth]

Hey everyone!
I have created a minor page on strategy. Please view it and give me some feed-back. It would really be appreciated.

Nice summary Bento Boy. Your calculations match my (unscientific) observations.

- The usual forum advice to start the game by building coal trains is correct, but you need a couple of quite big trains on short level routes, loading at high-production mines to get good cashflow.
- Hauling passengers on moderately long routes between two large towns can generate cash very well.

cheers,

Andy

[Zuu]

Indeed very nice work Bento Boy!

It looks like you intended to add links at two places of the scenario section, through there are no links. However I've read through all your document and saw that you had problem uploading some stuff so it could be because of that.

Nice to see someone applying some economical analyzes to the game. (Even if I don't agree that what signals there is on the track is logistics, but that is a minor problem.)

[DonRazzi]

Nice idea! A thing that should have been availiable since years...

But I miss three things on your comparasion:

1st:

It would be very interesting to see what happens if the incomming cash is invested in more vehicles. The point is that I believe passenger services have a much better performance - compared to coal lines - if the connected cities are able to generate enough passengers. Also much depends on the size of the cities.

2nd:

For me it seems you play with the normal tt airplane speed, which is reduced 4 times compared to the real airplanes. AV8 was designed after this limitation had been dropped on TTDP and it was never designed to be played with slowed down airplanes. Especially when driving on the ground, early airplanes in AV8 are extremely slow, if this parameter isn't changed. If I remember right, I ran a short testing game once and on that game it was no problem to run early airplanes of AV8 like the Farman Goliath profitable.

3rd:

I miss ships! No joke! Using ships on a coal line, the investments into infrastructure are extremely low as you don't need to lay tracks or roads. For the money you've saved you can buy another vessel very soon. It's a long time ago I experimented with ships because it's a little bit boring to play with them, but as far as I remember they are comparable too a good coal-/passenger-line.

Greets,

Don

[Bento Boy]

Nice idea! A thing that should have been availiable since years...

But I miss three things on your comparasion:

1st:

It would be very interesting to see what happens if the incomming cash is invested in more vehicles. The point is that I believe passenger services have a much better performance - compared to coal lines - if the connected cities are able to generate enough passengers. Also much depends on the size of the cities.

It would be very interesting indeed. The reason I did not to this in this test is that I simply did not have the time; and, by not investing extra cash the comparison becomes more accurate for one line only, even if it might not describe actual game-play as accurately. This is definitely something that should be investigate.

2nd:

For me it seems you play with the normal tt airplane speed, which is reduced 4 times compared to the real airplanes. AV8 was designed after this limitation had been dropped on TTDP and it was never designed to be played with slowed down airplanes. Especially when driving on the ground, early airplanes in AV8 are extremely slow, if this parameter isn't changed. If I remember right, I ran a short testing game once and on that game it was no problem to run early airplanes of AV8 like the Farman Goliath profitable.

It is true, I use 1/4th of the original speed, and I agree completely with you. This is actually not the first investigation of this kind that I made. I did one earlier, just for personal use, but it was not as exact (different starting years, construction finishing mid-year and so forth). My settings for that test was fairly different, one of the differences being that I did not reduce the speeds with 1/4. These settings did indeed prove to be favourable for aircrafts, including very early ones. The reason I used other settings this time is that I wanted this comparison to be relevant for hard and competitive multi-player games. That is why I asked this question earlier.

3rd:

I miss ships! No joke! Using ships on a coal line, the investments into infrastructure are extremely low as you don't need to lay tracks or roads. For the money you've saved you can buy another vessel very soon. It's a long time ago I experimented with ships because it's a little bit boring to play with them, but as far as I remember they are comparable too a good coal-/passenger-line.

Again, the answer is similar to the answer above. Because of the early starting year (1920) there were no ships available. In my earlier comparison ships proved very profitable and also had the advantage of minimal construction time. The only problem is that it is quite often hard to find good routes for the ships if you have only low to medium quantity of water.

Thank you for all your input DonRazzi!
//BentoBoy

[el koeno]

In my experience ships aren't that good for passengers, as they're very slow. Usually they don't run between big cities in my games though.

[DonRazzi]

In my experience ships aren't that good for passengers, as they're very slow. Usually they don't run between big cities in my games though.

