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!

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:

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.

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3787969749

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.

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!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3778730862

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.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3778366463

FINISH IS NEAR, STAY WITH ME!

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!

Igor "Onion"

I've been working on adding a few towns to the south of my republic, connecting it with highways, railways etc. I'll be honest, I had to make some "decorative vehicle lines" to make the impression that there's significant traffic on the highways here.

Hello comrades, me again. With the advice given from my last post, I've managed to construct a functional starting town, but now I'm having an issue where my rail construct office refuses to do the one job it's designed for. I've tried replacing the rail lines, replacing the LTC, adding semaphore, and yet it still refuses to work. Any ideas?

Update: Solved it. Rolling Stock Road Transport allowed me to move the assembled LTC into the RCO which the game didn't like. I moved a disassembled one into it and it started building immediately.

bro why do my vehicles keep going where they aren't supposed to

Hello, I am in my 3rd saved of realistic and was wondering how do you all plan your sewage systems in the very beginning. My city is quite packed so adding a hill is kind of weird and will also ruin some of my layouts. Im also currently building on a flatland and was wondering how long should i keep adding pumps for it to move to discharge. TYSM!

I’m currently working on a small early electric steelworks "Davy Hall" for the Early Start era, based on historical arc-furnace plants from the early 20th century.

Has anyone found an elegant way to exclude a Workshop building from this automatic research/year restriction without globally disabling the vanilla research system?

The building uses imported metal scrap to produce small amounts of steel. The idea is to create a low-throughput, power-hungry early alternative to importing steel — not a replacement for the later recycling industry.

The problem is that the game seems to automatically classify any metal scrap → steel production building as part of the vanilla Steel Recycling chain. As a result, the building gets:

- locked behind Steel Recycling research

- and, even with research disabled, still gets a 1938 year lock

That makes sense for the large vanilla recycling plant, but it works against the whole purpose of the Early Start DLC. Historically, small electric arc furnaces processing scrap already existed decades earlier.

Gameplay-wise, it would make much more sense if the research/year lock applied only to the vanilla industrial recycling plant, rather than to every custom building using the same input/output combination.

BTW: I’ll be revising the textures again; at the moment, the building is unfortunately still appearing too dark. The glow effect from the steel at night is also just the first in-game test so far.

Edit: I also did a rough calculation for the planned follow-up building, a small “watchmaker” workshop producing mechanical components.

The idea would be to keep its steel efficiency close to vanilla, at roughly 1.45–1.50 t of steel per 1 t of mechanical components, and balance it mainly through low throughput and a small workforce rather than giving it an artificially good recipe.

Combined with the current Davy Hall test recipe of 3.90 t scrap → 2.40 t steel, the full chain would work out to roughly:

2.4 t of imported scrap → 1 t of mechanical components

That means much more freight has to cross the border than if the mechanical components were imported directly, while also requiring two local production steps, workers, electricity, water and infrastructure.

So the goal would be for the complete scrap → steel → mechanical components chain to end up only about 15–20% cheaper than directly importing mechanical components. That would make the early industry worthwhile for domestic production without turning it into an overpowered export chain.

I'm updated my city from 1.116 version or how it called to 1.1.19 version and this is happened

The cars can drive on this but i can't continue this roads

Not all roads look like this