So my birthday Steam money now sitting in my account burning a hole... Debating what to spend it on, currently a toss up between SoS and the Konstanz route from TSG for TSC. I really want to give Spirit Of Steam a go, but just a tad reticent due to the number of outstanding issues and no real faith in DTG to resolve these. I assume we now have track sound etc. for the player train and a token means of manual firing to control the safety valve. However silent AI trains are a bit off-putting as is the knowledge that broken scenarios means another £25 route cannot progress through its Journey Mode. So am I worrying about nothing and missing out, or are there still enough concerns to hold out from paying full price?
i love German electric loco's, especially ones that were on the tracks in the late 1980's, I really couldn't give a frig about steam or diesels tho... and am not really a fan of UK rail operations, so i'm kinda biased. The Virtual RailRoads Konstanz to Villingen route is pretty amazing, they went overboard when making it, continuing the higher quality scenery for about 1km either side of the tracks, but you wouldn't expect anything less from them... if you have any of their Expert Line loco's you'll know what to expect (attention to detail and making as much work prototypically as possible) That said, it is about 5 years old now... tho when they switched to only selling it on Steam it got an update.... but part of that update most likely was the removal of all branding, as is usual with steam store stuff (i haven't looked, but i'd imagine there's plenty of add ons on the German site rail--sim-de to put the branding back in place) If you've ever been to that area of Germany (the routes set around the turn of the millennium) you will easily recognise things as you drive along, and if you have some of the expert line trains, they will make running along the route even nicer. But it is TSC, the the graphics are not as nice as we are used to in TSW2, and it's scenario based runs (unless you play on the free roam thing) And one of the reasons i haven't driven anything in TSC for months is because i much prefer the timetable based runs in TSW2. Someone else will have to counter this with why they think SOS is better, as i don't have it and will never get it, but not because of the negative feedback (which stops me buying the BR187) but just because i'm not too fussed about steam trains or UK routes.
I wouldn't buy SoS if they wrapped it in solid gold wrapping paper and gave me a years supply of Brains beer.
Yes the biggest drawback of TSC is the average 6 or 7 scenarios you get compared to the comprehensive timetable in TSW - even if it sometimes doesn't work as planned. Think I will leave SoS on the shelf for now, then.
I’m going to be a voice of caution here. Driving steam locos in TSW is really nice … for me as someone who doesn’t have access to TSC. I’ve got a hunch that TSW’s kettles will be somewhat underwhelming for you, OldVern, after giving some of the high quality kettles in TSC a go. The reaction of the steam locos feels way too quick. Power being applied on the rails is almost instantaneous after opening the regulator without needing to wait for the steam chest to build up - I don’t know how realistic it is but it certainly feels unrealistic. Even with the rudimentary manual firing, there’s not much you can do about the deafening safety valve going off for at least 50% of the service. The route is also a bit of a let-down. The northern half between Liverpool and Runcorn looks really good and has some diverse speed limits but the southern half between Runcorn and Crewe is just a long, boring straight with 4 90mph tracks and little scenery. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret my day 1 purchase, but I doubt you’ll enjoy it all that much, OldVern.
Turns out I had enough credit on my Steam account to buy both... so guess I'll be busy trying them out. The question is whether to go to Germany first, or try SoS!
So what about the silent a.i trains departing in sos? I purchaised the route, but the non existent manual firing & silent a.i kept me from spending time on that. Not a real priority for dtg, or do they still plan an update?
In my opinion this is the greatest weakness of the DLC and why I actually find myself spending more time with the kettles on WSR, NTP, and even DCZ (extremely fictional, but the grades and speed limit changes make it bloody fun). There are plenty of community-made scenarios in Creators Club that allow you to enjoy the locomotives on a variety of different (more interesting?) routes. Of course, it often requires some suspension of disbelief to enjoy. Cheers
hmmmm, running a 'Dampflok' on DCZ would be kinda fun with all the gradients... but still not 'fun' enough to get me to buy any steam locos. I get the 'suspension of disbelief' thing, I have a thing for the old DDR stuff (East German Railways) used to like the Projekt Freiberg route in TSC for that. I've had a play with the DDR repaints for the BR143 and 112, and the DDR chromegreen dostos... for TSW2, but i drive from the cab looking out the windscreen, so every time i pull into a station with the blue and white digital displays and all that brings me back to the current times... that and having hamsters (BR442's) on other tracks too.
About to dive in and take a look now. Had to drag myself off the Konstanz route though. Just driven the first 20km or so out of Hausach and it is jaw dropping. Actually looks better IMHO than DCZ in TSW though that said, I would say this is a route crying out to be in TSW. Only thing on the run I'm doing, is a powerful electric loco on four coaches is more of a challenge to keep from speeding going uphill, so I'll probably look for some scenarios with longer trains or crack out my UIC and Silberlinge stock make a couple of my own scenarios.
