Good day good people of TWC, I have had this game on my wishlist pretty much since release but being the cheapsake I am it was only a few weeks ago that I purchased
the game, heavily discounted
For those of you who don't know, Planet Coaster is a theme park tycoon game and basically the spiritual successor to Rollercoaster Tycoon series.
I spent the first few weeks just playing the career mission and learning the basics, and now I'm ready for my own park... Itova Valley...
The game mode is challenger which is essentially sandbox but with no money and you have to earn everything and research new stuff etc.
Bob is your typical dorky college graduate of some random "studies" degree from some random university, he is 20 something and lacks direction in his life. Home now again with his parents Bob future look unpleasant, he soon realized that his "studies" degree literally didn't mean anything in the real world, and after bouncing between different fast food chain employment "opportunities" Bob was beginning to feel the weight of the "real world".
One day Bob was just sitting down for his lunch break at K fry, he sort through the stack of abandoned magazines and newspapers on the lunchroom table, the usual rubbish he had read a million times. But wait, what was this? A "new" newspaper whole moley.
It was a newspaper to change the world.....!!!!! Or perhaps just Bobs life a bit, anyway he leafed through the classified and stumbled upon the best add ever...
"one used carnival ride, spins people round and round, good nick... two thousand dollars"
Wait a minute Bob thought, that can't be right a working carnival ride for only two thousand dollars, what sort of crazy ass world is this...
It was then that it dawned on him, why burn yourself with K fry gravy when you could run a sweet theme park... Crazy idea I know, but Bob wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Skip some boring background stuff, and fast forward a month or so and Bob stood on the edge of plot of land way out the back of nowhere (so remote, that apparently you have to tunnel underground to get to it) that was all his... Well technically he was renting it off some farmer who looked to be going bankrupt anyway, but yeah he had his own portion of land, and he watched as the delivery guys set up his new spinny carnival ride which he forgot the name of.
He had used his life savings, which amounted to a little over 5k to setup "Itova Valley" the name of Itova being the name that Bob uses for anything he randomly names (mainly video game stuff up until this point). He had the spinny carnival ride, and also managed to find another bigger swingy plane type ride as well (who know rides were so cheap).
But that was his limit, he could afford a few paths linking things together and a small burger kitchen he made himself (with help from his old man).
All that didn't matter, Itova Valley was open for business...
Bob's father slapped his son on the shoulder and head off, shaking his head at the dumbness of it all but his son was adamant to live in his basement forever... Or so he thought. Bob meanwhile had a few things to do...
First he needed staff, he hired a janitor, a mechanic and a shop vendor... And well opened the doors...
And NOTHING HAPPENED... For ages Bob just sat there while his "staff" played cards on the ground (since there were no buildings).
He was beginning to worry after a few days, but then... people... showed... up...
"Build it and they will come" a wise man once said, or I made that up not sure Bob thought to himself while grinning for ear to ear.
And so the park began to make money, well take in revenue... Currently it was free to get in the park and the two rides cost $15 bucks each per ride. Bob thought things were going well he had roughly 100 people cycle through a day, but then at the end of the month his accountant (really his sisters friend) told him no, he was losing money (and he didn't have much).
But Bob had a great idea, apparently there was an UNLIMITED supply of available worker around here, so he told his staff he would now pay them $1 a month wages hehe.
That didn't work, they just went on strike and mopped about the place... So he paid them... $20 a month, and that turned out to be the magic number, they worked and worked...
His park was making money woo.
Fast forward a month or so and Bob had expanded a lot, 14 rides and various stores and the fast growing theme park, he still paid his staff peanuts and when they slacked off he just fired them and hired new people (Bob had no soul).
But Bob had bigger dreams, more classy dreams... He wanted more... He wanted Itova Valley to be beautiful, thus he saved money.
It was then that disaster striked...
Oh no, the bad press... Bob thought it was best to kick his master plan into action early to avoid some sort of investigation into this labor practices...
And so Bob closed the park (and fired everyone), as the people left, the construction crews entered, for now Bob had the means to do something.... A little bit better...
OOC Notes
Hi again everyone, so I suck at this game and challenger mode is way harder than the career missions, you start with literally no money and you can't afford to do much at all. I managed to research new thrill rides and slowly expand the park overtime but I couldn't afford to do anything nice.
