Guide to Building Monster Trucks in RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 & 2

The Monster Trucks are a Gentle Ride featured in RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and all future installments.

(Monster Trucks 1 in Canyon Calamities)

“Powered giant 4x4 trucks which can climb steep slopes” - In-game description

Pre-Built Designs

*Ride ratings and statistics are measured using the ride with scenery (if it includes it) and operating functions. Building the ride without scenery, as well as changing the operating functions will affect the results.

Technical Information

Stats

• Base Excitement Rating: 2.00
• Base Intensity Rating: 0.50
• Base Nausea Rating: 0.00

Stat Requirements

• Length of at least 656ft (200m)

If this is failed, the ride's Excitement Rating will be divided by 8, whilst the other two ratings will be divided by 2.

Stat Contribution Values

• Excitement Rating Value Multiplier: 70
• Intensity Rating Value Multiplier: 10
• Nausea Rating Value Multiplier: 10
• Soft Guest Cap Contribution: 50

Building Information

• Cost of Station Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $18.00 (Vanilla RCT2)/$18.70 (OpenRCT2)
• Cost of Straight Track Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $12.00 (Vanilla RCT2)/$12.50 (OpenRCT2)
• Cost of Supports (per unit per tile): $2.50*
• Support Height Limit (ft/m/height units): 85ft/25.5m/+17

*Vanilla RCT2 does not decimal points in its support costs. Instead it will round down or round up to the next whole dollar amount at certain height intervals to equalize the amount as if it were spending a decimal amount. In OpenRCT2, it will correctly spend the decimal amount every time.

Other Information

• Maximum Guests Per Car: 2
• Maximum Number of Cars: Depends on track length - Up to 31 in Vanilla RCT2, and 255 in OpenRCT2.
• Sheltered?: No

Building Monster Trucks

The Monster Trucks are a souped-up version of the Car Ride. They look the same, cost the same to build, use the same base stats, and have all of the same formulas to calculate their stats and ticket prices. In spite of this, the Monster Trucks do have their own characteristics that make them stand out as a separate ride in its own right. Hence, OpenRCT2 continues to treat the ride as separate from the Car Ride whilst it groups all the vehicles of the latter ride together.

One of the most notable aspects of the Monster Trucks are their dramatically higher support limit than the Car Ride, and its ability to use steep slope track pieces. The Monster Trucks has a maximum support height of 17 units off the ground, compared to the measly 5 of the standard Car Ride. From ground level, a hill consisting of three steep slope track pieces will reach this limit exactly.

The Monster Trucks also have their own special track piece, the Log Bumps. Having one of these on the track will give the ride an extra 0.14 Excitement and 0.03 Intensity, but any Log Bumps after the first one will have no effect.

Unfortunately, the Monster Trucks do not have the same interaction with door scenery pieces that the Car Ride, Ghost Train, and Mini Helicopters have.

In stark contrast to the Car Ride, the Monster Trucks only have one vehicle option known as... Monster Trucks. The game claims that these have a 35% bonus to Excitement, 20% to Intensity, and 10% bonus to Nausea. These bonuses actually use the Car Ride's base stats as reference when applying these bonuses. Internally, the ride has the same base stats as the Car Ride, but since the only vehicle type for the ride applies a bonus for all three ratings, these base stats are largely nebulous in effect.

In typical Car Ride fashion, the Monster Trucks do not move very fast. They have a top speed of 4mph (6km/h) on flat track, which increase to 6mph (9km/h) on gentle downhill tracks and to 9mph (14km/h) on steep downhill tracks. When going uphill, this slows down to 2mph (3km/h) on gentle pieces, and 1mph (2km/h) on steep pieces. As a result, its speed is roughly on the middle of the spectrum compared to the Car Ride vehicles.

The Monster Trucks however, do have one fairly important drawback in comparison to the standard Car Ride, which is the fact its vehicles are not sheltered.

Stats

Given that it looks like the Car Ride, the Monster Trucks uses all of the same stat formulas as the former ride.

The Monster Trucks use the exact same base stats as the Car Ride, which is 2.00 for Excitement, 0.50 for Intensity, and 0.00 for Nausea. These values however are somewhat misleading due to the fact that the only vehicle type for the ride applies bonuses to all of these stats: 35% for Excitement, 20% for Intensity, and 10% for Nausea. This means that in practice, the Monster Trucks will never have an Excitement or Intensity lower than 2.70 and 0.60 respectively as long as you don't fail its stat requirement. Just like many other things on the ride, the only stat requirement on the Monster Trucks is the same as the Car Ride, which is a length of 656ft (200m).

As with the Car Ride, Ghost Train, and Mini Helicopters, the Monster Trucks has the same BonusTrainLength exploit that is possible in OpenRCT2. Unlike the Ghost Train and Mini Helicopters though, the formula on the Monster Trucks actually works. Building the Megatrucks pre-built and setting it to use a train of 82 vehicles yields an Excitement Rating of 7.60. This is the maximum that works though. If the train is 83 vehicles or higher, the stats will never be calculated on it.

For all intents and purposes, the Monster Trucks truly is a Car Ride when determining stats, although its stats will always be higher because the stat bonuses from the vehicles. All the stat values on the ride will roughly be the same as any Car Ride design as you will generally build a Monster Trucks ride the same way you would with a Car Ride other than the ability to go higher and use steep drops.

Make sure you always add one Log Bumps to the track for the extra 0.14 Excitement and 0.03 Intensity.

Throughput and Profit

Due the similar speed of the Monster Trucks, its throughput will have roughly the same average as any Car Ride design. Using the Megatrucks pre-built (which I used for the train length exploit seen above) with the maximum number of cars it can hold at 14 (which is not the default, the remember to change this if you choose to build the pre-built), it will have a customer per hour rate that will fluctuate between 1,008 and 1,056 guests per hour, which averages out to 1,032 guests per hour.

In RCT2/RCT Classic and OpenRCT2, the Megatrucks would have a 5-13 month old ticket price of $8.20 and $7.40 respectively, After factoring in the running cost, this equates to a value of about $8,260.00 and $7,430.00 respectively.

As with all of the other variations of the ride, make sure to always change the minimum waiting time away from 10 seconds to prevent cars from being stuck at the station without departing.

Verdict

The Monster Trucks are an upgraded form of the Car Ride, which can be a very strong Gentle Ride already. Ergo, the Monster Trucks can also be a very strong Gentle Ride.

Other Gentle Rides

[to come soon]