I could (will) research but might be useful for others, maybe even developers in case it's not appropriate. I always drove steam locomotives manually. Using the F4 HUD, I'd add coal and water as necessary. In some cases (SP Cab Forward), it didn't entirely work, but anyway. I created a scenario early January. A free roam, no player train. I added a 47 and a 5MT both at London and Peterborough. With Drive, you start at London, but I added a save without selecting a train at Peterborough. This way I could not just drive down and up, but also see those trains on the move. Yesterday I drove the 5MT Down. I turned on Auto Fireman, started with Drive, it was functional. Today I drove the 5MT Up. Started with Resume, some 20 miles in I noticed I'm losing speed. Fire mass 24%, boiler 11%. Oops. Recovered, no problem. Why wasn't auto fireman working? Is it a per-session, in-memory setting? Is it overridden by the scenario save? Something else?
No, the settings should be retained. However, I have found recently that my setup has lost its customised settings a couple of times and reverted to default. Default for auto-fireman is off. It is possible that may have happened to you in this instance. If you have other customised settings, you may wish check to see if it has reset those too. Previously this never happened to me in a zillion years, so I'm wondering if something in the core upgrades has made things more delicate. So hard to tell. John
Thanks! Test One concluded. I checked the setting, it was Off. No other settings changed, apparently. I ticked it back in, and ran some (different) stuff. It retained its state.
Test Two concluded. After running even the same scenario with Drive, it didn't affect the setting. However, loading the save did reset the fireman to Off. I assume the intent to restore settings to their state when the session was started. It's unclear why it affects the global settings, but past interview questions prove that most coders tend to these kind of decisions.
