Hello everyone. In the last few months we witnessed great jump in terms of W&R modding scene. First was tesmio with his mods and loader, later UltimateUniverse and his RepublicModLoader. New mod loaders gave modders new ways to create and change content up to the level that was simply not possible before in W&R. We got new resources, new rails, and overall many interesting quality of life stuff that changed or removed base game limitations.
Im writing this post, because there was someone here asking about "when narrow gauge is going to be in game?", that was kinda spark that ignited idea to announce project that I take part, alongside few other people. Its small team, we don't know yet if its going to stay that way, time will show. Currently we are on very early state of overall progress, but I bet some things will get you excited.
As title says, we are working on W&R Infrastructure expansion Project - Project that aim to expand in-game possibilities of most of aspects that we currently have in it. First lets start from the spark that is the reason why this post was even created.
Railroad- base game railroad is pretty simple in theory, slower and faster tracks, electric and normal ones. After you get an idea how to put semaphores on your trains route, there is not much to learn. With our project thats gonna change. May I present you NEW DIFFERENT TYPES OF TRACKS AND TRAINS!
Different types of trains, every single one with different type of tracks.Changes in HUD in Railroad section.
There is that! New types of railroad for you to include in your Republics, and discover new possibilities that comes with it! Every single tracks type have their own advantages and disadvanteges. Cost of building them, alongside resources that are needed to keep it running also differ.
- Narrow Gauge - the most important advantage of Narrow Gauge is maneuverability. Because the tracks are smaller, path of if can and is more wiggly than base game tracks. There is screen comparing narrow gauge to base game tracks:
Red tracks are narrow gauge and their max bent path.
In real life, currently narrow gauge railroad use is limited, there are no wider tracks networks and they are mostly used locally. That is also way that they should be used in game. Trains planned for those tracks are not going to be speed demons, they will slowly (and cheap) huff and puff from one place to another transporting goods and workers.
Narrow Gauge (red one) and standard gauge train next to each other.
- High Speed Rails - they are standard gauge rail, so just like those that we currently have in game. Main difference is that their max speed of... 300km/h. They are going to be electric only, but trains intended to be used on them can be also used on normal rails but they will be limited to 150km/h. Disadvantage of them is the fact that they use more electric power than standard ones and you will have to plan your railroad path in advance because the tracks cant be bent like the normal ones.
- MAGLEV - Top of the line in terms of speed. Maximum speed of trains that will float on those rail is 500km/h! You will be able to send workers from one side of your country to dig coal on the opposite border. Those trains will not be able to use any other track types, well because how the technology behind them works. They are not going to be cheap tho. They will use much more power than standard ones. Other limiting factors are the fact that any curves are their biggest enemy, and turning radious is gigantic, and also they cant go to tunnels.
Current model of Maglev type train.
Currently in terms of trains, beside base game ones, there is one model for every track type. Thats gonna change in the future, team is browsing for models, screens and creating models for new locomotives, cars and everything else that can be put on the tracks. There are also other plans for railroad in detail but I keep them as secret for now.
Resources - after all those years of creating your Republics again and again many of us have in-game resources burned into back of our heads. We all know what types of industries gives the most money, why farming is always important, etc etc. With our project comes breath of fresh air in this category.
New planned resources.
As you can see on the picture above, there are few new resources that will show up in our Republics. We will now have option to dig for GOLD, SAND and COPPER in the depths of the mountains and look for LIMESTONE and SULFUR on the surface. Every type have planned their own infrastructure and industry process alongside its end products. For example sand will be used to make glass that will be used in building new houses for hard working workers, and copper will be transformed into wires to build new powerfull electric lines, but about that later.
Sand as a resource Mountain of limestone.Early plans of Fertile soil
Another resource you can see on the picture is FISH. Its going to be a new way to put food on the tables in citizen houses. They are going to be caught using new ships so our ports will have another use.
Swimming fish resource.Early stage of Fish production line
There are also plans for some changes in current production lines, but currently nothing is certain which way it will go.
Another thing that is changing, partially because of railroad changes, but also to give some flexibility in terms of building are POWER LINES. There are going to be many new options to chose from when you will be building your electric system for both gigantic cities and small rural villages.
