Info Br101 Expert: Some Clarification

I'm one of the developers of the BR101 Expert DLC, so I thought I'd clarify some misunderstandings that I've seen on the forums since the Live Article was released, and answer some questions I've seen brought up.

TL: DR
- You can drive the IC cab car in the timetable on two routes, and the BR 101 Expert on five routes.
- Randomly occurring faults are enabled by default in Expert mode in timetable services and free roam.
- Suspension will not work at initial release, but is planned for a future update.
- The cab car is compatible with the Vectron, BR111, the ÖBB Taurus and the BR218 (at non-Expert level).
- The BR101 Expert is compatible with the original IC coaches and DB Dosto coaches (at non-Expert level).


1. The fault simulation is automatically enabled in timetable mode and free roam as long as Expert mode is enabled. You can disable it whenever you want, and you can also enable the fault simulation in normal mode (but it will be disabled by default there). By fault simulation I mean randomly occurring faults, that's not to say that the scenarios might not have faults occur as well

There is a "Chaos Factor" setting that at the default value simulates realistic probabilities of faults occurring (and different faults have different probabilities), but it can be increased quite a bit if you want an "interesting" drive.

2. The fault simulation is available on both the BR101 Expert and the IC cab car.

3. Safety systems are disabled by default in normal mode and enabled by default in Expert mode. They can be isolated or re-enabled. This process is more complicated in the IC Expert vehicles than other TSW locomotives however, just keep that in mind

4. There will be a manual.

5. The cab car will be compatible with the Railpool Vectron, DB BR111, ÖBB 1116 and DB BR218 on release, more are probably compatible but I have not tested these yet. This compatibility is at a "non-Expert level" which means that you can do the normal stuff like control doors, traction, train lights, pantograph, main circuit breaker and train line (when applicable) but some of the special indicators or switches that require jumper cable signals will not function since the jumper cable signals required for these only exist on the Expert vehicles. Mixing the cab car with old IC coaches is not supported.

6. The BR101 Expert is compatible with most other locomotives (at least the Railpool Vectron, old DB BR101, DB BR111, DB BR218 etc). However, the coaches may need to be broken up by a non Expert coach at release due to the locomotive not detecting all older locos (some have incompatible setup that makes them invisible). This will hopefully be fixed in the upcoming patch. The compatibility is at a "non-Expert level". For example the MU control (like ZDS or ZMS) pantograph selection will not work on the rear-non Expert locomotives (since they lack this capability). Certain MU indicators in the cab of the BR101 Expert will be missing (again since the older locos do not have this data).

7. Suspension is not included with the initial release. I made the decision to wait for the suspension physics, in the core game, to be finalized before implementing these on the locomotive and the coaches/cab car. The reason for this, is that suspension is, in my experience, something that can be very much "uncanny valley" and divisive, so it needs to be "perfect" before it get's added to the vehicles.

8. On initial release the doors will open by themselves when unlocked and a platform is adjacent (and the doors that are opened are randomly selected as to simulate passengers opening the doors rather than all being opened, and at the same time). But, the doors still need to be closed by the driver, as in other German locomotives in TSW.

I'm working on making this more realistic for a future patch. What this would mean is that the "virtual conductor" would use the UIC-key (which is implemented and simulated) somewhere in the train to send a door lock signal that closes all the doors, and then send a signal to the driver.

9. The IC cab car, Bpmmbdzf Expert, is drivable in two timetables: Nahverkehr: Dresden - Riesa and Bahnstrecke: Salzburg - Rosenheim.

However, at the day of launch the BR101 Expert locomotive substitutes on three additional routes: Bahnstrecke: Bremen - Oldenburg, Tharandter Rampe: Dresden - Chemnitz and Schnellfahrstrecke: Kassel - Würzburg.

The 3 remaining routes where the original BR101 layers on (Hauptstrecke Rhein-Ruhr, Hauptstrecke: Hamburg-Lübeck and Schnellfahrstrecke: Köln-Aachen) did not have substitution enabled on the BR101. I can't promise if/when this will be fixed, at this time.

The IC cab car requires a duplicate timetable to be drivable, and this means significantly more work than allowing substitution of the original BR101 with the BR101 Expert, so we had to pick and choose.

If an additional timetable was duplicated for the IC cab car to be drivable in the future, which one would you want?

