The Final Frontier For Tsw: Longer Routes?

IMO the Watford DC lines with hardy any WCML traffic wouldn't be good. North/West London Lines wouldn't be so bad as you're only missing noticeable AI traffic at Richmond and Stratford (still not ideal but at least that's not along the majority of the route).

 

DTG subconsciously tells us in many DLCs that 40 miles is the most ideal route in terms of time and length. Wish they had a long haul line in their annual plans.

 

Thankfully, dtg have slowly stopped doing this trend, we have gotten longer routes for the US and DE, just the uk is left

 

The problem is that it's much easier to make long routes for North America, with its vast expanses and few interruptions like station stops.

The UK has distance ( Southwest, North East, North West, Scotland ) but to make such routes requires more urban landscaping and lots of stations, whether you stop there or not.

( Actually I wouldn't mind a Scottish Far North route myself with loco- hauled, even steam trains but ain't gonna happen ).

So I see the problem for DTG in trying to make longer UK routes. More dev time, more expense and maybe higher prices. And higher prices do not go down well with this player base.

 

Most of the UK is countryside, unless you are talking about suburban routes. like the far north lines are mainly countryside mate, as soon as you get far enough away from london it just becomes countryside

 

Under the current circumstances, longer routes are unfeasible.
The save game system is a coin toss - you may complete the service and you may not. Therefore you pretty much have to complete a full service in one sitting and I am NOT going to dedicate a 3-5 hour session when I have something akin to 4 hours of free time after work.

This is a persistent issue for me, as the routes I like have services around 90-100 minutes. But every time I look at them, I go "Eh...too long". The solution would be splitting the services into smaller continuous chunks (Part 1 to N), similar to the services on Cajon.

For me, the future does not lie in longer routes (Kassel and Cajon are the longest right now and both are snooze-fests), but in networks. These would bring much more varied gameplay than a simple "A to B, but longer".

 

Save game is now pretty reliable. The only thing that doesn't seem to still work is if you want to chain runs together, take over another service then save and reload. 99% of the time it fails to load the clock and objective data in the top LH of screen or the lollipop if you have it activated. Silence from DTG on whether this is a "live" issue being looked at.

It would not be hard to find longer runs in the UK that wouldn't require complex infrastructure building or city placement. ECML north of Newcastle, Settle to Carlisle. Even Carlisle to Newcastle would be achievable. Cambrian Line whether Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth or along the coast from Mach to Pwllheli and as noted above many Scottish routes north of the central Lowlands. Even Aberdeen to Inverness is largely rural with a few small towns.

 

For the idea of a longer line, I was more concerned with a driving experience closer to the real world (I wanted to feel what it would be like to be a train driver in the real world). In the game, I am not very interested in the scenery from the outside perspective of the game, because the real game scenery cannot be replicated.

 

Years ago I would take the train up to North Bay from Toronto, about 350km. It would carry on to Timmins another 350km. There were a few small town stops on the way with mostly rural scenery. The train had to get out of the way for freight which made the ride even longer. This would make it a little less boring to drive. I'm sure there are other routes that do the same. Might be a way to break up the monotony of very long routes. 700km is crazy long, I know. Would still love to see some Canadian route love.

 

I feel the same. Time is hard to come by and if the save system was decent, I can save and come back to it. That was a regular thing in TSC. I think fixing that should be DTG priority before giving us long routes.

 

not only those, You can drive peterborough to newcastle as it’s over 200 miles and only has 11 stations inbetween

 

And that brings up the next biggest stumbling block for UK long routes.

Yes youve only 11 stations on that 200 mile stretch.

But you've also

LNER Azumas & Class 91's (Full Length)
XCountry Voyagers (both Class 220 & 221), HST's (North of Doncaster)
Transpennine Class 185's, Class 802 Nova 1 & Class 68/Nova 3 (North of York)
Grand Central Class 180's (South of Northallerton/Doncaster)
Hull Trains Class 802's (South of Doncaster)
Lumo Class 803 (Full length)
East Midland Class 158's (South of Grantham)
Northern north of Darlington and between Selby and York

Thats a lot obviously some will be missed out but you'd still probably need 3 or 4 TOCs to avoid having a sections of the route resembling a ghost line.