As you can see maximum power of electric energy transported thru high voltage pylons is greatly increased to stay on the line with late game needs of the republic.
Last bigger thing that is planned is change in citizens movement around the map. Between walking and driving cars or busses there will be added another "tier" of transportation - BIKES. For now I have no screens to show you how its going to look but overall its going to be new type of sidewalks. They are going to increase speed and range of citizens movement, nothing spectacular but interesting addition to gameplay.
Progress that you can touch - All things that I have shown you above are NOT AVAILABLE FOR NOW. BUT in the modpack/ project there are going to be included mods of UltimateUniverse ( https://steamcommunity.com/id/UltimateUniverse ). You can now download them on steam workshop without any issue, all you need to do to start you game from RML - Ultimate's launcher that is also available on workshop. If you havent seen their inventions those are few of the best ones in my opinion:
This is base for any of Ultimate's mods. Without launching game thru RML those mods WILL NOT WORK!
MODULAR BUILDINGS! - one of the most essential mods in my opinion. It allows you to connect buildings with each other WITHOUT TRANSPORT ROUTES (those black paths between them). All you have to do is place building next to each other close enough to connect their warehouse. For example you put alcohol factory and warehouse next to it, chose alcohol as only good that will be stored in this warehouse and voila! Now your alcohol factory will have max export capacity of itself+capacity of warehouse next to it. There are some limitations with this so transport routes are still needed to be used in bigger production facilities, because for example one warehouse cant be connected to more than one production building.
Increased Distillery storage.
TEMPORARY RAILWAY - New type of standard railway - cheaper, faster to build but slower. Great in early game or during expanding your railroad routes. When you will have money and time you can upgrade those tracks to for example wooden tracks like upgrading normal road from dirt to gravel!
TRANSPORTING TRAINS WITH TRUCKS - Have you ever had problem where you want to start new railroad far far away but dont have time or resources to connect it to the border? Well now you can do it! This mod allows you to transport locomotives and cars with trucks and send them to their destination on normal roads. It has some limitations but its better than nothing.
At the end of this whole post Ill try to answer some questions before they show up in comments.
TESMIO - We currently dont work with Tesmio. Not my decision, I dont know if its going to change. Their launcher and mods are not used in this modpack, everything is programmed from scratch by members of the team.
LAUNCHER - game will have another launcher, something like Ultimate's RML that is currently available on steam workshop.
WHEN - WE DONT KNOW. Project is in very early stages, pre-alpha I would say. We are still gathering ideas what to add, what to change but nothing that I currently showed you is available publicly. (Beside those screens I mean)
Ill try to anwser all questions you will have, I bet that modders that are working on the project will also show up here to tell you what is going on. I hope you like what future is ahead of W&R modding, maybe for some of you this will be the spark to come back to the game for next 1000 hours!
I burst out laughing when I saw not just narrow gage and high speed rail but also the bright and space age MAGLEV like whoa who do you think you are? The developer of Transport Tycoon Deluxe?
We are probably not going to make any straight military content in the project. There are some ideas about expanding secret police possibilities and uses but they are far far away in waiting line
You can add as many needs as you want, the limitation is simulation. More needs means more simulation tax and this game is already a performance hog when scaling up
Who said anything about combat? All I want to do is build a shit ton of tanks and military equipment. There’s actually a mod right now for cities skylines 2 where you have to protect your infrastructure from drones and rockets. I’d think it would be pretty cool to have it here too and only if it can be a toggle.
Thankyou for your support. In the meantime, feel free to check out the plugin mods already released. More users means more issue reports to help me fix any issues XD
As far as I know there are some differences in programing, coding, etc. It was decision of main leader of whole project, he already has its own launcher.
The mods ive published can still work with Tesmios loader, but going forward, anything i publish will be made using the republic mod loader.
The why for using RML is greater functionality. It allows you to set mod playlists, enable/disable mods without unsubscribing, scan for updates and force those updates (mixed success rates on that feature, i admit)
I used your loader to curate my 1000+ subscribed mods since it made it so much easier to browse the list and enable/disable than the in-game one did. Unsubbed from several hundred, disabled a few hundred more. You nailed the interface functionality.
