I am desperately trying to work out how to use the American ATC/ACSES systems. The MBTA cab (CTC-3 I think its called), merrily whistles away at me but I have no idea what it all means. Is there a manual explaining this somewhere? Thanks for any help, Neil
A manual? You think DTG will provide a manual on how something should work? Then more and more people would realise that the signalling on Boston Sprinter is completely broken.
For content which has a manual you'll find it its Steam page to the right, and below the ESRB rating, there will be a "View the manual" button. Again, that's assuming it has one though, because DTG have stopped doing them for newer content for some stupid reason.
If you haven’t seen it, there are plans for a comprehensive guide. In the meantime, this blurb might help: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/boston-sprinter-safety-systems-guide.44236/#post-361287
Let me inject a bit of fairness here: DTG has always provided user's manuals for its TS DLC and used to do so for all TSW routes and some TSW engines. This previously reliable practice ceased in 2020 (the last DTG produced manual I have is that for CN Oakville Subdivision, but there may be others for DLC that I have not bought). DTG has made available (how courteous and generous of them) manuals produced by 3rd party DLC packages such as Rivet and Skyhook Games, but without themselves following these examples. My feeling is that a DLC issued without a user's manual is only half a product and I have laboriously put together some PDF manuals based on tutorials and a few guides; the latter are available at TSW's Steam site, but the former are "too large" to be uploaded here. As the old grammarian would state, "This is a situation up with which we should not have to put!"
You know I wouldn't be entirely against gutting the manuals, or at least greatly reduce their role. Most games since the SNES era are usually designed under the assumption that no one's reading them, even if they still had one. Fact is when people get a shiny new game the last thing they want to do is spend 15 minutes to read a manual usually, so it makes sense to ditch them. But they'd need proper in-game tutorials in order to do that, and we're still at a point where DTG can't be bothered makings ones explaining fairly major things like the safety systems.
However for a game like TSW2 most of the people want to know how to drive it properly and personally I would read a manual as long as it was reliable, at the moment I'd give anything for some kind of tutorial on American signalling as it is a minefield of different rules with different lots of signals. I liked how they included how to reset after an emergency brake application but for Boston Sprinter this was only done for the F40 for some reason and most of the time when this has happened previously quickly shutting down the cab then activating it again usually soleves it.
Where are those plans for a comprehensive guide? Would that include all DLC? And what would happen when a new DLC became available? Personally, this strikes me as a ridiculous misunderstanding of what DTG's TSW customers want. Having to page through a comprehensive guide to find, as in the OP's situation, an explanation of U.S. signalling, might just be the only solution worse than no guides at all.
It’s an ATC/ACSES guide for Boston/Providence. Why would that include all DLC? Perhaps wait to read the guide before thinking the worst of it?