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Many older games have lousy installers that refuse to run on modern systems, such as if the installer is 16-bit and the 64-bit system doesn't include a virtual machine for running such obsolete programs. InstallShield and MSI installers were problematic even back in the day, because they could refuse to run if they didn't like something about the system. The games themselves will most often run fine as long as the video and sound drivers cooperate (varies from one system to another). This is the case with most not so old games, up to the point when things like Steam appeared. It's a shame really that we can't disucuss repacked versions on most open forums due to copyright reasons. A recipe that works in making such portable repacks, is, as stated above, making use of an intermediate standard 32-bit computer, or if not possible, an installation of VMWare virtual computer. You extract/install the game there, apply any official patches, then copy the game files over to the main system, add any needed "fixes", transfer any registry entries as normal REG files, verify that the game runs well. Then archive it from the main system into a RAR or ZIP file, so that the process doesn't need to be repeated in the future. My completely patched repack of RT2 TSC "Platinum", is 445 MB, and it will extract quickly and run without a CD. Hint: From the CD, besides the anim\*.smk, it will attempt to read a file called "music\track03.wav". The contents of this file doesn't matter. The latest patch 1.56 is important to have on modern computers, as it will fix the scrolling speed. The legally approved "Good Old Games" / GoG releases essentially are made like this. Except they add supplemental media to the game which doesn't belong to it.

I once tried to use throttle to keep several trains delivering loads for a scenario goal running one after another without yielding, but was unsuccessful "feeling" the decrease in acceleration. I soon caused a trailing train to slow down rapidly with the throttle too low, when slight decreases seemed to have no effect. In normal play I don't use throttle, because, as I posted in the Wish List thread, this alters train priorities, which cannot be read precisely, and the throttle setting does not snap in the default position. I also use all-round practical trains like the Mikado. In tight economy of the post-Geocore world, the Pacific seemed more efficient on flat ground though.

The practical significance of how a corner is implemented is in that mountain trains, which maintain more speed going uphill, also seem to work slightly better on curved track.

Case 3 could work better but also become unrealistic if you create 2 stations near each competitors station as close as the space permits. Then have a train go between the nearby stations, dumping any cargo whether demanded or not. Your trains would be ready most of the time to pick up loads rather than en-route between distant stations. Case 5 cannot be implemented when you need it. If you are lucky and have an AI build over your existing track, then it can work. I've used this method several times. I think the throttle setting has an impact on priority. Blocked trains will eventually start up and gain priority after waiting a really long time. Something related to case 5, but not quite the same is to divert AI trains running on your track onto spur lines, bulldoze the connection to the main network, and hold those trains hostage forever. Such trains will take up smaller amount of space than a blocked line, and I think you can even move them later if you need the land. The AI might even upgrade those trains (but don't take my word for it). I did attempt Case 3 in the Antarctica scenario. It removed profit from AI companies, and didn't cost as much to run. However, enemy companies were allowed to repeatedly declare bankruptcy halving their slowly built up debt, and would not be liquidated. A company getting liquidated happens once in a blue moon. In the end I had to propose a merger to purchase their debt with real cash.

I generally build 2 stations around Steel Mills, an In and an Out, so that trains at the Out can start up without yielding to an empty train that just delivered coal or iron. Most other kinds of industry are usually served by the one train. I do sometimes take advantage of separate demand to drop off some coal at the Out station. The problem with demand at Ports is a general problem with secondary demand in industries. That demand is low and does not recover. Jeff's Mod fixes most industries, but with the case of ports, I think that demand is recorded in the scenario file. The Antactica scenario is rather difficult because one must earn enough money to hurt or buy out competitors, without profitable industry. The last competitor stubbornly refused to be liquidated, and I purchased him with all his bonds.

There is nothing remarkable about it. I failed to get all of my company's stock, and profiting from interest. It's a Platinum game. The title reflects what I saw as the most important change in this scenario: alien costs and profits...

I find that it is rare when an AI route is useful for me. They usually run over steep grades, but have endless supply for sand only for the AI. And the short consists that the AI uses do not work well for me. Since moving trains to other routes costs money in fuel and maintenance, increases congestion, and costs more because the player cannot attend to his network while sorting out the AI subsidiary, I find that retiring all AI trains is the best course. The AI does not run electrical engines, so sorting out the new trains from the old should be easy. The Walls scenario turned out to be quite enjoyable and rewarding once I learned how to handle it. I continued playing it and built up the entire map. For the Chinese scenario, this approach worked for me. I electrified the track only recently. Some side lines are still not electrified, and I'm still running Hudsons, T1s and Mikados. The Mikado is a decent train for anything but absolutely flat land. I was angry about the Chinese scenario, and haven't played it past the victory condition. I hope that passenger lines serve them well.

