General Scenario Guide: Difference between revisions

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This general scenario guide provides a very generic walkthrough for most RollerCoaster Tycoon scenarios. Guides for specific scenarios can be found on this page.

Starting Out

Most RollerCoaster Tycoon scenarios automatically open the park details window, set to the scenario objectives tab, when you first load the scenario. You are also strongly advised to pause the game at this time so that you are not distracted by anything else happening in the park.

If this is your first time playing a scenario, read the objective to get an idea of what you must do in order to successfully complete the scenario as well as how much time you have to reach said objective and, if the scenario's author bothered to write a Chris Sawyer-ish park description, any scenario limitations in effect and/or specific details relevant only to this scenario, such as:

"...won't allow any landscape changes..."
"...badly in debt..."
"...can't build too high above the ground..."
"...land is cheap but loan interest is high..."

Next, scroll around the map to get a general overview of your park. Things you may wish to take note of at the start include existing rides in your park, its boundaries, the scenario's loan limit and interest rate, and the variety of rides already available for construction.

After that, identify any problems already existing in your park, such as excessive litter, lost guests or unsafe or broken down rides. Although you cannot clear litter with the game paused, you can hire and place handymen so that they will immediately start cleaning up any mess already existing in your park once the game is unpaused. Lost guests can be picked up by you and placed on footpaths close to the park entrance. Any existing ride in your park that you feel is unsafe can be reset by closing it twice. If there are already broken down rides in your park, hire 1 mechanic (if there isn't one already) and place them near a broken down ride—they will set about fixing any broken down rides once the game is unpaused.

If your park has any rides already running, hire 1 mechanic (if you haven't already done so in response to a broken down ride). For the time being, this mechanic does not need to be set a patrol path, since they are only a temporary measure to handle any (additional) ride breakdowns while you set up your park. You may also wish to take note of what kind of rides these are (i.e. transport, gentle, roller coaster, etc.) as well their statistics (such as their ride rating, admission fee and queue time) and, for tracked rides such as roller coasters or go-karts, their size. At this point, it may be necessary to unpause the game and modify some pre-built rides or their queue lines for more desirable ratings.

Finally, before unpausing the game, check the Research & Development window. Several scenarios give you a small selection of rides and stalls to work with, but you will often be missing something that may be important in the long-term (e.g. Information Kiosk, Toilets, more rides of a certain type), so you may wish to consider adjusting your research funding as well as priorities in order to get the rides/stalls you need faster or reduce the amount of money spent on research per month at the cost of researching new rides/stalls at a slower rate.

Building Rides

Unless certain conditions in a scenario create the circumstances, your park should have a mixture of low and high intensity rides to cater to as many guests as possible. A park that is starting out will generally have 1-3 gentle rides, 1-2 thrill rides and 1 roller coaster, so build the first new rides in your park accordingly. If the park's geography permits, build your first few rides on flat land, near the park entrance, with your least intense rides being placed closest to the park entrance. In addition, try to place the ride exit for your rides such that they connect directly to the main pathway from the park entrance. It may even be beneficial to relocate the ride entrance/exits of existing rides to facilitate guest movement around the park, while allowing a well-thought queue to hold as many guests off the main path grid without killing their hype.

Expansion

While you are expanding your park by building new rides, you may need to construct additional footpaths. Try not to construct long footpaths (about 5 tiles long or more) that lead to a dead-end or ride exit as guests are likely to get lost along these stretches. As a general rule of thumb to keep in mind, no path should be only connected to the park's entrance through a 180-turn. Avoid dead-ends at all if possible.

Reaching the Objective

Every once in a while, review your scenario objectives—it is very easy to lose track of what you are supposed to do during a scenario if you are busy managing and/or expanding your park. If the objective is to reach a high park value, consider building more rides to attract more guests; if the objective is to have a large number of guests, you can also consider taking out a marketing campaign or two if the scenario allows it. Keep an eye on the date as well ; the results of anything you do will only be seen after a period of time. For instance, if your objective has a deadline of 31 October, Year 3, constructing many rides or starting a marketing campaign on 26 October, Year 3, will not miraculously cause your park value or the number of guests in your park to skyrocket within a few days.

