It has become a bit frustrating to find even though you successfully complete all the objectives of a scenario, because something was slightly out of position you get an x “Objective Failed” against it which means the whole scenario is then counted as failed. No green tick, no XP, no star. Two examples with my recent route purchases: 1. First scenario for the Smokestack Big Boy on Wasatch Grade. I slightly overshot the stop marker for the coaling stage and had to back up to load the coal. Everything else got a tick including arriving at the final destination. However I was deemed to have failed the scenario due to that one slight hitch. 2. First Alco scenario on the Springfield route. I stopped in the nominated location and detached the caboose as directed to shunt forward and pick up the freight cars from the spur. Returned and reattached the caboose, proceeded to the destination all in order - blam… scenario failed. On checking the list for some reason detaching the caboose had an x against it, so all I can think it was slightly off position from where the game expected it. However it’s an unsignalled line, you have a train order and the pick up and reattachment was carried out as it should have been. So please DTG, can you change the failure parameters thus that so long as the actual activity and consists are formed and delivered correctly and the final objective achieved, the scenario is deemed a success. It’s this sort of nonsense that does have me thinking maybe the TSW way is how it should be done.
I hope you don't mind me commenting on that. DTG have given scenario authors all the tools to create fair - or unfair - scenarios. The ScenarioProperties career flyout gives a lot of parameters to tweak. With the introduction of Career mode, you don't get a "failure" for being late, just a score deduction, which can be disabled in the Game settings for people like me who are playing for driving a train and not competing in a race. You can have the player stop anywhere on a marker which itself can be added in Scenarios. You can choose to make them stop on a dime using stopping markers. There's way more possibilities for creating challenges than in TSW, where you just can't fail except for spadding. Your suggestions means DTG should change the game to adapt to unpleasant scenario design? All the game can do is check the task is complete or incomplete. The rest is up to the author. And if it fails, it always does for a logical reasons. I've hit some scenarios with wrong car numberings, making shunting scenarios incompletable. Authors like Not.Silent have found a simple way, just tell the player to couple to a rake of cars, without an actual CoupleTo instruction. He's relying on the player's intelligence and willingness to follow the instructions. Or in technical words, your issues are content not core related. (And I recall an issue on Springfield that is related to a bad coupler blueprint, so again nothing DTG can change.)
You may know this, maybe not... when you uncouple, the dropped section must be on the marker. It's an easy mistake to think that you stop on a marker and uncouple, but no. Heck, sometimes your consist doesn't even fit. As Spikee says it's down to the scenario author to set it up nice and fair. Sometimes it's a bit of challenge, because why not. Like those tiny stop points on Canadian Mountain Passes just in front of a signal. (For some reason, you can SPAD.) This also applies to LoadAt, StopAt, etc. Yes, you can back up if signaling allows, but it's still awkward in real life, too, to reverse, isn't it. (These only fail if the entire consist passes the area.) Spikee, having no CoupleTo instruction can be fatal as I've gotten Invalid Consist / Operation penalties, talking about career. Sometimes it just happens because the consist is stretched, and it just automatically merges back.
That depends and is decided by the author. The issue with coupling instructions is that it is awkward to change / remove / add stock afterwards, as all cars that are part of any coupling instruction are locked, you can't click and delete them for obvious reasons. That means whilst developing a scenario, you have to edit all coupling instruction car lists when making changes, which is very prone to introducing bugs as you'll have to manually type in car numbers. Such errors have made it into some official scenarios. (I think the first one that made me aware of how the game handles this was trying to fix an incompletable scenario on Falmouth Branch, succesfully by correcting the coupling instructions. I made a list on paper how the player consist should look like after each instruction and in the end the game expected a car to be at the final destination which just wasn't there anymore. A number was missing on my list. Mistake by the author - the game acted correctly.) Of course depending on the signalling the game will require a coupling instruction to let you pass a signal at danger into an occupied siding. Some authors only specify the first car to couple/uncouple to instead of the whole consist numbering list - it's all up to you how you set it up. So some authors leave it up to the player, your foreman tells you to do this and that and it's up to you to take your job seriously. TSC can be played in many ways. Hunting for scores will always be the most frustrating way to play TSC (and imho completely pointless but I understand some want a challenge beyond driving itself, and play for the Debriefing not the experience itself, needing a pat on the back from the game telling you how well you did). There's even players that don't give a damn what the game tells them at the Debriefing, or if they get a checkmark at all. OCD completionists will have a hard time in any DTG game. Not saying it's ok, but that's how it is. As for the recoupling operational error, it's again a content and playing thing. Couplers are a springy thing, and how springy they are again is in the way which parameters they have. The game doesn't have a coupler unlock bar, and this is something that is impossible to implement retroactively imho. Disable auto coupling, and when uncoupling US cars, apply some handbrakes on the part of the consist to be left behind, apply power until the couplers are stretched and then uncouple. There is no "core" coupling and each DLC brings its own assets, that's the freedom of TSC. (It would be long dead if it weren't so.) Some are correctly set up, many are not. Some authors triggered an objective success via lua script to get around some quirks. And to make it clear, I'm not about just dismissing suggestions because I don't like them, it's more because I think over the years and through bugfixing I have acquired a fairly good understanding of how the game works, and can give my thoughts on what is possible and what not with an open architecture game engine like TSC that aims to handle RS/RW/TS content with a high level of backward compatibility. There'll always be some kind of limitations, a reason DTG decided to do the first train sim on their own, TSW, ten years ago. Some changes require making a new game with new content from scratch. End of the story, most issues are down to content. And since their last production Pegnitztalbahn, DTG are not making content for TSC any more, only working on the core game engine. Much of the content creating staff are working on TSW, that's no secret. (And it shows, the quality of their recent TSW output Salzburg and Goblin has gained a massive boost imho, you can feel the addition of experienced designers to TSW.) And DTG's policy of giving fresh young talented people jobs has shown its two sides, qualitywise, because their QA has never been able to catch the many mistakes that are happening. I feel the last TSC releases by DTG were pretty good, route building very polished, made by experienced staff who are now working on TSW.