These two were also the most difficult scenarios for me. For the Walls Come Down scenario I had to learn what cargos should be ignored at the beginning. Coal, wood and ores could be shipped at profit early in the game, but could not at this stage. Ignore those cargos until you can complete their vectors to produce goods and food. Also use only electric trains. The SD is available at the beginning and looks like a fair choice, but it is discontinued soon, and there are no economical diesels remaining. There is plenty of time to expand slowly with electrical. I felt that the People's Train scenario had a typo in its allotted time. The player is usually given ten more years for a comparable goal. A truly phenomenal and unrealistic growth rate must be achieved. I tried to build a network the usual way, with electrical track, but ran out of time. Passenger production is high, and there will be an event that will increase pax production considerably. Have many trains running from the very south of the map to Beijing at this stage to ship those people. Another event will give decent steam engines (the Hudson if I recall correctly) at a great discount (think chinese electronics). Take that event to expand even faster and ship any passengers still waiting. I also ignored freight, but did not build any electric track, as this type of expansion is slower. I did start electrifying only after the steam train event. You want to spend all available cash at all times on new trains. Do not purchase industry, like some guides suggest, because the cash spent on it will just sit there for a decade before it will start turning a profit. You could keep the cash and be better off. Run long, straight passenger lines right across the southern mountains.

I recall the winter was relatively hard last year too in Europe. I wouldn't personally see it as extraordinary that a winter actually came, but it was unusual in comparison to previous years. Could it be that cold is back, or at least reaching into extremes for a couple weeks? Looking forward to it.

InstallShield frequently refused to run even on XP. That is an unreliable installer that always needs several files on the target system, and may be disabled by wrong registry settings. Steam is a legal download server for games. I've dealt with only one Steam game, and it was an executable wrapped into another executable (to make it twice the size) and some DLLs. The outer exe then would spit out the contained one, when executed, and control how that sees the system.... This was not RT2, however. If the Windows search function can't find any GM2 files, you can try using another file manager to do the searching, like Total Commander. This question has been asked before on HawkDawg's site.

I fear Microsoft Windows is being too smart once again, and makes decisions where files have to be stored. Every Windows version brings this kind of shocks to me. If you have installed the game into Program Files, Windows may decide to "protect" that directory and put your saves that ought to be in a subdirectory there, into your user profile. Look into here for GM2 files (GAM for the basegame). C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\* It should also be possible to use Search over an entire hard drive for *.GM2

This map has been very well done indeed. It is almost alive with all the events. I think it makes sense when troops now go to a destination rather than only between barracks like passengers. I've won the civil war without access to any military depot and achieved transcontinental status in 1866. So far the scenario has been easy. I only miss the ability to purchase industry. It doesn't change how I supply them, but takes away the ability to manage their growth, and control which industries will be kept and which will disappear. I've had very few breakdowns and one crash until now. I think i'm on +85% in reliablity. If you are still developing the map, maybe key military buildings could be placed, or made very probable in some towns? Same with the Foundry (steel mill). I have one military depot on the map in Norfolk, which can't be reached from the northern states, and a steel mill in Canada, also unreachable, which was needed to produce weapons. Since the war was over another steel mill sprung up in Portland also, and I'm supplying that. The chemicals and delivery of troops could be given some meaning if there were specific destinations for military cargo. I've stopped production of Ammunition in the north-east, since it now requires steel which is all the way in the west in Portland.

Are you saying that there are physical models of the lumber mill, the die factory, and farms, which I can rotate 360° and touch? That would be cool. I've only seen a model railroad once in my life.

I'm sorry if this has been explained already, but I tried to not look at the thread to avoid spoilers. The AI is drowning in chemicals in my game! I started in the northeast, near Baltimore and Washington, and there are ugly Chemical Plants all over this region. The year was 1936. As far as I can tell, those chemicals aren't demanded anywhere yet, and they ship in a 40 ton car. All AI opponents also build there, and they ship chemicals from one town to the next as expected. Do I need to deliver this product for an event? Where should Troops be delivered? Barracks now demand Weapons instead.

"momenta" ... thank you for the correction. Having options to manage train priorities would be even better. I did just race a few fast trains to see how they did on a practically flat land. And the Thalys slowed down abruptly on 2 squares of 3% grade "under" a bridge. I hadn't noticed this before because I didn't use this type of train. One more thing: The game should handle more common errors without terminating, if at all possible. It crashes with a Windows error message too often, for example if there's a missing graphic. Currently, if the chosen GM2 saved state file cannot be opened for writing, RT2 will exit without an option to save the game with another name, or to restore write access to the intended filename. This could occur quite often these days with file system permissions. (I have set my finished saves to read-only.)