The wages thing is legit, haha I paid them next to nothing and made good profit, when the staff complained I just fired them and hired new ones, a bit tedious and a bit of a hack but oh well
Last edited by Stildawn; January 19, 2018 at 07:48 AM.
Many months, and thousands of unethically earned dollars were spent on Itova Valley, construction crews and designers from all around the city came and put their individual stamps on the park, bringing it from a dingy craphole up to an almost "good" standard.
Bob's vision was beginning to unfold, it started with the entrance, a grand new building hand been built to welcome guests into the park, through 5 archways into a large interior the buildings grandeur make a lasting first impression on all visitors.
The first floor had wide open plaza's better to hustle the crowd into the parks interior, a central pillar housing information and various food and beverage stalls to get the guests sorted for the day to come. The second floor offering large sheltered verandas where people could enjoy a bite to eat while viewing the parks natural scenery. The top floor housing more shops and the main station of the parks new mono rail.
The main building opened out on to a double laned central street, the hub of the valley. Bob combined visions of NYC central park with multicoloured buildings that he saw in some magazine once, he thinks from Europe.
He had sold all his crusty old rides and purchased brand new German engineered masterpieces... 11 new rides in total 5 per side up the main street with the large sky swing as a central park figure.
The park ended with another central building housing two more mono rail stations, in the future this building would become a hub for transport around the growing wonderland.
The reopening was a complete success, thousands of people came to the park each day and reviews online were bringing in more and more each day. Much to his surprise, Bob was a success...
But with costs mounting and the daily expenses of this larger park taking its toll, how much longer could Itova Valley flourish...
OOC Notes
Hi again all, so I managed to save up a bit of money and basically deleted everything and started again, this time properly with a proper budget.
I'm not really the greatest builder yet but the game is great for creativity and I'm having a lot of fun figuring things out and getting things just right.
I literally just reopened the park and made like 65k in the first month (this is decent) but usually there is a drop off once the park is established.
Anyway here's a little tour video, its badly made as its my very first attempt with recording a game haha:
Last edited by Stildawn; January 19, 2018 at 08:15 AM.
I'm enjoying Bob's adventures! This sounds like a challenging game-start, so I can see why Bob used unscrupulous measures early on. His new park looks impressive and (based on the video) popular.
Last edited by Alwyn; January 20, 2018 at 10:57 AM.
This is great fun! And it sounds as if you're having fun playing (and writing)!
Things seem to be going well - but I notice the ominous reference to 'daily expenses', so I'm interested to know what will happen next...
Cheers, glad to have you along.
If you have any questions or whatever let me know, and any ideas would be appreciated haha
Originally Posted by mad orc
I like this aar so very much .Continue writing more .
Thanks, will do.
Originally Posted by Alwyn
I'm enjoying Bob's adventures! This sounds like a challenging game-start, so I can see why Bob used unscrupulous measures early on. His new park looks impressive and (based on the video) popular.
The amount of money is terrible at start and I only chose medium difficulty. On the harder levels you have even less money and have to research more rides I assume.
I guess they want you to use the loan feature, which so far I have avoided (though its been close at times).
I'm a bit of a neat freak when it comes to things like this which this game is great for/bad for at the same time, you can make things look great but it does take serious dedication haha.
Bob's sisters friend didn't look very happy as she entered Bob's now glorious office in the central building of Itova Valley, she didn't say a word but just slammed down a thick binder (she was stuck in the 20th Century).
"I like red" Bob said...
The accountant just rolled her eyes "No, you really don't"
The figures for the last 6 months since the reopening was in... And well they sucked, average monthly profit, it didn't exist... The park was hemorrhaging money, and fast.
"And this isn't even as rosy as it seems, the average profit is offset by the massive intake the park made in the first couple of month, since then the losses have been in the tens of thousands" She said trying to keep the absentminded Bob's attention.
"How much cash do we have?" He asked shyly
"Enough... For now"
"Well if university taught me anything, its that if you have a problem... Throw money you don't have at it until it goes away" Bob delivered the illogical line with a full grin.
"Sigh..." She said as her head hit her palm with considerable force.
And so Bob's next great idea took form... A roller coaster... Every park needs one of them...
Bob, being a "studies" major had no idea about anything to do with physics or engineering, but his sisters friend said they have "enough" money sooooo lets hire some super expensive people.
He sat down with his RnD team, who had just finished sourcing a coaster design... It was a fairly standard modern coaster design, with standard trains on a chain lift circuit.
