First of all, if you are playing this in TSW2/3, it's also possible that the loco is simply buggy. Dovetail never looks back and there are many newer versions of this loco in the game and it's absolutely possible that they broke the old ones at some point. However, there seem to also be some misunderstandings in your post. Mind you that the loco in game is not operated as in reality. It should be challenging and rewarding in game still, but the ingame controls are very different from the real loco. Do you have to use force selector? Yes, you have to. If you leave it on 100%, you are telling the loco that everytime it accelerates, it should floor it. It is roughly the equivalent of throttle level on other locos. With a passenger train, something like 60% will give much more pleasant ride. Once your speed starts to reach the intended speed, you can take it even further down. Should it take long time to go off throttle? Yes, trains from this era use notched power and it takes long time to return to zero, it can be easily even 10-15 seconds. There is usually an emergency way to cut off power immediately, but that's not for operational use. Basically, you should be on high notches only when you are not expecting any slowdown. Do not wait until you pass the magnet, slow down in advance. If you are getting close to a station, signal or speed warning, you should already be in low notches or coasting (in reality, there is a coasting button, in game, you need to move speed selector to off), so you can start applying brakes immediately or even before you pass the point of acknowledge. Using lower setting of force selector should help you with this a lot. How to correctly use brakes? It's the opposite of what you think. Once the train is about to stop, you release the train brake (ideally it should hit 5 bar / fully released just at the moment you stop), and you use direct brake instead to hold the train in station. Direct brake does not cause traction lock and is only applied on loco itself, so it releases much faster. Once you confirm that all doors are closed, release the direct brake and apply throttle at the same time. You are balancing to not have the power fight the brakes, but also not having the train move backwards when uphill. Usually as the brake application goes below 0.2 bar, the loco should start applying forward power. The separate brake release button is for different purposes, usually when you want to apply train brake and release only the loco, similar to Bail Off in other countries. Freight trains use this, as brake pad maintenance and taking the vehicle off duty is much cheaper on freight wagons than on loco itself. Hope this helps
Are there bottons on the (Xbox) controller for the force selector? The speed selector is managed by the right bumper/trigger, however I wish those buttons where used for force selector instead. To keep it easy, I now put the force selector around 60 and leave it, and only use more power on freight trains. I know this is not right, but I don't understand why DTG implemented the speed selector on the right bumper and trigger. Also when you start a service, the force selector is already at 100 or 120.
That's also the other way around on PC, you would expect the speed selector has the same key bindings as AFB and not the force selector.