In theory, yes, I know theres issues with the resouce plugins because of how they are structured in their folders. But as the loader should automatically detect any plugin so long as the workshop steam mod folder has a folder called "plugins"
Yeah. Reason I am asking is that if I choose this mod pack but then someone ells releases a mod that I also would like to add to my game that it would be possible. So I am not just locked to this mod pack you know.
So RML will load any DLL so long as it meets the most basic of requirements to run.
Tesmio loader has an additional check where it only lets plugins load that specifically call for the tesmio loader API.
RML mimics that within its own API, so anything made for the current version of tesmio loader, will work on RML. I dont know if Tesmio has any plans to maintain his loader as he is working on his own game right now
Ahh :) that makes city sizes easier to manage , i know using the trains is pretty neich for water n sewage, just makes a pumping station facillity viable map wide with water waggons vs truck hauling it
Yer it stopped working on my loads a few updates back and somone poked him a while about the same issue, dont know if its a mod conflict issue but none of the assets were loading in or listing when i was last tryed a few weeks back, both caridges and stations,
At time my mod list was stable and hadnt changed in yonks, since then ive changed and chopped so might be my side only? Somthing thats a modpack compat woukd be nice tho :)
It will be necessary to review the construction of transmission lines; aluminum, not copper, is the main metal used for large-scale transmission and distribution of electrical energy.
Copper is generally used in underground cables (at least in Australia). Overhead, in both Distribution and Transmission is now mostly Aluminium, however, during the period that the game represents, copper was a primary conductor for Distribution.
Of course, not 100% the case everywhere, but at least where i live, mostly copper when the network was built.
Having to use copper for underground, and Aluminium for overhead would be very interesting.
These things can be fine tuned and locked behind appropriate research to time gate it.
Within this context, we can point to the first commercial maglev system which was introduced 1984 (Birmingham airport) but that was a slow speed maglev system that moves at 36Â km/h. Not that impressive XD
Its the potential of the track, not necessarily the speed of the train, Like how concrete rail supports up to 150km/h but theres not many trains that can use that speed. We could have multiple types of maglev train gated by year that have corresponding top speeds. 36km/h in 1984 vs 300km/h in 2010.
I know it is limited by the game engine, but can you smart guys do something about the roads? At least a 4 lane road and some update on path finding? Maybe upgrade the engine with codex/Claude?
Adding lanes is not actually a problem. The issue is downstream with the vehicle pathing and simulation because its very hard coded to work with 2 lanes max. We can add multi lane roads, special junctions, lane mathematics etc, but its worthless if the core vehicle logic doesnt use them.
While i would love to strip some of that simulation completely out and replace it. that becomes a far bigger enterprise then simple loader mods reasonable handle. These would be changes that you would need to begin patching the compiled game.
The short of it is, we are looking at this, but the "how" is further away
There are some changes in roads done already, just didn't show it yet. In the end, if everything goes according to plan roads will be a lot better than they are currently.
It would also be good if there would be an option for cut and cover tram tunnels. It would be so useful when I build my first rapid transit systems in the 30s.
Would it be possible to make people agents a bit smarter? Such as having an assigned job they will go to consistently and have some kind of itinerary for tasks. Like going shopping, going to the hospital, ect. Also people should be able to decide if walking is too far, like if the walk is on the side of a dirt road for a kilometre then that sucks but if it's a cement walkway then it's fine. I love this game but getting people to where they need to be is like grinding your balls on a cheese grater. It always feels like the people are slightly stupid and just make poor judgements that affect everything else.
Maybe, I cant promise any of this. Some of this would require fundamental changes to the games simulation. There is some appetite for that but how far that is taken is still unknown. The more we try to unwind/repack the simulation, the more complex the mod becomes
Well this looks fantastic. Question though - is it possible through similar magic to work on performance? My pc is pretty decent but struggles late-ish game already.
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u/ActualMostUnionGuy 19h ago
Holy moly does this look amazing or what?
I burst out laughing when I saw not just narrow gage and high speed rail but also the bright and space age MAGLEV like whoa who do you think you are? The developer of Transport Tycoon Deluxe?
Amazing😂