After a troublesome introduction with TSW2 I'm now over the steep learning curve where I understand the basics of TSW2. But now I'm wondering If I play the game in the right way as I seem to be such a good train driver. Every time I get a gold medal. I'm certain I can't be such a good train driver after a a course of probably a week. Not bothered at all by that as I find TSW2 a very nice relaxing exercise. But I wonder about all the real train addicts and hardcore simulators fans. How do they play the game so it becomes more challenging for them? I didn't notice any difficulty settings.
There isn't really a difficulty setting for TSW. You can go into the options menu and turn various things off like next signal aspect, speed limits, hud elements and other things. Also, have you been playing with safety systems on such as ACSES (Boston route), PZB, LZB and Sifa (German routes) and DSD, AWS (UK routes except Bakerloo and Northern Trans-Pennine)?
I play it at the moment as it came out of the box. Only thing I probably have changed was auto load journey. I've seen it been mentioned on a stream but I guess you need to set the safety settings on in the locomotive?
That's correct. You do need to set the safety systems up on each locomotive as they default to off. Each one is different though so might be worth looking at a few videos and asking around on here for help with specifics. As I mainly only play UK routes, I can only help with those. As for removing HUD elements such as speed limits, signal aspects etc, these can be turned off in the game menu.
The scoring in this game is broken and ultimately pointless anyway so I wouldn’t pay much attention to it. Personally I play British routes with no HUD and all safety systems, as a Brit who works on the railway IRL, I’m comfortable doing so. With German and US routes I still have all safety systems on, with the hud I keep only signal aspects, next stop distance and speed limits on. The difficulty in the game comes from the safety systems as it is these that will have a big effect on the timetable due to the way they restrict your driving, specifically with the US and German units, the British systems are by far the easiest to content with so if you’re looking to get started on then I’d start there.
German routes, sifa and pzb on. Tell us how long it took you to throw joypad in rage. When you can drive a German route with no hud and all systems on then you e cracked game
Haha it's not my intention to be mastering this game. I'm using TSW2 as stress relief. It's so relaxing driving from station to station. Turning on safety systems would change that experience. I was just curious because I noticed you can't do much wrong. Even if you stop at a station miles from the marker you still get gold medals. But I was surprised not to find any comments on the forum about the difficulty levels. But I realise I already had forgotten that when I turn of the HUD the game becomes impossible to play for me.
If you want the challenge then turn on some of the safety systems and learn what they do and how to drive them. It won't stop you getting the medals (which are essentially a nonsense anyway) but you may well end up paying more attention to (and getting more back from) the game
I'm getting what I want from the game. I'm not looking for a challenge I was just wondering what people do if they want a challenge. It's explained to me and now I see where the challenge is for experienced players.
You're not the only person who will read this post. If there are others who read it with a similar question then the answers will also apply to them. That's how forums "should" be used rather than fifteen posts all saying the same (or similar) thing
I don't understand your response. I made the topic, people answered the question. It was clear in the OP that I'm not looking for a challenge so I clarify this too you and then you answer that is how forums work? That's not how forums should work. You read the OP see if the question is answered and if it is not answered you chip in. Repeating what has been said is only practical when a topic has multiple pages and the answer is hidden in a bunch of pages. I don't see how your contribution to this topic doesn't violate your own rules on how a forum should work
As one of the recommendations for more challenge is not to use the HUD I noticed something odd. I noticed in the stream that the DTG team does the right thing from a commercial view and that is using the international metric system when they use the HUD. And I think that is amazing as they are British. But how do the rest of us do that? I noticed streams from other British people and they use the imperial system. But how do you drive without a HUD on a train that uses a different metric system than the one you were taught at school?
I have set my settings to enforce it all over the game but the system used in the cockpit stays imperial when driving an American loco.
Which routes are you mostly playing? You might also enjoy trains with a bit more to the driving technique, like the Class 101 where you have to change gear manually and manually lap the brakes. You can still leave on the HUD and enjoy the journey without having to memorise stopping points etc, but it means you don't get so much dead time between stations where you're not really required to interact.
I don't remember the HUD showing km/h when driving in the UK or US, but it does show km/h when in europe. You can set the seetings to show kmh in the options but this won't change the dials in the cabs which would model what they do in real life, mph How do you drive to a different speed system? You either transpose the numbers in your head or you change your display if you need the numbers to literally be in what you know. Either that or you just remember that the speed is 60 so that's what you're aiming for on your speed dial, and whether it's km/h or mph becomes irrelevant. (It's the same for us brits who drive in Europe, so I can either remember that 100km/h is about 60mph and 130 is about 80mph or I just change the display in the middle of my car to kmh and follow that)
At the moment mainly Dresden, I prefer the German routes at the moment. I don't seem to be interested in freight and I probably prefer the easy trains like Talents and ICE, TGV is fun to drive but the most boring route I have besides Patch grade. Scotland I like as well but I prefer mainly German routes
