Oakville subdivision... So you get to the end but in order to finish the service, you have to wait for 20 minutes? 20 real world minutes?
It's badly signposted, it does not fully explain in the service instructions what you are meant to do there, the tutorials for the route go over it in detail. You park up, aligning the tankers with the hoses, get out, and one by one go up and open the tankers, connect the hoses, then start them filling up. After reaching the last one, you then go back to the first one and repeat the process in reverse, until you've loaded every single one up with ethanol and closed it back up. By the time you're done, the time will have gone by and you can proceed down the track and leave the full ones in place for the subsequent service delivering them. Whoever scripted the services assumed anyone doing it will have played the tutorial, and therefore did not include those steps, just a wait of sufficient time to carry them out within.
One of the loading services actually had you as driver, somewhat unrealistically perhaps, on the gantry doing the ethanol loading. But when I came across this scenario, also thought absolutely absurd that you have to sit in front of your PC or TV screen twiddling your thumbs or playing Clash Of Clans for a 20 minute timeout. Most definitely a case where the scenario should be scripted to fade out and come back in at the end time, or a fast forward button would be useful. Though this isn’t (apparently) as bad as the Class 66 freight run on ECML where you arrive at the destination 40’ early and the game makes you sit there the whole duration before the run shows as complete. It beggars me how this nonsense gets past the scenario/timetable authors let alone QA.
I think this was one of the first moments in TSW that had me thinking "This could make for some engaging multiplayer stuff" because I've had folks watching me stream it ask if there's a way to drop in and handle that job.
Previously in TSW 2020, you had to load each wagon manually, open the lid, swing the arm, connect it and operate the pump. At some point, it was said that the AI couldn't do all that, and the services were changed with this pointlessly long waiting time. Instead of making an effort to solve the problem properly, they opted for the cheapest and quickest change by taking away an entire mechanism and replacing it with a 20-minute wait.
They never "took it away", you're still supposed to open them up, position the arm, connect the pipe, and start it pumping, then close the tanks up once full. The entire mechanism with its visual and audio feedback is still there. The wait time is to cover how long it takes to complete that task. It just only goes over the steps in detail in the tutorial. Meaning someone who never played that (Read: most players) will have no idea why they are sitting around in that siding and will end up delivering a load of empties back to the dropoff.
What I mean is that the loading task was integrated into the services and objectives, and that was changed to a single 20-minute wait objective.
As an aside, I really enjoy those ones and wish we got more interesting yard work like that in other routes.
in the timetable you never had fully working loading of the ethanol loading because of the ai drivers also doing the same thing just waiting 20 minutes you could always just pretend doing it or get a cup of coffee
Can you even imagine trying to get AI drivers to go through those steps, presumably using a variant on the passenger pathing? Just driving past and watching the NPC clipping through the walkway and bouncing all over the place...
There is a work around if you get to your final destination early and dont want to wait. Try and stop about 100 yards from finish point come to a stop. Then when it says wait until whatever time creep forwards and if end the service. Job done
Thanks! After posing this last night, I replayed the service and found out that it actually continues after the 20 minute wait! If I was a real train driver, getting paid for a job.... I'd be cool with waiting whatever amount of time. For a sim though, that I play for fun? Not very cool actually. What do we do for 20 whole minutes?
It wouldn't be as bad if the loading actually would happen when following all the steps from the tutorial. I've tested all loading services today, both with and without mods, and found none of the cars getting anything pumped in them. So all I did was pointless shunting of empty cars which also didn't gain any mass by loading so the train handles the same before and after loading. It's a shame since it's actually not a bad route and the ethanol loading is not a bad game mechanic. It's more realistic but has you doing the same gameplay tasks in a similar environment to Derail Valley. Differences being DV has no loading mechanic like TSW has here with tanker cars and it's not a prototypical route and has no prototypical trains without any licences and also no AI traffic. Might just be a bug, since loading ethanol does actually work in the tutorial. The gauges on the pump move, the liquid levels of the cars rise and they gain mass. It's just not happening in the timetable. Opened a ticket in hope of the unthinkable solution for a ToD3 route which otherwise still is fun and massively underrated in my opinion.
