Dovetail Games Manchester Airport Commuter - Preview Q&a Thread

Does the freight jobs go the whole length of the route. And will there be xbox achievements. Also will route tasks be all at the stations/yards or spread out throughout the route.

 

I am really looking forward to this route, having lived on it for 18 years in my youth.

While l realise that this is ATS first TSW route and a termination point for the route at Alderley Edge was a sensible idea. Are their plans to extend it further to Crewe maybe in the future similar to the recent London overground route? I would be happy to pay the appropriate price!

Also what are the collectables for this route?

 

Looking forward to the route, looks superb. Excellent detail.

Has approach control signalling been implemented throughout the route? Noticed a missing flashing yellow around Heald Green for the turnout for the Airport (in the stream).

 

And what's the point of doing another stream when uncle Alan has already done his own?)

 

Presumably, they'll have the release build.

 

Will custom liveries substitute onto AI services?

 

How does this route tick the LAMPOIL boxes in particularly what is so unique about it to justify a Day One purchase, even with the very generous discount for Glossop owners.
Why not go to Crewe and make a decent length run of it?
Already asked but will repeat, are there plans to extend the route through to Crewe?
Why another "electric bus stop" route when we already have two that use the 323 including the Glossop line already based in Manchester.
Why did you not commission a new train to go with the route rather than piggybacking on existing stock in the game?
Are you going to continue making routes (and hopefully trains) for TSW or is this a one off.

 

I think Alan Thomson has addressed some of these questions, particularly in regard to it being a first attempt at a route. Personally I would rather perfect this first then concentrate on new trains. The £25 price point I think addresses this. As for extending to Crewe, this would be ideal and I hope it can be achieved in the future. However, though it is only 5 extra stations, it is quite a length further and Crewe station and it’s surrounding yards would be a massive undertaking. It couldn’t be just a rehash of the version in SOS due to the time difference.

 

OV, if they were to announce Alderley Edge to Stafford via Crewe as their second route, this may satisfy you, but there will be some who still wouldn’t be happy. We don’t know what ATS are planning for their next route, so we will all wait and see. Just Trains continued the North West theme involving Preston, so you never know what ATS are planning until they announce it!!!

With the MAC terminating at Alderley Edge seems sensible, especially as it’s their first step into TSW. They could have made Wilmslow as the terminus and any way it just countryside from Alderley Edge to Crewe, which would be boring to drive.

 

Tough one, but what sort of post-release updates or changes do you anticipate you might bring to the route further down the line? Are you planning to keep the route updated even if you as a team have moved onto other TSW projects?

 

Will it have Liam and Noel doing the station announcements

 

ATS mentioned a future loco add-on, would this be the Civity Class 331 and 195? Or maybe a TFW 197? Please elaborate

 

Alderley Edge to Crewe would have given a bit of a chance to thrash the 323 though.

I hear what you say and all routes have to stop somewhere, but from a customer POV starting to get a bit fed up with short stubs which fail to give a complete experience - WCL, PFR, Cardiff City and now this. And that’s just for the UK. We pretty much know that other than NLL/Mildmay most of these will never see an extension.

If this stuff was freeware I would say fair enough, but these people are all jumping on the commercial bandwagon - if you expect a payday then you need to earn it.

So I redirect my original questions on the matter for DTG/ATS to answer.

 

The question should be: why is a third party developer allowed to do their own stream before the 'official' DTG one (like never before). And, ATS used a dev build for their stream that was two versions earlier than the build intended for release.

 

If you want to give the 323 a thrash, drive it non stop from Piccadilly to Alderley Edge non stop.

 

With respect, can we leave this for ATS/DTG to answer (or not ) as the question was directed at them?

 

I'm praying for the 319

 

Simple answer not everyone subscribes or knows ATS so whilst he did stream it other day it follows normal dtg practice of previewing route just because it’s ATS doesn’t mean it different than from any other third party

 

That was a wishful statement of yours thrashing a 323 from Alderley Edge to Crewe. If your question is why did ATS choose Alderley Edge as a terminus, that was answered by Alan Thompson previously.

Here is a link to the ATS stream. Remember we are getting two routes with this release.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/249038...l4tF4KKCTudEwjB4cA_aem_7EPOyYlgi9AnofAmlCfTjg

 

One further question, aimed firmly at any DTG personnel on the stream. This route is another ideal candidate for chained service gameplay but can I please ask when are you going to fix the wretched thing, as it is completely broken at present. It breaks down even without the previous known issue of loading back into a save game. Just changing ends on your previous service after returning to free roam and taking over the next working, calling up the timetable still shows the first service.

I just refunded CCN not so much because of the tiny route, poor 150 sounds and other quality issues but because immersing yourself in the “World” of Train Sim World by chaining numerous short journeys or changing trains is utterly futile while the game doesn’t work properly. Pointless buying any more short commuter routes, including this little Manchester one, until you can be bothered to fix it.

