(a) Your partly right. It will take at-least 4 years for some TS2010 procrastinators to decide to upgrade to 12 or 14. It took 7+ years for some TRS2004 diehards - procrastinators to upgrade to TS2010 !!!
(b) As to whether there is going to be any improvements in the game engine to take advantage of higher spec'ed PC's, one would certainly hope so, but only time will tell...
(c) As to your comments about you believing it wouldn't be wise to purchase TS2012. The commercial reality is if the majority of the Trainz community don't purchase TS2012 (whether it be the collectors version, or the standard version) there won't be a TS2014...
(d) If I had to speculate, I'd be surprise to see N3V continue to offer a service pack/s - patch/es for TS2010 after TS12 is launched. IMHO, TS2010 whilst not perfect, is the most stable version of Trainz yet. Particularly CMP 3.3 (besides, there is no revenue in service packs).
I love it when this forum comes alive with so many posters getting their crystal balls out of their closets and dusting them off too see what the future holds. Makes for some exciting reading... :hehe:
To me it's simple. If a "collectors issue" interests you, pre-order. If it doesn't, or you want to sit on the fence until it's released to see what else maybe offered, great, but don't bad mouth N3V for trying to generate some addition revenue so that they can continue to develope Trainz...
Partnership !!! - We rely on N3V to continue to develope Trainz. They rely on us to provide them with the revenue, so that they can continue to develope Trainz. (you don't need to be a brain surgeon to figger that one out)...
Cheers, Mac...