I thought I had a reasonable collection of DLC's for TS, somewhere in the region of 125. However, up until recently, I've never dipped my toe into the waters of third party payware. After the recommendations on these hallowed forums, I spent in the region of £75 for the complete JT Midland Main Line and it's associated bits and bobs. Now I was stunned at the plethora of scenarios available but having read the manuals, I was also stunned at the amount of required DLC's from Steam, JT and AP for me to run all of those scenarios as their respective creators intended. At today's prices, I would need to be spending a further £475! Well, needless to say it could take me some time to justify to my Chief Financial Officer that I need to spend that amount of money on what she sees as a "game"!
And there is Free Software called TS tools which enables to to swap out what you don't have for a scenario for what you do have. I downloaded a scenario to run a train on the Brighton Mainline and you looked at the requirements and I needed loads of AP packs for units but as I already had the DTG version I saw no point in spending money when I did not have to. Yes, you want your train to be the best version possible but is it necessary to have the AP Class 377 pack for £16.95 for a train that will go past at a combined speed of 160mph+? I would rather spend time swapping trains with TS Tools Peter
I'm aware of TS Tools but never really had much need to use it. I feel I may be getting to know it much better pretty quickly!
