It was very interesting to hear Matt talking about how much work is required to "re-use" trains, and I wanted to add my opinion on what would help to make sure we can see and appreciate the work that is put into new releases. First, generally, in my opinion maybe a little bit too much work goes into the interior details and functionalities, at the end of the day it's a train sim and not a passenger sim, and I would personally come to the point of asking whether or not having interactable things in coaches is worth it or not, how many times do you turn on the lights in the DoStos using the in coach command? I never knew it could be done in the first place. And if that added complexity to coaches means building a high door dosto becomes almost as hard as building one from scratch I might say I would happily let go of those superficial features. Secondly, if you re-use a loco, the best way to make it feel new and fresh, in my opinion is to improve on the cab and the sounds, for example, Hamburg-Lubeck seem to largely reuse the 143 and 182 sounds, and the Taurus seem to have the same cab, except without the PIS "box". Maybe one of the "easier" ways to upgrade a cab is to fit a modern screen instead of the dials (like the 403/406) or increase the resolution of some textures. For example, the F40PH, the BR155 and the Class 377 Compared to the BR101 and the Class465: I don't know how easy it is, or the implications of changing those textures is, but in my opinion it makes a big difference to the overall feel of the cab and I was happy to see the BR112 got a better cab than the 143. The Class 375 also seem to have the old speedometer from the 377 that's much worse than the 465. Those dials are what we players look the most in the cab, so even a small update to those would, IMO change a lot. Another thing that I would appreciate is talking more in-depth about what's changed, especially in the pre-release streams, I would expect the differences between the old and new model would be the main point of the streams, and should get more coverage on the release and pre-release article. So tl; dr, instead of focusing on changing the interior, just make sure it "feels right" and then improve the areas where the player spends the most time looking at - the cab and the exterior model, togheter with any performance change needed to make sure the train handles realistically.
If they made changes specific changes to new models of the train (I don't mean unprototypical screens, I mean new features and textures), they'd be causing a disparity between the old and new version of the train. This is already an issue in TSW and is majorly so in Train Simulator, and should be avoided.
Yes all changes have to be prototypical obviously, for example the MRCE seem to own Taurus with both displays and analogue gauges, obviously I was not saying "put a screen everywhere". It could also be the other way around, if they ever decided to do a BR145 for example then they should use the (prototypical) gauges, it was a general suggestion, since an upgrade from dials to screens seems pretty widespread across modern german traction (mainly Eurosprinters and Traxxes), it was not a must have for every single train. About disparity between old and new and obsolence, it's already happening and is unavoidable with any evolving product, like TSW. The RT Talent 2 is worse than the SKA Talent 2, and the Riesa-Dresden Talent 2 will probably be better than both, but there is no way to avoid that, and I prefer to have better trains, even if that means my older version is a bit worse. For example, let's say the SEHS 375 was going to be as good as the Class 465 and much better than the ECW 377, would that be a bad thing, just because the 377 has now become "obsolete"? Probabily Adam's team might even go back and improve the 377 if the models are similar enough. It would be like saying it was a mistake to implement PZB, SiFA, and LZB to the BR101 on TS because the one that was released with Hagen-Siegen in 2012 would end up being obsolete. The best approach is to always make new trains and use old ones as layering or substitution, but it's not always possible or feasible and my post was aimed at the "key points" that would matter the most in case of a re-build, to add my opinion to Sam's discussion that a lot of work is wasted because not many people will care or notice for the minute differences they put into the interior of the train for example and I stated what are the "important" parts in a train for me, and what they should improve/change to make a re-used model still feel fresh. It was not an argument in favour of re-using trains whenever possible
