Re: [Rails-devel] 1825 half-tiles

[John D. G. <jd...@di...>]

On 2011-10-28 13:22, Erik Vos wrote:
> However, the question arises how to interpret the rule that "Tiles may be
> placed so that a railway terminates against the edge of the board or against
> the side of an incomplete hexag"  in some specific cases where laying track
> would not be allowed if the adjacent board was actually present.  For Unit
> 1, this refers to the Q row hexes, of which only the southernmost corner is
> just visible on the Unit1 game board.  If taken literally, the cited rule
> would allow track lays against all edges of the Q row hexes if Unit2/R3 are
> absent.  
> 
> However, if both Unit2 and Kit R3 are present, hex Q11 (Wolverton) would be
> only reachable from the SE, and hex Q21 (The Wash, i.e. sea) not at all.
> And that is how I had implemented it also for the case that Unit2/R3 are
> absent (I only vaguely remember that we might have had some discussion about
> this issue).
> 
> My current preference is to use a half-tile on hex Q11 (to which therefore
> track can be laid from both the SW and SE directions), and to omit it on hex
> Q21 (which therefore cannot be laid any track against).  To replicate the
> current behaviour, I would have to omit the half-tile from Q11, and keep
> using the existing 'open' attribute instead, so that Q11 can only be laid
> track against from the SE.
> 
> Any opinions?

What does any player have to gain from laying dead-end track?  Do people do it
to use up a critical tile?  To prevent someone else from connecting that line
to a destination?

The only reason I can see wanting to do it is to enable a player to place a
city tile with lots of exits at the edge of the board even though some of the
exits run off the board (thus avoiding the need to include tiles with some
blank sides, such as 1870's #170 "P" cities, in the tile mix).  In which case
either a narrow rule allowing just those city-tile lays, or a board that has
dead-end tracks adjoining the unused sides of those city hexes, would have
made more sense than the general rule.