February 2023 Update

Trains, Trains, Trains

This month, our team focused heavily on testing the recently released Fleet Tracking system on MesaSuite. The first part of this was the labor intensive task of setting up Fleet Tracking from scratch. This includes things like adding every yard and industry track to the system, adding each type of Locomotive and Railcar Model that’s currently in use, invoicing setup, etc. Then we got down to work running the trains themselves. The Iron River & Western railroad ran 10 separate trains this month, while the Crystal Beach & Pacific railroad 16 trains. These trains included returning a lot of equipment to it’s owners, delivery of new equipment, and actual revenue carloads.

A Test of the Economy

In addition to the running and thorough testing of the Fleet Tracking system, MBD$10,000 was awarded for every company in the Republic of Mesabrook. An additional MBD$1,000 was awarded for each registered location in a company. This currency was quickly put to use by various companies through various business operations. The main event that kicked this off was a large order from the Crystal Beach & Pacific railroad for a large amount of new rolling stock orders to Carsons RailWorks. This resulted in a cascade of material orders through the entire supply chain as a result of the sudden demand, which is continuing to occur at the time of writing.

While the economy has been started and is being utilized, it is not necessarily going to carry over into a full public opening. The primary purpose at this time is to observe how the money flows around and get a sense of the value placed on different commodities. We will likely see an economic reset when we get closer to a public opening. This type of “testing” will help us make better decisions when that happens.

Other Notes

• Fixed an issue where precipitation and snowfall was not occurring
  • Snow accumulation on roads has been disabled
• (Hopefully) fixed an issue with trains breaking apart when the length exceeds 12 cars
  • Will monitor TPS – this change may not be permanent

Looking Forward

The purpose of testing things is to discover and remediate problems. This has certainly been the case for the Fleet Tracking system with 5 issues entered into GitHub and at least 2 undocumented issues on top of that. The main focus for March will be clearing out these bugs in the Fleet Tracking system and continuing to test the economy. February was used as a break from development, so in March, we will be re-applying focus on MesaSuite development.