Hello, I just finished watching the VOD from yesterday's stream, and wanted to give my opinion on the use of the Baby Bullet Layer on OSD. Even though I advocated for unrealistic layering and subsitutions on other routes (which I'll get to later), I think we have come to the point where those decisions don't have to be a trade off between realism and gameplay. First off, I do not actually own OSD, so my opinion is not as relevant, but I certainly wouldn't be happy to see Caltrain branded train around in Canada, but that doesn't mean I would never like to drive one, especially because reskins exist, especially on PC, and I would love to recreate a GO livery in the livery designer. I think this would be a good case for an additional timetable, just like for the Class 313 on East Coastway (although for different reasons), it would combine the best of both words in my opinion. It would allow PIS and passenger services on OSD, while not removing any realism for the people that value realism above gameplay, and/or don't have access to a GO Transit reskin, but then you'd see GO trains in Peninsula Corridor as well, so it's not a great solution. And this is a similar conclusion me and a discord user came up for a possible BR423 substituion on the Koln-Aachen S-Bahn, and it's a solution already adopted by DTG for the use of the BR182 on freight services, and that is set the percentage of that train spawning as low as possible, so that it's very rare to see it roaming around, but you still have the choice between the two trains in question. In case of Layering, the same solution I believe could be reached using two different timetables, and I think (or rather hope) it won't take that much work, given the fact the two timetables (the Baby Bullet one and the Freight only one) are already existent. It would be the easiest method to quickly "Turn the Layer on or off", without needing to unistal/reinstall stuff.
Alternatively, I have long advocated for Livery Designer 2.0 (or an update before then) to include a checkbox system for each route to activate/deactivate liveries: so on OSD one could check the (homemade) GO livery and uncheck the Caltrain, and vice-versa. No need to multiply timetables out to infinity that way.
Definitely, but this update to OSD will predate any major addition to the livery designer, and designing your own livery shouldn't be required to have a baseline realistic experience, which could be fixed by in-game livery sharing. The MP36 is also strictly not the correct rolling stock. An even better solution would be to have a checkbox for which DLCs you want "installed", so you could disable or enable the baby bullet, or any other inaccurate layering/substitutions without too much hassle, even better combined with a Livery Designer 2.0 as you described. The two are not mutually exclusive
On steam at least, you can uninstall individual DLC, but if you want to play again you will have to redownload
I barely touch OSD, but I really hope this is a separate timetable. Seeing Caltrain rolling stock on OSD would be a reason for me to never touch OSD again frankly.
Doesn't bother me at all. I'm all for more traffic and variety on the routes. Probably should be a separate timetable though, since not everyone will agree. Another option would be an in-game toggle to enable/disable individual DLC. I don't think having to delete/reinstall DLC to have layers the way we want is an acceptable solution.
I believe in one of the streams Matt said technically it's possible to quicky mount and unmount add-ons in the game. So I suppose they could easily make it so you can toggle your DLCs on and off from the game itself.
I’m personally not too thrilled by the idea of having Caltrains on a Canadian route. Even ignoring the livery, the MP36 doesn’t even run on these routes. But honestly, I’d rather have a bit of an immersion breaker rather than having two separate timetables. The whole point of having multiple timetables is to actually give a different experience while still being on the same route. GWE has 2015 and 1970s timetables, RT has 2017 and 2021 timetables, and Bakerloo has 2020 and Pre-1972 timetables. It just seems pointless to make a new timetable that only adds some passenger trains. Makes it just a bit less unsatisfactory to see how many services I’ve completed. So while I’m not a fan of having unrealistic trains, I really don’t want it put in a separate timetable.
That's the counter argument I was expecting, and you're right, that is a matter of personal preference, and I completely agree with you, the double timetable is not a good solution, a better solution, as said before would be a combination of a new Livery Designer+Livery Sharing system, and a way to quickly "turn off/on" DLCs. My double timetable proposal was to try and please both sides of this argument (who wants gameplay and who wants realism) at the cost of the satisfaction of seeing the completed services and such. Although I disagree with the fact that "different timetables are used for different experiences", if you are able to put to one side the completed services thing it opens up a lot of possibilities (like this one, other more questionable layering, otherwise impossible substitutions like the Class 313, split up layers on last gen, etc...)