 

This is my big concern going forward. Is this not going to be a massive inconvenience when creating timetables on future routes? I can't help but feel the original 101 needs to be updated to include the cab car so the expert can sub easily in future. Plus, isn't the expert 101 too expensive to be used as AI? I think I recall that being mentioned on stream? So will that mean we would never see the cab car as AI unless the original 101 set was updated to include it?

 

Well that explains a few things. Thank you.

 

The original post should be pinned (at least for the time being).

 

That's why dtg explained in a roadmap stream that they would try to create duplicate timetables if possible but if not, it's not going to have one

 

I think on HHR but i'm still think HRR need a extansion and HMA for sure but it's (impossible so RIP)

 

the updated SKA timetable by Joethefish of course. preferably on all the routes. but with no preservation crew I don't see that as an option. god bless developer timetable projects and mods

 

also. question. there are no 101 services on that route. does that mean there will be? just like the unannounced 1116 layer on there? or are those just AI services at Dresden Hbf?

 

What Substitutes will the BR101Expert have on Dresden-Chemnitz? The original BR101 only has AI Services on this Route.

 

I would think that BRO would actually make sense, as it has ICs that do turn around in Oldenburg, which would make use of the cab car to its full extend

 

Thanks for the clarification cwf green, will buy this dlc at day 1. Looking forward to this a long time.

 

Hello, Schnellfahrstrecke: Köln-Aachen please. The reason is simple - be able to drive above PZB limits in LZB mode and enjoy high speed IC drive.

 

Well, just for info, I was just going through all IC with a cab car and where they would appear in TSW...



Somehow, that's the result (just the services between 2013 and 2018, before 2013, I only found Bpmbdzf, the Bpmmbdzf firstly appeared in 2013)


So, let's see, most appearances it made in Hamburg Hbf, but actually only 1 going to Lübeck, all the other ones to Bremen, Hannover, Schwerin, Flensburg or Westerland...so more or less 52 AI IC cab cars, while only one drivable...by the way, one other service was turning in Rothenburgsort, not using Hbf, and was then going to Lübeck...

Second...Köln Hbf, but again all services to Bonn, Solingen, Düsseldorf, not one service to Aachen, even though I found 3 appearances at Aachen, but they are going via Mönchengladbach...

Third...Duisburg Hbf...well, I guess replacing all the services of the original 101 wasn't a choice that they really thought about...

Next one...Mainz/Koblenz, but well, wrong time set, and the 103 wasn't able to communicate with the cab car...

And then...München Augsburg, but wasn't there something with adding new services with the BR 420 to it? So I guess, totally ruled out by again the same manufacturer...

Sixth place go to Bremen, but again most services go Hamburg Bremen Münster, to Oldenburg only one service...

Fulda and Kassel Wilhelmshöhe with the same ammount of services...well, looks good, but the vast majority are crossing services (Frankfurt-Marburg-Gießen-Kassel-Göttingen and Erfurt-Fulda Frankfurt...) SKW not really seems to be a route for the IC Cab car.

Leipzig Hbf on RT not really accessible, just one service I found seems to use the city tunnel...while the three services at Bitterfeld go to Halle...

Hagen - Wuppertal the next one...well, wasn't there something (big problems) with the preservation crew and adding the ICE3 services ?

So, Salzburg - Rosenheim the next on the list, well, here they are...

Würzburg with the same amount of appearances...but, well, all services branching off at the Nantenbacher Kurve to Mainz/Frankfurt, with a couple of services stopping in Aschaffenburg.

And finally DRA, found only one service for the IC cab car...maybe they will use it, instead of the IC2?

 

München Augsburg

 

Would like to add to my original post…

If I where to wish for something I would really like to be able to use the cold and dark state also in TT (regardless on what route this would be). Staying with my earlier BRO idea, would it not be possible to let one or two services end in Oldenburg, you have to place them in the siding, secure them for a certain amount of time, boot them up again hours later / the next morning and run a service to Bremen?!

I am aware that this would go above a simple copy paste operation but I think it’s a bit sad to use these abilities only in scenarios.

And after all, it’s a forum and I can certainly make a wish… if it comes true is another story

 

Same here. I understand the solution for the old routes (101 substitution and no cab car), but what worries me is future content. I might be wrong, but based on previous experiences with TSW I doubt we will see many instances where we can use the cab car, specially since DTG will be more inclined to add their own BR 101 instead of TSG's.

I understand the high price from a developer perspective, but if the new expensive TSG 101 will be used less than the old DTG 101, it is difficult as a customer to justify to pay for the expensive one, specially at full price.

