True. I’d love to drive my 4F down to Ditton docks manually via free roam, but for some reason can’t set a path there. Not only are the yards unused in the timetable, I can’t even get creative and use them myself.
It feels like something has gone wrong in the planning initially or developing of DLC, it's not hard to see why people are getting bored after handing over £30 or whatever currency type. Some of the DB routes aren't so bad. Just feels like no strategy other than grab revenue on day one and move on to the next PR spin.
Unfortunately this particular method seems to be the industry standard now, not just DTGs method, only way this stops IMO is we all start voting with our wallets as voicing your opinion on forums doesn't ever really work, as most forums are read by devs who TBH generally have the same thoughts and arguments we have, but you start hitting higher ups in the wallets they'll start taking note then, its a sad state of affairs now where devs are stuck between players and management and get slammed by either no matter what they do. Take Care & Happy New Year Gary
Steam is not being left out the FS has not long come out and if you own peak valley its compatible with the west somerset railway and theres a add on pack for the west Cornwall line. Something is in development for steam fans trust me,,ps Happy new year
Unless you can provide a source for your assertion it is no more valid than the alleged comment from a dev on Discord which triggered the discussion. There may be steam locos in TSW but that does not remove the fact that all require a major rework of physics and sound and the whole core simulation of steam needs a buff. The forthcoming WSR pack will no doubt offer a very good timetable but it is not coming with any new locos or any changes to the core sim. FS is the worst steam loco in the game and afraid to say just because an asset in the game looks and (vaguely) sounds like a steam locomotive does not mean it is any more an accurate simulation than a Hornby Dublo version.
SOS was such a missed opportunity. They could have made several DLC locos for it, and I'm sure me and other Steam fans would have picked up every single one.
I am not the biggest steam fan, and certainly wouldn't choose LMR steam, but I would buy every single one! There was and still is so much potential that DTG can capitalise on.
Like fr, I am a UK EMU Person, i dont even have any steam dlc's installed cos i never purchased deluxe editions or peak forest With 100% of respect, i find steam trains old faishoned and i dont likt it at all but i can agree that sometimes the steam era is negelected
Ultimately there will always be personal preference involved. However, the problem here is that if it's true (which at the moment I think it is) DTG are cutting off a large portion of people who'd be interested in steam/older routes. There hasn't been a single good steam locomotive for TSW so far. Not only is that a good reason not to bother with steam in TSW, but if there won't be any more steam locomotives for the game then the players who are interested in them have no choice but to play Train Simulator, which in the past few weeks has had a number of very high quality steam releases from third parties. They're expensive, but worth the money. I really want to get the 9F by Victory Works, but the Bossman Games Castle V2 is also high on my list. Currently, the best hope for steam in TSW is if MeshTools came back (they did the setup on the Class 33) or if JT made a steam locomotive for TSW. Their steam locomotives in TS vary in quality but they haven't done one in quite a while so hopefully they have improved since then. Obviously, the best hope would be if Victory Works or Bossman Games started working on TSW but I haven't seen any evidence that they might.
After the talk of Riviera line and TSC above I decided this evening (and now into the morning!) to fire up TSC Riviera line, and even with that route's flaws (including it being a WR route) it still puts the steam locos in TSW to shame. I now have my other steam content on TSC redownloading so I know what I will be spending my day off doing after I have done the shopping. I must just remember not to look out at the sea along the seawall! Hopefully once DTG towers opens it's doors again we will get an official response on here, hopefully confirming that what has been rumoured isn't the case and DTG do continue to improve steam in TSW to get it at least comparable to TSC's stuff. Only time will tell though...
I thought I'd be cheeky and put a few of my screenshots from both versions of the line, they're in the spoiler. Spoiler The sea wall, not sure where though. I love the old green FGW livery, although sometimes I feel like I'm the only one! No idea where I took this. As for the train, South West Trains used to run services to Paignton back in the day, and one of the Paignton services even went from Brighton. Recently Brighton lost its final crosscountry service (GWR to Bristol/Great Malvern) but it's fun to reminisce. I'm not sure if 170s actually ran the service but I wouldn't be surprised. Interestingly, one of SWT's 170s was 'stolen' from Southern, and was meant to be a Class 171. Instead it ran for South West Trains (with a Southern interior) before being transferred to its intended home later on. The wave assets are a bit weird, but the lighting is lovely. I find TS' lighting especially with the AP Weather EP to be so warm and approachable. Dawlish. The waves look a bit better here. As for the station and town, the scenery work here is brilliant, as it should be for a place as iconic as this. The lovely S160... Unfortunately I'm not very good at escaping Kingswear, is there any strategy for doing it?
Given steam trains were literally the first rail vehicles, existing for over 150 years, its not surprising they're old fashioned.
I just bought the Victory Works County at the last minute in the sale. Running it along the sea wall and it was brilliant. Everything a steam loco should be in a sim, even in standard mode. Think I need to check my TSC settings though as got to admit Riviera Line didn’t look quite as grand as I remember and one or two of the tunnel portals on the sea wall seemed to be ghosting a second entrance at right angles in the cliff wall. It really is a route crying out to be made in TSW (assuming Focus don’t go belly up and take DTG with them) especially if the path along the sea wall is enabled to take a stroll from Dawlish Warren to Dawlish. It really could be TSW’s finest hour with an eclectic mix of GWR steam and early diesel.