The turning on/off DLCs is definitely a good idea, having a feature like that would be amazing to strike a balance between the immersion police and those who want every single train drivable on each route. I remember I once made a suggestion similar to that but focusing on substitutions, as I was (still am) annoyed by unrealistic substitutions on the Sand Patch Grade. The double timetable thing I would still say I only like for new experiences. It was fair for the Class 313 due to the technical stuff, although I will admit that having an extra East Coastway timetable which adds nothing new besides the ability to use the 313 lost quite a bit of my interest for the add-on. It's the right choice, but I personally find it really annoying. Oakville is one of those routes where I could see myself trying to 100% the timetable, because 64 services isn't so bad. But increasing the total to 130+ whatever seems quite annoying, because that new timetable offers nothing new. The CN services would be exact same as the services from the original timetable. Of course it's mainly a thing I would find "mildly infuriating", but I feel like the new timetables should only be made if it's actually different from the original one. If it's something simple like passenger trains that don't interact with trains already in the timetable, then it should just be a layer. Of course the best case scenario would be to be able to turn on/off layers, but as that isn't a thing yet, I personally prefer having it be a regular layer.
Like I already wrote on another topic, I don't get the idea, why we are given a poll about our opinion on this topic and the least favored choice actually gets implemented. I get that we cannot have every train from every operator that ran on a route and thus I am okay with believable substitution. A train from an operator half a continent away is nothing such. Thus a Caltrain MP36 on OSD would stop me from using that route.
I'd put money on OSD – as a primarily switching route with zero passenger operations, plus all of the closed yard disappointment at launch – being one of the least purchased and least played of all the DLC (happy to be corrected if anyone with actual figures knows otherwise). DTG are clearly seeing an opportunity to boost its value and maybe pull in some extra punters by adding the passenger services that were probably planned from the start, but couldn't be included because of GO licence issues. They've said themselves that it's far from a perfect solution, but they're going to set it up like this and see how it goes. I imagine they have a pretty good handle on where the playerbase sits on the purist vs every-train-on-every-route spectrum and have decided it's worth a punt. Time will tell if they've judged it correctly...
I do own the route and am delighted that DTG are adding a passenger layer. The line is peppered with passenger stations, which are all dead - not a single passenger. Zero. It's like riding through a string of ghost towns. OSD has been massively neglected and needs as much love & TLC as Adam and the preservation crew can throw at it. I applaud anything and everything the team does to breathe new life into it.
I am NOT critizing their choice, but there were some internal frictions on this as well, and for good reason. I proposed what I saw as a possible solution to the problem of having unrealistic trains on a route, it was not meant as a criticism to Adam or his work. The idea is good to bring life to a route, however seeing "CALTRAIN" on snowy Canada would be more than immersion breaking for a lot of people, so my double timetable solution was a ready, and relatively easy to implement solution aimed to ""solve"" this problem without needing far-medium term future implementations or new features. This is not like using a BR422 instead of a Regional Express Talent 2 for a 10 minutes journey...
Without the necessary options available, so that’s turning layers on and off, enabling individual LD liveries per route, sharing of liveries, this goes a little too far for required realism that a lot of players like. I can see it being a timetable option when it comes just for the choice otherwise players are forced to see Californian trains running on a Canadian route, which isn’t good. I wouldn’t mind so much in this case but I’m not every player and seeing how some players react to even the correct trains being run on a route but just a couple of years after they were withdrawn I can imagine some people being quite rightly absolutely livid if they couldn’t easily run the route without the wrong country’s trains on passenger services. For this particular route, the passenger services will be a bit dull but it may give me a reason to dust off the old route and give it a go again. I got bored of the straight track runs fairly quickly with the freight. I like curves in routes.
Saw a mod a while ago changing the baby bullet and coaches to the Go livery. If it’s no longer available I’m sure a new one will be popping up before long.
1 - That would result in GO Trains in California 2 - Consoles Mods/User designed liveries should not be needed for a baseline realistic experience.
Not if they make them separate trains like the CSX shunter mod made from the CalTrain one. But that would still only help PC and console users would be stuck with CalTrain trains.
