Simutrans-Extended and its primary pakset have improved a lot in the year since I last played the game, and in the spirit of the 'Praises' sub-forum, I'd like to thank the community for four particular features (in alphabetical order) that make the game more enjoyable.
Balancing of Vehicle Costs
Balancing the pak128.Britain vehicle costs was a huge job that was understandably postponed again and again over the last decade, but it has finally been done. The game is much more playable as a result, not least because playability was deliberately prioritized over accuracy (though we know that a lot of thought (https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php/topic,18323.0.html) went into getting historically plausible outcomes too). Thank you, @Dr SuperGood.
Fields
One of the most pleasant aspects of pak128.Britain is just how, well, British the scenery looks! The larger farms with more fields definitely enhance this aspect even more, so the map is less like the empty scrubland of, say, southern Spain. They could also help the economic realism of the game, because in 2018 it rarely seemed to be worth running freight services to farms with such low production volumes. There's a bit of a trade-off here, because the cost of field demolition has made many farms less accessible for connections, but happily we can change the cost of redeveloping fields in simuconf.tab. I think credit for this feature is mainly due to @jamespetts.
GUI improvements
We all know that Simutrans has a pretty steep learning curve, but the new symbols in the stop window make it immediately obvious what is or is not happening at each stop. The old system of colour bars wasn't bad, but the symbols are better for new users, because we are almost infinitely more likely to associate a snail with slowness than whatever the old colour bar was. The introduction of the new industry output algorithm now has a helpful UI element in the staffing bar. And I have only today discovered the new Commuting/Visiting/Staffing/Mail Delivery modes on the Minimap. These will be very helpful in deciding where to place new stops. I also wonder whether they might prove helpful in understand the ongoing difficulties with staffing industries. These improvements, mainly by @ranran, are helpful for everyone from complete newcomers to developers.
Path Explorer improvements
This is not exactly a new feature... :P But we all notice very quickly when it isn't working. Although it (rightly) isn't obvious to players, it appears from the forums that a lot of work has been done on the Path Explorer 'under the hood' over the last few months. Hopefully we'll have a more stable and faster-loading game than before (and it does feel like there are faster loading times, even on a small single-player game). It appears that both @ACarlotti and @jamespetts have made valuable contributions here.
There are probably other changes that I haven't noticed yet, and other people who have written important patches, but these four features stood out for me. Thank you to all! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Thank you for posting - I am glad that you are enjoying this.