Posts by TrainMaster Hemi

The Learning curve for Rail Nation is extremely difficult IF you don't have a few good mentors to help, and to get that help you have to "Luck" into a good association.

Why do i say that? simple: there is no decent in-game guide for even basic function and strategy, Lucy's quests are vague at best.

i spent 2 rounds stumbling around, asking questions and sometimes getting answers, mostly getting the "don't bother me newbie" reply, until i finally found a group willing to teach to learn from.

and yes, i would love to see a scenario that placed far less importance on Personal Prestige, somehow tying personal ranking in with team / city / LM / region / east v west ect..standings. so the better you do working WITH a team, the better you do individually.

I finally think i worked out how Travian designed the maps, at least as far as Facility locations!!
THIS is what they did:
Found 48 different Paintball Colors ..
Equipped 50 Conscripted "volunteers" with rapid fire or full auto PaintBall guns loaded with 50-60 aforementioned Paintballs (1 color per gun, each color representing an industry) ..
Applied BlindFolds to the shooters and let them spray-and-pray a wall sized map!

NOW the map makes PERFECT sense!!I

figured out how the track routing was designed ages ago: that was a blind folded 2 year old with a box of crayons

Screenshot by Lightshot

then i use this tool to get the start date:

Hours from Now Calculator: Time in Hours Minutes Later Ago

The 10 minute delay was probably put in place for a couple reasons.. A to stop abuse with the "teleport" effect .. and B to create a cash flow path Via the ID/IR voucher.

Here is another possible way to Curb the abuse of this system: only allow trains to be moved from the museum to the Players HOME city.

Phase 2 of this solution is to Limit how often a players home city can be changed to once per 24 hour period. (same as association switching limits).

Play the Game instead of Gaming the system.

Player_3789 wrote:

Thanks it has been very helpful

welcome

The spread sheet is INTENDED to be a basic starter guide new or lazy players can use at a glance. the intent is to help folks get the ball rolling, then graduate to more advanced comparison tools.

is here me roars tool more versatile and provide more specific parameters? yup.

was my spread sheet ever intended to compete at that level, or has it ever been presented by me as such? nope.

which is why the sheet directs people to that tool for more in depth or detailed comparisons.

as far as parameters of each test?

i picked a city with good tracks built, and selected single factories at 1-8 tracks.

all trains for each era were sent to each factory 1 by 1 simultaneously using the "adopt schedule" feature available to the plus account:

example:

those numbers are what is used in the sheet.

the ONLY factors intended to be covered by this sheet is a pure head to head single stop comparison at specific track counts. that's it.

Kочегар wrote:

thank you very very very much

you are welcome. i hope it helps.

hilti2 wrote:

Sorry if I sound harsh, but the sheet is a bit useless if the industries don't have at least similar, if not the same waiting times.

for each era, Each engine was put on the exact same route, to the exact same facility, at the exact same time for each test.

I haven't been back to RS in 9 days. in my city i had 5 associations and at least 6 languages being used. i'm not translating 99% of messages to try to coordinate with folks.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iby-vqmsw-3wucbf6ywywphr-ephypvswlpn2emx7gq/edit#gid=1245085253

this is a direct head to head comparison of all standard engines of each era.

all engines are tested 100% upgraded and serviced.
please note: this is a pure profit per hour comparison.

yes, there are 3-4 other tools floating around, but, i wanted something people could see the results on 1 sheet without having to enter 5-8 parameters.

sheet is read only, feel free to copy or share at will.

Tested on Live servers.

Each engine was put on the exact same route (that does mean all used the same facility at the same time to haul from). all routes were single stop runs between 1 to 8 tracks from a city.

No, this sheet does not factor in Wait time difference, declining service levels, age of engines, lack of research, track maintenance, strikes, overtime, storms or integration.

It also does not cover any bonus engines.

And no, i will not add different variables. if you want that, copy the sheet and add them yourself.

this has been designed as a simple at a glance sheet for new players, or for those who don't have the time to dig into the more advanced comparison tools.

