I've noticed that the point system in TSW4 gives your penalty for being too early at a station. This seems backwards to me, because even if you are say like 2min early according to a time table you are still going to stay at the station and wait until the timetable says it's time to depart. So basically passengers just get more time to board. So now if you want to get all of the available points and you are running bit early you need to stall and keep moving until you are arriving in +/- 30secs of the timetable. In TSW3 you would only lose points for being late not early. I don't know if this is intentional but just saying that it sounds idiotic in my mind. But maybe it's just me I don't know.
I don’t take any notice of the points system, but in real life a Driver should aim to drive their train in its path - not just drive as fast as they can. If you’re arriving early in stations you’re using up more fuel/electricity than necessary - which costs money, and harms the environment - and you’re also likely to be getting in the way of other trains (i.e. you’re in their path, so they’re getting signal checks they should not be getting) which increase safety risk, wear on brakes and potentially makes those other trains late. For that reason, you should aim to run on time - not early, or late. Having said that, without any kind of Driver Advisory System, trying to judge precisely enough to arrive at a station exactly on time is extremely difficult, and being a little early is preferred to being late. Therefore, a minute or so early would be considered fine. Much more than that (certainly if done regularly) and questions would be asked. This doesn’t mean you need to just stop outside the station until arrival time. It means you should use your knowledge of the route and schedule to drive in a manner which conserves energy and path for the whole journey from the previous station. TSW helps you do that by telling you the distance and time to the next stop. Remembering that 60mph is 1 mile per minute and making rough calculations in your head from there can help you to drive at an appropriate speed. You don’t have to drive at line speed all the time. If you judge that you’ve got time in hand, shut off power and coast. In particular, if there’s a speed restriction or station ahead, shut off power earlier and allow inertia to reduce the speed of the train for a while before commencing your braking. You’re saving energy, reducing wear on brakes and other equipment and - if you judge it correctly - keeping your train in its path. On schedules where the timings aren’t particularly tight, this is a very interesting aspect of train driving.
Yeah the new stop at location scores are all over the place, but honestly it doesn’t matter, as long as you actually stop where you’re supposed to & complete the service. It seems you’d have to actually try to get worse than platinum.
You should only be penalised for leaving early. Nothing you can really do about arriving early. Does seem backwards to penalise for that.
It's disheartening to see the whole early/late topic resurfacing tbh. I'd hoped the scoring system would be weighted more towards safety with use of hud scaled in effectively. If you use the hud it should be impossible to get platinum, possibly even gold, and route knowledge should be rewarded in a meaningful sense by having to learn the route and drive it safely and well. Hopefully it'll evolve to become something to encourage more looking out the window and knowing the route rather than driving the hud.
Use of the HUD should not prevent a platinum. Some of the information within the train cab is hard to see and the HUD is needed to see it.
In some cabs it’s hard to see precisely what speed you are going. Especially playing on a TV across a room on PS5. You might have a different experience, but I know I’m not alone.
Timeliness should be based on departure not arrival, locking the doors any period of time before the scheduled departure should result in zero score for punctuality, as in real life not letting passengers board a train they were on time for would certainly cause more complaints from passengers than the train leaving a couple of minutes late.
Actually that's exactly what they do in my area, served by GWR. They even have announcements and notices that they'll be closing doors early to ensure an on time dept. From memory it's 30 secs prior but of course in the current industrial landscape it's all gone a bit ropey recently.
And there are many, many reasons why someone would end up early... You could in fact be going slower to avoid 1000hz magnets and end up early anyway. That's another reason why you SHOULD be early, so that they can pass while you are at the station and NOT get 1000hz on the main line... however, communication is key here.
