I appreciate this new DLC, the modelling of trains is magnificent, the scenery is good. It's a good work by DTG. But some players asked for the refund : The life in the scenery is missing. i think it's true. This is a very urbanized zone: there should be many cars and trucks on roads, and many passengers in the rush hours. But nothing. Also, some bugs (Passengers on the roof of stations Sic!) and optimization problems. And do you find that the driving of trains is there realistic and well ? (I have no idea)
Mixed feelings about the DLC. The M7 is modeled beautifully, the game world looks fantastic, and it's probably the most polished DLC released so far. But it still has the same atrocious interior lighting that has been present in every route since CSX:HH. The route feels empty and lifeless for the 'busiest route' in NYC, which is something like the 10th or 11th largest city in the world by population. ATC seems, to me at least (and I will admit that I only have a rudimentary understanding of ATC, ASCES, TWPS, ATP, etc.), poorly implemented: isn't it supposed to get the driver to slow down before signal changes? So why does it drop from line speed (80mph) straight down to 30mph (at an interlock) without stepping down to at least 60 at the preceding signal? I've requested a refund through Steam. I'm sorry, Dovetail: I want to support the hobby and further development of Train Sim World. I bought CSX: Heavy Haul just to get GWE when it came out--because HH was the 'base game' and needed for the DLC (and then you thank us by dropping CSX:HH and bundling NEC, GWE, and RT together--kind of reminds me how Microsoft said there would 'never' be Xbox One without Kinect, and then they dropped Kinect about a year later). I put up with the terrible diesel-electric simulation. I put up with the short, lifeless, and thoroughly underwhelming NEC. I put up with bad occlusion and thoroughly broken ASCES representation. I bought WSR and only played it a couple of times because it's beautiful but dull and lacks variety. But this is the final straw. I can't justify continually forking over money for pretty, but half-developed routes with fundamental issues and a vague promise that maybe, just maybe, one day some of those bugs will be patched, maybe PIS will be implemented, maybe development tools will be released for third party content.
The last dlc i bought was WSR. I own GWE and the base game. GWE is a lot of fun in a relaxing way and I enjoy it. I also agree with the above. Until the world is less dead, more immersive, less buggy, and less repetitive (up and down between reading and london with no fuel stop etc despite facilities there), Im in no hurry to purchase anything else. The patch was good, and the 66 and hst are now much more engaging, but how long did it take to get there.. Ho hum.
There seems to be a never ending cycle of releasing buggy, incomplete and short routed DLC. Until third party and the community can make routes, this is to be expected from DTG unfortunately.
Interesting 65% of the votes are positive stating “yes” they like the DLC, but those who comment are mostly negative... guess those that like it are having fun in the simulation instead of posting in The forums
I did not vote here because for me it's not just a yes or no. If I take the scenarios it's a yes, empty service mode a no. I voted in the other poll for "yes could be better"
Long Island Rail Road is definitely a mixed dlc. The scenery is good (much better than NEC: New York) and the M7 model is excellent however the service mode needs improving. Some ideas on improving the service mode here: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/long-island-rail-road-service-mode-overhaul.13771/ The service mode just feels empty like that in Rapid Transit. The levels of traffic in the service mode should be like in the scenarios, where the route feels much busier.
Thank-you for all and interesting answers. I am rather satisfied by this new DLC. And I am satisfied not to be the only one, even if unfortunately we are not many in the TSW community (I hope the editor change this). I hope that DTG will answer our demands to improve it.
I like the DLC but agree with all that was said above, and I do hope it will not take over a year to get patched up to fix, some of these bugs like people standing on platform roofs or people sinked into the platform should not have been overlooked which makes me wonder how this DLC even made it into release with these visual noticible bugs. But besides the bugs I do love the route.
