Hello internet. Welcome to part 2 of Playing Planet Coaster Challenge mode. In part 1 I dealt with the 'hard' part of playing challenge mode, so now it's time to use that money buffer and start getting creative (ish).

Also say hello to the box of OCD preparedness, here to help me align the building in the center of my park sometime in the future.

Speaking of which, I went through the process of ripping up the entire park and moving it all to more long term homes. Ideally, I want to have a main street with shops down the center paths and branches out into each of the 4 themed areas. I'm also planning to make a fancy entrance building over the entrance gates at some point, and a monorail station over that Y-junction:

This is the point where you should be thinking ahead with path widths. Too often I've seen people fall into the trap of just using 4m paths. You wouldn't want to make a guest black hole like some people. The carousel and Teacups are now in their permanent home, along the first branch toward what I'm planning on being the fantasy themed quadrant. I'm not planning on doing anything too exceptional with the themes and scenery, mostly just sticking to the four sets that Planet Coaster supplies. And that means...

It's time to start building a castle! Midway through building the first walls and gate, I had the idea that I could also sit the first coaster station up on the wall and have the queue go through. Being enclosed in the building gives 100% queue scenery very easily too, plus starting with a drop rather than a lift hill has some advantages which we'll get into shortly.

The other reason I specifically chose this little coaster (of the type 'Loony Turns') was because while I've been getting through setting the park going, the actual challenges have been waiting. The two coaster challenges I've been sitting on are two inversions and two sections of airtime, both very easy to do. The Loony Turns coaster is also suitable for all ages as well as being able to invert, so I won't even be excluding the families in my early park population. Here's what I threw together:

There's a little terraforming involved, to make the first drop just a little bigger and give a little more speed to bleed off during the early sections. Good enough to complete the challenges, but in need of some tweaking. Loony Turns has a single car formation, so I tried to put in a block section (just after the upper U-turn) and run two cars, but it was proving awkward and making the stats worse. I ended up removing the block brakes and running one car (for now...). I also used a little trick to get a bit more speed: since the first drop is directly after the station, I set the stations 'launch speed' higher, upping the overall speed the car travels through the track. Here's the stats after the tweaks:

Much more respectably green. Possibly a little high fear for families, but good enough. People are happy to pay $18 for this ride, but the single car somewhat limits throughput leaving it making somewhere around $800 a month. I'll go into more detail on coaster building in the future with a larger coaster, but here are some basic tips:

• As Yoda might say, Nausea leads to Fear, Fear leads to low Excitement, and low Excitement leads to not much profit. The three main stats are pretty directly dependant on each other. Once Nausea goes over 5ish for a while, Fear starts climbing. And once Fear stays over 7ish for too long, Excitement drops rapidly regardless of what the train is doing.
• This is what confuses people when they make a coaster with a bunch of loops and overall Excitement comes out at 1: the overall Fear of 15 (or 20!) has eliminated the Excitement.
• To reduce Nausea, have flat 'rest' sections in your track after major twists and turns. But not too long, or excitement will start falling again.
• To increase Excitement, add G-force. Sharp changes in incline are by far the easiest way to boost Excitement, along with 'airtime' hills where you get negative vertical G. But keep an eye on the heat maps. Going over 5G vertical or 3G horizontal starts to become too much and kills the Excitement again.
• Use the heat maps all the time. And remember that fixing an early section of your track might well lead to later parts suddenly becoming enjoyable if you've smoothed out a sudden Nausea spike somewhere.
• Use the smoothing buttons to reduce Nausea from sudden jerks. Select just the problem segment and spam the button a bit, don't just hit it once. Though over smoothing can remove G-force you were trying to keep...

To end part 2, I finished up the wall segments and gate, and threw down the first segment of scenery outside the castle wall, as a kind of forest/carnival/gardens area:

In part 3, the block brake problem gets fixed and the main street gets its first bit of attention.