Again: Suggestion For Improving The Upcoming Stuttgart - Heilbronn Route

Sorry for the re-post. I seemed to me this would be the more appropriate section to post this. Apparently, I cannot delete threads, so the one in Suggestions will have to stay there.

When Stuttgart - Heilbronn was announced, I posted a few suggestions to improve what I feared would be a lacklustre route concept. (Unsurprisingly) All of that apparently was ignored. More surprisingly, it seems literally all of my fears were confirmed.

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...the-upcoming-stuttgart-heilbronn-route.93358/

Obviously, I do not think we will get anything the like of what I suggested previously (although it is still as necessary as it was then to make this route worthwhile). So, what do I think can be salvaged?

• There should be mint and silver n-wagen or Silberlinge coaches mixed in the consists. If you are that desperate for LFR and Mittelwaldbahn sales, then make them layers. But do it. The completely red trains are pretty inaccurate. Also, there should be a blue-beige skin for the 111.
• They should include a 423 variant for S-Bahn services without the 420. Otherwise, the route will feel more dead than I fear it will anyway. Also, it would just be a re-skin, the interior of the Frankfurt 423 is pretty much accurate.
• Make sure you use time appropriate rolling stock for the freight services. It is bad enough that most of them will be only 10 km long. Include a non-red livery for the 140. In 2000, not all of them were red.
• Fix the PIS. The "Folgezüge" section on there is a very recent development. But I actually think the mechanical PIS which you skimped on in LFR would be the proper ones.
• Make the 111 + dostos and 425 layers independent of MKN. The non-S-Bahn liverys of BRO and HRR would be way more realistic anyway. It is such a desperate plug to get some more sales off an otherwise abandoned DLC. From a technical standpoint, unless you really messed up your coding, it should be no problem whatsoever to have a type of train (so the 111 and the dostos) perform the layer, regardless of variant (so in this case, the Mannheim-Kaiserslautern one). Stop tying to do these blatant cash grabs.
• For the 111 + dostos layer, add mint green dostos for mixed consists and therefore a more realistic rail scene

Some general further points which I don't think can be improved without postponing the release:

• The hell are you doing layering the low entry dostos with the fourth-gen cab car onto a route set in Stuttgart in 2000? The fourth gen cab car did not run there (no, not at all, not on occasions, it never did) before the late 2010s. It barely existed in 2000. Same goes with the low-floor only dosto consists. The low floor wagons except for the cab car were the exception in Stuttgart, and at maximum it was one or two in the entire train.
• I really don't get it. If you couldn't be bothered to do a proper 2000 rail scene, why didn't you simply set it in ~2010? The main station still was intact then, no construction going on (although you managed that in Groningen too?). Then, you could've re-used all the stock you wanted. The 140 and 111 and n-wagen would still be appropriate, but this time in all-red. The freight cars would have probably been much less of an era-appropriativeness problem. The PIS would have actually been largely appropriate.

I would really like to see this route succeed because I'd like to see more Stuttgart content, but I will definitely not buy it in the sloppy state it's apparently in right now. To be honest, I have little hopes this will have any impact of how the route is released (presumably in under two weeks). It is disappointing.

 

If blurry textures are added, it will be a big disappointment.

 

I would have gone out and bought this early if they’d of just given us some variation from the rapidly getting boring DB traffic red livery everywhere. In 2000 there was plenty of variation in liveries and far from being all red, that scheme had only fairly recently come in and hence it took a long while to change the livery to all traffic. It would have made such a difference and made this route stood out to actually have variation on a German route for once, currently it looks just the same as all the others.
I don’t know why this wasn’t done, was it laziness or based on the DTG obsession with rushing out dlc as fast as possible?

 

DTG simply don't do multiple liveries. However, where they already exist, why not use them? Owners of LFR and Mittenwald should have those n-Wagen available as substitutions, same with the blau/elfenbein 111. DB trains ca 2000 looked like circus trains with their weird hodge-podge of colors.

 

Why don’t they do them, is it laziness or are they in such a godawful rush all the time?
For me they could have made this route be a real stand out from all the other German route clones and sold a heck of lot more copies because of it. They are shooting themselves in the foot.
Nor is it remotely historically accurate. Simulation means it should have represented the real thing.

 

Not sure if prototypically there was any RB, RE or IC service done by the DB 218, but it would be nice to have services for it.

 

The 218 and its V 160 siblings understandably ran on non-electrified routes. This included the Filstalbahn from Stuttgart to Ulm, and so 218s in front of passenger consists would be appropriate as AI at Stuttgart. But the Frankenbahn itself is electrified, so I can't see a place for drivable diesel services.

 

I really hope that the weittenberger steuerwagen be compatible with the 218

 

Should be, it certainly is IRL. Unlike the Karlsruher, the Wittenberger can control both electric and disel locos with the flip of a switch.

 

Unfortunately the missing variety isn't unexpected. Just another example of TSW not utilizing its full potential in order to make a decent product.
What I really don't get are basically two things:
- we have that wagon substitution technology for randomized consists and a perfect example for using it. Why not?
- why on earth are some substitutions neglected because of being not entirely era-appropriate because of really minor details when there's no alternative and we have a layer selector?
I mean, I'm not going to start about the awful Dostos once again...

Being local to the Stuttgart area to the 2000s I hate to say the current representation of the route has nothing to do with reality.
Sorry, TSW is a full grown product by now, not in its early stage where rolling stock wasn't available and this is simply very poor product design and not good enough anymore to justifiy a price of 35€.
At least it's quite practical from a business point of view to have that layering system instead of including the rolling stock whereever appropriate but if even that is considered too much work... sad how low the games standard has become. There was so much more potential in it, and now that it could be utilized the products are still half-finished, just without any plausible reasoning.