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+This '''general scenario guide''' provides a very generic walkthrough for most ''RollerCoaster Tycoon'' scenarios.
-This article lists many tips to keep a park running smoothly while dealing with common problems associated with operating an amusement park.
+Guides for specific scenarios can be found on [[:Category:Scenario Guide|this page]].
-==General==
+==Starting Out==
+Most ''RollerCoaster Tycoon'' scenarios automatically open the park details window, set to the scenario objectives tab, when you first load the scenario. You are also strongly advised to pause the game at this time so that you are not distracted by anything else happening in the park.
-===All Games===
-* Whenever you start a new park or scenario, the first thing you should do is pause the game. Besides being able to scroll around and get a general overview of the map, you can also set up your research & development, make changes to your finances and open/close/demolish rides while the game is paused.
-* Some parks already have a developed path network at the start; quite often, such parks have no rides, resulting in overdeveloped path networks that do not lead guests to rides, causing guests to often wander around aimlessly and get lost, while causing any staff you hire to potentially wander a great distance away from any paths or rides that they should be moving around. Pathways that lead to nowhere should be "disconnected" from the paths that you are using by removing one connecting path tile between them and the paths you are using; any guests or staff already in the disconnected paths should be picked up and placed onto the paths you are using. As you expand your park by building more rides, these disconnected paths can be reconnected if you need to use them, saving you the necessity of building new paths around your park.
-* [[Signs and Items for Footpaths|Benches and litter bins]] are more heavily used around food/drink stalls; placing lots of these path items around these stalls will reduce the amount of litter seen elsewhere in your park. In addition, guests who feel sick after exiting a ride are more likely to sit on the nearest available bench upon exiting the ride; giving such guests enough benches to sit at the exit of a nauseating ride will allow their nausea ratings to drop a little, extending the amount of time they are able to get to the nearest [[Bathroom]] or drink stall before they throw up.
-* You need enough [[Guests & Staff#Staff|Staff]] to keep a park in good condition.
-** Handymen should be assigned patrol areas if your path has a large and/or complicated path network. Each handyman is capable of keeping a 30-40-tile pathway clean, depending on the nausea rating of rides, presence of food/drink stalls and number of junctions on the path.
-** Mechanics do not need to be assigned patrol areas as the nearest mechanic to a broken down ride will usually be assigned to it. However, if your park's path network is large and/or complex, or if a short stretch of pathway has several rides along it, consider assigning patrol areas to some of your mechanics. One mechanic can manage 3-4 rides, inspecting them and fixing them as they break down.
-** Security guards are only required along stretches of path that constantly experience vandalism; their patrol areas should be set accordingly.
-** Entertainers help to increase and maintain the happiness of guests who see them, but are also useful in extending queue length times. Setting an Entertainer to patrol along a queue line path will lengthen the tolerance for guests to wait by about 2 minutes.
-* If a pathway is untidy, guests will start to [[Vandals|vandalize]] the path items along it. If your park is kept clean, you do not need to hire any security guards at all.
-* Bathrooms and drink stalls help to reduce the nausea rating of guests feeling sick; consider placing some of them near your most nauseating rides.
-* Place food stalls near less nauseating rides to prevent your guests from vomiting all over the area. Stalls with souvenirs should go to your most exciting rides, since happy guests are more inclined to buy balloons etc.
-* A higher [[Park Rating]] attracts more guests, so keep your park's Park Rating high by building and maintaining a variety of rides that are crash-free, ensuring its paths are clean and free of vandalized path items and keeping the number of guests who are lost to a minimum.
-* [[The Complete Awards List|Park awards]] affect the number of guests entering your park for a period of about 4 months. Good awards, such as the "Best Value", "Safest" and "Tidiest" park awards, will attract more guests to your park, while bad awards, such as the "Worst Value", "Worst Food" and "Most Disappointing" park awards, will reduce the number of guests visiting your park.
-* Marketing campaigns temporarily boost the number of guests visiting your park. If your scenario objective is to have a certain number of guests in your park by the end of a certain year, starting a marketing campaign a few months before the deadline may be useful if you only need 50-100 more guests to reach the objective.
-* If your scenario objective is to have a certain number of guests in your park by the end of a certain year, you only need a few additional guests in your park, and you only have a few days left before the deadline, you can block the park exits with No-Entry signs or by removing the path tile right after the park entrance. Note that your park rating will start to drop very fast, but this method helps to keep guests intending to leave the park around longer, hopefully for a long enough time for the deadline to pass without your park rating dropping below the objective.
