How many Handymen? Per square, etc....

I'm having many puke issues in Magic Mountain. So I'm deleting every handyman's zone, and going to rezone them with smaller areas - I'm thinking between 3-6 (4x4) squares (depending where ride exits and puke is high) per handyman?

I think I resorted to removing some of the paths in the Magic Mountain scenario, it's so big - the cost of employing them becomes too high.

I don't have the game now, but from memory I had one guy with a relatively small area around the coaster exits (particularly near X and Viper) and gave larger area to the others near the flats (ha!) and water rides.

^I'm also having the make the paths bigger, b/c the number of peeps is increasing and they are complaining "It's too crowded here!"

So reducing walking space won't help me :(

I love doubling the paths. It makes it pretty. Sometimes I would keep a space of grass in the middle, so that my path was three spaces wide, and I alternate between a tree and a path and a tree and a path.

I'm going to have to look into running this game on my Mac. You are making me miss it. Does anyone know, do I need to buy a copy of Windows, or will some kind of emulator work to run the game?

I have about 55 handymen at Magic Mountain now - up from about 37 or so... and my park rating jumped high and is consistently staying in the upper 800s - it was dropping down to the low 600s before.

^I'm now doubling all the walkways - including the ones going uphill, etc. I dunno anything about a copy of Windows, Travis, cept the one on my machine :(

I never thought I would get back into RCT after doing NoLimits - but it's fun, for now.

I got back in to it recently, too, after not even having it loaded on my latest computer which I've had for years now. I've been having fun starting over and going through the scenarios. If you have a high intensity-style park, I generally assign one handyman to about 6 spaces of pathway (12 if it's double-wide.) And one mechanic to every 2 rides... 3 if they're tiny ones.

I don't think of it as quite so academic. Put some down in any given zone. If they can't keep up, put more.

If you're pricing right, hiring costs shouldn't even be a concern.

I should abridge that to say 12 if it's double-wide and the "coverage zone" splits the path, but I digress.

I do start out with the "throw 'em down" style. Generally, if I see puke, instead of finding where the other guys are, I just hire another one and put him there. Later on in the scenario once there are a bunch of them, I end up assigning zones to them... once you have 20 or so people and they all end up in the same corner it's annoying to keep moving them.

Still assign zones, but there's so many potential path setups that it's impossible to create a hard, fast rule, I think.

Big difference between a long stretch of straight path with no rides and a twisted little side path with 4 or 5 ride exits on it.

Yeah... I should've added a YMMV on that, I guess.

You guys are making me consider trying to find my disc(s) and install it after all these years. I've forgoteen so much about RCT2 that it'd be interesting to mess with again.

Can't download any tracks, but I still have this page that shows some of the old creations (keep refreshing it for more). I think Jeff said he still has everything from the old CB Games site, so these might still exist somewhere. Don't think I have them anymore.

I started from scratch about a month ago. Don't know why, just got a hankering to play it again. Don't have any of my old saved games or tracks, so it's literally starting all over.

I actually thought about getting some of the expansion packs on eBay so I could have some new scenarios. I never got them for RCT2 the first time around because they were basically just scenery add-ons as I remember and didn't have any difference as far as rides/stands/etc. I'd like some new-to-me scenarios, though.

If you look around, I've seen RCT2 with the packs for $10 or less. I've seen it at Best Buy.

Now you guys have me wanting to go back and fire up the old dino and try to get my building chops back to where they used to be.

As for the topic at hand, I never really had a method to my madness in terms of placement of the handymen. I generally just assigned according to foot traffic and food/rides. If I developed trouble spots, it was usually an area where I could overlap two or three of them pretty heavily without issue. About the only thing I did consistently was try to overlap zones by about 1/2 zone either way. I've found that lets me have longer/wider zones.

I know I had a formula for how to assign handymen, but I can't remember. :p

Unless the scenario required extreme penny-pinching, my formula was something like.

If AmountOfPuke >> 0, Then HandymanCount + 1

I only bothered with defining zones for them if the park was huge... generally I built on a compact grid to get the most $$ per tile and minimize guest getting-lost...ness.

I thought before there was a drop down menu for handy man on fix and inspecting ride because I having a hard time sometime getting they to fix rides I get messages this ride still needs fixed check were your handyman are do you have to zone them like you do the the cleanup ones like you you want to sign them to more then one ride sign them to 2 rides sence then go in the exit way you would zone in to square sections right or and would they be able to leave that zone and go to the other ride and do you have to zone them in the whole stage of the ride so if they have to walk all the way down the ride to fix it they can sorry if this is compicated it's the best way I can make it out

My God, there isn't a single period in that post.

I don't know if there's a period in there or not -- I couldn't get through the whole mess -- but I can tell you it sure blocked up my colon trying to read the thing...

I hear bran muffins are good for that.