 

Well if they "simply don't do it", I simply "don't like it". But no, honestly, it would be a really low effort improvement, given that all but one of these liveries already exist. You could give the 111 even two by changing the color from blue to dark red with a color picker tool. And once you have the green or blue 140 (the only new one), you could do the same there and get the other one. This takes a day or two of dedicated work from one person at max.
About the layers I am confused. In one screenshot, we see the Dostos + Dosto cab car, which should be a layer? Then again, Stuttgart looks like a ghost town and I haven't seen any 103 + intercity coaches or ICE 1/ICE T trains. If this is really all that layers give you, this turns from sloppy to dumpster fire.

It is. At least for one train pair per day. There was an IR service from Stuttgart to Erfurt via Heilbronn which took some unelectrified lines after Heilbronn. I guess for time saving reasons they did not swap the loco. This specific service has also been teased in a roadmap stream before. There even would be the correct coaches for it in game (namely the FlixTrain coaches with a different livery), but I doubt we will get the different livery, so maybe we get the joy of having n-Wagen IR trains like we had D-Zug trains operated by n-Wagen consists in LFR (please DTG... don't do this again).

The Filstalbahn actually was electrified for a long time, it's the part after Ulm that wasn't. I don't actually know if they performed a loco swap in Ulm, I know they definitely did in later years, so the trains ran electric until Ulm.

What should and what is are two different things with DTG.

I could not have said it better.

 

Well, I've got to say my enthusiasm for this route has dropped precipitously and it's looking more and more like a "wait for the 60% off sale." I love vintage German, but this seems like a truly half-arsed effort, with only a passing nod in the direction of "vintage." Yes, the old Stuttgart Bahnhof is a nice idea, but without appropriate rolling stock (and, yes, that includes the paint) it's an empty gesture.

This is two German disappointments in a row, following the minimum-effort Dresden-Leipzig.

 

For the issues with era accurate scenery, its probably the known DTG standart.

What confuses me is the timetable situation.
At first i dont really think the article was supposed to focus on layers and so on did not go into any detail.
I believe so because of the huge amount of missing info, for example it does not say anything about Sbahn (likely with a FTF 423), interregio, intercity or other services. The special "once per day diesel loco with passenger coaches" they talked about in a roadmap before, yet nothing said about a 218 layer in the article.

I would not judge the timetable based of that little coming soon article or video, but rather wait for either a timetable deep dive or the preview stream.

After all we know that Joe is doing most to all of the work on the timetable and looking at his reputation it seems very unlikely for the layers to end with some 425s and dostos.

Especially for a route with 50km length and Gen 9 only, performance shouldnt be much of an issue.

 

At this point I believe we won't get a 423 layer. It was barely in service in 2000, so that might be the reason. Which is not to say that I think we absolutely should get one, we should, the route will look like a ghost town until we get the 420 if we don't get the 423 and the S-Bahn is a big feature of the route in general. Also the 423 was part of the rail scene, albeit in smaller numbers.
The special once per day diesel loco is an Interregio service. I was surprised they mentioned that because they don't have the proper coaches unless they reskin the FlixTrain ones. Maybe they noticed that so they toned it down?
I hope you are right about not judging it yet. But on the other hand, we have always got that kind of info at this point in the development cycle and considering they want to preview-stream it in three days, the timetable should be done by now. Unless of course you do it last minute and don't test it, but that's very bad practise and a huge issue by itself.

 

Even that wouldn't be correct. The Flixtrain coaches are refurbished ex-DBB m-Wagen; the IR used former DR Halberstadt coaches.

 

Not always, the m-series was indeed in IR service, especially around Stuttgart. But the interior was very different in comparison to todays' Flixtrain use.
But again, same situation as with the 423, it's chosen to not include them at all because of minor details which are considered unrealistic... but the effect on the final product is much worse.
You basically couldn't visit Stuttgart in the early 2000s without spotting an IR.
Or mint n-Wagen, even Silberlinge were quite common back then.
Verkehrsrot got spreaded in mid to late 00s, when the 423 dominated the S-Bahn services...

 

Oh by the way, why was this thread moved into Troubleshooting? Does this mean the raised points in this thread are taken seriously and actively worked on, because otherwise this would be a ... discussion?

 

What DTG should have done (IMO) is
1) Make a proper release of Dresden-Leipzig, including

• refurbish and bugfix of the pre-existing Dresden-Riesa route
• include the BR 294 as the new loco (not a no-loco route)
• Overhaul the crappy old 1442 from Rapid Transit, which was subpar even back in 2018

2) Use the BR 140/Wittenberg as the "deluxe edition" loco DLC. Make LFR its home route, with available substitution into Mittenwald and Bremen (and Niddertal as AI)
3) Don't bother with Stuttgart-Heilbronn at all, OR hold it until the spring and do it right

 

Well, the preview stream has shown it's not completely down the drain, but there are still issues:
- no 103 layer (why???)
- no livery layers for the 111 and n-Wagen
- horribly wrong on board announcements
- rather poor levels of AI traffic, the route looks a bit dead
So I think it's save to say DTG once again did not care for this kind of criticism. Vote with your wallet, this route will be available with a substantial discount in just a few months.

 

The roofing material and hence the lighting at Stuttgart Hbf is all wrong.