Bob scribbled some lines on a piece of paper and pushed it towards the engineers, who just shook their heads and used an eraser on parts... This continued for sometime until a fairly pedestrian "design" was settled upon.
Construction started as planned but soon met delays, space constraints hindered the plan and build, workarounds had to be used and shortcuts taken, but eventually after a few months the coaster was finished.
Along with the new coaster, a new mono station was built and the street extended from main street, to direct park guests towards the new attraction.
Bob eloquently named the ride "Fire Arrow" mainly because on one of his first construction site visits he saw the unfinished track, painted red with primer, thinking that was the final color he came up with the unimaginative name.
The Fire Arrow had a large station building and set off from the second floor, a steep decline to get things moving and a little flair on the way to the 35m chain lift.
What followed was a series of drops and airtime hills, a couple of inversions and a misty explosion scene. Meanwhile in the station building, while more fearful guests can watch the coaster at two dedicated look out points and also through the expansive openings along the walkways.
The Fire Arrow passed its tests with decent results, and there was nothing else to do but open this baby up...
Never one to have any caution, Bob thought it would be a great idea to advertise his new coaster, thus money was spent on two social media campaigns (one for adults and one for teens, both demographics that appreciate a good coaster). He also spent big on some cheesy TV commercials.
And as his luck continued, only hours after opening the Fire Arrow was packed...
Bob smiled at the sight of hundreds of people fighting for a chance to ride "his" creation. He grabbed a slushy and sat down to enjoy the rest of the day at the new mono-station eating area... Admiring another great angle of Itova Valley...
OOC Notes:
Thanks all for reading this far if you have. I realized a bit through this coaster that I should probably document the actual construction process so you all can get a feel for it and how punishing it can be.
With coasters what I have figured out so far is that its essentially a balancing act of excitement, fear and making people throw up. You want excitement up, which is a combination of speed and g force, but if those two things get high then fear and nausea skyrocket which of course means no one will ride it haha.
I managed to get Fire Arrow to 6.42 excitement rating (out of ten I believe) which is not bad considering I was trying to cram it into a small triangle part of the park.
Regarding money issues, so I think the game is a bit weird, it seems (at least to me so far) that people pay to enter your park and can literally stay their for months in game time, meaning when the counter is saying 3k guests which I thought was good like per day type thing... Its not, meaning lots of people who have already paid to enter and thus I'm not making any more money.
Its a bit silly in my opinion, I wonder if there is any mods around for it to be a bit more realistic.
Anyway, I am trying to sort the cash out by starting to charge a "very" small amount to actually ride the rides,
which guests ain't a fan of after paying $60 bucks entry.
I also realigned the park a bit, like I said neat freak, now things are more balanced as below:
Anyway, I leave you today with another video, this time riding Fire Arrow... Enjoy
Last edited by Stildawn; January 22, 2018 at 04:27 AM.
Things seem to be going reasonably well, despite the worrying start to the chapter. Will the number of people wanting to try out the new ride drop off as it becomes an old ride?
I agree, this was a worrying start - Bob's financial problem sets up the chapter well, it sounds like constructing Fire Arrow and making it a success was a real challenge.
Things seem to be going reasonably well, despite the worrying start to the chapter. Will the number of people wanting to try out the new ride drop off as it becomes an old ride?
I dipped below 100k at the start of building Fire Arrow, so still healthy but for your reference all up including buildings and scenery (trees etc) Fire Arrow was probably around 40k to build so a decent chunk.
The game has a prestige system on each of the rides you have, its based off the ratings and scenery etc so the more effort you put into it the higher the prestige, the prestige I believe accumulates and adds to your overall park rating which then dictates the amount of guests etc.
The rides start off as "new" with 110% base prestige, then then progress through various stages (established, aging, old, revival etc) until they get to "classic" which goes to 110% again, but it takes like 15 years in game for that to happen. At any point after established you can pay to rebrand the ride which resets it back to the start of established.
Prestige also dictates who much you can charge to ride it as well.
Originally Posted by Alwyn
I agree, this was a worrying start - Bob's financial problem sets up the chapter well, it sounds like constructing Fire Arrow and making it a success was a real challenge.
I'm trying hard not to have to get loans, so at bit alarmish haha as stated above I just dipped below 100k which is still fairly decent. Fire Arrow was a challenge to fit into the small triangle I had assigned to it.
