We need difficulty settings, So- Easy, Medium and Hard. Hard can be for full air brake simulation so it doesn't take 15 seconds to charge up the air brake on a 50-100 in length freight. It takes much longer and without this Cajon Pass is not rightfully simulated. Taking a 5000tonne train down a 3% grade is very serious but only when you know about the REAL braking system. Apparently it was changed in Sherman Hill. Because people hated waiting correct times to charge the air brake. Is there a way I can alter the settings in a file somewhere so I can get it back to realistic? I thought they were using Simugraph!!! This will be good for those who just want to drive a train arcade style>>>>>> select easy and you don't need to learn anything really.
If you have to stop the train (or apply 3 successive FULL applications) for some reason on steep hills (like Cajon or Tehachapi). the crew have to tie it down, that is apply hand brakes on every car and then release the air brake to charge it. I think after fully charged an initial or minimum application with locomotive brakes might hold it otherwise an application enough to keep it still, then releasing it after the hand brakes have been released. There might be some articles on Trains magazine web site or rail fan sites about this.
Here: http://www.railway-technical.com/tr...-equipment/brakes/north-american-freight.html It has a good description in the 4th paragraph "Successive applications". Only people that are real world engineers and brake specialists ie in the industry understand this.
This is not really hard to understand but DTG decided to choose some kind of compromise solution for some reasons. I like Run 8 more in this aspect.
Hard should also require you to run with safety systems on and more severe AP penalties for infringements. Taking this a step further, there should also be a third level of Mastery, with more worthwhile awards but only achievable by extended play at hard difficulty level.
Manual trail locos setup etc etc The new "just drive" experience is good itself but bad for the story about what the US freight experience should be like.
DTG have always said they don't WANT to implement some sort of difficulty setting because they want players to essentially "turn up and drive off" When I did playtesting on the original TSW I suggested that they could do a Gran Turismo style learning centre with some form of progression in difficulty and requirement for safety systems, and that's what I was told back then. Matt's reiterated it since, but for me the training centre now is where people can "mess about with trains", then you have "journey mode" which could be used to teach specific locos in specific routes and add in safety systems, reduce HUD functions etc so when you "progress" to timetable mode you know the route, the loco, how to deal with safeties etc Maybe that's too in depth for them to program but it would be what I would consider a decent way to make the game available to the dabbler in train simming, as well as providing the challenge to people who want the game to fail you if you mess up
To expand to this maybe Easy could be that Your train starts fully turned on, Lights, Reverser and more (maybe no safety systems) Then medium: How the the train would normally start and all you need to do is Set reverser, turn on lights and safety systems and get going Then hard: Cold start like from the depot or from a terminus station and you need to turn on battery, Set the brakes and test them, raise pantograph etc
Thinking a bit further about this, I have to say I doubt many players would want to sit there for 20 minutes at the start of a scenario waiting for the brakes to come off. Even Run 8 doesn't simulate that.
That's not really realistic. IRL in the UK at least most trains are prepared by the depot crew and wouldn't be completely shut down unless they're down for a long time (so maybe for freight at a depot) but on passenger runs where the layover might be half an hour or less the units aren't really shut down and certainly not "battery dead" And the setup of the train isn't what makes train driving hard, more a case of route knowledge, safety systems and dealing with gradients etc OldVern brings up the matter of "waiting 20 minutes for brakes to charge" and it's true people DON'T want to wait that long in a game or sim for these things, but to extend that I don't see that as "difficulty" either, you set it up and the compressor does the work (whilst you do other things or sit there drinking coffee...)
I still have trauma (!) recalling the more complex aircraft in older versions of Flight Simulator. I think 747 Ready For Pushback was the worst, despite the title it was anything but. Over 30 minutes from cold and dark I never could get Engine 4 to start, as Ctrl-E simply didn’t work.
I thought the game was already on the difficult setting, get an hour into a run.... stuck at red light or some random derailment, and start again. Live die repeat! With no save function it's like I'm playing Mario brothers all over again. I'm all for some cold starts but 30 mins for the brakes to build pressure would be agony. I did a run the other day where I had to wait nearly 10 mins for a signal to clear. It was like waiting for God.