The fact that the default DTG timetable will probably be used in Journey mode instead of the TSG 101 timetable also does not help. Again, feels like paying for the expensive DLC comes with more problems than staying with the cheap one.

 

Pure speculation, but I could imagine that the ICs will come in two layers in the future: all real world services without cab car come with the old 101 (expert 101 can substitute), all real world services with a cab car come from the expert DLC.

No idea that this is the plan but it would get rid of the double TT problem in the future…

 

Will this same issue recur with other similar third party content in the future?

 

I would never recommend basing a purchase decision on future hopes, but it's certainly my intention that if there is a route in the game that has/had IC cab car services at the time when it was set (and these are actually drivable for the player, not just some 1 station AI hop) that they have a duplicate timetable with IC cab car formations. But for initial release two routes was what we had time to do and test.

You have to understand, everyone of us that are working on this project loves the BR101, same goes with the cab car. We want to drive them on as many services and routes as possible. For example, my favourite route to drive the original BR101 on was HRR. I can't guarantee anything. There's no warranty, but I want to drive the BR101 Expert there with the cab car.

There are actually 5 freight services with the BR101 substituting for some unknown reason. They are pretty fun to drive!
Just note that, in contrast to the duplicate timetables and some of the newer timetables, the services have zero setup time, so you probably need to be quite experienced driving the locomotive to not lose too much time.

In the vast majority of situations: no. The cab car requires a duplicate timetable for a few reasons:
1. The substitution system doesn't support substituting a loco + coaches formation with a loco + coaches + cab car formation.
2. The BR101 Expert, the IC cab car, and the IC Expert coaches all use a new jumper cable system that is supposed to more realistically simulate the UIC 568/545 cable, but to be able to use this communication protocol you can't have intermediate older coaches, or the train falls back to a compatibility mode that is less advanced (since the old jumper cable protocol used in TSW doesn't have the same "bandwidth" essentially). You can still drive these mixed formations (or the substitution of the BR 101 Expert wouldn't work) but you lose some of the more advanced features and indications.

It would be a bit pointless for us to implement these features and then never have them be used because the loco and cab car substituted into formations with all the intermediate coaches being old ones

This issue is not just unique* to Expert style DLC but also the circumstances of the BR101 and IC rolling stock. A future Expert DLC of a freight locomotive (for example) would not require duplicate timetables, at least not necessarily. Any third party developer can of course choose to make a new timetable because they want to add more content (like services in a different year or season etc).

EDIT: * I should say in "in a unique class", because there are some other situations where a duplicate timetable would be required. For example, if an IC2 (doesn't have to be Expert) DLC were to be made you can't just replace all the IC1 formations on a route like Dresden-Riesa or Hamburg-Lübeck, with IC2 formations.

 

Then surely that is what DTG need to be focusing on before this release; to allow the substitution system more flexibility with formations, after all, you can only drive from one end at a time.

 

You are already a second developer admitting that even such basic feature of the game behaves in wholly unexpected and unpredictable way. That does not sound like TSW has a great and bright future.

 

Don't really understand how you derive this from a substitution problem. This will not be the end of TSW.

 

Finally its possible to use the 101 on freight trains with the correct brake settings.

I hope their next advanced project will be a railjet full formation .

 

The thing is - to make an expert DLC you need a train driver for that. And I don't think that Maddy drives a Railjet as she works for DB Fernverkehr. So I don't have high hopes for a Railjet Expert.
I'd be more than happy with a "normal" Railjet tho

 

The end? No. But it’s another one of those silly things that shouldn’t be an issue.

 

I can agree with that!

 

I'd like to think that cwf.green was actually just questioning why the 101 subs onto these services in the first place, not saying that it's doing something it's supposed to do. 101 was initially used for freight too, but they decided to use it for passenger services only due to increased maintenance costs iirc.

 

A 200 km/h Fernverkehrs loco's annual deadlines "wasting" with freight is not gonna happen on regular basis. Probably there were still enough 103 ready in service when the 101 was delivered, or as only available quick replacement out of schedule. (Just my personal guess).

*the annual deadline is for the Hauptuntersuchung / maintenance, which is either based on time or the amount of km driving distance.
Usually a limit is covered for both distance and km, and if one exeeds the department takes out permission for the operator for the specific vehicle.

 

I have edited the quoted comment to say "unknown reason" because I don't know why the BR101 Expert substitutes on Dresden-Chemnitz. That is what I meant by "weird", a weird decision rather than a weird behaviour from the code. I have never seen a locomotive substitute when it's not supposed to, only the opposite (which is usually caused by the formation length with the desired locomotive substituted exceeding the previous length).

