Railway ideas

[Kaiser Kirk]

To me the point of the railway rules was two fold
1. To make explicit connections for military purposes
Example - Bory's creation of an additional line to Friuli
Example - Post Franco-Prussian War, the Prussians built several railroad to their new conquests, including a railbridge over the Rhine, which shouldn't be present in Navalism, meaning there are only 4 bridges on the Franco-Bavarian border.

2. To expand and link infrastructure in poorly developed areas.
Example - France's funding of Russian railways prior to 1914, intended to allow the Russians to mobilized and invade Germany.
Example - Bavaria's dealings with the African Coast includes building railroads, as they have few. Intended dealing with the Mughals was to include a RR to Afgahnistan had the Mughals stayed unentangled.

There is a 3rd point- which is that railroads constructed in the the 1860s will be built to lower standards than later. A RR build in 1920 will have better constructed beds and higher weight rails, allowing higher speeds and heavier loads. This can be ignored as too complex to track.

Further, where railroads are scare, their presence becomes strategic, particularly pre-auto.

As such, I see a *need* to be able to stipulate transportation construction.

My experience is that it is possible..but difficult to find on-line maps of railroads.

I like the idea of a simple 'transportation index' for provinces. 1 = a single track network, 2= a mainline + spurs, 3= heavily RR'd.
Starting core provinces would be 3s by default, borders 2s. ....i.e. no one needs to build RR at home.

Then allow purchasing of "1" level as also equivalent to X km of single track and "2" is equal to Y km of double track.

So you can link either upgrade a province, or stipulate that you're building an "Orient Express" to link two far flung areas of importance through provinces otherwise lacking in transport infrastructure.

ed: Sometimes it's odd to see what I post.  For example "you can link either upgrade"  doesn't read right. It's because I rephrased what the rest of the sentence said. I tend to have the problem of I know what I was trying to say, so it reads fine to me....

[ctwaterman]

Hmmm I did this in N3... the early part right after I joined the game.

I built a military Narrow guage railroad from Behgahzi to Tobruk, from Tobruk to the Egyptian boarder Bidi Sadi I think.   And then build a 1 meter guage railway all the war from Tunis to Tripoli to Bengahzi creating a North African Costal Railway net.  Part of that was handled by IC purchases in North Africa but the Military railroad from Tobruk onwards was completely and totaly a $$$ and BP purchase.

But the question remains how many people want to track this... this is an additional layer of complexity and it will have to be considered carefully!

Charles

[miketr]

Kaiser Kirk the issue is do we really need this level of detail in our empires?  Do we want to deal with the paperwork load? Are people willing to track province population, GDP and railroad levels?

Michael

[Kaiser Kirk]

That's why I presented it the way I did.

I think there is a need to denote the level of transportation infrastructure.
I think that at the province level, finding historic detailed RR info is too daunting, so we need to dispense with that for a generalized number.

I also see a need, and cited both historic and Navalism examples, for the explicit construction of a specific railroad. We even see that now with the Chinese lines to Tibet and the Indian border.

State                                  Population   BP       IC     Revenue    TI
Bavaria Palintate & Hesse  7.46            3.0      12    19.46          3

For most of the time, that new "TI" column would be the tracking, and be a static number. In Bavaria's case, a "3".
Very easy tracking.

Now for "Lithuania" it would be a "2", which you could upgrade to a "3".

However, to place a new railroad from Karachi to Kabul would take Y amount of resources, while still leaving "S. Paki, N. Paki, and Afgahn' provinces a lowly "0" or "1" as it's an explicit line.  In those cases being able to specify a route is useful.

[Darman]

I agree with Kaiser Kirk on this, that RR played an important role in the warfare of this period.  And his system doesn't seem too complicated to me.  Why not have a list like Valles suggested.  And when you write your sim report you just look it up.  Seems simple enough to me.  I'm always looking things up, generally I have my 2 or 3 previous sim reports open whenever I'm writing a new one anyways. 

