sas205

Allow me guys to jump in and share you with my thoughts. I consider myself and avid player--a Baron if like. I played RT2 like hell and always on 'Expert'--the most challenging difficulty level. I adored it and still do, especially after releasing its expansion pack: The Second Century (SC for short). In short the game possessed every thing you expect in a true strategy game. Gameplay rocks; I still feel motivated to go and play the game over and over again after these years. With the release of its sequel RT3 last year, I couldn't wait... Rushed to buy it like crazy as soon as it hit the shelves. But as I laid my first track, all my excitement vanished!! Most of the great features of RT2 were removed(!) without providing alternatives, such as flexible track laying, levelling terrain, flags and station-based service facilities which have been removed and need to be placed outside, to name a few. Yes, they encompassed a 3D engine in the heart of the game, but I doubt that any one buys the game to just enjoy scenery or to watch trains as they fade in/out! Unfortunately, the game IMHO was empted from its most significant component: Gameplay. Don't know what to count and what to leave. I've deeply played the game for almost 6 months, before I decided to uninstall and place it back into its box. Developers released some patches but their fixes and added features were minor as this didn't help to improve gameplay. Aside from the 3D engine, the game introduces a new economy model which is more challenging and a bit realistic than the simple and straightforward one of RT2. Unlike RT2 where freight loads wait for you to come and pick them and industries remain idle until you connect them to your network, RT3 uses the 'none-rail freight' approach. Freight loads travel by other means like rivers, animals, carts, or even trucks (you don't see them unfortunately but their traces ) as they do in real life (but never cross mountains). If you offer your rail services, freight will only use your trains if it would be more convenient to! As a result, row material travel to industries, and finished goods to cities; i.e. industries don't stay idle--imagine what impact this would have. Buying functional industries therefore becomes more expensive and requires careful planning of what to buy, where and when. This freight movement drastically affects pricing of goods, and you can't transport cargo if the price at destination is similar or less the ones at source. A good add-on in this regard is that you can build industries, but their cost is higher than what you pay to buy an existing one. In short, I liked this model, very challenging indeed; you always need to study the map and closely monitor the directions of cargo movement before building anything. Worse, you can't predict about possible direction as many influencing factors keep on popping without further notice (new resources, new industries, industries that disappear, change in levels of demand, ...). As a compromise, PopTop (the developer) provided an easy tool to let the game decide which loads are the most profitable to load in behalf of yourself if hate to constantly micro-manage; the 'Auto Consist'. But if you need the real challenge and fun, try using 'Custom Consist' instead (as I mostly do) and see how the game totally turns into a different one! Playing at lower levels of difficulty can grant you fortune in no time, but on higher levels, you will be toasted in seconds if you aren't a real Tycoon. I have seen other game in this genre that superbly handles the 3D dilemma with tons of brilliantly developed tools that far overwhelms RT3 (its called Trains & Trucks Tycoon--TTT or T3 for short), but I have to admit that in spite of all my cons against the game, its economic model and stock market are great and remain unique to it. I've posted a few evaluation threads on the game's official Forum ( http://www.gathering.com/forums/ ) which you can view if you wish, and have the time and patiance to (most of them are long posts!). You may try this early detailed evaluation report or this comparison analysis between RT3 and T3 . Go ahead and get the demo. You won't regret for sure. But as for the game, well, it's up to your discretion. Hope this helps. Cheers, Saed

The problem cjmarshall is not with the stops placed right next to avenue junctions as they are OK. It is ONLY with those that are placed one tile away from the junctions. Let me give an example: || || || || || || || || ====[]========[]====== || || || || || || In this layout of Avenues, placing a stop on top of an Avenue in the red tiles will create the problem, while placing them on top of other locations is fine. It seems a problem with the game itself as you mentioned, as I encountered the same when tried placing GDV's electronic tolls on Avenues today (including the empty breaks in Avenue inside Zone overlay), which supports your comment about how the game handles transit enabled lots plopped on to an Avenue. Thank you anyway, I'll try to think of a way-round. Cheers, Saed

