Without doubt this is the major factor missing from TS and indeed other sims. I don’t believe it would be difficult to institute into the sim and would improve gameplay massively. So for example instead of having a certain train emerge from a portal at a certain time you could for example have a train emerge between a set time eg 7:30 and 7:40 and the train to be one of 20 chosen randomly from a list of ai trains previously set up.it would be incredibly immersive and I think the biggest leap forward in train sim ever: Every one I talk to says this is th done thing missing that would most improve train sim and other rail sims. So what do you think?
The random time, yes I can see that would be a good factor, but "20 randomly chosen consists"? The major issue here is how the dispatcher would deal with these. When putting a consist into the editor it works out speed, accelleration and so on to give the consist a "will it get there" factor. If the answer is no you get errors. In this case you would have to put in 20 consists with similar speed and accelleration factors else the routing and interactions would all mess the dispatcher up It's just not flexible enough to deal with such things
Nice idea but as said above the despatcher is not flexible enough and in my experience sometimes cannot cope with fairly simple instructions let alone trying to complicate it. It can't even stick to it's own rules of hierarchy, for example I have several instances when making a scenario where it has prioritised a stopping passenger over an express passenger.
Indeed, and let's not even start on "You have three trains in a station, one delayed, one intercity and one regional stopper. what order should they go in?" The scenario planner / dispatcher is the bane of my TS1 existence sometimes
It would be nice, yes. Not entirely realistic, but there is a concept of populating one scenario and then using it for various options. Pretty much like free roams and good old timetabled scenarios. For yards this could actually work in a realistic manner, assuming the scenario is simple and thus a bit unrealistic. Now, if you don't mind the extra three minutes, you can do the following: go to Build, search your scenario, optionally Clone it, then pull the instructions from one train over another. Press Drive, and voila, a slightly different experience. Heck, it can create cases where in one instance, you have full Clear, while in the next, there is a freight train ahead of you so you get warnings and even dangers. Specific example, you follow a Class 801 on London-Pb, but you change the instruction to a Class 365 (top speed 105).
From what I know, AI always runs at line speed (or the percentage of that speed set in the instruction) irrespective of the vmax of the consist in question. Certainly there are cases where scenarios are unable to be completed if you stick to the vmax of the consist in question because the timings are for linespeed rather than consist specific