[miketr]

The thing to keep in mind is that not everyone has the same view on this issue and we want to try to have a game that brings in the most people.

Michael

[snip]

I think KKs proposed system seems to be along the lines of what I am thinking would be an acceptable way to track this

[Nobody]

I have the feeling you caught my original idea, which was to give a simple system to handle rails for those that don't want to meddle with individual lines, while giving those who want, room to breath.



Since this simple railway idea practically turned into one for an economic system, I thought I should do exactly that. I made an example sheet for that (see attachment).

NOTES:
Pretty much all variables, constants and formulas are subject of tuning.
The system doesn't work unless all provinces are roughly equal (see "Ruhr-Area" and "Sealand" as counter-examples, although a RR on a small island is just inefficient).

Now for using:
The green boxes (although there is only one) have to be updated by the player.
The blue-ish boxes are usually copied, but can and should be updated form time to time (tax and RR stuff).
The red-ish boxes are subject of moderator changes and may not be changed unless being told to do so, or you understand what you are doing.
The yellow[/y] boxes have to be copied into the grey ones. You might have to be careful to copy the numbers and not the formulas.
All other (white) fields are either empty or used for calculation - be careful.
It should be easily possible to add more provinces (at least up to 10), but that might depend on the program you're using. Some knowledge about Excel is useful nonetheless.

Oh, and of course there is no upkeep for harbors, docks, ships whatsoever yet.
Neither is there a merchant marine (MM), which I remembered some wanted to have back as well.



OK, so what does it do?
It (hopefully) offers a manageable way of handling the income and growth for many provinces with a basic economic system.
Growth is influenced by the tax.
Growth slows down if the GNP to population ratio gets higher.
Growth is increased by better transportation infrastructure.
An oversized RR can lead to high running costs.

It can simulate the official N4verse system by removing the RR related stuff and changing 5 of the red boxes.

[Korpen]

I think I agree with P3D here, complications that do not stand in proportion with any gain from them.
The devil is in the details; the more factors one try to take into account the more sources of error one introduce. So one cannot talk only about railroads if one introduce direct infrastructure factors, but must take into account other ways of transport as well as the relative geography. Simply put; a landlocked province without major waterways could have the most sophisticated double-track integrated railroad system and still have a worse operational infrastructure then a province with just some local tracks that but is crossed my a major river and have a good canal system.

[Valles]

...I wonder how it is that spreadsheets always seem to make everything more obscure...

[Kaiser Kirk]

I think I agree with P3D here, complications that do not stand in proportion with any gain from them.
The devil is in the details; the more factors one try to take into account the more sources of error one introduce. So one cannot talk only about railroads if one introduce direct infrastructure factors, but must take into account other ways of transport as well as the relative geography. Simply put; a landlocked province without major waterways could have the most sophisticated double-track integrated railroad system and still have a worse operational infrastructure then a province with just some local tracks that but is crossed my a major river and have a good canal system.

I was suggesting we just streamline RR or other infrastructure as "Transportation Index" - canal, road, or rail. There will come a time when the flexibility of the auto is of import.  How that effects anything economic is not really my concern right now. I'm not keen on the complexities that are being mooted about anyhow.

I was also suggesting that there has been a persistent need for specifying that two points are indeed linked by rail, when it is otherwise unreasonable to presume so, so such should be provided.

Thats all.

As for merchant marines- be nice to have it explicit, so the effect of commerce raiding is plain.  However that adds a civilian shipbuilding infrastructure to the economy with the attendent questions about taking it over in wartime, etc.

[miketr]

As for merchant marines- be nice to have it explicit, so the effect of commerce raiding is plain.  However that adds a civilian shipbuilding infrastructure to the economy with the attendent questions about taking it over in wartime, etc.

That is one thing we have a fairly good idea how will work at least.  It is a somewhat simplistic system in terms of making the trade routes but it will be there.

Michael