[Rails-devel] Having trouble getting the payout calculation working right for 1861

[Chris M. <cmo...@gm...>]

I think 1861 has a different model from the other games already
implemented, and I'm wondering if I can get it to work just using the XML
configuration or if I'm going to have to code around it.

In 1861 a train can choose to skip a town or not.  If it skips the town it
doesn't get paid for it.  So for example, If I have a route that is City -
Town - City I can run a 2-train on that route and get paid for the two
cities.  But if a route is just City - Town I can run a 2-train there and
get paid for the city and the town.

I've played with the options in the XML and I can get it to either skip a
town and score the town it skipped, or I can get it to not allow me to
route to towns at all.  But I can't seem to configure this "route to a town
only if needed" option to work.

Any tips on configuring that?  If it can't currently be done through XML,
any tips on where in the algorithm code to add this behavior?  The whole
algorithm package is a little overwhelming, and I haven't figured out yet
how it works.

Thanks,
Chris