Originally Posted by mad orc
Ah ,gosh ,good lord ,the fire arrow came out without problems and now the field is open for further glory .Your OOC notes are a good idea too .+Rep .
Thanks, I will be putting more of the mechanic side stuff into OOC so that you all have an idea of how things are being done on a game level.
With the success of Fire Arrow, Bob's doors were getting busier by the day. Unfortunately this wasn't overly flowing over to increased revenues and something had to be done quick before the whole endeavor went down the toilet.
Bob's sisters friend had said that cash reserves were now nearing 50k, which while a lot more than Bob started with it only a drop in the bucket compared to yearly running costs.
And so at a family & friends BBQ, Bob had to humbly beg for help from his sisters friend, who with the ruthless efficiency of an accountant worked her way through the books and with some creative analysis came back with a plan.
First an "admin fee" was placed on all the rides individual to the large entry price, now guests had to pay $5 per ride even including the monorail, while the Fire Arrow had a decent $15 take per rider. While the feedback was bad, a few weeks in and the queue lines were still packed.
The second initiative was to finally streamline the food and shops pricing, to be more realistic. The approach taken was of quality demanding a higher price. Each of the stores advertised new and improved options and the prices were inflated to reflect that.
And lastly, research was done that indicated that consistent advertising campaigns not only covered their costs but brought large numbers of customers, and so regular TV advertising contracts were drawn up with various local and national networks.
Much to Bob's chagrin but also to his relief the plans worked, and the increase in revenue happened almost overnight.
With profits soaring and cash rolling in, Bob's could once again do what he does best... Dream...
And thus he turned his eyes to the other corner of nothingness in his park, a small triangle of spare land (similar to Fire Arrows location) to the left of main street.
Turning to his engineering team (who he had somehow managed to keep on throughout all the financial turmoil) who had just sourced a new and exciting coaster design.
It was a single car design with two rows of 4 seats on a standard steel track capable of spins and turns and breathtaking all round vision.
The feature that caught Bob's eye was the vertical drop ability, he had visions of screaming people and plummeted to their certain deaths... Well maybe not the death part but you get the point.
So with idea in hand he again did the scribble dance with his more tolerant (now that they were being paid properly) engineers, drafting up the initial plans for "Death Drop" an exciting new coaster.
Ground was broken and work commenced as eager park visitors peered over construction fences as the work continued. As before a new monorail station was built to express people to the new feature. After that the "Death Drop" began to take form, a few setbacks and redesigns half way added to the cost, but this was expected this time round.
And thus "Death Drop" opened to great fanfare and anticipation, the queues were instantly full as guests poured into the area for their chance to drop to their deaths.
The "Death Drop" was housed in a grand stone chateau based of old European designs, with heavy gates opening as the cars sped off to the 40m chain lift and the actual death drop just beyond. Saved from the fire pit the riders experienced inversions and turns at speed while dodging fire and machinery once again as they zoomed past onlookers heading to more turns and inversions around a not so gentle lake to the finish.
Meanwhile at the station, guest could enjoy two separate eating areas, the first floor with a balloon store and first aid, or the top floor where they could enjoy a burger and drink while watching the coaster cars fly past.
Despite a few opening day hiccups the "Death Drop" was an instant success, thrilling rides and leaving them wanting more.
OOC Notes:
Thanks again everyone for reading this far, was a strenuous update as working out the revenues was a long process of trial and error.
The conclusion I came to was that advertising was awesome and in the future I will be experimenting with running even more campaigns side by side to see if there is a point of diminishing returns.
The food/shops situation I used some hints off the internet, in the food store options for each menu item you can enable additionals, things like onions/cheese/ketchup etc for burgers, ice etc for drinks. I set all these options to "a lot"
which means that the draw to the shops was a lot higher, and then adjusting the menu prices means now all the stores make a decent profit.
I wasn't overly keen on charging for rides again, as I personally hate those types of parks myself much preferring to pay once and have everything free, but I think with the guest system currently in the game this is how it will have to stay for the time being.
But now I'm making decent profits again and are back to 200k ish at the time of writing.
Now on to coaster designing haha, Death Drop was a little bit more challenging, I started out with copying the monostation from Fire Arrow which the game allows you to do and move perfectly inline across the park to the other side. Then using that as a reference I drafted out a square for the coaster station, trying to get all things squared up etc as best I could.