Its interesting, some things are more universal than others. The red DB trains are for me almost interchangable, but not for big fans of German routes. They know which route each runs on and which height the doors should be on the carriages. The BR blue trains are almost interchangable as evidenced from the Cornwall route, but also we see the aficianados who are saying the years are slightly wrong etc. It still looks fine to me. DB have some red class 66s which run in the UK, would they look odd on German routes? I don't know. But on the other hand even I can see a CalTrain in Canada is a bit odd, as would be a Southern branded train in NTP/TVL or a UK/German loco in the USA. Everything is a bit more nuanced and I think there is a line where things are just believable enough without being blatently "off the rails".
But at that point it's not a layer, it's additional content added to the Baby Bullet DLC, effectively using a different train, a first for non-modded content, and I believe not what Adam is doing. Still, it's a good solution for PC, but I still believe that would only be acceptable if official livery sharing was a thing, so everyone (both who wants to keep a vanilla install on PC and consoles) would be able to get a GO Train livery.
I mean, im still annoyed that there is no way to turn off the Clinchfield SD40 or the UP SD40-2 (SD40N number series) from subbing into Sand Patch Grade. Without it being in its own timetable, this is just another non-protypical setup that really only benefits PC players or those good enough with the livery editor to make it at least somewhat realistic.
Doesn't benefit us : we can't turn off the "wrong" locos/liveries either. Although we can add a GO livery mod, then we either have a mixture of both on both routes, or do a complete replacement which puts GO trains in San Francisco. TSW NEEDS a user-controlled livery/rolling stock selection interface. I don't want Caltrain in Canada, GO in California, or Clinchfield locos in Maryland in the 2010s.
No, I'm talking about mods. TheShotte has already made a CSX MP15DC mod based on the CalTrain shunter, and it's a standalone locomotive, not just a reskin. It doesn't replace the original CalTrain locomotive either. So as I said, based on the method mentioned above, the same could be done with a GO Transit set based on the CalTrain Baby Bullet, without replacing the original CalTrain one, so both routes could have their own version. Of course, I bet it wouldn't be an easy job, and it still wouldn't be ideal to rely on mods for this. So as I said, I still hope that at some point they will be able to add a real GO Transit version. I bet that even if it would be a proper paid add-on for the route, many people would get it. But I do agree on this one. Just an option to check and uncheck rolling stock and liveries for each route. That way everyone could personalize their experience the way they want it.
No, as I said, I was talking about making a Go Transit mod that doesn't replace the original CalTrain one. But because relying on mods would not be ideal (especially for console users), a proper DTG made paid version would be the ideal.
I'm gonna just pretend that GO bought some baby bullet sets from CalTrain and hasn't repainted them yet. Problem solved for me. DTG can't win either way for some people. Oakville is probably the deadest route in the game, which is a shame to me because it has some cool stuff in there- so bring on the extra traffic IMO!
Yes I'm aware of it, but as I said, it's a different locomotive, not a layer of the Pen.Cor one, which should (in theory) be added to the Baby Bullet DLC, and not a layer of the CalTrain one. As I said a first for an official DTG DLC - even if it's just a question of copy/pasting the original one and placing it on another route.
Well if it were an official DTG add-on, then it could be totally independent of the CalTrain Baby Bullet one. And until then, the current CalTrain layer can be a placeholder, so if they ever make a correct GO Transit one, then just replace which train runs the timetable and the whole thing becomes independent of the CalTrain route..
Then it becomes a question of economics; DTG would have to look at its spreadsheets and make a business decision as to whether making a new loco as an add-on to a route which (apparently) doesn't sell well, and which would not layer into anything else, makes financial sense or not. TheShotte has done a bang-up job with his SW1500, but he's working within the hobbyist business model.
How so? In that case you are giving a Baby Bullet for free (although I'm guessing it won't add anything to Pen.Cor), and by making it one of the stock trains for OSD means at this point there would be no way to deactivate it whatsoever, and you are giving away a train DLC for free (although the 363 coming out natively with BRD has set an interesting precedent). Otherwise it has to be tied with the Pen.Cor. one regardless - so in the Baby Bullet DLC there is the "OSD set" and the "Pen.Cor set" which although might be the same, they would still need to be two different entities to make sure an unsupported modded livery only works in OSD. This might result in the Baby Bullet DLC having two "home routes"? It seems too much of an hassle to do all of that just to make sure a mod works well. Releasing another completely different/reworked train DLC with the correct stock and branding is surely a future possibility.
