el cid again
Posts: 16922
Joined: 10/10/2005 Status: offline
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Comprehensive update 3.01 https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ap7XOIkiBuUwhPxFuII1ZkrVQefJBQ From a player point of view, this update is a reissue of 3.00 insofar as it updates the files of 3.00. From a technical point of view, this update corrects a variety of eratta in every sense - including errors in understanding infrastructure in certain locations. The most important change is the way the interior waterways of Canada work in the Monsoon and Fall seasons. [These are frozen in Winter and suffer from the terrible condition called "breakup" in Spring: you can neither build an ice bridge nor navigate the waterway in Spring.] In standard (not Japan Enhanced) scenarios, the portage route between Fort Smith and Fort Fitzgerald (near Great Slave Lake) is wholly redefined. Technically, this means a vessel can sail between them, and in the Fall seasons, all the way to the ocean. This is a preliminary to building the CANOL (CANadian OiL) Project, and since JES cancels the expensive CANOL project, it also cancels modification of this portage. In JES scenarios, it is not possible to sail between Fort Smith and Fort Fitzgerald. There are two principle special rules. These are defined in the Seasonal Construction and House Rules document in the RHS Documentation folder. 1) Only vessels up to 300 tons displacement may pass. However, this DOES include small tug and barge combinations up to 1500 tons (with no individual barge being over 300 tons). Canadian Barges were redefined to their actual historical standards. [RHS uses generic barges and these are usually larger in size.] Note as well - Simplified RHS scenarios (with even numbers) do not generally include river vessels or barges - and none on river systems isolated from the ocean all or part of the year. So only FULL RHS scenarios (this with odd numbers) have them. 2) IF a vessel with any kind of cargo (including troops, supplies, resources, fuel or oil) reaches Fort Fitzgerald (the normal case, coming from the railhead at Embarras, or the refinery at Fort MacMurray), they MUST UNLOAD completely. The cargo then must move to Fort Smith. The EMPTY vessels may transit between the two river ports. Then the vessels may reload the cargo. In fact, the vessels are moved by a secondary road using tractors and gigantic trailers towed by tractors (which is why the 300 ton limit). This secondary road itself was built in the Spring of 1942. [In JES scenarios, the portage remains a trail, and no vessels can move between the two ports because of four steep rapids falling over a "wall" of granite]. So vessels do move between the ports, but without cargo, and the only way to let them do that is to define it as a navigable river. This cumbersome process, the long route, and the utter lack of roads or railroads is why the CANOL project was only barely feasible, and took too long to build (even had Japan invaded the area - it must have been in the fall seasons of 1942 or perhaps 1943). Having defined these special rules for Canada, we added one for the peculiar river ports of Terapo Mission and Bulldog on New Guinea. This one is more simple - only rule 1 applies: no vessels over 300 tons (or barge combinations over 1500 tons) may use the river route. Not so much because 300 tons is the limit, but because, to this day, larger vessels almost never attempt the route, and it would be very difficult. Never mind a river as wide as a football field and 12 meters deep can nominally pass a large ship, uncharged ever shifting sand from the volcanic dust of the area limits the passage to smaller vessels, so if they run aground, they can be worked free. These size limitations are now marked on the maps as an aide to player memory and for those who don't actually read House Rules. There were as many as ten hexes with eratta of various kinds on each map - a missing segment of primary road in China - a misrouted trail on New Guinea or Celebes (or both) - incomplete Road of Bones, ALCAN or Baikal-Amur Mainline routing. [Never mind the BAM was not completed in WW2, most of the foundations were built, and these show up as trails snaking across Siberia in strictly historical standard RHS scenarios. The early segments of the RR (in the West) were ripped up in 1942, while the foundation work continued. But the Eastern section was completed in 1945 to move supplies from Komsomolsk na Amur to Sovietskaya Gavan - so in fact that part of the BAM was in WW2. In Japan Enhanced Scenarios, with the greater threat of a stronger Japan, the Russians put more effort into the BAM, and most of it is completed, although the extremely difficult mountain sections only finish after the end of the historical war, RHS allows the war to go on into 1946.] There were a few trails missing (or which should have been missing in Monsoon seasons) in the SE Asia areas of the map, or misrouted. [Note that trails represent several different things in RHS: actual trails as well as traditional river traffic along rivers which sometimes include portage points. Both can change seasonally, usually in Monsoon areas.] Trails in RHS are attempts to channel troop and logistic movement along historical lines - used or not these are the routes that could have been used - in preference to striking out across untamed wilderness. Trails also serve the WITP function of representing a way to move along a railroad in the absence of rolling stock. This was tedious work, but lays the foundation for all the following seasons in out years to be done more quickly. I took the time to get it right. I was also slowed by a deadline for a USAF project: I just work on RHS to take a mental break between sessions working up databases and reports on Chinese air forces.
< Message edited by el cid again -- 4/2/2018 10:22:06 AM >
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