(poll) Coupling The Coupler And Air Brake Hoses Should Be A Separate Action.

I will structure my suggestion is the following way

1. The basic premise of this suggestion.
2. Why I would like to see this happen, and what it adds to the game.
3. How I would realistically see this feature implemented from a practical standpoint.

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1. The basic premise.

I think it would be great if connecting the couplers did not automatically also attach the air brake hoses, and possibly, if applicable, also the power cable e.g. on passenger wagons and locomotives.
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2. Why I would to see this happen, and what it adds to the game.

A) What it adds to the game.

It is my firmly held opinion that TSW2 gameplay would benefit greatly from such a small feature as it currently is a little bit too simple if you'd ask me.
To be more precise, there is currently too little room for mistakes.
By separating these two actions during coupling where possible, and properly simulating the consequences, you're introducing a new element to coupling that adds depth to the game.
Mostly, you're adding meaning to checking your train before setting off.

Before, although you're encouraged to by most tutorials and scenario's, doing your brake checks means nothing other than role-play. Everything that could be wrong is fixable in less than 30 seconds without leaving the cab. Now, it could actually mean something.

Moreover, when you're playing for example an American freight train, not being able anymore to just collide into carriages when shunting to then only having to wait a few seconds till the brake force is equalized properly and being good to go would add realism.
If you want to do everything quickly, you can still do it with one of the outside camera's of course, but if you like realism, driving HUD less and without external camera's other than for screenshots, having to actually get out, check your train, and attach brake hoses gives the game immersion.

Furthermore, it adds some form actual utility to trailing carriages that have their own gauges.
One example that comes to mind would be the newly added cabooses on Clinchfield, or the InterCity carriages added along with the DB BR101, although admittedly, there are no scenarios (as far as I have seen, but I could be wrong) where those IC coaches need to be assembled, or where the BR101 does a runaround and needs to couple on again.
Especially with the cabooses, you could easily check if all your brakes are working by applying or releasing your main brake while viewing the caboose's gauge to see if your input reaches across the whole train or is interrupted somewhere.

B) Why I think this feature is important .

An important factor too is that not noticing, or forgetting a disconnected brake hose, adds danger and consequences to making mistakes. Something of which at this point there is in my honest opinion too little of in TSW2 currently.
Leaving a brake hose disconnected in the middle of a freight train means you're only going to have access to half your braking force, which, when going down a gradient, will be felt, and will have dire consequences.
Another damning scenario that could play out with this feature is, when coupling only a few extra cars at the back during assembly, you're not going to notice it when you start driving if you forget to connect those up. But if you haven't checked your brakes, and you then need to change ends with your cab, you are going to haul a train that is practically brakeless.

To summarize; adding this danger to forgetting, or not noticing a disconnected air brake hose, gives the game more realism, and gives meaning to actually checking your train properly before you set off.
This in turn makes driving assembled trains more rewarding, especially when you did the assembling yourself.

On the flipside of it being rewarding when successful, being punished for mistakes should be more part of the game, and is also part of the fun when you get it right after failing.
As you could do it the fast way by having your camera mode ready when coupling, I don't think doing this would compromise too much on the difficulty of driving a train, and something most people who play more casually and aren't prepared (Sam/Col. Failure ) are only going to forget a few times before learning to check their train properly.

The following video may be a tragedy, but a mistake like that could never happen in TSW2, where I think it should be possible. Especially on Clinchfield I think there is great potential to make mistakes like this.


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How would I see this feature realistically implemented in-game from a practical standpoint?

A) Air brake hoses.

There are two ways I could see this implemented.

1. We can grab the air brake hoses the same way we can grab the fuel hoses, and by dragging them towards each other, or a center point where they'd connect, they snap into place.
   Also, in terms of game mechanics, just like the fuel hose, if you forget to detach the air brake hose after detaching the couplers, it just snaps loose after driving away, and of course, depending on what would happen in real life, it would automatically trigger an emergency brake on both ends.
   
   
2. After the couplers are connected, you can proceed to click on one of the hoses and all the cables will snap into place, and when decoupling, if you forget to disconnect the hoses and cables before uncoupling the couplers, they automatically detach.

I would like 1 best, but I think option 2 would be the most likely way they'd implement it.
Either way, I do think it would be best that you only need to drag or click 1 cable, in case the train has multiple ones in order to connect them all.
It should still be fun, and if you need to connect or disconnect every single cable individually that would probably get a bit too tedious in some cases.
Although possibly too it could be done where ones that are close together, like for example, on American and British locomotives there's 3 little air hoses on both sides which are I think for the independent brake, and the middle one that's for the main brake, and somewhere depending on the locomotive there's the power cable(s). So to couple up two US locomotives for example, would take 5 steps (taking into account my optional suggestion I'm making in the paragraph below).

1. Couple up.
2. Attach main air brake hose.
3. Attach independent air brake hose set left or right.
4. Attach the other independent air brake hose set.
5. (optional, depending on your stance on point B) attach power cables.

B) Power cables.

This is optional, as I have included it in the poll anyway as a suggestion.
Although I just said that I think that through whatever way this mechanic is implemented, multiple cables and hoses should probably be connected all at once, perhaps it could be interesting if, because they have different functions and consequences, connecting power cables too is separated from connecting air brake hoses.

Failing to connect those could mean not having that second engine to help pull a heavy train, or in the case of a passenger train, either an unlit train, or if it's pushing, not having the pushing locomotive respond because it's not getting any input.

Either way, if power cables should be separate or not, I'm not sure.
It would create even bigger depth to the possibility of forgetting those too when appropriate, but at the same time, it may be the case that that could be taking things a little too far in terms of making coupling tedious.
Although one argument for it would be that unless you're assembling a passenger train, you aren't going to need to connect power cables nearly as much as you need to with air brake hoses.

