Just got Arosa on sale and found this manual advice about brakes. Why isnt brakes overheating implemented overall? Especially in freight trains? It would be game changer on CJP, SH, HSC (not like now, dynamics+ permanent automatic trimming which is a fiction)
It's a lot of work to add in more simulation elements and making them work properly with simugraph. You also have to think of all the different variations of brake overheating and how the rate it overheats might change depending on what you're going. Maybe we'll see it someday but it's up to dtg to implement it.
Somewhere on Matt's "ambitious projects for way down the road" is modeling various failure modes- brakes, couplers, bearings, engines - but that remains aspirational. TBH, the real gamechanger for US freight realism would be coupler failure, a concern even greater than braking with those monster trains.
I wonder if license terms would preclude DTG and its partners from simulating coupler separation as well as other catastrophic events such as hot box failures and the consequent possibility of derailments and fires. Not as common as they used to be, but recent events suggest overheating axle bearings are still an issue. There are hot box detectors on US freight routes like CJP which are modeled in TSW.
There is nothing that prohibits implementing brake fade in the game. We already have similar effects (brake moisture fade, traction motor heat) implemented. I think the reason why DTG hasn't fully implemented brake heat fade yet is because it is a quite niche feature and it would only be noticed by a few players (especially on routes that don't have steep gradients etc). Perhaps if a mountain route (or a route with extended steep gradients) was released in the future it would come with brakes that can burn off if used inappropriately
