So we've had free roam for a little over a year now and in all that time it has never worked properly. From not working at all to being a complete waste of time because you drive for an hour to earn absolutely nothing I think it's about time DTG pulled their thumbs out and either fix it so we score for the run or remove it all together as a good idea executed terribly!
I wouldn't say that free roam should be abandoned. I do think that players should have the ability to create a custom timetable using free roam. I can run a M9 for instance on the Long Beach Branch to Atlantic Terminal Brooklyn using free roam but you can't pick up passengers or drop passengers off. If you spawn a full passenger train, they will just stay on and don't get off once you arrive at the terminal station. The fact that you can't create custom timetables is a negative. The concept of free roam is good but wasn't well executed in my opinion
How can driving a train in TSW be a « complete waste of time » ? This is what TSW is all about. How can the scoring system of a game be more important that the content ?
Free roam is about....free roam, go where you want (within reason) and drive what you want (within reason).
You should be able to drive any traction on any route regardless of OHLE voltage, no 3rd rail, no pantograph etc.
Even though AP doesn’t bother me, the one and only time I tried free roam I was actually a bit irked not to get any kind of recognition on completion. Whereas if you knock up something in Scenario Plannerand run it, you do get the route and traction AP.
I don’t quite understand the issue. Is it just about the lack of AP or a tick/medal (where would that even go)? I’ll admit that I don’t care at all about either and I’m very happily using free roam many times I open TSW. We run most of our steam challenge runs this way and I’m using it a lot to get more out of locos like the Br 218, Br 110, and Br 103. Apart from the occasional locked path and a glitch once or twice, never had any issues with it.
Hi folks - just acknowledging the feedback here, Free Roam is meant to be our "You do what you like, with your trains, anywhere you want" mode, and allow you to get creative and experimental, and ultimately enjoy things you might not usually get to see or play in TSW. (DTG Jan building an entire formation of Vectron's just to be leading with an empty wagon comes to mind). That does mean scoring is inevitably a difficult design to understand. I've always loved being rewarded for playing games, it feels like I'm putting my time into something and getting it back, even if that's experience per minute of gameplay, or points for completing a session. Aside from other improvements and aspirations we have with Free Roam, including general improvements, I'll pass on a note to the team that finding new ways to reward time spent within the mode is a desire. Thank you!
Free Roam is one of the best features in TSW for me ..it adds lots of additional play value ..i like to mix it up run US trains on UK routes etc .i do wish they could make it so you can run any train anywhere for example run a Amtrak Accela train on HSC or SPG even though no electric catenary or run a Pedalino train on HSC or run a 3rd rail EMU on routes where no 3rd rail.. I have run class66 s with the buckeye coupler with US freight cars on all routes US UK looks awkward or not prototypical but thats the fun of it,,
The only thing I'd like to see implemented in Free Roam is loading and unloading passengers but I imagine that's a core issue tied to the timetables. Personally I love Free Roam, yesterday I ran a HST in Intercity colours from Preston to Carlisle. Can't do that on timetable mood.
Free roam is a game changer for tsw. As for a points system, you have timetable mode if that's all your interested in! I've spent several hours on a route, spawing and moving various rolling stock and had the most fun I've ever had on tsw. Last night I spawned the 87 on wcml South and run the Caledonian sleeper upto Milton Keynes. I can do all kinds of runs like this without having to wait for dtg to add these services to the timetable. If they ever will.
I don't go on free roam to earn points, I go on free roam to drive a train, simple as! Not interested in points. It's also useful to cause delays and a bit of havoc
You can spend hours on scenario designer, adding all the services and trying to make it all work, but it's not realistic if the trains all start at stations and there's no rolling stock dotted around in sidings. Or you can spawn a train in timetable mode and fit into a realistic busy timetable In seconds.