Personally I would make them separate as well, but that's my personal opinion.

C) Biggest expected hurdles.

1. Difficulty with AI
   I am expecting the biggest hurdle to implement this properly would be to "teach" the AI to also attach these cables independently.
   Especially if DTG were to go the extra mile to try and get the AI to leave the air brake hoses disconnected while shunting on certain routes in certain set times where such practices are/were done. Though it would be another reason to doublecheck your train beforehand to see if the AI did properly attach cables.
   
   One thing I would definitely not want to see in order to circumvent this issue though would be to turn attach brake hoses into an objective on the timetable's objectives chart that comes after coupling.
   This would take away part of why I want this feature, to be able to forget it, allowing for mistakes.
   
   
2. Low popular support
   Although I am convinced this is not just a greatly appreciated, but almost a necessary one for this game to really be a simulator, I can see some people not liking the idea or thinking it would scare away the more casual players. This could scare DTG into not doing it in fear of backlash if they don't implement it correctly, or make it too tedious, facing community backlash over it.
   
   Or that they would be afraid too many people would forget it if they don't also do what I mentioned in my earlier point what I specifically did not want to see happen.
   My workaround for this would be add a tutorial for every route on coupling on locomotives and carriages of both the freight and passenger variety for every route and train type.
   Like how the power cables on the IC carriages are actually inside the gangway connection and on German loco's it's often on the nose, under the driver's windshield, whereas on most British and American locomotives and carriages they are usually lower, at around the same place as the brake hoses are, either on the sides or in the middle.
   
   
3. Difficult to program/no time to create this all on the side of DTG
   I doubt this would be too difficult to implement, as carriages that don't have the needed cables and hoses, coupled in between carriages that do have them, already interrupt the air flow for the independent brake to carriages following, as well as interrupting the electric input to trailing carriages and locomotives behind them.
   You'd think it's not impossible to condition this already existing functionality on whether or not they're appropriately connected for it.
   However it should be considered that however much I think TSW2 needs this function, I doubt it would have a high priority for DTG, and so even if they do put it on the roadmap, even then it could take a year or more to have this fully implemented. Especially because this would require adding this functionality to all existing rolling stock in order to work.

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Anyway, I'd love to see this, and I think it should have some priority in fact.
I'd love to hear what you guys think!

Let me hear, and don't forget to vote!

Good day all!

(edit: spelling error)

 

This would work best as an Optional setting so that way a casual player can still play without having to couple airhoses and pipes

 

I definitely agree.
I had thought about that, but ended up forgetting to put that part in, probably under the

part

I fear though that making it optional in settings would be very difficult for DTG to actually program in.
Although if they were to make it anyway, as I described, and with the setting turned off, it just prompts to automatically attach or detach all possible hoses and pipes on coupling or uncoupling, that should de facto mean you play like it doesn't exist.
Although even than the hoses and cables are still interactable, but that should be fine whether you use them or not I think.

 

It would certainly add additional elements to the gameplay.

 

You could go one step further and implement what happens in Run 8 if you immediately open the angleocuk fully - the PCS pops. You need to half open until the air flow slows down and stabilises.
Doing the coupler and air hoses is also a feature in Derail Valley.

 

And rightly so, cause doing that wrong, or forgetting it at all, is an easy way to derail... into the valley... in Derail Valley
Ba dum tss

 

Yes yes yes. I would love to have this be a part of the game. It would be nice to have this be an optional function. Doesn't TS have a "automatic coupling" setting in the you can turn on and off in the settings menu?

 

As I can’t envisage this ever working in a satisfactory way (see refuelling or ethanol loading) and not being a feature that many would stick with for long or even want in the first place, I think the amount of work it would need (on every wagon, loco, carriage, applicable timetable service and scenario) would largely be wasted. I’m almost shivering with fear at the prospect of all the bug reports it would result in. I voted No.

No extended specific analysis of why I don’t think it would work well in TSW or whether it would cause more hassle than it’s worth but it would be worth noting how much forum time is taken up with the current set-up of US locos and the flawed system of banking comms, the fact that the devs have forgotten/failed to have the banking comms working in the last two DLC it was needed in, and the broken ethanol loading feature that AI trains can’t even do and you will easily see how I came to that conclusion.

As far as I can tell the current coupling system largely works. I think that is a good reason to let it be.

 

I recall one of the streams Matt saying that currently the anglecocks are actionable, they just have them restricted. Why 4 years in this simulator still feels like a toy is beyond me. I'm sure it's all already modeled in the air system (probably not power). Having the option of prototypical or beginner would move this 'game' into the realm of being a simulator.

 

couplers, air brake hoses, and power cables should all be separate. I would go full Derail Valley on this. Keep you on your toes all times

 

Yes, I fully support the idea!
The implementation of brake systems will allow performing shunting hump operations. Makes the driver's work more realistic.
And finally, it will transfer TSW2 to the category of a railway simulator, and not the arcade, which it is now.

 

I agree totally because the air & brake system is modeled well in tsw2.

But unfortunately coupling of uk trains is always a random thing which hoses are connected etc. 2 blue star locos usually connected with all hoses (dual). Many times the main reservoir is missing etc, so yes if dtg could make this in the way suggested, it would be a big improvement.

 

Excellent idea and when it comes to German locomotives some of them such as DB BR151 DB BR189s use C-Akv couplers with Faals Falrrs Iron Ore wagons. DB BR189 C-Akv couplers has a Chain mounted to it therefore the correct procedure is switch to chains then couple to the wagon tighten the chains the final part should be connecting the brake lines then do brake test otherwise you will have a runaway train issue.