Rail Movement

[julianbarker]

How do I not use rail movement? The manual is no help. I can't see a way of not using rail movement if rail movement is available. If I have a tank in a town on a rail line and I want to advance to the next town in enemy terretory I seem to have no choice but to advance in rail mode and get shot to bits if I encounter enemy on the way. Surely the game should not use rail mode when entering enemy terretory or when the player chooses movement to a hex adjacent to the enemy. The tanks then get stuck in rail mode unless they survive long enough to retreat and detrain, then they cannot advance along the same line again, unless they want to go back into rail mode...

[Erik2]

Rail mode kicks in when you try to move longer than the normal movement allowance for the unit.

Note the (rather fuzzy...) train ghost in the screenshot. If I select to move to that hex, the unit will be entrained.
It is similar to using a truck for ie infantry.

In general, infantry can debark on any hex, art/AA/tanks must debark in a village/town etc

Hope that helps

[julianbarker]

Thanks for that explaination. It is helpful, but I confess I find the ghost train really hard to see, especially as what is an ordinary white arrow suddenly becomes a white ghost train as you click in the next hex. The effects are devastating as you cannot take a move back, and you can't get out of the train if not infantry. There really should be some sort of intervention to stop the player stumbling into combat in a train, even if it can be turned off for those players with younger eyes who feel they don't need it. The game provides things like "you have unmoved units" prompts so not unprecedented. I can't get my head around entering unfriendly terretory in a train. The historian in me thinks it should simply not be possible to ride a train full of tanks into enemy territory.

Despite it not being my sort of wargame I was starting to like the mechanics and bought Rising Sun, but ahistorically stumbling into the enemy whilst riding a train with no way back except reloading from a save has seriously soured the game for me and I am struggling to find the enthusiasm to progress with the series.