I would like to see grade, either positive or negative, to be considered also. A train that is already climbing a hill at speed should be allowed to do so. For example, consider these two trains met on a single track. Their momentums currently are 4800 and 7700. Therefore priority should be given to the food train travelling downhill. If both trains stop, the food train has no trouble accelerating downhill, but the passenger train can only reach 12 mph. Or these two trains, where the passenger train (3200) has caught up with a food train (3500). One of these trains will have to stop. If both stop, the food train can get moving easily, but the passenger train is stuck travelling below 1 mph. That is an interesting observation, outofmage. I did not know about it, and only attributed the poorer grade climbing of modern trains to car weight. I can confirm this with a GP18 (Above Average acc.) and a Class 232 (Very Fast acc.), where both have comparable mountain climbing capability. GP18 took the grade slowing down to 10 mph, but the Class 232 got stuck travelling at 2 mph well before the apex. Now we have another explanation why the E111 with Average acceleration is as good as it is.

When a breakdown occurs, the track where the broken train is on is blocked for passage by other trains. But turning down the throttle of the broken train, it is possible to instantly unblock the section, and have the broken train "remove itself" (because it's now on a low priority class). This seems like a cheat. I'm certain that I played the v1.56 version when the demand problem occurred. I started a new campaign, and didn't load an old save. I just verified this by trying to supply a Cannery on my map. By searching more, it seems that this problem is already known, and that some modding is required to fix it. As documented by Jeffryfisher, the problem occurs with secondary demand, rather than low like I believed. I don't quite understand the data format yet. Edit: It is fixed in the Historical US Mod (rt2_plat.exe.j10x2). Same savegames now do generate demand for Tires (auto plant) and Aluminum (cannery). I couldn't check ports in Antarctica yet, because my save is from the very end of the game.