Thanks cjmarshall for the clarification. Things are fine now and the stops work great. Just a couple of things I recently encountered as well. If I have an Avenue intersection (2 Avenues or Avenue-Street) and attempted to place a stop over an Avenue stretching from that intersection, I noted that the stop will ALWAYS DELETE sections of the Avenue (3 to 7 tiles) if the stop is placed one tile away from the intersection. So, I have to lay the Avenue once again after the placement! Bit you could realise how costly this would be aside from being tedious... Placing the stop just after the intersection works fine. Only if placed one tile from it!! Why is this happening and how can I overcome it? Another thing. When I'm inside Zone overlay screen I can see the stops while I'm placing them. But if I exit the screen and enter it again, the stops don't show, but their places appear as empty breaks in streets/avenues. Is this familiar? Cheers, Saed

Sorry, duplicated post... Why can't we delete our posts? Cheers, Saed

Upgradeable Capacity of Mass Transit Stations/Stops/Terminals?? Would it be possible? Let me elaborate a bit more on this. I'll start with an example: The Short Landing Strip (smallest airport). When it is placed, it has a capacity of 10K passengers, and shows only one Hangar as a visual indicator to this capacity. As demand increases, you will be prompted by a message to upgrade the Strip (Yes/No). Selecting Yes will cause the Strip to be re-constructed, and after a short period, the Strip appears with a second hangar indicating it has been upgraded to 20K passengers. Again, as demand grows, another stage of upgrade will be prompted, which will go through same re-construction sequence when approved, revealing a 3rd hangar to visually indicate that the Strip has been upgraded to 30K passengers. No further upgrades are possible beyond this max capacity. Now, can't we apply similar concept to transportation stations/stops/terminals? A bus station for example can start with a capacity of say 1000 (as is by default). Current 1x1 bus stop has its rare half almost empty aside from that fence. So, it can be altered and replaced by just a bench to visually reflect the 1000 capacity. When it reaches this limit, an upgrade prompt message appears with a hyperlink (e.g. this station needs upgrade) to take you to the stop in question. Approving the upgrade will double the capacity (2000K) and will cover the bench for example with a shelter occupying the front half of the lot (leaving the rare empty as is). When time comes, the 2nd upgrade takes place and capacity increases to 3000 or even more. To visually reflect this, a second shelter can be added to the rare half with another bench but in opposite direction (or any other design) without the need to change the 1x1 lot size. Similar can be applied to other Mass Transit stations (Subway, Trains, ...etc). This will to a great extent relief us from destroying game-standard stations/stops when becoming overcrowded and/or replacing them with custom-created lots, and would be consistent with other transit gateways (Air and Sea Ports). Back to the main question: could this be done? Sounds a combined Modding/BATing project. Hope it is possible; it is already there for Airports and Harbours. Cheers, Saed

Hello there, I got frustrated from the low capacity of standard bus stops, so searched the STEX and Mods for more convenient alternatives till I found your brilliant Mod. Used it yesterday in a city of mine and it sounds OK, except for the following. In the ReadMe file you mentioned about the NRZ occurrence when placing a stop in front of a 1xY Res. lot. But nothing was said about this annoying zot when placing a stop over an Avenue in front of a 2xY Res. lot, probably because the Avenue stop occupies a 2x2 slot not 1x1 as street/road stops. I see this another restriction to the Mod. Haven't seen a mention to it anywhere, so here it is reported. Also, when I started placing stops on most streets/avenues things appeared to improve in term of city development, but as I completed placing stops over every street/avenue, many Res. buildings showed the NJZ!!! Is it me or is it something to do with the Mod? One more thing: would the direction of the stop make any difference? (e.g. left vs right or up vs down over the same cell) The only Mods I have installed are NAM and Equinox RCI QueryMod. The RoadTop MT I downloaded yesterday is the one currently available at Mods section which shows 2.1 as its version. BTW, being a Transit Mod by DarkMatter, does it have any conflicts with NAM? Cheers, Saed