Hello everybody- As some of you might already be aware of, in the Hamilton Explorer scenario in the Oakville Sub route, the player has the ability to put together any train you like based on available locos and rolling stock in the scenario. But... you are unfortunately restricted to a fairly small area in the route map in which to run any train you might put together there, and *don’t* have access to the full route. So... I created a poll to find out if anyone else (besides me) would be interested in having a similar free-roam scenario (for trains) in *all* routes for TSW 2020- that gives you (and your train) access to the entire route, and would not restrict movement to a limited area. Please vote Yes, No, or Don’t Care- whatever your personal take is on having this capability in the sim in the future. Thanks in advance for your participation!
Personally I don’t see the point. Service mode already accomplishes this, as there are usually more locomotives and rolling stock sitting around than what is actually used in the services themselves. No restrictions to specific parts of the map either. You can also take a train which has not yet started a service, or is in the middle of one, and just use it however you want. For routes with these free roam scenarios, I’ve just done the bare minimum to complete a couple of them, just to check them off the list. I’d rather have them include one more scenario with interesting gameplay, rather than a free roaming one which basically just feels like filler that they can use to bolster the scenario count with in their advertising. With Oakville, I’d sooner want to see them properly finish the route. Put all those inaccessible tracks to use, the passenger stations, etc.. not to mention they could also stand to lengthen it. That route is seriously lacking, from the looks of it, and needs a lot more work provided in a free update before I’d ever personally buy it. Either that, or deep enough sales to have the route and any paid expansions (which address my wishes above) total out to a more reasonable price.
Well, not exactly, since only selected switches are hand-thrown in any given scenario or timetable session. For example, in the Hamilton Explorer scenario a player can, I imagine, leave the Hamilton yards area after assembling a train, but cannot, I'm quite sure, enter the smaller yards at other towns along the route because the entry switches are not controllable by the player. I know this because I've looked at them in numerous activities on numerous routes.
I respect that it may be wanted feature for some, personally i don't see the appeal. driving up and down an empty route just not something i personally would find entertaining and I never enjoyed the free roam in TS either. There is technical reasons dovetail has gone over multiple times on streams as to why its also not a trivial thing to implement so while i have no issues if the feature did eventually show up for those who want to make use of it, i doubt its something that will be seen any time soon.
While preparing a pre-editor session for the DB BR 204, I discovered another reason why, contrary to Deebz's opinion, simply departing from the instructions during a timetable session is not always wise. My activity involves a number of shunting maneuvers not included in the original activity. During one testing session, I took a considerably longer time than usual to accomplish these and as I returned to the original instructions near the end I discovered that an AI engine had pulled up behind mine (nice of it not to just run into me!) and its presence had caused a signal to turn red, blocking me. After pausing the activity and scratching my head a bit, I decided to try coupling to the AI engine, which actually worked, allowing me to complete the job I had invented. I'll also mention again that although yard and station areas may contain rolling stock, entry and exit witches to access them are usually automatically controlled and thus cannot be changed.
