Rct Writing Rating Guide
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Rct Writing Rating Guide
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Still need help? Check the for more information. Welcome to my comprehensive guide to the excitement rating on rollercoasters in rollercoaster tycoon 2. In this guide, I will treat every method of increasing excitement that I know of in great detail. This guide will consist of three main parts: The coaster itself, everything around the coaster, which I will call decorations, and a few examples at the end.
I hope you enjoy reading this guide and that it helps you build better coasters in the future. The coaster Every type of rollercoaster is different and needs to be built in a different way to achieve the highest excitement rating possible. However, while different coasters get different amounts of excitement from different stats, the excitement bonuses will generally max out at the same point for all coasters. In this section, I will first discuss the penalties coasters get if you fail to meet certain requirements.
After that, I will discuss the stats that are shown on the stats page, and I will finish with a couple of things that aren't shown on the stats page. Penalties Excessive intensity If the intensity rating of your coaster is at or above 10.00 (bar the standup twister and floorless coasters, which don't get penalties until 10.40 intensity for some reason), your excitement will be reduced quite a lot. There are four more penalties for higher intensity ratings: 11.00, 12.00, 13.20, and 14.50. Because your intensity points are limited, I like to view intensity as currency you spend to get excitement points. Some stats are more expensive than others, and some stats come for free. You also get penalties for having excessive lateral G-forces. For information on that, see the paragraph about lateral G's.
Stat requirements There are six main stats that coasters can get penalties for is they don't meet certain requirements: highest drop height, number of drops, max speed, length, negative G's, and lateral G's. Not all coasters get penalties for all those six stats, and not all penalties are the same. The requirements to prevent a penalty are also not always the same. For instance, the max speed requirements range from going at least 18 km/h to 42 km/h.
For a full list of which coasters require which stats,. There are two other penalties that are not on that list. The lay-down, flying, multi-dimensional, and heartline twister coaster will get a very severe penalty to excitement if they do not have any inversions, the reverser coaster will get a harsh penalty if it doesn't have a reverser segment, and the water coaster will get huge penalties to excitement if it doesn't have at least one piece of water track. If a coaster fails to meet a requirement, the stats will get a pretty severe penalty. Usually, the excitement, intensity, and nausea are all divided by 2, but there are a few exceptions. Some penalties only affect the excitement rating, and some will divide the excitement rating by more than 2.
Stats Maximum speed For most coaster types, the maximum speed stat doesn't give a lot of excitement. There are some coaster types, like the giga coaster, that get a bit more from it, but it's still not a lot. High top speeds are usually achieved by having high drops, although some coaster types have boosters, which are a faster way to get up to speed. Average speed Average speed is usually not a stat that noticeably contributes a lot to the excitement rating. However, this is because most coasters will have a decent average speed by default.
If your average speed is really low, you will get a noticeable drop in your excitement rating. Launched coasters and coasters with boosters have an easier time achieving a high average speed because they don't have to traverse a slow chain lift. Ride time Ride time gives excitement points, up to a certain point. I don't know how many points it gives or what the cap is, but I do know there is a cap. It is possible that the cap is around 5:50, which is around the time that guests start to think 'I want to get off this ride'. It is not very advisable to put a really slow part at the end of your coaster to make the ride take longer though, as that will decrease the average speed, which will in turn probably lead to a net decrease in excitement.
If you want to increase ride duration, you should do it by increasing the ride length. Ride length This is the only stat that increases the excitement without increasing the intensity or nausea rating. You get excitement points for a length of up to 6000 meters, and this bonus is quite significant. In scenarios where money and space are not a concern and you need that extra excitement for the park goal, this is easily the best way to get that excitement. If your coaster has two or more parts and two or more separate ride lengths are given, the combined length counts as the total length. Maximum positive vertical G-forces Positive G-forces usually aren't very influential on the excitement rating, but it can be a useful stat to spend your last points in intensity on because as far as I know there's no cap on the bonus. Vertical loops and small steep-to-level pieces are the easiest ways to gain high positive vertical G's.