I should imagine you will like SoS when you play it. It’s not a finished route and the service pattern makes no sense but the runs that are there are enjoyable, even though some of them need workarounds to play them. I’ve been having lots of fun on it and the locos are stunning to look at. Careful with the volume though as those safety valves will blow your head off.
Konstanz to Villingen in TSW2 would be amazing, unfortunately this was already asked in another thread, and Maik said something like 'no way' But i can imagine that is because there's no way he could recoup the cost of making it with the limits set on DLC prices for TSW2 etc. Plenty of people on the steam forums moan about it's price for TSC, but they have not bought it so are missing out and will never find out what an amazing route it is. The only way to get around that perhaps would be a sample of the route, playable for a short time given for free, that would get people hooked and see it's beauty and attention to detail, then maybe realise it is worth more than a standard route, But some people will still moan that they'd rather pay what they did for the 8 mile IOW route for it.
I’m with you on that. I find myself looking for railtour scenarios on Creator’s Club more often than I’m running the kettles on Crewe-Liverpool.
DTG may yet make Konstanz to Villingen in TSW if it’s seen as a popular choice, so who knows (well DTG do I suppose ). Actually isn’t there an unnamed German route in the works…?
I suspect that will be my play, once I get to grips with the basics. Something where I can run through the hills. In fact it's a bit of an omission that DTG themselves don't seem to be interested in adding railtour layers to the other UK routes, at least. There is indeed but no one official is saying much about it at present.
Anyhow back to SoS... Done the first couple of training modules and... well it's not as bad as I had feared. The worst part is actually the braking, seems to have been set up in a very odd way that makes it impossible to set and hold a lapped application. On the Bossman etc. TSC locos you could fine tune the small ejector to keep a balance but on the 8F at least I don't know what they were intending. If you apply the steam brake it just releases. Maybe I should close the small ejector and make a quick swipe of the handle to apply then release, which I think was the process on one of the Pro range locos, release being a bit of a misnomer. Matt's tutorial should really explain this a bit more. I need to look up how you semi disable the fireman so you can control the dampers and the pressure from blowing off. Performance wise, lot's of stuttering and pauses too. The objective marker has a nasty habit of obscuring the upcoming signals, a problem on the US routes too with gantry signals. The label need to go higher in the sky. It should be possible to close the deflector window in head out view to see more cleaarly. Anyhow I think there is potential and I'm not reaching for the refund button...
I am actually the one who made them. So is the 363 that was repainted as a DR V60 Baureihe 106. You can also enjoy my scenario to which the Deutsche Reichsbahn DDR Trains took over Duisburg Essen Bochum Railway. S19 Köln Aachen route.
On a long train you should not have trouble to controll the loss of vacuum. When driving light engine you dont have a pipe, so you get instant reaction. I think the brakes is something dtg modeled well & in detail. Possibly players are not used to implementation of physics.
Okay, I have to throw this one out to the audience. What's the sweet spot on the small ejector to balance the vacuum so the brakes stay off while in motion but don't bleed off after you make an application then put the lever back to "Release" which is more akin to Off or Lapped. It continues to elude me. (then using the large ejector to control the actual release). Only other feedback after getting halfway through the third Journey scenario this morning, is that the 8F at any rate seems a tad overpowered, just charges away with the train so it does seem to me that performance needs to be toned down a bit.
i don't drive steamers in simulators, but i believe that there is no 'lapped' position for the brake valve, you make that work manually by adjusting the small ejector as you admit air into the system with the brake lever, so it's a balancing act. Drivers in the steam days certainly earnt their money the hard way.
Someone (though I can't remember who) said on the forums that some drivers in real life use the large ejector to balance the brakes, which led me to adopt that practice. For the large ejector, it's about 6-7% on both kettles.
Thanks guys I will give that a try, as you say a bit of trial and error. At least by putting the untimed freight runs first in the Journey you can plod around at 30 MPH and try things out.
That's the key point isn't it? Like so many routes in TSW, SOS is already crying out for additional stock or an enhancement pack. The route is fairly well made, albeit a little sparse, scenery- wise and the locos are first class. But it's just too quiet. Not nearly enough AI, and what there is is rather muted anyway. I have to believe that this was a very busy route in 1958 and trains from all points north and south were fighting to get a platform berth. I'm not that well-versed in BR history, but legend has it that Crewe was the Clapham Junction of the North, in terms of trains and passengers. I've started to buy routes again, after a long hiatus, and I recently acquired SOS, Harlem and Luzerne. I'm enjoying all three, but my impression is they are sooooo unfinished, compared with what I was used to with TSC.
Not my area of expertise. But i can safely say that Crewe would have been far busier than depicted in SoS. Certainly far more variety in locomotive types and rolling stock. Route needs a DLC with 3 or 4 loco types and pre-nationalisation coaching stock and wagons.
