The Alpine Coaster is a Roller Coaster that does not exist in the original games. It was added to OpenRCT2 on November 24 2022.

(Custom-designed Alpine Coaster in Mega Park)

"Riders toboggan down a meandering steel track, braking to control their speed." - In-game description

Technical Information

Stats

• Base Excitement Rating: 2.30
• Base Intensity Rating: 2.10
• Base Nausea Rating: 1.04

Stat Requirements

• Top speed of at least 11mph (18km/h).
• Length of at least 1,214ft (370m).

If either of these requirements are failed, all of its ratings will be divided by 2 for each one failed.

Stat Contribution Values

• Excitement Rating Value Multiplier: 50
• Intensity Rating Value Multiplier: 30
• Nausea Rating Value Multiplier: 10
• Soft Guest Cap Contribution: 65

Building Information

• Cost of Station Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $33.70
• Cost of Straight Track Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $22.50
• Cost of Supports (per unit per tile): $2.50
• Support Height Limit (ft/m/height units): 85ft/25.5m/+17

Other Information

• Maximum Guests Per Car: 1
• Maximum Number of Cars: Depends on track length
• Sheltered?: No

Building an Alpine Coaster

As the Alpine Coaster is a coaster type that was added in OpenRCT2, there are no parks in either of the vanilla games where it can be built or researched. Custom-built scenarios may include it, but building it in the vanilla scenarios will require you to use cheats (as does all of the other coaster types added to OpenRCT2).

To access the Alpine Coaster, click on the golden shovel icon, then click "Object selection", which will bring up this menu. From here, you can select or deselect any object in the game at will to appear in your chosen scenario.

As with all of other coaster types added to OpenRCT2, the Alpine Coaster does not feature any pre-built designs.

One of the most characteristic elements of the Alpine Coaster is the fact that every uphill track piece automatically comes with a chain lift, and through normal means, this cannot be disabled. You can build uphill tracks without chain lifts if you turn on the "Enable all drawable track pieces" cheat, but this is not recommended as this creates the possibility of cars becoming trapped.

The Alpine Coaster is an extremely simple coaster type, consisting of no real special elements except for the S-bends and helixes. Due to its nature as a terrain conforming ride that is meant to travel down mountains, it carries a unique distinction of being the only coaster type in the game to feature downward helixes, but not upwards ones.

The Alpine Coaster is tied with the Junior Coaster for being the cheapest coaster type in the game. In fact, the coaster in the article thumbnail costed less than $5,000.00 to build. This, combined with the lack of special track pieces and the fact that every uphill track has a chain lift by default makes it a very good coaster type for beginners to learn the mechanics of track building.

The support limit of the Alpine Coaster is much higher than you might expect, being able to be built up to 17 height units in the air, which is much higher than any real life alpine coaster would ever reach.

The Alpine Coaster carries another unique distinction of being the only coaster type in the game in which the maximum number of vehicles that can be on the ride is determined by the length of the track instead of the length of the station. With all of these characteristics combined together, the Alpine Coaster can almost be thought of as more of a Thrill Ride than a Roller Coaster.

The Alpine Coaster carries a lot of unique behaviors. Just like a real alpine coaster, the Alpine Coaster cars are controlled by the guests, allowing them to control their speed. This means that the speed of the cars will vary quite a lot, and the faster guests will inevitably catch up to the slower ones. If a guest reaches within a certain distance of a slower vehicle in front of it, it will slow down to match its speed to prevent it from crashing.

This can often create a cascading effect where guests will slow down because it is approaching a slower car, thus making the next car more likely to catch them and slow down, in turn making the guest after that more likely to catch them, and so on.

In stark contrast to real life, guests will not ride Alpine Coaster cars at their top speed on a completely flat track, no matter how much empty track is in front of them. Some inclined propulsion is required for the cars to start moving fast.

Similarly, real life alpine coasters are equipped with a brake system that prevents the coaster cars from reaching a speed too fast, but in the game, they do not, meaning that they can accelerate indefinitely down a hill like a real coaster can. The brakes on the cars however, do work while the car is moving downhill, so this won't become a problem. Since the Alpine Coaster does not record G-forces (more on that later), there's no penalty for taking turns too fast.

An Alpine Coaster moving at 37mph, whereas real life alpine coasters generally don't exceed 30mph.

Stats

The stats of the Alpine Coaster is very weird and generally small. It is the only coaster type in the game without a test function, meaning that the stats of the ride will be determined by the first guest who rides it. When the stats of the ride are calculated, it can no longer be influenced by other guests riding it. Because the behavior of guests on an Alpine Coaster are not consistent, it's possible to build the exact same coaster design twice only for the two coasters to have slightly different stats because the first guests who rode each coaster rode them slightly differently than each other.

The Alpine Coaster has very average stat boosts, which compounded with the ride's generally low speed and low track length, results in generally small stats. Weirdly, the Alpine Coaster has the lowest top speed requirement in the game at 11mph (18km/h) which it shares with the Side-Friction Coaster, but it also has the highest length requirement in the game at 370ft (1,214m), which it shares with the Bobsled Coaster, Mine Train Coaster, Suspending Swinging Coaster, and the Wooden Coaster.

Most of these values are not particularly spectacular (except for the BonusScenery value of 11,155, which ties it with a few other coasters for the highest in the game), but just like the Car Ride, the Alpine Coaster has a TrainLength bonus for some reason even though normal gameplay, Alpine Coasters cannot have trains longer than a single card.

If we use cheats to give the coaster a single train of 200 cars, it results in very glitchy guest behavior, but it also gives the coaster an Excitement Rating of 5.15, which is higher than the coaster would normally have if it was running single-car trains, even with the ride failing the top speed requirement. When I tested the ride normally, it would normally get an Excitement Rating of about 4.70 and that's with it passing the stat requirement.

Uniquely, the Alpine Coaster is the only coaster type in the game that doesn't record G-forces, meaning that you do not need to worry about the speed it goes over hills or takes turns.

Throughput & Profit

Due to the ride's single-seat functionality, the minimum waiting time is extremely crucial. Cars cannot depart without guests in them, so setting the minimum waiting time of the ride to 0 seconds has no penalty as it cannot cause guests to miss a car that has started running.

The car count is also very important. Even any design's default number of cars is prone to causing blockades at the end like this one, even with a minimum waiting time of 0 seconds. To prevent blockades, you will actually want to lower the amount of cars that can be run on the track.

Guests may also end up becoming stuck behind slow cars that simply refuse to speed up even though there's plenty of empty track of ahead of it, which usually happens as a result of the guest slowing down to avoid hitting another vehicle, and then not speeding up later. As a result, it's nearly impossible to get a consistent reading on how many guests it can generate. Even on designs that don't appear very long, this can result in guests complaining that they've been on the ride too long because the guests in front of them won't speed up.

Verdict

The Alpine Coaster is a fairly weak coaster type in terms of practical gameplay due to its low stats, inconsistent guest behavior, difficulty to optimize, and tendency for guests to become stuck. If you choose to design one, you will need to be quite meticulous about how you build it.

In spite of this, the coaster type is extremely cheap to build, which inherently gives it a utility in your park and makes it useful as an early-game money maker. It's also a very pretty ride to look at, and its inclusion in the game as an OpenRCT2 creation inherently gives it some flair.