Comment by mrighele

Comment by mrighele 6 days ago

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> Indeed, in some of the most difficult scenarios, the efficient operation of your railroad provides no more than the seed capital for the real key to victory, your shenanigans on the stock market.

This is in fact what I don't like about RR2. The stock market had too much of a big part in my opinion, and I never enjoyed it.

I liked much more Transport Tycoon (and its open source version OpenTTD) which had much more focus on the mechanics of transportation. Too bad, because I really loved the graphics and some of the mechanics of the game.

ryandrake 6 days ago

This is the same problem with the more recent Offworld Trading Company game. You can take a half an hour building a great colony, harvesting all the resources, building all of the goods, and so on, but none of it really matters. The end game takes about 60-120 seconds and it's all trading on the in-game stock market, resulting in a sudden "you lost" screen popping up even if you did everything else right in the first 29 minutes. Kind of a let down.

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  • mywittyname 6 days ago

    > even if you did everything else right in the first 29 minutes.

    But you didn't do everything right. What makes OWTC different from most economics sims is that the goal is to quickly establish monopolies on the various planets. So unless you starved the competition of resources, pivoted to producing high-value products from cheap commodities, or speed run to offworld shipments, with an eye towards buying out everyone else, you're not playing to win.

    The matches are sprints, not marathons. And faction abilities are critical to victory. You really have to chose matches that favor your faction if you want the upper hand.

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    • ryandrake 6 days ago

      Yea, it's entirely possible that I'm simply expecting a different game and just don't find the current one's endgame fun or satisfying. I played it a few times, chugged along building a nice colony, and then suddenly the big full-screen "Haha you lose, your opponent bought you out on the stock market (which you can't prevent)".

      I'm trying to think of any games that try to include an in-game stock market, where the gameplay doesn't eventually utterly hinge on playing the in-game stock market instead of whatever else the game was about. Looks like we've discovered a rule: "Take any game about anything, in any genre, and if you add a stock market, the game eventually becomes a stock market simulator instead."

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      • BlueTemplar 5 days ago

        That was one of my initial fears with Shadow Empire, but it somehow doesn't manage to devolve to only that... I guess because there's a variety of brakes applied on trading like trading houses' limited stocks (including in credits), the way how price discovery is gradual between trading regions and not instant cross-planet, and the way they rip off the major factions by taking large trading margins ?

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  • legitster 6 days ago

    I would argue that OTC without a stock market is barely a game - it would just a race for resources.

    IMHO the problem with OTC is that there is not enough opportunity for financial shenanigans. If someone successfully corners the market on the right commodity, there's a runaway leader problem with not much you can do. The game wrapping up early is a grace in those situations.

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mapt 6 days ago

It may not be enjoyable, but for about a century, railroad schemes were often as much about entrepreneurial fundraising, land rights, and corruption as about actually delivering infrastructure - it's thematically correct.

Colm Meaney delivers an entertaining performance with regards to this in 'Hell on Wheels'.

There are parts of Pennsylvania that briefly got violent with each other over gauge changes (and thus, which town had a rest stop, and no doubt, which investment would prove profitable). The "Erie Gauge War".

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  • bluGill 6 days ago

    Depends on the rail road. Most were as much about what government subsidies they could get (federal, state and cities all did various things as they saw any railroad as key to their success).

    A couple railroads started because there was money to be had in transporting things. They picked routes that made a lot more sense (a compromise of geography and the cities served) even today when we don't have to refill the steam engine with water ever few miles. These are the exception though. Most were trying to get the upfront money and not thinking about the long term success.

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jncfhnb 6 days ago

I’ve never played this game but it reminds me of some railroad game I did play where you could put all of your money into a commodity, and that would raise the price of the commodity… which would start causing the overall value of your assets to explode exponentially… which allowed you to justify absurd loans from the bank… which compounded in a loop where you could start to break the math of the game as the price of coal detached from reality and your market cap soared into the quadrillions and beyond…

Good times

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  • wat10000 6 days ago

    I don’t think you could quite do that in RRT2, but it wasn’t too hard to abuse the system.

    The article mentions that the trains are just representative and in-game journeys can take over a year. What you do is, as soon as the game starts, spend every penny of your company’s money on the longest line you can afford, with one train hauling the most valuable cargo. Try to make it take a little over a year to arrive. As the individual you’re playing, sell all of your company’s stock.

    Ongoing maintenance costs will quickly put your company in the red. By the time the end of the year comes around, your company is basically bankrupt, and the terrible fiscal report will devastate your stock price.

    Now buy all of your company’s stock practically for free. Proceed to the next year, where your train soon arrives, your cargo pays off handsomely, the debts are more than paid, and your company is on a very healthy position with a very healthy stock price. Enjoy the rest of the game with a substantial personal fortune you can pour into your company if you want to focus on building, or use to wreck competitors if you’re up for that.

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bongodongobob 6 days ago

Huh, I've always just ignored the stock market and haven't had any issues.

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BlueTemplar 6 days ago

Yeah, that reminded me how too easy diplomacy (in particular tech trading) can make almost everything else pointless in some strategy games...

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