- Rollercoaster Tycoon Elevated Path Set
- Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Elevated Path
- Rollercoaster Tycoon Elevated Path System
1 Building a Ride 2 Building a Roller Coaster 2.1 Coaster Checklist 2.2 Ride Construction Window 3 Tips Note: the game cannot be paused in RCT2 while building a ride. It can be paused during this in RCT3, and will automatically do so during construction. Click the New Rides button to open the Ride Selection window. Using the tabs, choose a type of ride. Select a ride by clicking on. Paths allow your guests and staff to walk around, and are required to be placed before they are able to navigate around the park. 1 Guests and Paths 2 Building Paths 2.1 Path Types 2.2 Path building options 2.3 Pathing Systems 3 List of Paths 3.1 RollerCoaster Tycoon 3.1.1 Normal Path 3.1.2.
Factory CapersThe last beginner scenario for RCT2 is Factory Capers. Unlike the previous two scenarios, Factory Capers is a pay to enter park, with free rides. A lot of people find these types of parks more challenging than the free to enter, paid ride parks, and I would tend to agree. The goal for this scenario is to have 1,100 guests in the park by the end of Year 3. You start off with $10k in loan and a lot of scenery and paths. After removing all the paths and scenery, I actually paid off the whole loan and had around $10k of spending cash. As usual, I built a few gentle rides and all the thrill rides that were available at the start of the park.
The biggest way to stay out of trouble in the paid to enter parks is to make sure you keep your ride running costs down. Rollercoasters and other large rides can cost around $250 an hour, but the gentle and thrill rides only cost $50. My strategy was to build cheap rides to attract a lot of guests, thus generating a lot of income through park entrance tickets. With all the extra cash, I kept expanding, however I would not open the rides until new guests stopped coming to the park. I watched the up arrow by the number of guests, and as soon as it went away I would open new rides, and it would come back. This meant that I always was increasing the number of guests in my park.
Also it is important to remember the goal of this scenario is not to have cool rides, or lots of money, but 1100 guests. Year 3 is quite a while, so I did a significant amount of waiting between opening new sections of the park. By september of Year 1 I had expanded all around the entrance of the park, and build and island of other rides farther away. To combat the crowded park, I built a path all the way around the park.
Each month I was building about $2500 worth of new rides, and the running cost was steadily increasing, however was only around $100. One rollercoaster would of been costing around $20 a month, verses around $4 for a thrill ride.
Now to my secret. I recently read about a strategy on Fossil’s Dig Site that specifically pertains to paid admission parks. Based upon the size of your park, and the number of rides the game determines when new gets will come. One way to attract guests is to build more rides, increasing the total number of guests that the game will allow into your park. Another way to attract guests is to have all of your guests leave. The game tries to keep the number of guests in your park about the same, so if 100 guests leave, the game will generate 100 guests to enter your park. An easy way to get guests to leave, and still be moderately happy and have a good park rating, is by not having any bathrooms. It takes around one year for guests to get a full bathroom meter, which gives them ample time to get on rides and buy souvenirs. Also, not building Cash Machines insures that when guests run out of cash, they will also leave.
In a free ride park, if a guest goes to an Cash Machine and gets $50, they can last almost forever on cash, buying only at most 2 drinks and 2 food per hour. Instead, setting a very high entrance price (In this scenario I stopped around $40, as several guests only brought $43), means that the guests can only afford a few shop items, and then will run out of cash and leave the park. Thus creating a new guest, with full cash, to enter the park in their place.
I sampled 4 guests who were thinking “I have to go to the bathroom” to see how they were feeling. Surprisingly, they were kind of mad, however my park rating was still above 900! One thing to note is, the entrance of the park actually has 3 entrances, and at some point the paths broke. The queues for the Merry-Go-Round and the Ferris Wheel worked as queues, but also all guests would also walk through them, sometimes getting trapped at the entrance of the park for a very long time. This created a serious overcrowding issue, as well as trapping many guests away from rides, lowering their happiness quickly. I didn’t actually figure out the cause of this problem until around June of Year 2, and instead of rebuilding the front of the park, I just decided to place Entertainers there to increase the happiness. I chose this decision because the park was really just about waiting for their bathroom meter to get full and then have them leave, as the rest of the park was very well populated by now.
Also round this time I opened half of the the far island area which featured an Enterprise, which definitely was the most liked ride of that section. This area included a drink and food stall, and while guests sit down and eatdrink, their happiness goes down slightly. I employed an entertainer to walk around the bench areas to see if I could counteract, or maybe increase their happiness while eating, but it seemed to have little or no effect.
As you can see, each month I was generating around $8k in entrance tickets, and paying less than $300 to keep the rides going. This is the key to making money in free ride parks. I definitely overstaffed this park, as it was large and some parts were overcrowded, however I was still generating a lot of profit each month.
A few months later I opened the rest of the area, and at this point 242 people had to go to the bathroom, and 45 were running out of cash, and I had a park rating of 999. So nearly 300 of the 1400 guests were soon to leave the park, and thus generating a new guest who would pay $40 to enter. It appears that this strategy works.
Rollercoaster Tycoon Elevated Path Set
With over a year left, and clearly beaten the scenario, I decided to start making bigger rides. What else was I going to do with $60k?
I really like Splash Boats (River Ride in RCT1). Each boat can hold 16 people, and rides can range from 2 minutes to 5 minutes, while still having very high excitement, with low intensity and nausea. This one had a ride time of around 4 minutes, and 20 boats.
The clear downside is the running cost, equivalent to 6 thrill rides ($25 per month). But knowing that it keeps about 200 people on it at all times.. It evens out.
Then I built a junior coaster in a small section of the park. I wasn’t sure what else to build here, so figured I’d splurge on a junior coaster with lots of helixes. Its just a normal 3 train, about 1m45s ride. Very optimal for getting people in and out as fast as possible.
With still more time, and ridiculous amounts of money left, I decided to make a train ride. I usually don’t make transport rides, as they are usually very expensive and hard to design without taking up a lot of area. Using the elevated path that went around the park, I just had the train drive under most of it. This kept the actual usage area down to only a little bit, which I had go either over, or under other rides. It was quite effective, and with even just 3 trains, held tons of people. It suggested 5 trains, but that was clearly too much, each train holds 36 people.
The train actually did quite well, and had nearly full queue lines for the rest of the scenario.
Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Elevated Path
The end of October Year 3 came, and finished this scenario. Without using Restrooms and Cash Machines this scenario became quite easy. Each month I was generating around $5k from entrance tickets, which was more than enough to run the park. Keeping ride costs down at the beginning, and building as many cheap rides as possible help increase the number of guests in the park. And not having Restrooms or Cash Machines makes sure that the guests leave after about an hour (one Year), letting new guests come into the park.
Rollercoaster Tycoon Elevated Path System
While I dont suggest to everyone to use this slightly game breaking method, if you are having trouble beating free ride parks, I’d first try to just build only thrillgentle rides. If you still need more money, then remove all the bathrooms. It’s not exactly the best way to be playing the game, but it sure does get the job done.