 

As asked previously:
- Is a future extension to Crewe planned?
- If so, will it include a new NT piece of stock (maybe 331 or similar...) or will this be released later, as a separate pack?
Thanks in advance!

 

For the Dovetail Games and/or ATS folks

1) Are you able to explain any more on why the loyalty discount for owners of Glossop is not available for PlayStation, Xbox and Epic users?

2) will either of the timetables align with Glossop to actually make use of the route hopping feature between the two as this seems like the perfect chance to do so (if there ever was such a thing)

 

With the release of Manchester Airport will the Class 323 on the Glossop line get suspension?
Question for DTG: if one of the locomotives in the series has suspension, what is the difficulty in implementing it on locomotives of this series on other routes?

 

Because it's their route?

 

If, as indicated in the other thread, the Ambassador streams for today have been cancelled due to issues with the route, how on earth does that inspire confidence to buy tomorrow? Is this going to be another rushed out faulty DLC waiting forever for fixes then quietly forgotten? Surely the gold version should have been locked down days ago?
What reassurance can you give, customers won’t be buying a lemon?

 

JT and TSG did not do such a stream, ATS got special permission from DTG. It's probably in the contracts that they are not allowed to do so (unless with specific permission)

 

My question is this as someone totally new to this route are there functioning level crossings and any level crossing/lineside signal boxes ?

 

Alan Thompson has apparently listened to MAC route criticism, which is good to hear from a third party developer. Watch the video on You Tube

Alan Thomson Sim responds to TSW5 criticism

 

Does MAC have Trophy support for the PS5? no patch has been download for it

 

Alan answered all of these questions on his stream. You should watch it.

 

The ambassadors never said they couldn't show it because of "issues" with the route..

The wrong version was uploaded on Friday and they are uploading the correct version this morning but it takes time and some ambassadors were scheduled to release videos prior to this being completed. Or may have pre recorded over the weekend.

 

Also: still missing the trophies for Frankfurt S-bahn.

 

I thought they would have sorted them by now. I dont think we are gonna get any.

 

Don't mean to sound childish but both version of there be-loved Thomas & his cronies got Trophy so why not MAC or Frankfurt S-bahn

 

They reckon its because ffs and mac are gen 9 only thats why.

 

Don't believe that its probably more to do with Sony limiting the amount of trophies they could have in any one game

 

So incompetence, then...

 

There are 85 trophies in TSW5 compared to 251 in TSW4 so it's definitely not that.

The biggest problem DTG face is that on Xbox there is only one list of achivements shared between Gen 8 and Gen 9, so if they publish achievements they risk upsetting Gen 8 players who won't be able to earn those achievements. This isn't a limitation on PlayStation, which has completely seperate trophy lists between Gen 8 and Gen 9 versions of the same game, or on PC where there aren't generations.

DTG have mentioned parity requirements from certain platforms so there is every chance they don't think they can put trophies on PlayStation if they can't put the same achievements on Xbox.

 

The thing is gen 8 user would not be able to download the gen 9 only dlc any so they know the cant achive them . So there shouldn't be a problem.

 

It's not about the user but how Microsoft implements it's policies. If TSW became a gen 9 only game then you wouldn't have this issue but as Matt has mentioned before they're not quite there with enough users shifting but I think DLCs like this and other limitations are potentially going to nudge it in a direction where this may happen with TSW 6 or 7.

 

No, you can fit way more trophies / trophy sets in the game than this. See TSW4. Plus, they were promised but never implemented.

 

Achievements are added to SteamDB weeks before a route releases, it's still not there so don't expect any achievements/trophies for MAC

 

I remember them saying they were gonna add them. But when was that supposed to happen.

 

Basically.

 

A few days after release of Frankfurt S-Bahn, there was a core game patch where the trophies were supposed to be added. (And, of course, should have happened in the core update before release in the first place)

 

Will Manchester Airport route be coming to ps4

 

For PS4/5, the base TSW5 SKU is shared between PS4/PS5 versions, so there is a singular trophy set. Since PS4 isn't gettig this DLC and thence is not getting trophies for the DLC (because they would be unobtainable), then neither will the PS5 version. Its possibily similar for the Xbone and XBS platforms

Above is hypothesis and not fact

 

If that is the case, it would be great if they communicated this. Not a big problem (to me), just be upfront about it.

 

Only correct for Xbox, PS4 and PS5 games are completely seperate entities, when you buy a game that runs on both you are buying a bundle of 2 different games, nothing is shared.

But yes, on Xbox if DTG pushed out the achievements to the players then anyone playing on Xbox One would have achievements that cannot be completed.

Pretty sure as the stream completely ignored everyone asking about achivements that we aren't getting any.