I just read through this thread of valuable observations. I generally agree with everything. Inflation would be good to make runaway profits from interest less likely (but still possible), although it must not cause overflows or loss of precision, which happened in TTD. Prices must be computed from a fixed base year, instead of the previous period. Perhaps inflation could equal interest payment during prosperity; and during boom times when interest is low, the value of cash should actually decrease. I don't think interest should further increase costs compared to revenue, as that already happens with revenue. Unless, the new inflation model would be a replacement for the existing revenue decay. A few ideas of my own I could add. Weaknesses: Currently trains lose too much speed on curves; the momentum just disappears without the train derailing. It is too beneficial to build straight track and even cross mountains in a straight line (Alps without going through the Brenner Pass). I don't quite get how map scale could be incorporated here. An improvement could be to use a similar model as TTDPatch. If a train makes one 45° turn it should lose a little speed. If it makes another turn in the same direction within a certain distance, it loses much more speed. TTD takes into account the length of the train (instead of a distance threshold), which wouldn't translate well into RT2 where trains are shorter, and have disposable cars. It wouldn't make sense to have a deadhead engine race curved track at its top speed. Perhaps the distance could be made a little dependant on the mass of the train. Trains could be allowed to make a second turn in the opposite direction (_/ˉˉ) with little penalty because such a junction would represent a gradual shift of the track to the left or right, technically limited by the granuality of the map cells. Undesirable: Train priorities, when deciding when to yield to an oncoming train, are difficult to understand and manage. Trains that take long to accelerate may be stopped too easily, even when the other train is of the same broad priority class. Upon meeting, both mass and current velocity of two trains should be compared, taking into strong account the priority class. A rough formula of computing the priority score could be: mass * (velocity + (20 * (priority - priority[other])) - 10 * relative_heading + 5 * grade). A higher priority train could always pass, but I don't play with priority classes myself, so I'm fine either way. It seems to me though that if the another train has picked up very good speed, it shouldn't be stopped by a possibly erroneously set class. Relative_heading is simply a small bias to prevent a train being run over from behind, which doesn't look good. I'd like to hear what the current system is aimed for. This would prevent two or more trains stopping and jamming forever on an uphill stretch, where a single train happened to stop (due to a breakdown or an express overtake), as they erratically switch priorities. Only one train should remain stopped then. Currently it seems that if a train has yielded for a very long time, it will take over the track eventually, even on foreign track. The throttle setting should not be taken into account when computing the priority score, only the current velocity attained. This causes a practical problem and a glitch. If the throttle has been adjusted, it is very hard to return it to the exact previous value. And it seems that currently a train with lower throttle will have a much lower effective priority score causing it to yield for no apparent reason. A broken down train may be made to yield by lowering its throttle. A broken down or crashed train is presumed to be blocking the track permanently until the section is restored. Yet the crash site may be micromanaged and cleared immediately via the throttle setting. Stations do not regenerate their demand if only a low demand facility exists in their catchment area. Examples of low demand facilities are a Port (for example, in the Antarctica scenario it demands raw materials) and a Cannery for aluminum. Demand starts at 3 or 4, and, once met, never increases above 0. (Produce demand at the same cannery does go up.) High demand facilities eventually have their demand increase to 9 if not supplied. Low demand should go up some too. Otherwise these routes are hard to make profitable (like in Antarctica where there is little other industry). Nice to have features: I personally quite enjoyed the more challenging Second Century campaign, yet some things seemed to be follow logic. Improve the post-Geocore economy, which could be switched on with a dedicated flag on maps. Prices of cargo could stay the same to preserve most of the challenge. But towns could once again start demanding milk, produce and coffee. Different, smaller passenger cars could be used. If no new cars can be modelled, the pre-1950s version without the roof windows could fit better. I have only recently started to play RT3. Overall I'm pleased to see how it's maintained most of the PopTop spirit in it. Splitting of food, goods and grain into a few distinct types is handy. I would like to have separate farms for industrial grain (corn) and grain for human consumption (wheat or simply grain). Although I admit it would remove some of the challenge of managing the grain flow. You may stop reading here, as the following is just some vague impressions. Some great points made there by Minneapolitan. I too have played only offline and still learning how to communicate. I agree that Track Maintenance could be a reasonable method to control and reduce the frequency of breakdowns/crashes. Passenger destinations are a great addition to RT3, and they shouldn't have the basic "demand" making a long express train more or less valuable depending on loads delivered locally. I think the alcohol car is unfinished. It is of the same weight and size throughout the game, which makes it out of balance early but reasonably in line when all cars are heavy. The heaviest cars (like gravel, and IIRC bauxite and coal) are actually 65 tons. I think Iron, along with Cement, Waste and Uranium, are intentionally small cars, making the player assess if any gain from shipping them faster would outweigh the costs. I don't understand however, how so much steel can be produced with so little iron. The cars that are exposed to the weather and the sun are definitely of concern to me. TTD has even more issues when it ships grain and paper in this way... I would welcome an improvement here, but only if it doesn't make all cars look indistingushable. RT3 ships many cargos in boxcars and also has "realistic" but very similar industry buildings. These RT2 designs are somewhat symbolic and shouldn't be taken literally. This is my biggest gripe with RT3 which looks too realistic (as was the trend with 3D games). Definitely agree, and also building of industries, both at prohibitely high cost to make that unavailable at the start, but to make the endgame when the player is a god more interesting. I miss the bread chain in RT3. Flour definitely makes sense. Thank you for your insight in its history. The game could be expanded with more types of food, perhaps as a replacement for the raw products that towns stop demanding. I recall reading many years ago that cities (8 houses) produced Waste in RT2, yet I have not seen this in my game. Their production should be constant and low in my opinion, depending on the actual number of houses. This product, while rather difficult to collect from a number of cities at once, could be shipped to a new type of recycling industry for processing. But it would have to be a separate product from radioactive waste, which is not good for recycled paper nor metal.

I succeeded in changing the discontinuation dates which I took from the appendix to the official strategy guide. The date is stored in the exe as a single word following the introduction date. I'm new here. Could you direct me to the Jeff's spreadsheet? The GG1 is an excellent engine; and I have less trouble using it for freight due to its rusty appearance. I also enabled the 1020, which is kinda ugly and might look good for moving wood/coal/iron in Europe. For the first time seeing the GP18 side by side with the Dash-9, I realize it is equal or significantly better than it in every aspect. I wonder if the AI will use the enabled engines also (doubt it since they lack in top speed). I wish it did, because it's no fun watching FP45s stuck on AI's grades.

Every now and then, while reading discussions or advice about RT2, or even RT3, players mention returning back for cargo hauling only a caboose. I always return with only the engine (which is rare in RT2, but still occurs), mostly to avoid taking up space on the track and possibly causing another train to yield. I can't quite understand why would someone take an extra car that does nothing. Or does it?

I probably have never bought an F9, even by mistake. In the 1950s, the last Mikado's are serving well, along with electric lines where they seem plausible. And then the GPs came. I'd would like to buy off the person who decided to discontinue the GP9 and the GP18! With mucn better reliablity and the same or better speed under load, the GP18 is the best choice for express goods/autos. I generally don't want to see anything below "Good" in diesel reliability. I'll admit that the real horsepower of the GP doesn't come close to 6000, but to keep these engines was the only time I used a cheat code in RT. It'd be great if these engines, or a more reliable SD, stayed. It does get kinda boring to haul everything from coal to pax with the same white E111, especially on U.S. maps. I try to throw in some Eurostar or Brenner (when is the ground around curves really flat?) only for their visuals. V1.53 did improve overall reliability of new engines.