+If this is your first time playing a scenario, read the objective to get an idea of what you must do in order to successfully complete the scenario as well as how much time you have to reach said objective and, if the scenario's author bothered to write a Chris Sawyer-ish park description, any scenario limitations in effect and/or specific details relevant only to this scenario, such as:
-===RCT2 and Later===
+*"''...won't allow any landscape changes...''"
-* When starting a new scenario, check your park entrance fee and any rides already existing in the park to determine if the scenario is a "free park entry" or "free rides" scenario. The general strategy to play a "free park entry" scenario differs noticeably from the general strategy to play a "free rides" scenario.
+*"''...badly in debt...''"
-* Place [[First Aid Room]]s near the exits of rides with high nausea ratings to encourage guests who feel sick after leaving the ride to enter the room and deplete their nausea rating before they throw up on the path. First Aid Rooms serve no purpose in other parts of your park.
+*"''...can't build too high above the ground...''"
+*"''...land is cheap but loan interest is high...''"
+Next, scroll around the map to get a general overview of your park. Things you may wish to take note of at the start include existing rides in your park, its boundaries, the scenario's loan limit and interest rate, and the variety of rides already available for construction.
-===RCT3===
-* In addition to what you can do in ''RCT1'' and ''RCT2'', you can now also perform construction works and purchase land while the game is paused.
-* If the reliability of a ride is low and/or the Park Inspector is harping about the low reliability of a ride, you can manually summon a Mechanic to inspect the ride in question, boosting its reliability.
+After that, identify any problems already existing in your park, such as excessive litter, lost guests or unsafe or broken down rides. Although you cannot clear litter with the game paused, you can hire and place handymen so that they will immediately start cleaning up any mess already existing in your park once the game is unpaused. Lost guests can be picked up by you and placed on footpaths close to the park entrance. Any existing ride in your park that you feel is unsafe can be reset by closing it twice. If there are already broken down rides in your park, hire 1 mechanic (if there isn't one already) and place them near a broken down ride&mdash;they will set about fixing any broken down rides once the game is unpaused.
-==Research & Development==
-===All Games===
-* You can set up your research & development options even when the game is paused.
-* Increasing research funding speeds up the rate which you get new rides. If you are given a small variety of rides at the start of a scenario, considering increasing research funding to get new rides; you can reduce funding at a later time when you feel that you have enough park elements to work with.
+If your park has any rides already running, hire 1 mechanic (if you haven't already done so in response to a broken down ride). For the time being, this mechanic does ''not'' need to be set a patrol path, since they are only a temporary measure to handle any (additional) ride breakdowns while you set up your park. You may also wish to take note of what kind of rides these are (i.e. transport, gentle, roller coaster, etc.) as well their statistics (such as their ride rating, admission fee and queue time) and, for tracked rides such as roller coasters or go-karts, their size. At this point, it may be necessary to unpause the game and modify some pre-built rides or their queue lines for more desirable ratings.
-===RCT1===
-* Some saved track designs use special track pieces or cars that may not be available at the same time the ride type is researched or for that particular scenario. These track designs will remain unavailable unless the track pieces or cars they use are available through researching Ride Improvements.
+Finally, before unpausing the game, check the Research & Development window. Several scenarios give you a small selection of rides and stalls to work with, but you will often be missing something that may be important in the long-term (e.g. Information Kiosk, Toilets, more rides of a certain type), so you may wish to consider adjusting your research funding as well as priorities in order to get the rides/stalls you need faster or reduce the amount of money spent on research per month at the cost of researching new rides/stalls at a slower rate.
-===RCT1 and RCT2===
-* You can choose which research categories to focus on in the Research Funding window by ticking the categories you want to research. Research & devlopment will then prioritise the categories you choose over the other categories until all items in your chosen categories have been researched. Unless research is set to No Funding, unticking every category is the same as ticking every category.
-* A greyed out, unclickable research category means that everything in that category has been researched, or there is nothing in that category to research. Once all research categories are greyed out, set research funding to No Funding as you will no longer receive anything from sinking funds into research & development.
-===RCT3===
+==Building Rides==