I think your conclusion is quite off base. The substitution system has limitations (as described in the opening post), but none of the limitations are "basic". The issues preventing whole formations from substituting, with different number of drivable vehicles (e.g. BR101 + Coaches to BR101 + Coaches + Cab Car) is a quite complex combination of how the substitution system works and UI setup.

In any case, whatever the reason is for the BR101 Expert substituting on Dresden-Chemnitz (most likely that the supported regions include "DB IC" or it was left open but requires a combination of horsepower or maximum speed that makes it exclude the BR143) surely this is a good thing? More playable content after all. So to come back to my wording, "weird, but good" is my personal opinion.

 

Mind you, ÖBB does it quite successfully…

 

I see, that changes the meaning of the original post. Because Maik was complaining about such thing in the past, that he has no idea why 218 is showing up in services it is not configured to. If that continued to be a thing, timetables in future addons would start quickly deteriorate with combinations that were not intended by the developer. And DTG showed many times that fixing issues in the core is not something they feel very comfortable with, as any fixing done there usually produces more bugs on other places.

 

I Think you should put it on Lindau-Bludenz. There it could go as IC 118/119. Btw i dont unterstand that so many people think the Price is too high. You get so many Features for only 35,99€. Thank you very much to the TSG team!

 

Yes indeed. This was a major part of the specification when austria was choosing the model / manufacturer backthen.

 

Interesting. I haven't encountered those exact issues myself. For me it was always the opposite. For example I wanted to try to make the Vectron substitute on the Nightjet services for Kassel-Würzburg but it didn't work due to the formation length. There is a small setting that you can use to add an extension, but that can be dangerous and might break the timetable (I might be mistaken on this, I'm relatively familiar with the substitution system, but there are definitely gaps in my knowledge) so you may end up having to re-sim the timetable anyway, which is what you wanted to avoid in the first place.

For me, the main thing I'd like for the substitution system is to substitute whole formations. I know this is possible for certain types of formations (like you can substitute the HRR BR425 with the BRO BR425, or some ICE3 formations for others etc), but not for the case of replacing a formation of old BR101 + IC coaches with an Expert formation where you end up driving from the IC cab car. From my understanding, solving this problem is much more involved than simply editing the substitution system since it requires substantially changing the UI system in the game. My speculation here, but I think what would happen currently (supposing the substitution system supported it) is that you'd basically end up with having to select "DB Intercity" rather than "DB BR101" or "DB Bpmmbdzf".

Not to mention that replacing whole formations would probably require the dispatcher to be changed as well, so a highly non-trivial problem, but maybe some day

It would certainly open up a huge number of possibilities.

 

Of course it's unpredictable. As the person setting up a locomotive, how are you supposed to know how exactly timetable authors set up the substitution settings on every single one of their formations five years ago?

And the other way round - when choosing substitution parameters, you can easily see which trains (that exist in TSW) can sub into a formation. But of course, the Editor won't tell you "hey, be careful, if someone ever makes a DR class 252, that could sub in here. Are you sure you want these settings?" or anything, so it's not super easy for a timetable author to consider whatever trains might come in the future.

 

I was under the impression that there was a flagging system for substituting locos. If that isn’t working then it needs looking into, no?

Look what happened to TSC, so many issues got suffocated in complex code & never fixed, then it basically made it so that tons of problems with TSC could never be fixed.

It doesn’t help that every couple of months we hear about something being impossible to do because of a certain way it was done to begin with. After all this time on the same engine you’d expect a degree of standardisation. KWG for example is not that old & the Vectron even less so, so why all of a sudden it can’t be subbed onto passenger services there because of a formation length issue, is perplexing.

TSW was originally touted as being a successor to TSC, but it very quickly turned into a parallel title with similar mistakes being made in development.

 

Well, yes of course there is. But, like I said, how is someone developing a loco supposed to keep up with how exactly those flags are set up on every single formation in every single timetable ever made and into the future? (and the other way round of course)

 

I’m not entirely sure if it works in a way where you assign a flag in a route itself, or to a loco individually - but in either case you’d think that both need to flagged. Otherwise how do you stop any loco in the game appearing on any route?

No one is saying that a dev should have a crystal ball, just that there should be a way of assigning rolling stock to sub in or not.

ie; set a service/formation up for substitution. Future locos will then need to be ok’d to slot into the substitution. I don’t think the loco particulars need to come into it, because the developer should make the substitution decision when the time comes.