The biggest issue plaguing Free Roam in all honesty is this: Came in back in TSW4 when the formation designer patch was released for PCs and has never left since. At least two different threads exist about it and DTG seem not to notice, they released one patch that only reduced it to a miniscule level and haven't commented since.
i figured out how to get around the not enough space issue .its more time consuming but i just spawn on foot in a yard area or siding and spawn cars engines 1 at a time how i want then i assemble my train and line a route ..just make sure it in a area where no signals ,juet do it where there are more tracks with hand thrown switches or map to do it..a lot of the US routes have yardbig enough to make longer trains this way.
Most of my Free Roam sessions all end in the same way: 'You have reached the end of the simulated area' (not sure of the correct wording, but you know what message I mean). I wanted to use Free Roam to explore all the places you never get go in timetable services, but I soon found out it was useless. Every where I wanted to go, I was thrown out prematurely and greeted with above mentioned message. DTG should make it so that anything on the live map is accessible for the player in Free Roam
I know, but we should not need a mod to drive to places that are on the map. If DTG doesn't want us to go there, they should leave it off the map
For a long time, I used to be focused on timetable mode. But just recently I figured out the powers of free roam and am using it now more and more once in-game (even more than timetable services currently). I prefer the less known "timetable free roam" (on foot mode) though, because it offers the AI traffic of timetable mode to patch through which "pure" free roam does not, and its very nice to use the benefits of both game modes in this way. You can do many things which service mode (and intended gameplay of some DLCS) does not allow, for example to use locos and formations which aren't available/possible in timetable mode for a route (maybe because they were never used on that route IRL or simply do not match the era), create custom paths along the line and do shunting tasks or breaks in between, however you want it to be. Free Roam (timetable free roam) is a huge enrichment to Train Sim World and I don't want to miss it at all. Scenario Planner is nice, but not intuitive enough for me. The requirement to plan everything beforehand in contrary to the easyness of Free Roam to be able to just do and plan everything I want to do on the fly, makes free roam so much better for me personally. Also the bug that passengers do not spawn on stations or board/unboard in locos for custom created scenarios is what makes me avoid Scenario Planner at all. Also the way to setup AI locos is not that intuitive for a session to have occasional fun with. Scenario Planner needs a complete overhaul in my opinion with maybe the ability to set aspects on individual signals (causing traffic stucks) to make it more fun for me. I prefer Free Roam over it. However, I do agree that the scoring system not counting AP to the profile is what annoys me in Free Roam the more I play it as well. I mean it's definitely not a game-breaker and I'm using Free Roam (like the game in general) to have fun driving a loco, not for achievement hunting, but the more you use free roam and the more you see that points do not get counted in comparison to other game modes, it's a bit demotivating to do more with or even focus your entire gaming on it. I guess we all have the little "level-up" challenge in our minds, regardless whether it has a big impact on our gameplay or not. It's just nice to get rewarded. The strange thing is that the scoring system is indeed working correctly. I set a path in free roam, the dispatcher sets the signals accordingly, I drive under speed limits with or without safety systems and I actually do get AP points in the scoring HUD. However, when I want to go out of the free roam session and return to the main menu, these points do not seem to get counted to my profile. So the problem is not that the scoring system wouldn't work in free roam, the problem simply is that the AP points do not get added to my profile. It's like I'm in a test and I'm seeing on immediate feedback that everything I do is correct but "in the end it doesn't even matter because I had to fall" and lose all my points. One can use DMUs on lines with OHLE, but can't use EMUs on tracks specified as diesel tracks (unfortunately). Would really love to drive the Expert 101 on Maintalbahn or Niddertalbahn. The fun fact is that in timetable mode, when you reached the playable area you actually can press on an entry to return to the session and if you do so, you can proceed in the "inaccessable" area as long as the tracks go I assume. I did this on DRA and you also can see it in this video for SKA. 11:50 is the point where the game stops the player, but when pressing return to the game, you can drive further until the end. However, the same trick does not seem to work in (pure) Free Roam, only in Timetable Free Roam (On Foot) mode which from a technical side is timetable mode still I guess. Just had a run yesterday in Free Roam, where I tried to get into a line branching off the mainline. Although the track I wanted to drive onto itself was visible on the 2D map, free roam didn't let me enter the branch quite a large chunk before. The game gave me the same message of "You have reached the end of the simulated area" and then after hitting on "Continue to free roam" or "replay", it spawned me back to the station (I guess where the next travel marker is located to which the player shall respawn to).