Isn't that what I said as well? I never said anything about giving the CalTrain train out for free, I don't understand where you get that idea from. I said make a separate, proper GO Transit add-on, separate from the CalTrain Baby Bullet.
I thought you talked about both doing an OSD version of the baby bullet, and in the future a proper train DLC. If I just misunderstood something, I apologise.
Oh, no. I meant using the CalTrain train for now, as a layer coming from Peninsula Corridor. But when the time comes and they get to make a proper GO Transit set, then release it as a separate add-on and replace the current CalTrain dependent layer with it. I think that could work, hopefully.
For reference locomotives are the same but the cab cars are different since San Francisco California Caltrain did not piggyback on Go Transit order for the cab car. Can be corrected if DTG gets Go Transit license from the province of Ontario provincial government Metrolinx.
For an MPX series, the 2 may look the same by shape, but not by design on the inside. As Lamplight has said, these two are very different in specs. The MP36PH-3C (from Caltrain) uses a 645F3B engine with a separate HEP generator, which is different from the MP40PH-3C (from GO Transit) that's built with a 710G3B-T2 engine. So again, it's more than just reskinning and being satisfied as "close enough" from a paint job, DTG would have to make a whole new model to fit in OSD (if they managed to get the GO license that is), instead of just layering in the wrong train that may look alike, just for the PIS systems at stations. I may speak of this techno-babble, but like the Simugraph, it's what's under the hood that really makes a difference between the locomotives. Spoiler And the underline numbers gives you a hint on the horsepower the two produces.
I don't think this should happen. First of all, as some have already pointed out, the train that runs on this route is the MP40PH-3C, not the MP36PH-3C which are completely different trains by technical design. The cabs of a MP36 and a MP40 are different as well. The cabcars are also different. Secondly it makes zero sense to add a CalTrain to that route since it doesn't run on that route in real life. DTG wouldn't tell rivet add the Class 43 HST to West Cornwall because it would be incorrect for the time period since the cab is different and it has different engines nor would dtg add the DB Munich S-Bahn DB BR 423 to SKA because that train doesn't run on that route in real life but it's ok for dtg to add a completely incorrect train for this route? That's just hypocrisy. I think it would be better to release a GO Tranist MP40PH-3C as a DLC to Oakville instead of adding a completely innacurate train with an innacurate livery to that route. Oakville Subdivision was apparently the worst dlc released for tsw2020 so I wonder what's really the interest for this route still.
I completely agree with you, it would be like placing the ICE on the TGV line as both the TGV and ICE are high speed, not even the same country, and completely different one
Thanks for the explanation about MP36PH-3C San Francisco, CA Caltrain vs GO Transit Toronto & Oakville, ON MP40PH-3C differences. My thinking was that DTG will pull Hamburg-Lübeck (Dab780 instead of Dab 781) on Oakville subdivision when DTG has GO Transit license
No, it's practicality. When SKA was released, HMA and the 423 did not exist. The 422, from RRO, did. They either used a train in stock, or had no S-bahn at all. Shall we toss the H-word at them for also putting 377s on 317 routes in ECW?
Well they could've made a db s-bahn koln br 423 whilst ska was in development but they choose not too so it's not a matter of hma existing since there are diffences between the s-bahn koln and the Munich S-Bahn versions so it's not like you can make a Munich S-Bahn 423 and just paste that exact train on ska. The passenger interior and pis are different
Sure. They could include with each route every train that ever ran on that route or even to adjacent platforms. That would be..... uneconomical.
It's one train. Heck if they were already planning developing the DB S-Bahn Munich DB BR 423 they could've used the shell as a base and make changes that would reflect the S-Bahn Koln version. Also ska is the base route of tsw2 and since a majority of players moved from tsw2020 to tsw2 which we had to pay for mind you DTG would've made the money right back. That wouldn't be uneconomical.
In case you hadn't noticed, DTG haven't included more than 2 locos in a route since the very first releases.