Really? I'd have thought you would have preferred looking out over the sea, with the waves crashing against your window, as you sat in a buffet car having a full english? Wouldn't that be TSW's finest hour?
This is what it all comes down to. I'm making it one of my New Year's resolutions to not impulse buy new DLC when it comes out. I'm interested in Goblin line but I'm only going to buy it if the 710 sounds authentic, comes with announcements and the route has genuinely good urban scenery, which is something DTG is hit or miss with. I was at Clapham Junction irl last week and later the same day drove through it in TSW, and was appaled by how barren the skyline is. Going back to steam, it would be a terrible shame if DTG abandoned it because the physics are the only thing majorly wrong in my opinion. The 4F and FS are beautifully modelled and the 4F sounds brilliant below 20mph. They Scotsman used to sound ok too but I think the update completely butchered the sounds in the 20-30mph range. Wonderful for the upcoming WSR update.... They just don't feel right. The 4F feels overpowered and the FS feels underpowered. I don't feel like I'm in control of one of the fastest classes of express locomotives in Britain. That's the first thing they need to fix.
I just bought the Victory County Class loco pack for TSC and my word it is superb, even in standard as opposed to advanced mode. I guess the issue must be trying to get steam to work satisfactorily with Simugraph.
Let's not stop posting in this thread. I cannot ignore the fact that the chuff sounds have still not been fixed, all trains simply are silent barring the rolling stock sounds. This has been 2 years + now and it's a big gripe because even my Support tickets were completely ignored all that time ago. How do we get our voices heard?
Quite right Alex. Well if DTG are back in the world today, who knows we might get some response to the question raised in this thread which, to recall, stems from an alleged comment made by one of their own employees on a Discord group. In the meantime I am on a roll with the Victory County. Load 14 out of Exeter heading for Reading, just about to depart Taunton on my next session. Sounds spot on. Coal and water consumption as you would expect. Steams well but working hard up Wellington Bank not continually got safety valves blowing off. No unrealistic top speed, cruises in the low to mid 70’s MPH with 90% regulator and 25% cut off (which does need to be advanced to 35 or 40 on rising gradients) but you can see trying to push any harder is going to empty the boiler and put the fire through the chimney. So unlike TSW you do have to actually manage the loco, even in standard mode.
I suspect you will get no response. If they confirm that steam is abandoned, a lot of people will get annoyed. If they say it isn’t but it’s not on the roadmap, then we are in a no better position. This is a rumour from discord supposedly by someone saying they were a DTG employee. I doubt there was any proof that they were actually an employee and to me it would be highly unusual that an employee would want to damage their companies reputation and risk their own job.
Major gripe here also. I'm closer than ever to an uninstall now. The silence is deafening on this issue. I think TSW needs to draw its line in the sand. I guess it did with the modern only policy for UK bar a couple of steam. This thread has twisted and turned but DTG need to read the room here. If a decent competitor appeared they would be abandoned very quickly.
I was actually reticent to mention it here because the devs tend to be both more active and more engaging on Discord (probably, IMO, because the environment is less discouraging than here on the forums), and I had no interest in either putting any dev off interacting with us on Discord or encouraging some sort of pile-on (hence why I've not named them directly). Having said that, the reason I decided to speak up here was because this is ultimately a more public forum than Discord and (agreeing with Vern) I do think that we need some sort of official DTG response because steam has been left in such a poor state. (The dev in question is well known to both Discord and these forums although tends to frequent the former. The Discord server is public and searchable if you still want receipts - the discussion in question was on the #tsw-british-dlc channel if I recall correctly. There is no doubt in my mind that they are who they say they are.)
I truly admire the persistence of wanting some official statements from DTG regarding the thread subject. What for, to what effect? I know hope is the last thing to die, but sorry, DTG´s credibility went down the drain long time ago. At least in my book. They can state whatever they want, I wouldn´t believe it before cross checking with other sources. OR: Seeing that numerous promises over the years have been kept actually. One can dream, of course ...
It would be good to get an official comment. I have often commented on the lack of DLC for SOS but nothing is ever said in response by anyone from DTG. If steam is being abandoned that is indeed disappointing and will make me consider how much more I buy into TSW as for me variety is important.
Just want to complement this thread about steam in TSW, i found that the Flying Scotsman behave very weird compared to both Jubilee Class and the 8F Class. Has this been discussed before? I mean you can accelerate with 100% Regulator and 50% Cutoff at 75 mph, and in fact you should do that in order to achieve 100 mph record. I think this is not prototypical.
