Not a fan if I'm honest as I try to drive as efficiently as possible, so always aim to arrive on time rather than early. But with your method I'd always be late leaving. As a side note I understand Amtrak only pick up passengers at the stations on West bound runs between Boston and Providence with no set downs and vice versa eastbound. Don't know if this is possible in game? Also eastbound I believe they are (or were) permitted to leave early (as not picking it). Would be great if this was incorporated in game
Does the Amtrak timetable only include departure times, no arrival times? I know that MTA and LIRR timetables for example show both arrival and departure times, which makes it easier to copy. What about the MBTA timetable? Anyway, if the Amtrak timetable only shows departure times, then I suppose the arrival times in game should be a minute before?
I'd also like to add that you shouldn't have to wait unessacrily. You should be able to depart when passengers are boarded and you have extra time. This would, of course depend on the station and how busy it is irl.
Well, irl the drivers also need to wait, until the official departure time. You are not just allowed to run 5min early, just because. I personally still think that irl arrival times and departure times are the best option.
I just checked the Amtrak site for that service (yours has different times, so I don't know, if you have used an older timetable, or if tomorrow, there is something special on the route). But here you can see arrival and departure times. You can see, that in both intermediate stations, there is 1 minute difference between arrival and departure. For me, these are the timings that should be used in-game. So, for example Route 128: Arrival: 5:18 Departure: 5:19 But I think, that you should not be penalized up to 60s (30s at the moment). So, for me in-game, it should be: Arrival: 5:18:00 Departure: 5:19:00 Edit: Just checked another service. For this one, stopping is shorter in Boston Back Bay, and longer in Route 128. So for this service, you arrive 6:06 and load, and after that you can leave, but if you are early, you still need to wait until 6:06 before leaving. Route 128 on the other hand in this example has 2 minutes stopping time, so you should wait until 6:16 before leaving. But if you are late, you should not necessarily need to wait 2 min, but just the time for everyone to get on board. So for me it should be: Boston Back Bay: Arrival: 6:06:00 Departure: 6:06:00 Route 128: Arrival: 6:14:00 Departure: 6:16:00 And as I said before, imho, you should only get penalized for being more than 60s off, not 30s, like it is now.
I still think setting the passenger loading time to 5 or 10 seconds (so you’re not forced to wait if late) and having the correct arrival and departure times is the best approach. If it means waiting a couple of minutes, then that’s realistic - we just have to slow down if we don’t want to twiddle our thumbs before departure.
I don't have working timetables for this time period, just these public ones. Just so you know, if you're on time you aren't losing points for the arrival and departure objectives. For example the departure time at Back Bay is set for 05:05:00 and I completed the loading objective (doors closed) at 05:06:06 and got the full 500 points.
In any case, what I posted was just an experiment. I'll keep playing around with other options and let you know the results. Thanks for the feedback so far!
I think action point deductions for lateness should be removed altogether. Especially in cases where lateness was caused by a safety system at some point before stopping or a red signal or stopped train. This happens very frequently on many services. Why should the player be penalized for a lateness that might not have been their fault? If this can't be done, even penalizations for latenesses more than 5 minutes instead of only 2 minutes would be much better. Gives more wiggle room, especially in services where you are chasing signals or waiting for a platform to be clear.
well, if they are early, they need to wait until the official publicised departure time. (You can't leave early, as people might still come to take the train. Your example of 5 min is a lot). Only difference I know of, is in Switzerland Stops on Request. If the train is more than 30s early, it needs to stop an wait until official departure time, even if there is no one there, as people might still show up. Only 30s before departure time, they may pass without stopping and waiting.
I agree, that there needs to be some changes for the action points, as especially on older routes, if you are playing with safety systems, it is often very hard/impossible to stay on time. But as newer routes tend to use more real life timings, that does not apply any more. There should be some reward for staying on time, and not running whenever you want. I remember that not that long ago, some companies still had rewards for drivers, who achieved to reduce lateness in their trains. But I agree, the game should give a little more than the 30s as tolerance. I would advocate for 1min or 1:30min.
From what I saw, when playing the game, the game gives you the action points only after completing the loading objective, but I think it takes the arrival time into consideration for the amount of points? At least that is what I get when trying (arriving on time, but closing doors 3 min late, I still got 500 AP).
It seems to me that currently points for arrivals are based entirely on stopping distance, not time. Time instead is counted on loading: did you complete the cycle by the scheduled departure time?
when arriving, you get points for stopping points. when closing doors, you get the other points, but they seem to only be counted for arrival time. When I arrive on time, and close doors 3min, I still get 500 points.
Brandon, do you have access to the employee timetable, I believe that they do include an arrival time for the trains. The public tt usually only shows the departure time, except at major terminals, so its hard to go off of.
And as I mentioned, the flip side is that they will presumably have policies for how long the doors should be opened for when running late. These could be used as a basis for creating arrival times when the timetables don't specify them.
At the moment the highest ranking question in the questionnaire is to round to the next minute. Here is a picture of a German EBuLa timetable, which shows that this would simply not be realistic. In Germany the timetable is usually rounded to 10 seconds: (not my picture, Original can be found here: https://bahnblogstelle.com/lexikon/awb-symbol/)
Completely agree, and I think if DTG are gonna insist on having a scoring system I feel like it should be way more focused on encouraging safe driving instead of keeping to time. Give the player points for doing things like slowing down for yellow signals, proper braking, or keeping your entire train on the platform (Yes I know it already does this, but I don't feel it's implemented well). If I were to be a bit bold how about scoring the player based on using safety systems as well? You can keep them off if you just want to have fun, maybe even still score a bronze if you play well. But make so that if you want those gold medals you actually have to turn them on and learn how to drive properly. I know this is almost certainly well beyond what Cactusjuice can do, but I think it's worth bringing up regardless. The scoring system is idiotic as is, a simple principal of game design is you use the elements of your game to nudge the player toward what you want them to do, And I don't feel the current scoring systems does a good job nudging new players toward the sim aspects, if anything it does the opposite.
As a tube driver irl, I must say LU run their timetables to 15 second intervals so for the Bakerloo line that would be realism, anywhere else I feel that to the minute or half minute is acceptable.
But on the other hand, I was under the impression that LU WTTs do not contain times for most stops, so those would have to be calculated for TSW.
I like a lot of these ideas personally, but can you imagine the firestorm if they locked gold medals behind using the safety systems??? Holy cow it would be a conflagration for sure!! The X% (and i wouldn't be surprised if it's at least double-digits) who play the game solely for achievements would be livid lol
The safety systems aren't even that hard to deal with once you understand them. Especially the dumber types like AWS in the UK or the alerters in US diesels, but I wouldn't call more advanced systems that difficult either. It certainly would be easier than keeping to overly strict timetables that's for sure.
Having a working (dynamic) timetable would be more true to real life operations. On some lines if you are delayed they have you skip stations to catch up to the static timetable. Dwell time could definitely be adjusted based on how late or early you are. This would also allow a pathway to have OPTIONAL random events that slow or stop the train without penalizing the player for encountering it through scoring or delays. Of course this also relies on a dispatcher that doesn't break when trains run late so for now wishful thinking...
Considering the game already supports any form of rounding, it's just up to the timetable in question. This thread mostly talks about the Boston timetable, which should only use minutes. But it would already be entirely possible to round to 15 seconds or 10 seconds as well, if the timetable creators wanted to.
I chose both arrival times close to the timetable and looser because that will reflect difficult Rush Hour scenarios