Maximum negative vertical G-forces Negative G-forces are a bit more important than positive G-forces for two reasons. They produce air-time (which I will explain in-depth later on) and they can prevent a stat penalty for not having high enough negative G-forces. Any negative G's below -2.5 do not give an excitement boost, so try to keep them above -2.5. Maximum lateral G-forces Lateral G's are a tricky thing. Some coaster types need at least a certain amount, but if they are too high you get harsh penalties quickly.
The excitement bonus for lateral G's stops after 1.5 G's. Keeping your lateral G's below 1.5 G's is something you should always aim for if possible.
However, you don't get penalties until 2.81 G's (note that 2.80 G's are already in red on the stats page, but you don't get a penalty until 2.81 G's). If you have lateral G's of 2.81 or higher, you will get a large boost in intensity and nausea.
If they are also above 3.10, your excitement will be halved and you will get an even larger boost in intensity and nausea. Below is a table with the maximum speeds you can take various turns and elements at without going over 2.80 G's. The vertical turn isn't in there because it doesn't give any lateral G's. Element Unbanked Banked Tiny turn 45 km/h (28 mph) x Small turn 59 km/h (37 mph) 101 km/h (63 mph) Medium turn 99 km/h (62 mph) 162 km/h (101 mph) Wide turn 141 km/h (88 mph) 206 km/h (128 mph) Steep turn 91 km/h (57 mph) x S-bend 101 km/h (63 mph) x Corkscrew 71 km/h (44 mph) x In-line twist 101 km/h (63 mph) x Barrel roll 119 km/h (74 mph) x Air-time This is a big one. About half of the coaster types get an excitement and nausea boost from air-time, and the other half only gets a nausea boost. All coaster types get about 1 nausea point for every 48 seconds of air-time and the coaster types that get an excitement bonus from air-time get about 1 excitement point for every 24 seconds of air-time.
Since there is no cap on the air-time bonus and the maximum possible amount of air time is around 1964 seconds, you can get roughly 82 excitement points from the air-time stat. This goes coupled with 41 points in nausea, so having that much air-time isn't very useful for practical purposes. Air-time is achieved whenever the negative G-forces are below zero, which is usually achieved by taking hills at high speeds. The strangest thing about air-time is that the stats gained from it are applied after all penalties are applied. This means that if you have a coaster with 5 lateral G's and 15 intensity, but also 240 seconds of air-time, that coaster will still have an excitement rating of over 10.
Below is a table which shows all the coaster types that get an excitement bonus from air-time and those that do not get an excitement bonus. Note that on the coaster types that do not get an air-time bonus it's wise to avoid air-time as much as possible since they do still get extra nausea points for it. One measure for how good each aspect of a ride is would be to quantify the ratio of added excitement and intensity. I looked through the code in openrct2, and it appears as if extra drops, higher max g-forces and higher speed only supply roughly 0.6 excitement for each extra intensity point. On the other hand, large banked turns generally provide 3 excitement per intensity.
Tight unbanked turns have a ratio of 1. These ratios are slightly different between coasters, with a few outliers. A coaster with high excitement and low intensity would therefore be very long, have many turns, and use all of the intensity-free bonuses outlined by OP, all while keeping the speed, max-g and drops to the minimum required to avoid penalties. One or two loops making use of ride/path interaction would also be worth it.
The intensity free bonuses are ride proximity/interaction, paths, scenery, water, length, duration and (almost) station synchronization. I have a few designs with 7 excitement and 4 intensity without scenery, water or underground bonuses. That's some interesting stuff. I did not know how to test for that (it's super hard to keep all but one value constant in the game) and I can't read code very well. I also knew that all the ratios are different, and didn't want to spend forever figuring that all out.
Ride duration gives very little excitement though. I once built a ride that was near the maximum ride duration (1090 minutes), and having a ride duration of 10 minutes and an average speed of 100 km/h gave a lot more excitement than a ride time of 1050 minutes and an average speed of 1 km/h.
You say build one or two loops, but in my experience, for most normal coasters it's definitely worth it to build six inversions. Bar some exceptions they give a lot of bang for your buck. The last thing is that paths aren't completely free. Sometimes after retesting once you've laid down the paths, you also get a bit more intensity in addition to the extra excitement you get. I don't know how that works, but it does happen.