My only complaint, is service mode is severely lacking AI traffic. Dovetail Games you must be able to add more AI, without killing performance.☹️
In my opinion this is great DLC in some respects but once again very lacklustre in others. When will DTG learn that what makes a route feel authentic is not just how shiny a train looks or how detailed a cab is, it's how much activity is going on around you and if the world feels alive. GWE has 37 miles of track and has over 270 services in service mode and even this feels like a Sunday service. LIRR, one of the busiest railroads in America has approx 180 for 40 miles of track. Hubs like Jamaica and NY Penn have no trains in them sometimes. No wonder it feels dead. Cars still don't move on the roads and people still behave like zombies bumping into each other. I understand that processing power has to be prioritised but making the world alive has got to be a priority and in my opinion holds back every TSW route right now. Also, why only one train, the M7? What made GWE and Ruhr Sieg Nord so good is that they have 3 trains to drive. 2 isn't great but providing one is just lazy.
I really do like it. I do hope that the signaling gets fixed, so that it works properly. It’s very close, but it could be better. The route is beautiful and I love the branch lines. The M7 is so great to operate!
I'm glad you feel this too, I was trying earlier to go through, hunting the collectables and it was simply impossible to use the trains to hop between stations... either I could walk between 5 stations before a train came, or when I did finally catch a train, it missed all of the minor stops and just took me straight to Jamaica.
I would like to see more stations on the lirr dlc like Huntington,Babylon and Far Rockaway and Ronkonkoma.
I have brought this DLC as soon as it was available and I have quite enjoyed driving the M7 and now the M3 But I have now come to the point where I want to drive more services to other branch lines. I need more variety
The LIRR route is dead because the Hempstead and Ronkonkoma Services Run Hourly.....ironically its true in real life.......however also the Huntington Branch runs every 15-60 minutes in real life....not to mention oyster bay services....that area between Jamacia and Hicksville should have trains at least every 5-15 mins since like around more than 2 rains an hour uses the mainline...its alot more than that. Hempstead Services are ok...but trains run to NYP and from NYP run only during the morning and evening rush.....what they do get right is trains to Atlantic Term...but IRl trains use 8 cars and at most 10 car trains....not 6 car trains....hopefully train lenghts are fixed in the future.
They need to extend the route further to ronkonkoma or Huntington maybe a third party group is working on the Huntington or ronkonkoma Branch line.
100 percent and hope it happens one day 100 percent i agree ..the route is great but for me the signal adding more mph sign.. Yes more stations means more service and seeing more rail traffic.... So im my opinion.. yes its a amazing route and love it for the detail and operations just no traffic no challenges .. just strictly driving and thats it.. if u can over look no traffic no challenges and waiting for hours for railfanning moments.. then u will love it in my opinion.
Thing is, I could understand that the route is currently dead because even if they use a true-to-life timetable for the exsisting parts of the route, all the trains that go to other branches that are not in the game would be missing. However there are services going to the Ronkonkoma and other branches already in the in-game timetable, of course with the only difference that they require you to give up the service at Hicksville or at other stations, then AI continues to drive off the map. So I really don't understand why there is so many traffic missing. Even if the number of driveable services stays the same, there could be much more AI only traffic going to different directions off the map, resulting in a much busier enviroment. I know they apparently gave hints at trying to come up with a better timetable several times, so I'm really hoping it will come at some point. Currently LIRR is one of the routes that comes with the base game, so it really deserves some love and care. It needs a new, busier time table and a few fixes like the missing trackside signals, etc. It doesn't need to be a 100% accurate time table, because I've also read that apparently they tried that but there were performance issues (don't know if this is true), but at least make it busier than it is now, especially on the main branch and around Jamaica. Also the fact that the Long Island City station is included in the route, despites the electric MUs barely going there, gives me hope that the diesels with the double decker cars will come as a DLC later on, giving more services to the timetable, as obviously they can't be simple replacements to the M7, like the M3 is now. The LIRR is probably my favorite route in the game already, so if they gave it a busier timetable with more M7s/M3s, a few small fixes, then even more services with the diesels, then it would be perfect. One can hope I guess.
I hope they’ll add the DM30AC’s Locomotive in the future that would definitely give Long Island city more traffic and hopefully add one of the dual mode diesel locomotives Branch’s like port Jefferson or oyster bay.
Yeah it would be great to have at least another branch fully or at least partially extended. Currently the stop at Hicksville feels so sudden.