Bruno_BF wrote:

You can also deselect forums and threads in the messenger.

yup, familiar with that one, hit the bell to disable notifications.

thanks.

and i stand corrected, thank you.

hehe, 20 months playing and never looked much past the sitter screen in options, my fault.

the overall system does however still need a major overhaul. more reliability, a more streamlined way to change forums/threads, and some options for multi association private communication. perhaps Chairs and designated Deputies being able to create "invite only" Forums/topics where the creator has admin level control of that thread ... hmm... or maybe each association could be given 1 topic/thread that requires permission/invitation to join, where the chair or 1 designated Dep can delete posts or remove people? ..

sacroima wrote:

I think you can deactivate some of those messages in options.

no, you can't.

sacroima wrote:

it's called the lottery.

nope, not what i am talking about. the lottery is random. i'm talking about a direct gold to cash purchase.

in other games there is the option to use purchased currency to acquire earned currency.

let me toss one wrinkle in this one: the ability to "trade" gold for cash on a increasing scale: 1mil cash = 10g .. 2m - 25g ... 3m - 30g ... ect ect.

The in game messaging system needs to be made more reliable. many times, people are not seeing messages at all, or getting them minutes after they were actually sent. which is why many have gone to outside options.

i suspect the code that runs the in-game forums is very dirty.

one thing i would like to see is a cleanup of the system messages, key being the "so and so collected a bonus for you" we need to be able to turn those off, or just eliminate them all together.

messages for City/LM/factory levels, Prestige, plus bonus, ect, are far more important, and i get tired of trying to sort thru 500 irrelevant messages to find the 5 or 6 i'm looking for.

IMO the chat plane can just go away. it's dead all the time anyways, wasted resources/bandwidth there.

what i have noticed is as soon as there are 100-125 people logged in, the server starts to lag noticeably.

at about 150 people pretty much everything is very slow to respond, and freezes start to happen fairly often.

by the time 175-200+ are logged in, like during EG, the servers became nearly unplayable.

at this point reloads and browser re-boots are required at least 10 times an hour, with logins taking up to several minutes.

on some of the faster paced servers i play, this dramatically impacts efforts to follow calls, be on point for recalc changes, ect.

i don't know what the devil your techs are doing, but whatever it is, they are causing players to leave the game entirely.

in servers i play, we have lost several people due to this problem.

don't believe me? no problem. simply track the numbers over the last 6-9 months, it's pretty clear.

Perdita wrote:

think of this idea you have an association of 10 members and no other association in your city, at some time you hardly can level your city, no chance to reach the endgame then you move ot another city so you have the chance to build that city to the endgame .....

....So there must find another way to avoid the situation you give right now.

if we shift the "cutoff" to the end of Era 3, people would have ample time to realise they can't win with their city, and work out a partner or partners in a close by neighboring city, or bring a team or 2 into their own city to help. you know by the end of Era 1, early Era 2 at the lastest, what your realistic prospects are. This would also add some urgency to work out partnerships and/or mergers far earlier, and stick to them to have a legitimate chance.

again, this would allow for 7-10 cities with 80-100 players competing on a far more level field for an EG win.

One thing to consider: this issue i understand is in the classic servers as well, tho i don't play those, so that is not something i can really speak to.

i do however know that participation in US servers has fallen way off in just the time i have played. primarily due to the ability of a very few associations to dominate at will.

MuchachoNL wrote:

That would make moving to another city to join a corporation nearly impossible, wouldn't it?

ok, i see this point. so perhaps move the cutoff to Era 3.

Same for MokMonster's concern.

Perdita wrote:

There are a lot of players who move halfway to another city, often with the whole association and when only era 1 counts you exclude them from the bonusses while they work half the server for that city.

This is precisely the situation that needs to change. whole associations only move significant distances to team up with the purpose of dominating an EG without actually competing. gathering 150-200+ players in 1 city is not competition.

this is why typically there are only 2 viable EG cities in US servers.

Limiting the ability to create these "super alliances" would open the door to having 7-10 viable EG cities with populations in the 80-100 range actually competing on a field where any of these cities could win.

the concern is that far too many players are resorting to "gaming" the system.

they are simply watching the dominant associations and following them to 1 of MAYBE 3 viable End Game cities, where you will have 100-200+ players in a single city just for the EG.

I have the following suggestion to attempt to add a new dynamic to balance the server somewhat:

Players only get End Game win Bonuses if they were connected to AND delivering (WITH A MINIMUM TONNAGE REQUIREMENT) to the winning EG city IN ERA 1. this should include ANY winning EG city prize/bonus: Prestige, Career Points or gold.