 

There are many pieces of rolling stock, many routes, many scenarios and many timetables in this game. Having to check every single relavant formation in every single relevant timetable every time you release a locomotive is not feasible.

There are tags like "DB Cargo", "Railpool", etc. that you set up on the locomotive and on the formation. Things can only sub in if these match, and you can further restrict by necessary safety system, multiple working standard, minimum number of powered axles, maximum length... etc.

The game needs to know how much longer a formation may become through substitution. This is a very reasonable restriction, because a train that's too long might block points, occupy adjacent blocks, or even create deadlocks. Looks like the author of the timetable simply did not know, or did not consider, that a (slightly longer) loco that's also appropriate to use on these trains, was (going to be) in development, so they didn't set it up like that.

 

And thus we have arrived at the original point being made. Doesn’t set TSW up for a bright future when a fundamental issue is that you can’t substitute locos around, where they realistically should be & vice versa.

 

Thats well said. My impression is, with the release of tsw4 substitution is not working well anymore and DTG keeps something behind and shut.

Never had problems in tsw3. The locos were all appesring well and in a very nice mix. Now with tsw4, the vectron doesnt appear on the semmering route, and the 1116 never appears in vorarlberg. Both were in the patchlog of the route update log.

Same on riesa dresden. 99% 185.5 appear, 1% 143 and sometimes the es64u2 but very rare. No 155, no vectron, no 185 rp, no187, etc....

This mess is beyond acceptable and is a the major reason i avoid buying dtg dlcs at the moment (skip them all).

At least the substitution core should make it easy for devs to swap formations. And fore sure not cause problems to exchange locos in a player session.

So now after 50 routes who is gonna fix that mess? Im very sure they broke something big time with the release of tsw4. Was it the addon manager? I really dont know and i also dont care what DTG was trying to "create" and even release this mess.

But i noticed in the fist route i fired up in tsw4.

Im considering about skipping TSW 5 entirely. Instead of making TSW to a solid sucessor, its getting drowned down to tsc level. And it doesnt seem they want to solve the chaos. Instead of just go to the next iteration as quick as possible. Even i think it reached the point its impossible to solve the core with that many dlcs now. A solid developed core should have had priority over TSW1 2 3 4 5..., now the bugs are cloned and spreaded along the entire dlc foundation.

Im on board since tsw2 before rush hour, and it doesnt surprise me that DTG is going the same path as tsc. But now the line was crossed, basic things not working. Neither quality control / standard seems to happen.

Cl. 385 without flange sounds, cl.170 without runnin sounds, why publish this below standard products?

Probably there are many arguments for the current situation, but my wallet stays closed for 80% of the released content and nothing can change this.

Here to add: have not installed a single mod!

 

I can see what technical issues can rise with variable train length, but you know.. this is something that real-life railway needs to solve as well, so we have 100 years old solutions that simply.. work.

Every route has its designed limits for passenger train lengths derived from shortest platform available for each service pattern, as well as general train length limit derived from shortest station tracks. Nobody is running around with a ruler when you need to change the traction vehicle, as long as it complies with the limits. And there is no real reason why the ingame dispatcher should be treating it in a different way. In fact, it's pretty common (like everyday-common) to just hook a second loco onto a scheduled train if it needs to be moved somewhere, it's way, way cheaper than sending it as a separate locomotive train.

Something else is services with shunting operations of course, there it matters. But there extensive consist substitutions do not make sense at all for obvious reasons, and it is nothing difficult to detect those automatically.

I just hope that with next-gen train simulator, they will onboard actual experts from the represented countries, who can simply explain these procedures to them, and help design the systems programmatically in much better way. It must be so much cheaper than burning programmer time on constantly fixing systems that were designed wrong since the beginning.

 

Checking if a train is above or below a set maximum length is indeed very easy. Figuring out what exactly that maximum length should be is very difficult, especially if you want the game (or the editor) to do it automatically.

 

You can’t drive the 101 on Dresden Chemnitz

 

Bradley

Yes you can drive on Dresden Chemnitz

 

As all of the routes we have are (or DTG claims are) realistic, you can simply write down that number from the official book.

 

Not yet

 

The topic 101 Expert right?! So you can in the future drive with the 101 Expert in this route

 

Yep

 

There are lots of situations where for one reason or another, you need to set a limit far below whatever the absolute maximum is.