I mean it's not like there are steam engines in the Historic Dockyard outside :P (well apparently one that works). (I'm just saying there are steam engines outside the office - nothing more than that before people start quoting me :P ) (I confirm though the Electric tap for the hot water ) - I can't remember the last time there was a kettle in the office - equally hot tap quick and instant though )
Even though driving steam in TSW isn't all that realistic, I managed to get 4 Jubillees coupled together up to 320km/h at the training center, I still enjoy it because it's different. I have wondered whether to get Peak Forest for ages but the re-using of the Jubillee and 8F on top of the 4F having a lack of services, it feels like another SOS but with one more loco. The addition of the 104 however, is appealing and I hope DTG decide to create a bundle with it as that would make it more appealing. I hope they don't abandon steam altogether or worse wait for a TSW5 before the next steam loco release.
This is rather out of hand now, 4 pages of speculation on the development (or lack of) TSW steam, a feature which arrived with much fanfare and more promises of it's future than potentially any feature yet with no official DTG response. Surely at this point a firm yes or no is needed to be given so we all know where we stand because sitting on edge of a cliff like we are now is really not a nice situation. So that's where the local Chatham youths meet up to... Oh hold on were you talking about the boats? I never think the water from those hot water things makes a good cuppa personally, I don't know why, and in honesty don't know why I had the urge to share that piece of information either. Perhaps a reminder is needed that traditional kettles, whether electrically or coal powered need to be filled up with water at rather regular intervals.
Various railway messrooms and staff kitchens I used over the years, where there was a choice of using the hot water heater or the kettle, folk (including myself) invariably went for the kettle. As regards steam in TSW agree it would be nice to get an official view form DTG on the matter. However in the meantime further evidence of how broken it is, thought I would step back across from TSC to finish the last Journey run on PFR. Down to 110 PSI on the Jubilee gauge climbing towards Peak Forest. Still merrily accelerating away on Load 6. At that level of steam pressure, not only would you have no tractive effort, in all likelihood you couldn't maintain vacuum either. Ah well, back to my County on South West Expressways!
Assuming DTG have read this thread (I’m pretty sure they will have), I’d take their silence as confirmation they’ve abandoned Steam on TSW. If they haven’t abandoned it, I’m pretty sure they would have made that crystal clear right away and closed the thread. That’s what I would have done as Community Director/Manager anyway.
I'm not sure you can read much of anything into a business' inaction during the week after New Year's.
If anybody has seen the game/simulator called Railroader, you will see the fundamental difference in quality of representing a steam locomotive. It just feels so much more realistic and way that the steam distributes itself. Absolutely fantastic, it's a shame that the TSW franchise has made steam look poor and not have a immersive feel at all to it...
Pretty certain if the business is open to some degree (which we know it is given we got a patch for the PS5 issue) there is someone in authority who can give clarity on the situation.
I think Matt would be the one to make such a call (I think), and I seem to recall reading that he's on an extended break (don't quote me on that), so I wouldn't expect anything soon. I don't really think DTG stand for any benefit from commenting whatsoever. If they say "no, we haven't abandoned steam" then that says there will be steam in the future - which there might not be, if demand isn't there or they just can't get it right. If they say "yes, we have abandoned steam" then you'll have WWIII on the forums - and again, that could very well change. Either way, if they say something and their plans change, what they said becomes an issue.
Personally not seen any reason to believe steam has been abandoned at all, they did just include it in their last U.K. route aswell (Flying Scotsman)
Totley Tunnel is almost 1km longer, and has been in continuous use since the Victorian era. More recently, HS1 runs through a 19km tunnel to reach St Pancras.
Well Flying Scotsman in TSW might look like a steam loco but as I said earlier, it’s no more an accurate depiction of steam loco physics, performance and management than a 12v DC Triang Hornby version. It is overpowered, can run constantly and never runs out of steam. No coal or water from the tender is ever consumed. Frankly, it’s a bit of a joke and by far the worst of the four steamers in TSW (not that the rest are much better).
Correct, it wasn't a feature in the core steam physics. Yours truly played a major part in making that particular feature happen. Actually, quite a few things that have since become standard in TSC steam locos weren't in core. Core physics were never changed to add them, either. To add these features, loco developers had to work around the core physics with heavy scripting. That includes the steam chest. Last I checked, devs were still using the approach I pioneered to do that, with many tweaks of their own to add further non-core functionality. Frankly, core physics for all types of loco were broken in a lot of ways, but some parts of it had predictable enough behaviour to use as a basis for scripting. Disable most of the broken core functionality, and do it properly in Lua. That's how you make a TSC loco sing - and I did exactly that for the Deltic Prototype, the 87, and a version of the 76 that didn't get a commercial release but which testers seemed to like a lot. I think the one thing that was completely unsalvageable was the diesel-hydraulic model. TSW was supposed to allow this sort of thing to be done in core, through this "Simugraph" gubbins. Instead of hard-coded core physics, there are a bunch of modules that you can wire together, and I assume those modules include one to implement scripting, too. Great in theory, but it means every loco dev now needs to really know what they're doing to make anything that works at all, let alone realistically. Some devs are better at it than others. From what I've observed, you have to start from a position of deeply understanding how the machine you're trying to simulate works. Failing to do so yields basic errors like using one torque converter and two fluid couplings to simulate an L.217 transmission, which actually has two torque converters and one fluid coupling. And to simulate a steam locomotive, you have to deeply understand a great many things that simply do not exist on most other types of loco. DTG evidently realised this far too late.
