Some thoughts about Rail Transport

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George Geczy
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Some thoughts about Rail Transport

Post by George Geczy »

Regarding Rail Transport in general, this is a game engine addition we had hoped to have in for last year's SRGW release but the development schedule didn't work out at the time. So we're really pleased to have it released now for SRGW and SRU.

In the past couple of weeks as I've worked on and tested it I have noticed that the strategic implications in the game are actually bigger and more interesting than I originally thought they would be. At the core we were looking for a quicker and more realistic way to move all those walking guys around in World War I. But the implementation offers a lot of interesting tactical and strategic elements:

- The ability to move leg and towed units between major fronts is of course a big new element.

- Units moving on rail are at constant speed, meaning you can bring coherent force groups (infantry, artillery, and armour) to areas much more efficiently.

- When units move on rail lines, they do not use fuel, and they do not suffer efficiency and morale decrease (as you would get in a long travel path). This means that unsupplied backwaters (Siberia comes to mind) can suddenly be moved through in a tactical manner.

- With units moving on rail they also provide opportunities for the enemy - units are less stealthy, plus of course their path is predictable. Recon and air interdiction becomes tactically more interesting.

- The rail lines themselves become tactically important, adding an interesting new element.


Right now we provide a few ways to control the use Rail Transport:

1) You can turn Rail Transport support on and off in the game startup lobby, under Military Settings. It defaults to On in all saved games and new games, and affects the entire map.

2) In the Defense Department ROE (Under the Alert Settings sub panel), you can set whether units in your region will use Rail Transport. You can change this setting at any time.

3) Individual Unit Advanced Orders Panel allows changing the pathing priorities - "Quickest" will generally be most likely to use Rail, and "Direct" will be least likely.


We do not allow turning Rail Transport use on and off on a per-unit basis yet (there isn't any room in the Advanced Orders panel for another button, among other things), so you can't micro-control the rail transport use at that level. Right now, any unit taking a rail-based path will automatically use Rail Transport - this could actually result in some units slowing down (if their ground transport speed was faster than rail transport speed on the terrain), and it also has a couple of tactical effects.

In particular, when a unit is travelling by rail transport:
- No fuel use, no efficiency or morale loss.
- Ranged units will not scan for or fire on targets (artillery, anti-air)
- If units encounter an enemy in ZOC, they will dismount from rail and then fight normally (cannot fire while rail transport).

There are a couple of oddities we're looking at with the Rail Transport system:
- Sometimes leg infantry will still use a direct route even when a rail route would be much faster. This happens generally on short routes.
- Sometimes it doesn't make sense to use rail - such as a tank or artillery unit travelling only a few hexes - but the rail is still used. We'll take a look at setting some rules about this.
- As mentioned above, we'd like to add a per-unit setting as well in the future.

I hope that everybody enjoys the new gameplay strategies that this opens up.

-- George.
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Uriens
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Re: Some thoughts about Rail Transport

Post by Uriens »

Sounds really good. :-)

Can i suggest that techologies that improve rail infrastucture also increase speed of rail transport? It would make them better/faster in modern and future era's.

Thanks for adding this feature.
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George Geczy
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Re: Some thoughts about Rail Transport

Post by George Geczy »

Uriens wrote: Jun 20 2018 Can i suggest that techologies that improve rail infrastucture also increase speed of rail transport? It would make them better/faster in modern and future era's.
Yes, that's on our list, but not implemented yet.

-- George.
Micheal Berg
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Re: Some thoughts about Rail Transport

Post by Micheal Berg »

Awesome to have it in the game.

I have been advocating it since we started the SRGW wish list.

Thanks BG :D :D :D
Draken
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Re: Some thoughts about Rail Transport

Post by Draken »

Most Excellent! Thank you.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov, Salvor Hardin in "Foundation"
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Si vis pacem, para bellum
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It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
Voltaire
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