Ok... so after quite some time, new US Freight released, 90s era... maybe it will be cool to visit... but let's wait for reviews... which turned out catastrophic... but one point stuck with me and I would love to explore it a bit more. I will borrow a screenshot from Schnauzahpowahz video to illustrate this. HIS mentioned time and time again there are 250 services on the route, which for a freight route sounds pretty good... but as the screenshot shows, that is not exactly the case as they are split into up to 4 parts, usually 3. So the real number of trains goes down drastically. This is nothing new, but to this extent it is pretty wild and it brings me to my point: STOP bloating the service number! Yes, the big number is a great sales pitch, but it is pretty much a lie. The only reason where I would see this being fair use is when the train would have an actual long stopover... which doesn't really happen since we don't have single-track freight routes (apart from the dust-covered CRR). Officially, it's split because "people don't like to play long services". This wouldn't be an issue if you FIXED the savegame in the first place, because I could simply save and continue next time... Also it creates the annoying bit for those who DO want to play long services, where you have to go through the final screen multiple times during the drive and wait for artificially set starter times of the next part. And that's before you start with the depot moves on some routes... because of the technological debt of TSW, the AI can't simply change cabs on a train and therefore you have depot moves split into numerous parts, some 1 minute long, because the service has to end and get restarted if AI needs to "get" to the other side of the train. I've seen a 7-part depot move that would normally take like 20 minutes. Both of these, however, add to the service number and nobody gives a second thought to maybe not including them in the big number... because the big number sells. So this might be screaming into the void, but DTG et.al., please... when mentioning the service number, give us an actual number of train services, not chopped up gameplay pieces you've created.
^^^^^^ WRT to the save game as mentioned above, this is exactly where more than one slot would come in handy. You could start your two and a half hour run on Cajon. Save. Do a run on ECML which you also need to save, then pick up Cajon in another session.
I see your point but this time I think the adding of shorter services on the complete route service is fine. I'm not that interested in the save game, but that is just me, so this way I have the possibility to choose a shorter service. Besides that I'm on your side, that the adding up to get a high number of services is a little bit missleading.
I hate it when they split a job into 3 or 4 services. I think it just be split into 2 parts and some full length jobs. More save slots would give us the opportunity to save the longer jobs and come back to them if we wanted to.
What weird, is I don't even think there is 1 full run on the entire timetable when I looked over it before I refunded.
As disappointing as the pack turned out to be, this is the least of its problems imo. I like that the longer services are broken up precisely because the save feature doesn't work, and also, sometimes i only want to play a shorter session. Clicking through a "continue to free roam" box isn't a big deal imo.
To be clear, it's not the save function itself that's the problem. I can interrupt a session and resume it without an issue. What's missing are multiple saves, which would enable you to interrupt one run, play another and then save your progress in both. This is a function that was available all the way back in MSTS with even more functionality. Unfortunately, this has gotten the dreaded " silent treatment " from DTG and is very unlikely to appear any time soon, if ever. You have to assume that not only is it low priority, but somehow the skill-set required to implement it is missing.
Sadly, without being negative towards Matt P., this is another example where something was picked up as being "passed to engineering", followed by an extended silence, then when pressed on the matter in the run up to TSW6 he finally conceded it had been graded as low priority. Not saying it should take precedence over sorting out blurry textures etc., but it is a pretty key feature in a product which has in excess of 60 routes to choose from, many of which require an hour or more to complete some scenarios or longer runs.
I'm not interested in game saves and I'm fine with services being split like that for reasonable times, but it would be nice if we had option to just turn off the evaluation whatsoever. Just like in most other sims, from omsi to zusi. I don't care for the evaluation at all, it will either be perfect or I will know what I did wrong even without it, and especially I don't need giant red signs for "your AFB-led train oversped here for 1 km/h, boooo!". Let me turn those off, and if there is a following service, just seamlessly give me new orders. But oh, that is broken anyways -- when I remain in the train, I will just get all-completed list from the previous service.
Splitting up a single route can make it easier to just pick up and play, but maybe there should be an option for the player to run the whole route if they want to? This start/stop can ruin a nice flow of play and is it needed? I am currently working through Cathcart timetable and that has a few drive a train 10 meters to get a medal, rather than just bolting it on to a service? Multiple trains, multiple routes, multiple countries....one save slot???
