Well That Was A Watse Of 40 LOVE*ing Minutes.

This would be ideal but I doubt dtg would spend weeks moving all the markers.

On some routes you get a tolerance when stopping at a marker then on others you have got to stop bang on the marker. Maybe in future dtg could give us a tolerance of 30yrds or something.

 

Well, yeah, also in real life you'd have to worry about things like splatting the blood and guts of some idiot who tried to beat the train. But much like how in TSW you never have think about pedestrians or cars, Clinchfield's train lengths are well within the siding lengths, and thus aren't really something you should be needing to think about.

Strongly disagree, it's just as much the fault of the sim for not penalizing the player when it should. For example US routes tend to display max track speed, and penalize based on that. This would give the impression to a new player that they should always stick to this speed. However it should often be lower after passing through caution signals, yet there's nothing in-game that indicates this to you. Add the tight scheduling on top of that and I don't see how it's the fault of a new player for not realizing they should slow down when the game makes no indication they should be doing so.

I might know everything you've said, but that's because I've spent years of my life looking up info on trains in their operation. A noob isn't gonna now that the timing aren't realistic. For all they know real drivers very well could've had to remain on the schedule down to the minute. Hell, in Japan their Shinkansen's have penalties for being seconds off, so it wouldn't be completely unreasonable for a new player to think that.

 

No, I meant that literally. I didn't even realise it could be taken as referring to the game crashing until you pointed it out.

 

Agree it’s important to stay true to the prototype. Red means red unless you get permission to pass it from the dispatcher. If the prototype has a signal and stop close together then more real is better than less real imo.

 

Disagreeing is absolutely fine, I have no problem with it! The only thing i dislike about these forums is the constant negativity, but a robust discussion is always entertaining to participate in.

Your POV is interesting, but will still disagree on the following points:
1. I haven't looked into how snugly the consists fit in the sidings, rather I was just observing certain scenarios where stopping on a sixpence would be not just expected, but required in real life. If they don't exist such as that in TSW, fair enough. Agree that the target logic needs to be improved, but I still wouldn't expect any more than a couple of feet either way, since if you're approaching a stop point you should be at a crawling speed anyway (clarifying edit: I mean when you're bearing down on the target, not when you're half a mile away of course)

2. Disagree again, negative reinforcement is a proven (probably, don't ask me for citations...) method by which to enhance any learning experience, gaming or otherwise, even if it is only make believe action points. Humans like positive acknowledgement and dislike being told directly or indirectly that they're doing LOVE

3. Re the US track speeds, I don't know enough about US rail to confirm or deny, but if true then absolutely agree it should be something DTG to add in, since we have the UK signs showing freight and passenger train limits (though only passenger is enforced on shared lines)

4. Shinkansen - Agreed they are scheduled to seconds, but all of those times have been calculated for the maximum safety of both the trains and its passengers, and if it does run late there will be penalties (depending on circumstance one assumes), but no driver who knows he is late is going to exceed posted limits especially on Japanese rail

 

I do like how you interpreted my er, interpretation correctly without me even typing a word, well done sir (not even the slightest bit sarcastic, actually impressed)

 

US routes have track speed markers. You may be having trouble noticing them because they look completely different than UK signs.

 

A thought while I was writing my previous posts. As I said before there are two types of target; the single pointer one and the yellow? one with outlines of the wagons/carriages. It seems the single target ones are the ones with issues, so perhaps they should be eliminated in favour of the carriage outline ones? Some of the front of the consists would still be inches away from a red, but if the train is anywhere in the yellow (and for the US freight routes those markers are going to be loooooong) when it stops, then the task will be fulfilled

 

I was more referring to Mich 's comment of "However it should often be lower after passing through caution signals, yet there's nothing in-game that indicates this to you.", I have seen the regular speed signs but do signs for this scenario exist either in real life or in game? Or is it a set of training that the engineer would be expected to know?

 

They're also much smaller and harder to read than the UK/DE ones IMO.

IRL, this is all route knowledge for the engineer and you will learn it in-game as well, but there is a lot of unnecessary frustration for new players.

Some routes implement speed control signalling, which makes it easier, but really every route should come with a basic track schematic indicating track speed limits at the very minimum.

TSW3 saw the return of manuals, so maybe there's hope.

 

Agree, the TSW3 manual is very good, its just a shame that for console (which I imagine attracts more noobs than PC does) there's no longer an easy, indeed for PS5 completely missing, way to access the digital manual. I forget how X1 handled it, but many times on PS4 the manual for a game was instantly accessible from the home screen (press down on the game tile). Wii u had a fantastic digital manual system as did the Vita, but apparently noone needs them anymore according to Sony/Nintendo

 

I wouldn’t want to waste console storage space for something I can google on my phone or laptop

 

Crikey, embedded videos in the game at 4k quality would be even more of a hit to the 64gb DLC limit...Correct decision there!

 

That’s a really good idea. I wonder what app that would open on a console

 

It would just open the browser and play (I assume) embedded YT videos