That's right. But give ships on a coal line a try. You'll be surprised!

Don

[arpa_ks]

In my experience ships aren't that good for passengers, as they're very slow. Usually they don't run between big cities in my games though.

I use hovercrafts in cities around big lakes, where a train should travel a long distance around the shore.

[michael blunck]

A thing that should have been availiable since years...

George has a "transport analyzer" tool on his web site for years.

Nevertheless, with the features of newcargo and newindustries, with custom vehicle sets, and other modifications implemented by newgrfs, it´s possible to set constraints however you like it.

I believe passenger services have a much better performance - compared to coal lines - if the connected cities are able to generate enough passengers. Also much depends on the size of the cities.

In addition, the effects of custom building sets together with modified parameters of town growth, allow even more variable economic scenarios.

Example: ATM, I´m running some tests using DBXL 0.9 and pre-releases of the EuropeanScenario buildings set and the ECS-compliant NewCargo set. This gives a totally different economic setting in comparison to the original game. E.g., the DBXL increases track building and other railway-related infrastructure cost, the first generation of buildings from ESS generate very little travellers and mail, but accept some exclusive freight, and the NCS generates a very different behaviour of industries, incl. need of workers for production.

regards
Michael

[MasterNnja]

Even though the configuration was not varied, different full-load options were tested.
· No full load (8). Ok result.
· One full load (9). Ok result.
· Full load at both station (10). Slightly better that ok result.

I'm quite confused with the third option (10) "Full load at both stations".
How would that work? What exactly does the orders list say?

Because as simple as I can understand it, you orders list is like this:

Code: Select all

1. Go to Station A (full load)
2. Go to Station B (full load)
--- End of Orders

With that the train will full load at the first station, then go to the second station, there will keep its passengers and try to "full load" again - which it can't, because it's full already... So it will go back to the first station and then back and forth without taking or delivering any passengers... Impossible to create a "slightly better than ok result" with that...

[Bento Boy]

Because as simple as I can understand it, you orders list is like this:

Code: Select all

1. Go to Station A (full load)
2. Go to Station B (full load)
--- End of Orders

That is correct, this is exactly what the orders looked like.

With that the train will full load at the first station, then go to the second station, there will keep its passengers and try to "full load" again - which it can't, because it's full already... So it will go back to the first station and then back and forth without taking or delivering any passengers... Impossible to create a "slightly better than ok result" with that...

I am not sure which version of the game you are using, however, in the version that I am using the orders strictly meant:

Code: Select all

1. Go to Station A (unload (and get paid) then full load)
2. Go to Station B (unload (and get paid) then full load (again))
--- End of Orders

This means that the train was empty each time it tried to full load. Thus it could have better results than with just a single (A or B) full-loading.

I hope this clear things up, if it doesn't feel free to point that out.

[MasterNnja]

I'm currently using 0.6.2, yeah it's out of date, but only a week or so... (Note: I try playing only the stable versions because I wanted - as least as long as I consider myself a newbie - a base to compare with other players easily - however I maybe will think that over, since in fact there seem to be more players whou play nightlies than stable - at least in the forums)

I will try that out, I have thought about that and it could be possible I just never tried out this setup of orders because I just assumed it would not work because the way I figured the orders out...

(To be honest, I had a lot of trouble figuring the orders out first, some time until I realized the purpose of the "Transfer" order - before I set up passenger routes through different cities with "full load" at the first city, "unload" at the last one and "Transfer" at every city in between, wondering why it isn't very much of a moneymaker )

[Dave]

Just had a read through - a nice effort. It's good to see someone actually analysing the effects of building rather than just blazing away at the coal mines with 100-truck trains.

Cheers for sharing!

[DonRazzi]

Something I forgot yesterday: If a more advanced TT-Player would set up an ultra-hard network game, he would usually turn down the maximum number of airplanes for a player instead of slowing down the airplane-speed when using AV8. Using AV8 with reduced speeds causes more trouble than only reducing profits. Exspecially the pre-WWII planes in that set are so slow on ground, four or five planes approaching of this kind will jam a small airport. And disadvanteges like this have been the cause TTDP and OTTD have been developed once...

Don