Totally new and totally hooked. I intended just to play for an hour a day but instead this game sunk me in. I have done CSX heavy haul, the dreaded NEC (how that pass quality control!?!), and currently on Caltrain, I'm American by the way that's why I just did American routes so far Anyway, trying to remember what I wanted to point out here... Let me know if y'all would rather have this topic split up Journey mode If I complete a service in journey mode there is an option to return to free roam, depending on the train there may be a service soon after, if I were to go on ahead and complete service it does not seem to register in journey mode and I have to do it again. The game knows I completed that service so journey mode should just let me go on ahead and skip it. Better yet journey mode shouldn't just end at the service, it should end when that train has nothing else available for a long time or rest of day, auto save between the services (although I believe there is a saving problem thou). Oh! But the wait time, time skip feature while in free roam please! Although dealing the with the Caltrain journey mode, I feel that just scenarios should be in journey mode not 5 services that are mostly the same and take an hour to complete! Doing a service in Journey mode just drops me right into the train that, in Caltrain route, wasn't configured properly. So gotta rush to fix it up before departure time which isn't enough time to go to go to the other side of the train to set up the lights (nitpicky I know). CSX heavy haul: possibility that engine on other side of train was not configured correctly and puts a drag on the rest of the train, lucky there is no schedule to keep thou. But I imagine that trains that have engines on each side would have a crew on both sides, would be nice if we could switch to another crew member on the other side of the train if needed rather than having to make the long voyage to the back of the train. CSX Heavy Haul....... Why did you guys think players would want to stay stuck at 20 - 30 mph on a hill all day? I know this is to show off the weight of the train but come on. By the way.... American freight train, big, and super long, but there is only one (although well done) scenario where you get to pull a over 100 car beast!?! Many services, but all are pretty much same thing with different cars...... snore. No real delivery of anything, just fill and drop off or just help a train pass through the area. (I come a trucking sim by the way, where you always start and finish the job!) There are trains that clearly did not come from Cumberland yard that are just passing through but we can only just help the train through the hills and that's it. I would like to see and expansion of CSX heavy haul so we can actually start and finish those services from start position to final destination. Big deal to do that I know, but perhaps scaling down some boring parts of the map and keeping the interesting parts at whatever scale they are using? And considering how expensive Dovetails content is and have been over the years... why do they not have the manpower to do this? Low demand of content? Low profits despite high prices? Game too new? Or maybe they do have the power and it just takes forever? Although there is that saving issue where it seems that game forgets the objective you are on and screw up the whole job. I myself would want to put together that 100 car beast. Caltrain Never been on the actual train but seriously tight schedule, and boarding time is also super tight, is this for real or just to save personal time? Challenge the player? Plus player has to figure out the crazy brakes mostly on their own with no way to train up before going into the fire.... well at least its a sim and not for real. Stated issue with being dropped right into service mode above. Also when passing through the cars, the doors should auto close on their own, I shouldn't have to press anything to get them to close again... which can be a real pain by the way. Also on the bike car, the HEP system can be turned on for the whole train as if the game is treating the car like its an engine... even though in the engine I purposely turned it completely off... meh dem passengers don't pay me enough to keep them from suffocating. Plus... don't they ever take these trains apart? Swap out cars or engines? Starting Engine Funny thing is, in real life they don't shut the engines down on diesel electric engines, the engine itself determines when to stop and start. People should have seen the autostart warnings on the train, but the game does not simulate this (and how much money did people pour in Dovetail?). Seems like a simple thing to put in, didn't they have time to study the engines behavior to see how the auto stop start acts? Diesel electric engines can be a pain to cold start... if it will even start, so they leave it to the system to determine when to stop and start the train. What the system will do depends on outside conditions, batteries, internal temperature, air pressure (maybe), and whether the engineer put the engine in gear, I think the engine can go into low idle mode on its own depending on the reverser (can't rely on humans to save fuel)---- come on Dovetail do the research yourself. I imagine if any other engine in the world had this system it would act the same way, so could just be a copy pasting of autostart code. Supposedly only time they ever completely shut the engine off is when they are doing service on it, or unless it catches on fire. Personally I always did think it seem like they didn't want you to hit the engine off button unless