I thought about simple dlc - just train park\museum , where you can walk and see all locos you have bought. Something like hunter's trophy lodge, but for train fans.
A museum where you are the exhibit curator would be incredible. Train museums are a huge part of train culture and preservation. Model trains might even be one of the first "collectable" hobbies to exist. Adding a collection/museum aspect would fit extremely well. After achieving certain levels with locos and achievement unlocks, it unlocks that loco to be placed in the area. After finding all the collectables of a type on a route you unlock that prop that can be placed in your museum. I imagine the space the museum building/area already has empty track/exhibit space and you just choose which track/exhibit space has your achieved item. When you choose a spot for that train/prop it has a bit that you can read about the history and/or useage of that thing. This would be for people that would like the levelling/achievement system to have a purpose, a well as the collector crowd that I would speculate is quite sizeable in the TSW audience. This wouldn't be invasive. All the normal simulator content is there not locked by any level barriers. An empty museum is a sad museum. Achieving a populated one with cool engines would be so satisfying.
maybe they could use the editor so you could use all of you trains move this train there and customise it so you have your own museum that you have built or customised
This would actually be a great idea for a variety if things one can unlock, or purchase with points accrued from doing services! Even if they're not operable in game, it would be cool to use points to purchase various display pieces for said museum!
Has anyone played Astro Bot Rescue on PS4? When you complete a level, you can go to a section where you can get little model recreations of certain level elements and build up a big scene, so as you progress through the game, this room fills up with a huge scale model of the things you've completed. Something similar in TSW would be awesome - maybe start off with an empty room with an oval of model railway track and a couple of sidings, then as you complete services or get new DLC, you get model versions of the trains to add to this layout (maybe adding more sidings if you have loads of trains), new buildings to drop in and posters of the routes on the walls. You could probably do it using the exact same models but scale up the view or try to fake a tilt-shift photography lens effect to make it all look small. If it ends up being too cumbersome, maybe have four or five sidings on the model railway into which you can drop trains from the list of bought DLC so they're not all there at once, and have a simple control system to move the trains out onto the loop.
how about the playroom vr I saw you gain coins (maybe action points) and then can spend them in a museum shop thing
Maybe you could add some kind of test track to it, so that you can select a loco/train and drive it on the test track. To drive another loco you have to park the one that's on the test track. The test track could be some kind of circle or oval, you know just a simple test track. And maybe - because of that museum aspect - you could have some miniature locos/trains as well.
Hm, I could imagine a big showroom with (a non-functional mock-up version of) every train ever made for TSW on display, so you could take a look at them from inside and out, fiddle around with a few buttons (lights etc), and of course, if you haven't already, buy their respective DLC from that salesman at his pedestal in front of the train.
Yeah, this would also be an option. What they could also do is an inside and outside part of this museum, kind of like the DB Museum in Nuremberg.
Yes! Outside it would be kinda rundown, that's where the old Brits, US locos and ex-DR machines would be stored and could be explored. 37s, HSTs, GP-38s... Then inside the old roundhouses, sheds and such would be all brand new and refurbished, and here we'd have our hightech stuff. Traxxes, M7, 182, 377... The whole exhibition area would need to be made in a way that allows for easy expansion as the TSW fleet grows, or built reasonably large from the get-go.
Or you could place the older locos inside as well in a "historic corner". And then place the EMUs and DMUs outside so you have more room. Because if they were inside you'd need a lagre hall. So three areas: old locos, new locos and the EMU and DMU area which could be split in two areas; one for the EMUs and one for the DMUs.