Ecological Salvage/Scenario Guide

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Remember:
  • The Scenario Guide below is only a suggested strategy for completing this scenario—it may not work for all players.
  • The General Scenario Guide and Hints and Tips articles may also provide helpful information in completing this scenario.
  • There are usually multiple strategies to successfully completing a scenario; these can be discussed on the scenario's discussion page or written down in an existing or additional section of this article.

The player starts this scenario with no money, and can borrow up to $30,000 from the bank. This scenario also sets the player up with land purchase rights to virtually the entire map at the extremely cheap price of $5 per tile. The park is already open, although there are no rides built.

Although money could be a huge problem in this scenario, its description also mentions "You can sell the old buildings for salvage". Set up research & development—priorities are a non-issue since there are not many new rides/stalls available through research—and borrow just $1,000. As this is a "free rides" park with a high loan interest rate (20%!), avoid taking huge loans at all costs.

With the $1,000 loaned from the bank, and with the main view still centered on the park entrance gate, move to the small building with the satellite dish, located to the right of the park entrance. Purchase the land this building is on and demolish it along with the dish. The amount obtained from demolishing these should give a bit more money than the amount paid for the land, so repay the $1,000 loan immediately.

Next, move around the map to see what scenery objects can be demolished once the land they are built on is purchased. Much of the oil refinery mentioned in the scenario description is located near the back of the park, and the land its buildings and scenery items are built on are also fully purchasable. The rest of the map also has a generous amount of scenery items that can be demolished for a profit. The fishing holes strewn around the map give the greatest net profit upon demolition ($25 per tile), although they are relatively few. Demolishing the refinery buildings, as well as the pipelines, gives the greatest total profit due to their sheer size and length; parts of these buildings also have footpaths built, which can also be demolished for additional profit. Across the map, individual scenery objects that take up multiple tiles of space (such as the ice formation near the now-demolished building with the satellite dish) cannot be deleted unless all the tiles they are built on are purchased by the player, although there is still a net profit. Do not purchase any land that only has fencing/walls (since demolishing these give no money) or trees (since demolishing trees cost money, which adds to the net cost of the tile it is on). The ice formation sitting alone on one of the icebergs also cannot be demolished since one side of it sits on tiles at the edge of the map, which cannot be purchased under any circumstances.

Demolishing most of the profitable scenery items and footpaths on the map should net a total profit of about $9,500. With this amount of cash-on-hand, start a nice small park by building a few flat rides, as well as one or two shuttle coasters, and set the park entrance fee to $40, which is the lowest amount of cash a guest has in this scenario. Building an Information Kiosk and food/drink stalls is optional.

As this is a "free rides" park, there should be a constant flow of guests stepping through the park entrance gate, which can be achieved by either not building any Restrooms or closing the park down once every few months.

Once all that is done, let the game run its course for about 3 years without building anything new. Since ride values drop over time, it is not practical to build new rides as they are researched. However, as the number of guests in the park depends largely on the number of rides built, the rides built in Year 1 will ensure a small but constant flow of guests stepping through the gate (assuming you chose to build no new Restrooms or close down the park every few months to make guests leave), generating a consistent source of revenue even as the value of the rides drop.

In Year 4, with the accumulated revenue generated from the park running uninterrupted for the past 3 years, set about building a real park. Ride options are limited, but there are enough different roller coasters to work with. Following the strategy detailed above should provide sufficient funds to build enough rides to reach a park value of $200,000 over the course of 2 years, as the map has a lot of large and flat spaces for most track designs.