I’d like to specify that I was also talking about the timetable-free roam. I do forget that the free roam mode exists frequently, I’ll admit. It’s immensely good for recreating real life runs on the fly. I’ve recently spent some time back on HRR recreating special additional trains run by TRI with real timetables and formations (as close as TSW has). It’s fantastic fun
I use free roam on LIRR2 to simulate the diesel services. Together with fast travel I set on the yards the sidings the way I want to make every run feel different. Hoping for further expansion of the feature by being able to pick a passengers, PIS to match the service pattern of your free roam. And able to set up as many stops as you want
That picture I posted was taken after trying to spawn a single Class 47 locomotive in a station. The issue is not the length of the formation, it's the compatibility between the addon itself. Say it happens for example when trying to spawn the ACS-64 from NYT on another route. The problem is not just the ACS-64, it's every bit of stock from NYT all at once, meaning the ALP-46, the Amtrak coaches and the NJT coaches will all throw up exactly the same error, no matter if you spawn a formation of one or one hundred.
Every single signal being red has never made any sense to me. I never use it because I can’t get anywhere !
You need to request a route from the dispatcher. Click on your train in the 2d map and the options to select your destination and add waypoints will come up.
That's not actually correct. If you are prepared to invest the time you can add additional paths, place wagons in sidings and come up with some very interesting scenarios. You can also run any formation you want too whilst still using community liveries. It just take a bit of work and, as far as I know is only available to PC users. (The screenshot below is taken from a scenario on TVL. All stock placed using the standard Scenario Editor). This isn't quite right either. I have passengers spawning on platforms in my scenarios and I also have them getting on and off AI services. So I don't know why you aren't seeing the same? However, I also have lots of 'standing around doing nothing' passengers too which is a bit of a pain. (Screenshot below shows passengers embarking and disembarking from a recently arrived CL31 passenger service at Saltburn). I don't disagree, but you can achieve these effects by either tweaking the departure time of services (especially the player) or by bringing new paths in to play on the various routes. (I will have some mods finished soon that will do this). In the screenshot below the HST departs first, then the CL158, then another service arrives at Queens Street. These 3 AI services block the player service (in the middle of the shot) and add operational interest. To be honest I think that TSW in general has more or less abandoned scenarios. Too few paths, two few formations and an obsession with timetables. With just a little more thought, which I am hoping to add, the game could have been dramatically improved through Scenario Editor giving both playability and Community Liveries a new lease of life.
Nah, all in all, I don't think that way, for example, HRR, RRO and MSB are still missing the ICE-3/T drives that were in the timetable back then, but not in game...so well, to complete the timetable, now you can spawn your ICE-3 in Hagen and drive it all the way to Wuppertal just at the right time, as it was in the timetable these routes provides. So, with free roam, you can add missing runs in the timetable, that somehow haven't been layered in for some reason...
Dovetail have given you the ability to play with all your toys through free roam. Sure, it makes no sense how you can carry all these trains around in your pocket, but I am not going to drill holes in it. As for getting rewards, the rewards are only a bi-product of playing and enjoying the game, they are not always the goal. What would be good and I am not sure if it would be hard to put in place is to jail break the rest of the trains onto a service you want to run. For example play WCML timetable route for the pendo, but be able use a HST instead to fufil the service. Of course there will be limits, if you pick an electric train and there is no electrification available? Maybe a filter could be set up in the background to limit what trains you could use. Free roam for me is limited, but more limited by my imagination than the game mode itself, but it is a worth while thing to have.
This could be achieved, AFAIK, by enabling off the rails in free roam rather than just in scenario planner which is the case currently.
