If you go to the HUD guide in game and then to steam HUD. You see a picture with the steam HUD and with two additional indicators for water and coal. My question is: why are they not in the game when playing?
Because manual firing isn't officially released or supported yet. The manual firing in game isn't even a full system yet
DTG tried to add the manual firing module with Peak Forest but unfortunately it did not work as expected and they had to return it to the drawing board. The "simplistic" semi-automatic module they have right now as a placeholder does not use those UI features.
These elements have actually been in the HUD Guide since SoS release, and are not new for Peak Forest. It has taken rather a long time for manual firing to (not even yet) appear in game.
But then raises to me another question: why that part of the HUD only for manual firing? It is still useful if you don’t have manhal firing.
As far as I can tell, the whole boiler model is just a basic placeholder. Coal and water are not actually consumed from the tender, and the injectors are not used (or needed) to replenish the water level in the boiler. So probably the data elements that those HUD elements would refer to don't even exist yet.
I think water is unlimited but the fire mass does appear to increase and decrease. On manual firing you get a boost of power a few minutes after you've started shovelling coal as the new coal starts to burn properly which is nice and the power seems to wane if you keep it firing constantly and smothering the fire. If you don't shovel at all you get a 'service failed' notification and booted out as apparently the fire has reduced so much you have no power. Even though pressure continues to rise and there is no indication of your fire mass. This last bit is so annoying as they haven't bothered to give us any indication of the fire for us to monitor but still give us the punishment. The only way I found this out was through forum members. If I hadn't looked at the forum I'd have no idea why my service kept failing which is ridiculous.
And the message doesn’t even tell you the reason you’ve failed. To anyone who hasn’t searched for the reason on these forums (and presumably most TSW players wouldn’t) it must just appear to be a bug, as I thought it was at first. Why it’s been implemented this way I have no idea.
I'm sure it never happened like this prior to the changes a couple of weeks ago. If this feature is here to stay, then the boffins at DTG need to devise some way of letting the player know fire mass management needs...managing. We get a pop up message 5 seconds after stopping nagging that the cylinder c0cks should be opened, so why not an advisory that the fire is getting low, or that we have put enough coal on and it's time to close the firebox door for a while. Either that or activate the visuals on the HUD. Really can't understand how DTG continue to struggle with such basic concepts, given they brought steam into the game - get the systems working correctly ASAP. In any event you shouldn't be burning through the contents of the firebox in less than 15 minutes, gently chugging downhill to Gowton Sidings and running round the brake vans, as happened to me with the 4F in Chinley Gala, when I forgot to hit "F".