+Unless certain conditions in a scenario create the circumstances, your park should have a mixture of low and high intensity rides to cater to as many guests as possible. A park that is starting out will generally have 1-3 gentle rides, 1-2 thrill rides and 1 roller coaster, so build the first new rides in your park accordingly. If the park's geography permits, build your first few rides on flat land, near the park entrance, with your least intense rides being placed closest to the park entrance. In addition, try to place the ride exit for your rides such that they connect directly to the main pathway from the park entrance. It may even be beneficial to relocate the ride entrance/exits of existing rides to facilitate guest movement around the park, while allowing a well-thought queue to hold as many guests off the main path grid without killing their hype.
-* If you have the [[Soaked!]] or [[Wild!]] expansion packs installed, the 18 scenarios included with the base ''RCT3'' game will have their research trees updated to incorporate elements from any installed expansion pack.
-==Finances==
+==Expansion==
+While you are expanding your park by building new rides, you may need to construct additional footpaths. Try not to construct long footpaths (about 5 tiles long or more) that lead to a dead-end or ride exit as guests are likely to get lost along these stretches. As a general rule of thumb to keep in mind, no path should be only connected to the park's entrance through a 180-turn. Avoid dead-ends at all if possible.
-===All Games===
-* The amount of money guests start with varies across scenarios. Within individual scenarios, this amount also varies by $30.
-* Setting an admission fee for each bathroom in your park will help to reduce their monthly running cost.
-* If guests are [[Guest Thoughts|thinking]] that a particular ride in your park "is (a) really good value", you may wish to consider increasing its admission price. Alternatively, you can set the pricing of your rides such that most of the rides in your park have guests thinking that they are "(a) really good value", which gives you a high chance of getting the Best Value park award.
-* A good way to determine if the admission fee for a ride is too high or too low is to check that ride's Satisfaction rating. In general, the optimal Satisfaction rating is 75%.
-* Where applicable, note the loan interest rate for the scenario you are playing. Some scenarios have high loan interest rates to dissuade you from borrowing too much money from the bank. It is possible to actually lose a huge chunk of your monthly earnings to loan interest if the interest rate is high enough. As a rule of thumb, you should exercise caution when borrowing money from the bank if the loan interest rate exceeds 10%.
-* Before starting larger projects, you should already have a basic park with a few rides running, and you should be generating a consistent monthly profit. This will help to defray the construction and/or landscaping costs for the project.
-===RCT1 and RCT3===
+==Reaching the Objective==
+Every once in a while, review your scenario objectives&mdash;it is very easy to lose track of what you are supposed to do during a scenario if you are busy managing and/or expanding your park. If the objective is to reach a high park value, consider building more rides to attract more guests; if the objective is to have a large number of guests, you can also consider taking out a marketing campaign or two if the scenario allows it. Keep an eye on the date as well ; the results of anything you do will only be seen after a period of time. For instance, if your objective has a deadline of 31 October, Year 3, constructing many rides or starting a marketing campaign on 26 October, Year 3, will not miraculously cause your park value or the number of guests in your park to skyrocket within a few days.
-* As soon as you have ''any'' park entrance fee (even $1), your guests will pay considerably less for your rides. The higher the park entrance fee is, the lower you can charge for individual rides. In addition, as your rides age (and their value drops), you may need to reduce their admission fees so that guests will continue riding them, or otherwise demolish and rebuild them as "new" rides.
-* Make sure that even the poorest guests can afford your park entrance fee and still ride some rides afterwards, otherwise they will leave very unhappy, increasing your chances of getting the "Worst Value" park award.
-=="Free Park Entry/Pay per Ride" Parks==
-===All Games===
-* As soon as a guest is out of money, they will usually leave your park, unless you provide free rides, food, drinks and bathrooms. If a scenario's objective requires your park to have a large number of guests and a high Park Rating, earning as much money as possible might be counterproductive.
-* Build enough food and drink stalls and toilets so that your guests will stay in the park longer. There should also be enough Information Kiosks distributed around your park so that guests won't lose their bearings and become unhappy getting lost in your park. If the cash machine/A.T.M. is available, build a few of these around your park as well so that guests can withdraw additional cash when they are running low, greatly increasing the amount of time they might spend in your park.
-===RCT2===
-* As a rule of thumb, you can raise the price for coasters up until their excitement rating, rounded down. For non-coaster tracked rides, the standard fee is usually okay.
-===RCT2, RCT3 and RCTC===