In the picture above you can see how I go about building design, using a trick off the internet I make a template for a wall section (the three floating sections on the bottom right) in these I add in all detail bits like columns, cross members etc (this one is fairly simple really), then I copy and paste them twice for windowed version and archway version.
And as you can see I use these using the duplicate tool to smash out a fairly decent looking building quite quickly. I'm a big fan of natural light, so I use a lot of archway pieces on the walking floor levels which paired with paths that have railings gives the interior nice natural light.
With this coaster I did a slightly different process, usually I build the whole coaster then build the station around it, but the Fire Arrow station turned out a bit weird in parts so this time I decided to build the station building, then design the coaster around it instead.
With the building shell done, I started with the actual coaster, getting out of the station and the big drop and the first few turns were all fairly straight forward.
Speed and thus fear/sickness was an issue after the big drop, so if you look closely I have a block break right at the top which slows the car just before the drop, I can use this with great accuracy to vary the speeds throughout the coaster to get the best results. (More on block breaks later)
The picture shows my original design with an extra inversion on this side of the building but unfortunately the fear/sickness was too much and the angles were not working so I deleted that section and reworked across earlier than I had wanted.
And this was the section created on the other side, I had originally planned to cross the building more than once, but the tightness of the area restricted by speed on the turns means that it wasn't plausible. Thus I settled with one crossing and a series of turns and inversions on the new side.
You can see another little chainlift section right at the end, these are usually the death of a coaster as guests don't want to sit through another boring chainlift, but luckily I only needed a little tiny bit of momentum to get back up to the station, so as you'll watch below, that chainlift is quite quick and you don't overly notice it.
And so we end up with the final design, it was fairly successful considerating the space used. Luckily this completes stage 1 of the park so the next coasters will be designed with large open areas.
I'll touch on block breaks for those who are interested. Block breaks is a way not only to break/stop the cars (if you want) but they also break up the coaster into sections, this is especially useful in a coaster like this (single cars, rather than long trains) as it allows me to run multiple cars at the same time. The block breaks are designed so that it will stop a car if there is a car already in the following section (tracks between block breaks). So if you add in lots of block breaks throughout the coaster it allows you to run lots of cars at the same time thus increasing overall throughput of riders. I think the max I can run on this coaster is 11 cars, but I only run 7 to allow timing for load/unload.
You can see the amount of work that goes in from the shell state above, to the finished state below. I spend a lot of time on scenery and excitement. This coaster features a fire pit at the bottom of the big drop which deactivates to allow the cars to fly through. There is also the fire and mechanics part when it fly's over the building which has fire streams deactivate in turn as the car goes through.
As well as finishing off the building and adding in the roof/scenery.
And so stage 1 is complete, as you can see below the rest of the park is opened up by that cross road so hopefully I'll be able to come up with even more exciting coasters in the future.
And once again I leave you with a video of the new "Death Drop"
Good updates .Hope that the death drop takes Bob's rising profits to new heights ,after all in his case ,the more money he has ,the more he can dream .
Impressive design work on the Death Drop, I wonder if park guests are worried or reassured by the thing that isn't a balloon store on the first floor, or by the picture showing flames above the comment about 'opening day hiccups'! It sounds like, as mad orc said, Bob will be able to make more of his dreams into reality in future.
Good updates .Hope that the death drop takes Bob's rising profits to new heights ,after all in his case ,the more money he has ,the more he can dream .
Originally Posted by Alwyn
Impressive design work on the Death Drop, I wonder if park guests are worried or reassured by the thing that isn't a balloon store on the first floor, or by the picture showing flames above the comment about 'opening day hiccups'! It sounds like, as mad orc said, Bob will be able to make more of his dreams into reality in future.
Originally Posted by Darkan
This is an interesting take on an AAR. Hopefully Bob will soon design the ultimate coaster.
Thanks guys.
The hiccups was that my paths were not actually connected to the coasters exit even though they sure looked like it, so guests got stranded lol. Just a little fix required haha.
Sorry for the delays all, I am still playing just that my wife has decided to try and learn to play LoL with me, shes awesome and I'm super happy about it haha but it means most of my spare time has been playing LoL with my wife and daughter haha.
I am working on something big and it is almost done so stay tuned lol.
[Planet Coaster AAR] - Itova Valley & Bob
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Caillagh de Bodemloze