 

Hull Trains, TPE and Lumo are owned by first, who also own GWR and Avanti WC which we already have in train sim, so i’m assuming it’s not out of the reality for those TOCs to be added in TSW, LNER is owned by DfT who also own the EMT license (which is coming to TSW) as well as the northern license , the EMR license might be a bit more difficult because it’s owned by stagecoach and also the XC because i’ve been told TSW can’t seem to get the XC license

 

Track length and stations isn't the only thing that goes into route building. It's also building the whole timetable service by service and testing it all works. Longer routes means longer test times to run the whole simulation. And that's done after every couple of services that get added.

Even if dtg had the right licenses, they have to build brand new trains and it's not possible to have like 10 different trains per route (exaggeration but you get the point)

It's also not only 200 miles and 11 stations. It's building everything in between. If autogen was perfect and recreated 1:1, then yea, not a lot of time to be spent. But that's not how it works does it. Lots of things have to be manually placed by hand and built manually. That means possibly over a year of work and no other releases. Players also want as realistic and accurate detail as possible. How do you expect dtg to build 200 miles of track with almost a 1:1 representation of the scenery and every single landmark and a busy timetable with lots of trains in a given timeframe while player expectations are extremely high. Dtg need to earn money and if they spend too long, they're earning nothing in the process.

 

I don't think anyone would expect every landmark on a long route, although enough landmarks have been left out of 40 mile routes so not sure what difference it makes. I think most players would accept that not every train would be included, certainly not from the off, obviously some licences might not be possible. I am sure most of us would be happy to see extra DLC. There are plenty of trains missing from shorter routes too.

I don't see the problem with having one or two longer term projects (longer routes) amongst the shorter routes we have. Personally I think there should be a mix, also more network types are definitely needed, I think 30 mile straight line routes are the ones that go stale the quickest.

Personally I get a bit fed up with having short sections of fast mainline. The new MML route won't have a very long stretch for the HST, the only other route we have the HST on is GWML which is over in a flash. Is something like Bristol to Exeter, Birmingham to Bristol, York to Newcastle totally beyond the bounds of expectations now.

The calls for longer routes will just grow louder. I don't think anyone expects every route to be 100 miles or more, that would be silly and I wouldn't want that as I think there is a lot of value in shorter routes but most route releases are as short as they were four years ago.

 

As has been pointed out already, routes longer than 40-50 miles are feasible for many players ( like me ) only if the save game feature is reliable. It still needs more work apparently. So until then, longer routes would be a questionable proposition.

 

i agree, fair enough a 200 mile route might be a bit long , but a 100 mile on the other hand is surely more realistic

 

Have always wanted to do Aberdeen to Edinburgh so that both the iconic Tay and Forth bridges could be drove over. Bring in a new vehicle in the class 170 alongside HST and class 66 for freight. I know 3 trains from 3 different companies could be a headache.

 

I agree with you and this was the whole point of my original post. There are tons of options for people who enjoy the shorter routes and the 30-60 minute runs, but there is a true lacking of options for longer runs. No one says that everyone has to like and buy the long routes as it certainly isn't everyones cup of tea. However, for those of us who want some longer routes, it would simply be nice if the option to have them was there.

 

I travelled on ECML this weekend, Newcastle to Edinburgh and back. The only stop in between that LNER service made was Berwick. Would be great to get this section of the ECML in TSW3. Would need a few other TOC’s to make it realistic however the main operator is LNER using the class 80x, LUMO and Transpennine both use the 80x on the route. Youd need a cross country voyager and maybe a few at some point and a few Scotrail services but with Edinburgh Waverley already made, surely this route must be in the thoughts of DTG It’s mostly countryside in between. A big chunk of it is along the coast and you’d think this wouldn’t take as much time to create as it doesn’t need to be detailed. The trains would take a while but LNER alone is most of the traffic on the route.

 

my point exactly, most uk routes are 80% countryside 20% suburban, unless you are talking about metros and local commuters

 

What are the 3 most anticipated routes this year? I don't know when SKY will hold the "Soldier Mountain Summit" in the United States.