bribing backfire?

[Toontown]

Hello,

I don't know if this is a bug ...ahem... feature, but a bribing a local authority seemes to have backfired massively on me. I bribed this particular authority repeatedly (and by clicking very fast) and - of course - got caught with it. The rating of my company has stayed on "apalling" since then, even after ~60 years of game time passed since this attempt. Though I got one train station left in that town for passenger and food supply that town still doesn't like my company.

I got this problem under OpenTTD stable 0.5.3. Maybe I triggered another bribing as the "you got caught" message appeared. But I don't know for sure. As I said, I was clicking very fast on the bribing option.

Anyone else got a problem with this? And is it possible to show the numeric rating of local authorities in the game? Maybe my rating dropped below -1.000.000.000....

[edit] Planting and renewing trees regularly over all that time didn't help either. [/edit]
Regards,
Toontown

[feliciafan89]

If you're going to "kiss the you-know-what" of the local authority, replanting trees is not the way to go. These guys couldn't give a damn less about the trees in this game... and neither could I. (See my avatar; but I care about them in real life. )

In any case, bribing is a very expensive prospect. Don't waste your money on it unless you seriously need it. I had around 20 million dollars before I started doing that. Assuming the curreny you're using is Dollars, bribing will always cost somewhere in the 1-million-dollar area, no matter how massive or tiny the town is. It's usually a better idea to ignore the town that hates you and move on to another one. Over time, they'll eventually let you build stations there.

[Toontown]

feliciafan89 wrote:

[...]
Over time, they'll eventually let you build stations there.

Yes, but more than 60 years seems to be a bit too long for me.

[edit] Whoa, I take it all back... after 64 years the rating finally changed just this second to "Very Poor"... there's light at the end of the tunnel - hopefully it's not an incoming train...[/edit]

[athanasios]

Personaly I would edit the game in the editor and remove the damned city!

There is a better way: In single player always save before you bribe.

[richk67]

And the even better way, is that if you intend to do a major development/landscaping, then first place 3 bus stations near the town centre with a frequent service. Then if your rating gets snafu, the bus service will improve your ratings pretty quickly, and keep it from being stuck on Appalling.

[FooBar]

[edit] Planting and renewing trees regularly over all that time didn't help either. [/edit]

Planting trees only helps if you plant them on bare land (i.e. land with no trees on it). Planting a tree on a square of land which already has a tree on it doesn't increase your rating.

A dirty solution I came up with is removing all the trees around the city. This doesn't affect your rating, because it's already as low as it can get. Now replant trees around the city and see your rating going up.

[feliciafan89]

Wow... it actually works? I seriously thought it wouldn't! But sometimes, even if your rating is "Apalling," they'll give you the bare minimum persmission of one bus station. That's a start. If they don't, try again later, even if it's still "Apalling." If all else fails, try athanasios's "solution". (I put that in quotation marks because it's technically cheating. But you know what they say: "If at first you don't succeed, cheat, cheat again!" )