steve39

Common knowledge can be suspect and I'd be interested to know exactly what the set-up is, if known, because in many years play I have: (a) never observed a serviced town decline, only unserviced ones, and (b) have observed many serviced towns prosper. Were my eyes deceiving me?

Items not used or connected do tend to disappear; it's part of the set-up. And it's not just industries, towns without a station gradually lose houses and shrink. Best advice is to get to resources you wish to use sooner rather than later. Buying them will secure them, but it costs of course, and they will lose you money until you start tapping them. ;)

After playing RT2 Gold (Win98) under WinXP by setting Win98 compatibility OK for ages, I've just bought the Platinum (XP) version. It's faster to load and works OK, but I cannot run any scenarios imported into the maps file. They're in there, and they look identical to all the maps around them, but simply don't show when playing the game. Pt seems to be giving them the cold shoulder. Anybody got any thoughts on this one please? ???

Gwizz, Yep, you're dead right. I've done the historic, geograhic and economic analyses but all good scenarios need a "core idea" around which the whole thing can be developed; I just haven't found it yet! I'd rather not disclose the country I'm looking at for now, if I may, and will only say that the terrain, economy and history are unusual and the whole thing is quite difficult; this is almost certainly why it's not been visitied before! A couple of possibilities have floated by but the eureka moment hasn't found me yet.... Good scenarios take time, please bear with me! :)

Dear Snoopy, May I suggest that you lose RT2 and get the TSC version? (I bought a copy of the Platinum version from Amazon UK the other day for better compatability with WinXP). TSC offers more industries and hence richness and flexibility to the game. Some new locos too which fill gaps. Best of all is the ability to "store" cargoes at stations; hence you can have a feeder branch line with a cheap loco dropping off goods at a main line station to be rushed off by an expensive express; that's how real railways work and one of the beauties of TSC. Once you've played TSC, the basic RT2 is but a pale imitation, the difference is that great! :)

Funny, that, me too! :) Mind you, my scenario-designing skills have atrophied somewhat... :( I've got my eye on a map with wonderful topography but can't for the life of me come up with a fresh angle. I've always liked the strategy aspects that form a core in RT2.TSC and hated RT3 for the same reason!

I discovered this scenario (v.3) the other day while rambling through the forum and gave it a spin. Two problems showed up: (a) CONNECTED FAIRBANKS - this trigger isn't working because the embedded station in Seattle is not showing "connected". I realised this very late in the game and had to add a second station! (b) STATUS [for the above] - is also not working, this one because the city ID for Seattle is 83 but 62 is written in the trigger. (City 62 no longer exists, as far as I can see). Having since read the forum notes I see that some of the above has been mentioned - has a corrected v.4 been issued that I have somehow missed? The subject has been dormant for a year or so.... Regarding a previously mentioned point, the "no houses" glitch is caused by embedding too many industries inside a city. I think it confuses the random generator.

Hawk, You're going to hate me for this because Dreadnoughts was actually finished but RT3 came along and all the websites dumped RT2 so there was nowhere for it to go! Only later did this site bring back RT2 maps but then, alas, it was too late. I never got on with RT3 and consider RT2 more satisfying. In Dreadnoughts you had to build the battleships at 4 dockyards, fit them with guns and ammo, fuel them, and then conduct a Review of the Fleet off Portsmouth! For which the Royal Family had to be brought over from Buckingham Palace by Royal Train; bunting prepared for the celebrations; and so on. I did send a beta version but email addresses changed and we lost contact - if anybody has a current contact for Lars Maischak please speak up! Steve ::)

Please go ahead. One of the pleasing things about RT2/TSC always was its huge learning curve and in this case, had I known what I know now.... The saddest part is that we worked up an enormous UK scenario for which Geoffey downloaded several satellite images and wrote a programme to fuse them. It was the full Monty at 500x500 and gobsmackingly detailed... It was all there with features like Shap Summit... The scenario was based on building Dreadnought battlesships at four dockyards before the First World War and was so big that it had additional levels of difficulty, Platinum and, er, Pewter! Sadly both original and back-up copies were lost. Yes, I could have wept.... :'(

A short note to say that I've reposted this scenario (I'm half of Geoffrey & Steve Banks) after fixing an intermittent bug, namely the disappearing Auto plant. One of PopTop's design features is to make unused industries vapourise if they're not used or you're simply slow getting round to them. Well, it doesn't happen with this one any more! (The trick is to set up a separate company which owns the item in question). For anybody who's struggled with this scenario - we like them to be challenging operationally rather than financially - the best starting strategy is a line between Warsaw-Lodz and, as simultaneously as possible, between Krakow and the heavy industrial region to the west.