-* [[A.T.M.|Cash Machines/A.T.Ms.]] should be placed near the entrance to rides with a high admission fee, which will "help" guests pay for the ride's admission fee by putting them within reasonable walking distance of the nearest cash dispenser.
-===RCT3===
-* Adjusting the admission fee of your rides is seldom needed if a reasonable cost is initially set. For the most part, ride admission fees should be set to around $0.40 multiplied by the sum of the intensity and excitement ratings.
-=="Paid Park Entry/Free Rides" Parks==
-* Your park entrance fee should be set to the ''lowest'' amount of cash a guest starts with. For instance, if the guests in a scenario start off with $40-$60, your park entrance fee should be set to $40. It is usually not advantageous to get more money from richer guests at the park entrance while turning poorer guests away.
-* Guests usually pay the most at the park entrance; once they enter the park, the only way for you to get money from them is through food and drinks, merchandise and services only. The amount that they will usually pay during their time in your park is almost never higher than what they can potentially pay at the park entrance.
-* You need to ensure that there is always a steady flow of guests entering the park. As the number of guests in your park is largely determined by the number of rides you have operating in your park, this can be achieved by any of the following methods:
-*# Continuously building new rides;
-*# Not building any food and drink stalls, toilets or cash machines/A.T.Ms. in your park, which will force guests to leave your park once they are hungry, thirsty, need to go to the toilet and/or run out of cash buying merchandise;
-*# Closing the park for a brief period of time so that most of your older guests leave before re-opening the park to allow guests in again.
-==Rides==
-* Rides with high nausea ratings should not be placed near food stalls as guests are more likely to throw up due to them possibly buying some food before riding the ride, causing their nausea rating to increase faster.
-* Placing a ride near other rides, scenery objects, water or footpaths, or building a portion or all of a ride underground, will affect and usually increase the ride's ratings.
-* Tracked rides should not exceed 5 minutes in ride time, otherwise guests will start thinking about wanting to get off the ride. Ride breakdowns also aggravate this issue by artificially lengthening ride time.
-* Roller coasters with the [[Powered Launch]] operating mode allows you to create cheap, compact shuttle tracks with relatively good ride ratings and a high guest capacity due to how short the ride is. The most basic shuttle track is a station platform leading to a vertical loop and, from ''RCT2'' onwards, with a steep slope or another vertical loop built at the back of the station as an overrun track in the event of brakes failure. Set the launch speed just right so that the train goes halfway up the loop, then down again. Even though the ride's excitement rating won't be too high (about 4), its low ride time (below 10s) allows the coaster to be vastly more profitable than many continuous circuit coasters due to the number of rides it can complete within a short span of time. Such tracks are also extremely cheap, usually costing less than $2,000.
-* Watch out for rides running on Continuous Circuit Mode that have more than one car/train and their car/train enters the station at a speed above 28 mph (45 km/h). These rides are likely to [[crash]] if their brakes fail during a breakdown.
-* Rides with covered cars, and tracked rides with 40% or more of their overall length constructed underground, will attract guests even when it is raining.
-* Although a large number of scenarios focus on constructing rides on uneven terrain, consider preparing some compact rides and save the track design to use in scenarios. You will usually find a spot for these rides in most scenarios, giving you a head-start. Consider checking the [[RollerCoaster Tycoon:Ride Exchange|Ride Exchange]] for track designs you can use.
-* If a ride offers more than one operating mode, you can build multiple versions of this ride and have them run on different operating modes. Your guests won't get bored of this.
-* Queue lines should at least be long enough to hold enough guests for 1 car/train.
-===RCT2 and RCTC===
-* Guests will board and alight from rides at half-speed if the path tile connecting to the ride entrance is sloped. In addition, Mechanics will take twice as long to fix rides under the same conditions. Plan your path network, design your rides and place your ride entrances such that the path tile connected directly to your ride entrances is flat to ensure that guests board and alight quickly and your Mechanics fix rides at full speed.
-==Guests==
-* Guests have different preferred intensity ratings, with some scenarios locking all guests' preferred ride intensities to 5 and below or 9 and above. Your park should comprise rides with various excitement ratings.
-* Guests will start to feel that they are spending too much time queueing for a ride if its queue time exceeds 7 minutes, and they will start to leave the queue unhappy from 9 minutes onwards. Queue Line TVs and Entertainers can raise the latter to 11 minutes. If a ride's queue time is 7 minutes or more, consider shortening it so that guests will not feel frustrated waiting in line.
+==See Also==
+* [[Hints and Tips]]
 [[Category:Cheats and Hints]]
+[[Category:Scenario Guide]]
 [[Category:Strategy Guides]]
 [[Category:Descriptions]]