you really had to. Now players who have read this topic should now know why scenarios don't require you to shut the engine off. Granted in game, yeah, engines just run 24/7. With auto stop start code, they would shut off or low idle on their own, and fire up when needed. They could program a safety system that will get on your nerves if you are not within one millimeter of it's speed limit, but not a simple auto stop start system? Quality of content Hopefully Dovetail has some sort of checklist of things to go through from engine to engine, like in CSX heavy haul, I was able to go into the engine room of one old freight engine, but couldn't with the others, granted I had to go into that engine room to actually start the engine which I did not have to do with the others so I guess it makes since why it's not available on other engines. On Caltrain, when you blow the horn the crossing lights don't plusate. I don't know if the Caltrain doesn't do that for real or if something the engineer enables (that I can't find). But on the modern CSX freight engine (the one wit da fancy screens, don't remember name), scenarios (or maybe it was a service) there is a strong tendency for one of the engines to not be set up right and cause issues when handling it, sure fun troubleshooting it but eh. Plus I recall going through CSX journey mode that the journey could put you on an engine you did not train with at all, all training material should be at the beginning of the journey or at least not swap you around to an unfamiliar engine, yeah the modern fancy pants engine was a doozy, acted completely different from the other two. Regardless, I'm a bit worried about Dovetail's and their reputation, seems like they may drop a bomb every now and then and just expect players to eat it up all the time. NEC oohhhh yes, now that is the bomb I'm talking about, not going into quality issues with this one, but I got a soft spot for Amtrak so sure I went in... during the winter sale. I had to leave the safety systems off on this one because speed limits were not set up right at all... or maybe the system wasn't (one time it kicked in for no reason at all)... anyway, I know some of MTA's trains go through Penn station... so why not expand and merge NEC with the LIR? Although I've read that NEC was an early content thing so it may be scrapped and redone... if anything is done about it. Also.... why did you guys ignore the Acela... really? Future Expansions I come from a trucking sim SCS made, they expand state by neighboring state, country by neighboring country, connecting them all together to make their small 1:30 scale map bigger and bigger, Dovetail is seemingly just throwing a dart at a map and saying "that's next". I think Dovetail should focus on expanding (or in the case of NEC redoing) the maps they have now. NEC's trains go from Boston to Washington, not some hick town through New York and another hick town and done. CSX trains go from the Chicago to Baltimore not just through Sands Patch (although I don't know if the same engines stay with it, the crew only sticks around for 12 hours before they hand over to someone else). CSX Heavy Haul, NEC and LIR could just be one big map when combined. Could be heavy on the system but hopefully Dovetail can figure out the solution, I'm thinking of the game just focusing on relevant tasks within the sector by sector of the map as the player moves through the map. SCS has a separate team for Europe and America. Perhaps Dovetail should do something similar (not aware of how they work) Timetable/Free Roam The journey does have services in the list that are also in the timetable, you complete that journey service, there is an option to return to free roam AKA timetable mode. Issue is, gotta guess what engine has the service you want, can't just pull up the timetable in the menu while in the world. No choice to warp around or skip time, absolutely lovely. Also, is the timetable always the same everyday? I imagine with freight trains it would be different everyday... and then there is that saving issue, can really screw you up if you did multiple services in one session. Please iron out this bug. You guys have been around for so long, such costly content, big profits (maybe, shoot maybe you guys broke for all we know) and maybe the best simulation game out there period... apart from no steam engines but I'm still enjoying myself anyway. I hope that is everything I can think of with my experience so far, can't wait for the Canadian expansion, more freight more fun.... although y'all could've just expanded CSX Heavy Haul.
Here some videos my lazy butt didn't bother posting from last time, plus seems like whichever engine is in control is the one to fire the other engines up, plus one of those CSX freight engines was supposed to have a toilet but y'all locked the door, what!?! we ain't allowed to take a **** while driving the train!?! For the record no idea how the electric engines work, whether they bother shutting them off or not or just lock them down.
Youtube comments, lovely section for info, arguments and plain delusional people but anyway this Autostart system is called https://www.google.com/search?q=tra...VEdt8KHU74BTsQ_AUICSgA&biw=1920&bih=969&dpr=1 Automatic Engine Stop/Start (A.E.S.S.), TMV Control Systems (and maybe more companies) make these things. NS Railway has an easy to access PDF: http://www.blet375.com/NS_Smart_Start.pdf Progress Rail (Caterpillar company, seems to be a modification): http://s7d2.scene7.com/is/content/Caterpillar/CM20191024-46bab-52950 ZTR, maybe even more Here is train not from ignoring coronavirus America:
