Feature Freight Hauler - Feedback Thread

For XSX, the Freight Hauler Tooltip does not work when set to "Scheduler." It does not show the status of the three nearest wagons when you press and hold the View button on the controller, or press T on a keyboard. It only shows the Freight Hauler Progress box, the same as if the tooltip was just set to off.

In addition, the camera movement is completely frozen when displaying the progress box. However, the camera rotation does still work in this situation. I will note that with the freight hauler tooltip set to on, the three closest wagons do correctly show up. Unfortunately the only mode that works is with the tooltip set to on, so the player must have the wagon displays on constantly or else must change the setting constantly.

Edit: the tooltip apparently does work as expected in scheduler mode on PC, so this may be a console- or Xbox-only problem.

 

PC: I found the tooltips on the wagons to be a bit too sticky in the UI, they would stick around whilst I was in the cab and when I went to photo mode. They weren't in the photo at least, but a bit distracting.

The mode definitely has great potential, but I think being able to tune your experience will be important. Tonight, I would have fancied doing say 11-12 wagons around a yard, on another day I might be more than happy to go from Neville Hill upto the quarry. I think being able to tune the desired length of session (and the number of wagons as a low/medium/high preference) would be great (1 hour is often plenty of me after work).

Definitely looking forward to seeing if this can be activated on routes like Crewe-Preston and MML!

 

My initial thoughts after 90 minutes on FTR, Series X...

I cycled reset about two dozen times to see how many cars I would get. The low was 29 cars and the high was 48. I would say the average was about 40. Even 29 cars is a lot when considering the amount of area covered by this route, and how big Hialeah Yard is. Number one, there definitely needs to be a slider to set the number of cars, and why not have a value of 1 to 50? It would also be great to be able to set the general areas where these cars will (or won't) appear, but first things first, we need a slider and we need it now.

Although I did encounter some loaded cars, most were empty. Even then, only the hoppers appeared to have loads. The boxcar, reefer, tank and center beam always appeared to be empty. Perhaps as I play more I will encounter more loaded vehicles, but it is something that should be looked at.

The AP acts in strange ways in this mode. You only get awarded AP if you have a route set; if no route is set no points are awarded. If a route is set, you get points for reaching your objective, but then if/when you set a new objective, your AP goes back to zero. So you can't earn AP in Freight Hauler, unless making a delivery counts but even after 90 minutes I am not close to that.

My recommendation is to use automatic switching for Freight Hauler combined with setting a path, even when moving around in yards because having all the switches set for you makes this much more doable. Also if in Europe I would strongly consider automatic coupling, which of course is not necessary for America.

I see a lot of promise for Freight Hauler but it has definite kinks to work out plus is not really manageable in its current state where you are guaranteed to be there for hours and hours. Some more customization would go a long way. I could even see a route that is primarily just for Freight Hauler and has lots of different cars with different liveries and all that. More feedback to come as I progress with this.

 

First attempt at using Freight Hauler, all was going fine at first and the mode definitely has promise. However during some movements I got the bug within Free Roam tools where you set a path, it creates a path through the signals and they correctly go green, but it doesn't create an objective marker to go with them. I moved through the signals anyway because they were open, but with there being no objective marker to read as having been reached/completed, the path couldn't 'close' afterwards.

This meant the wagons became stuck in a headshunt, the signal would never clear, and because the path was still present I was blocked from spawning in another loco to reach the wagons, and also could not route a loco from elsewhere into the headshunt due to, again, the old path still being present and the signal still remaining red. This is more of a Free Roam bug than a Freight Hauler bug perhaps (a bug which has existed since day one of Free Roam I might add...) but I mention it here because in my case it caused Freight Hauler to effectively become softlocked and impossible to complete.

 

PC
Firstly the scheduler tooltips option seems to be broken. The only way I could check the destinations was by opening the map

Secondly when I tried it out at Nürnberg RBF I spawned in a DB 193 and coupled up to the 13 wagons waiting for me, but when I released the brakes all of a sudden the middle of the train just exploded and derailed. Something similair also happened on the preview stream of Würzburg-Nürnberg so it might be the same problem.

 

PC: Had a few gos on the Airedale and Wharfdale route now and have not quite been able to complete a full "go" at this mode. The final attempt was my own doing going through a red...

The save game situation doesn't seem great with this mode - once the game has been saved it seems to forget its a freight hauler mode and now just acts like free roam. During the initial run, I also somehow managed to lose the "Ctrl+T" widget after changing loco, which I feel like I have to do in order to not have the issue of the path sticking to the loco+wagons when I uncouple.

It definitely feels like it has potential but theres a few bugs that I think would prevent me from trying it much more. The risk of it feeling like wasted effort after an hour (due to a bug) seems a little high at the moment.

One absolutely great thing about it is the licence it gives you to make your own formation and journey - I've never driven the 37/7 so much until this mode came along!

 

Some further observations on Series X, Tri-Rail route:

The save game for freight hauler does not seem completely reliable. When I went through an unavoidable derail (more on that in a moment), I had just saved because I thought it would be a SPAD (it was). But my save game reloaded quite a few save states back. As mentioned before, these sessions take a long time, so save game must work in this mode. It should really be looked at as soon as possible, even moreso than the player setting the number of wagons to start. If save game doesn't work with freight hauler, the whole mode will probably fail.

Also on loading a save, even when it does put you back into the correct time and place, the elapsed time always reverts to 0:00. However, the total distance travelled is retained properly. The timer will start again, but if you save and load again, it will return to zero.

I have completed a few deliveries now and you don't get any AP for that. So, at the end of my play session that lasts hours I will be looking at very little AP, since as mentioned it also resets to zero whenever you set a new path. Although AP is not integral to the sim experience, since DTG have made it a part of the game experience, there should be a better system in freight hauler than just bare minimum points for hours of driving.

Finally, the derails! They will let you into some sidings but then you will SPAD if you try to roll back over them the other way, even if you set a path and contact the dispatcher. The easy way to deal with this is to just abandon your consist and spawn a new one beyond the derail, but obviously this is something that needs to be corrected.

 

After extensive play I am sorry to report that, in its present state, freight hauler is too extensively broken to use. All play on Series X, Tri-Rail route.

The number one problem is pathing issues. Of course you need to set a path to get signals on the main line. Sometimes the game will let you do this even though a passenger train already has a path. This results in crossover switches that don't set for your route, and signals that don't clear even though your route is set through them. It's really hard to overcome these obstacles, even using all the tricks like deleting other trains, spawning new vehicles, etc. Plus it really detracts from the gameplay. The easiest solution would be to disable all layers for freight hauler, although that would take some of the fun away. Another solution could be to allow the player to change the states of signals and automatic switches, in freight hauler mode only. Or even if the game could let the player know that a route can't be set because another train has it, so you could wait or try something else. The way it is now, is untenable.

Changing signals would also help with the other major problem, the derails. Although these are more easily dealt with by spawning wagons to "straddle" the derails, they should really all be removed. Many of the sidetracks off the main don't have them in the first place. Who play tested this mode and thought the derails were a good idea and could stay? How did the Tri-Rail route, which was designed to be used with freight hauler, even end up with derails in the first place?

The final issue, which is not an explicit problem but exacerbates everything, is that the number of cars to sort, considering the distance covered, is too high. I started with only 13 cars, and after six hours and driving 106 miles, I had sorted 11 of them before getting stuck at a crossover that wouldn't change with a signal that wouldn't clear, an objective that couldn't be reached, and a path that could not be reset. Game over. For right now, if nothing else is changed, the player should at least be allowed to start with however few cars they want. At least then the playtimes would not be outrageous if an impossible barrier is encountered. Something else that would help is letting the player select the number of delivery zones, so they could be kept to a minimum as well. Currently, even absent other problems, playtimes can become very long even with 10-15 cars.

Immediate recommendations:
1) Disable all layers for freight hauler
2) Remove derails, and the red signals that are associated with the derails on the track map

Next step:
2) Let player select number of wagons

Future:
3) Let player select number of delivery zones
4) Enable player to change signals and automatic switches, or give player better information about pathing, so that passenger layers can be re-enabled

Known bugs:
1) Wagon destination cards do not display in scheduler mode (works on PC but not Xbox)
2) Camera movement freezes when freight hauler progress box is diplayed

Edit 3) Returning to a saved game resets the elapsed time counter in the progress box to zero

 

On a final note for right now, how about letting the player quit freight hauler at any time and seeing their final progress on a status screen, with percentage of cars sorted, time taken, and distance driven? Perhaps there could be a lifetime counter of totals for these, so at least if you bailed the progress you made could count for something. As it is now I don't know what happens when you complete a session, but of course if I complete a timetable service I get a forever record of what my score was and what medal I got, and lifetime total medal counts with the total distance driven on that route. There should be something like that for freight hauler too, although plainly it has to work correctly in the first place for any of that to matter.

 

If you wait for that train to pass you're usually the next train allowed through. As in after you set your path you join the queue, If there isn't a conflicting path you'll be let through immeadietly and if there isn't then you'll have to wait for the path to clear, but the route will then be allowed. I haven't played the Trirail route much so maybe the pathing for the AI is set up way further then it is on Würzburg, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

Most of the major problems for pathing are when you have set a route but another train has a route set coming towards you. Waiting for the train to pass would surely work, but there is no way of knowing another train is coming towards you until you get closer to it, and then it is already too late. As you say, the offending train can be quite far away, miles and miles away, and the game doesn't set any signals to make you wait or have any other way to let you know a train is in your path. You would have to search using the track map. The other thing is that with freight hauler in general we are already talking about something that is going to take hours to complete, so if know you have to wait 30 minutes for a train to pass, perhaps you will decide to approach your shunting differently.

The other problem is that, once your path is set, the oncoming train will usually end up at its own red signal, and must be removed. But removal doesn't always clear the signals and automatic switches that the offending train has set for its own path in the first place, and then what can you do? Spawn all kinds of extra stuff to manipulate signals and switches, which then messes with your own paths and objectives.

But, if you have found success and are actually able to complete a freight hauler session, I would be very grateful to know what strategies you used and if there was any sort of status screen or what happened!

 

The Live Map is essential in this mode, and in its current version it’s also the weakest link in the chain! I’m having massive problems with route planning on the Xbox. I can only set 3–4 routes before the Live Map stops working properly and won’t set any more routes. The only thing that helps is to save the game and reload the save file. Then only 2–3 route points work again, and the game has to be reloaded once more. I’ve been noticing this problem across several Core versions; it’s just that back then you could live with it. Now, however, you’re completely reliant on a functioning Live Map.

 

Here's a video of the end screen. Personally a bit of an anti-climax, but it's something

 

Wow, thanks for sharing! That sure is... something. I'm curious about the XP earned because for me the counter always resets to zero when I set a new path. Are points accumulating in the background, or is this just a case of no new paths having been set?

In any case, if this is going to be a serious part of them game, an overall/lifetime status screen, including the results for individual routes, would be something I would strongly encourage DTG to strive for.

 

I think they are stored in the background as I only have 65 AP in the video and previously used 2 other trains to move the rest of the cars