  Collective interactions in the preequilibrium quark matter and hadronic
resonance gas stage of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions are studied
in the framework of the the transport theoretical approach RQMD. The paper
reviews string fusion into color ropes and hadronic rescattering which serve as
models for these interactions. Hadron production in central Pb(160AGeV) on Pb
collisions has been calculated. The changes of the final flavor composition are
more pronounced than in previous RQMD studies of light ion induced reactions at
200AGeV. The ratio of created quark pairs $s\bar{s}$/($u\bar{u}$+$d\bar{d}$) is
enhanced by a factor of 2.4 in comparison to $pp$ results. Color rope formation
increases the initially produced antibaryons to 3 times the value in the `NN
mode', but only one quarter of the produced antibaryons survives because of
subsequent strong absorption. The differences in the final particle composition
for Pb on Pb collisions compared to S induced reactions are attributed to the
hadronic resonance gas stage which is baryon-richer and lasts longer.