Mike (IKB) and I know each other since the early days of MSTS and Trainz - just a bit of friendly banter! Edit… Anyhow let me know how it goes Mike. There are a few frustrations and I just encountered the branch freight scenario where you can’t get going until you pull the strings on the bauxite wagons, as DTG marshalled the consist wrong. It’s also a bit strange that Journey mode throws you in at the deep end doing freight when they should have balanced between the 8F and Jubilee on passenger work.
I like to keep things simple because I just brake as required with the brake lever, and use the large ejector to bleed off or release the brakes as required.
Route is bland, uninhabited and everything is too clean. Need houses and factories with dirty textures, not oh look these have all just been built. Loco's look ok detail wise. But just as good by Victory Works and Bossman for TSC. Not enough loco ambient sounds above 20mph, certainly nothing that sounds like real world loco's. Suppose they were recorded on a tourist railway at walking speed. Biggest laugh i had was some muppet thinks it is authentic. To have a string of MK1's, in a consist. maroon, crimson and cream, maroon, crimson and cream. All the way along the consist, alternately.
Vern, can't you re-marshall the consist, to it's correct make up. Or are you on a fixed path ? I was doing the 8F tute or whatever they are called. Got stopped at an outer home, sat there for ages. Got fed up and decided to chance my arm, to the next home signal. But game threw me out of the tute It's not a total dead loss, but not worth 25 sovs.
8F physics seem way off. Slips far too easily - 10% regulator at 70% cut off. Sander does nothing. No way that can be right. Made finishing Branch Freight almost impossible, took about three attempts. Still sort of enjoying it and too late to refund but I stand by my past assessment that DTG rushed this out and it needed a minimum of two or three months to get it right. Just hope they won't now abandon it like they have with so much else and sweep the problems under the rug.
I bought this, refunded and then for some reason the file stayed in my game. Even having it there technically for free for a week I had a love / hate/bored Shipless by it's quietness. I think even with dlc on this I'd avoid as the routes not interesting to me and to devoid of scenery. I can't imagine the Uk ever having large empty expanses along any part of its network
Yes I was very surprised to see such long stretches of green, rural terrain in that part of the world. I had thought that the route had been chosen for its soot, clag and gray, industrially- scarred landscape.
It really is as if someone called, “Time gentleman please”, on this with much work still to be done, whether fleshing out the scenery or getting the physics right on the steam locos. The core lighting shortcomings don’t help either as this really is a route where you need to be able to see what you’re doing, not trying to move around in that murky twilight which seems to pass for day time.
I can’t help but feel the accountants are really holding the team back. We get “one route” features Some of these bugs Shorter routes sold as “gameplay” routes. I know there’s a finite cut off line and DTG will never please everyone with a route but I wonder if they’ve backed the self into a customer base of gen 8, performance optimised , scenery light routes
I have reached saturation point with SOS and I have only played it for a few hours! This is the trouble for me with TSW, there are only a couple of routes which feel "complete" and even then they aren't totally. This route plus my other two favourites NPT and TVL really feel like they could do with a swathe more DLC. Both NTP and SOS are far too quiet. TSC still seems to be the best sim for realism, it might not look as good but when you can create a busy summer Saturday on the Riviera in the 50's with ten different classes of loco yet SOS another busy mainline which even with DLC is still likely to not have the variety you would have seen in 1958.
I know where you are coming from. Was dividing my time between SoS and the Konstanz route in TSC, all the time thinking of the scenarios I could create with my German rolling stock collection in the latter. SoS already seems to have been forgotten, they should have had loco and stock DLC pretty much ready to go after initial release. A Black Five, a Crab, Jinty, LMS or BR Standard 2-6-4 tanks plus loads more coaching and freight stock. Of course the limitations of Scenario Editor, compared to TSW, don't help but at least if we could populate the route with a greater variety of assets would be a start.
This is the problem with tsw! Routes always seem un finished. There's always a complete lack of rolling stock. Too many bugs! Lack of paths in the scenario designer. The director needs to be put before a firing squad! Can I still use the term firing squad or is this politically incorrect these days?
But now they have your money and so don't have as much incentive to improve it as they would if people held off until it met their expectations. Oh well. The accountant's view would be that you say it isn't good enough, but you still cough up the money so it is good enough. Actions > words.
I find I keep going back to Germany. it’s alive It’s scenic dense It full of variety of stock Routes are interesting
Well as I said earlier, it's not all bad and I don't regret getting it but that doesn't mean there aren't areas which could be better. Next time I will wait for a sale. And I actually have made conscious decisions not to buy some of the more recent releases. I passed on HSC and the Rivet Swiss route and will probably wait for the revamped IOW route to go on sale. Just for some reason my inner voice was nagging about SoS and I also took the view spending gift vouchers on it wasn't as painful as peeling the notes off my own wad.
Yes, the German routes do seem more lively. But, for me, the problem is the lack of loco variety. Red box after red box passing by. Same with BML. Lovely route, well made, but all you see is a procession of electrostars. Most US routes are the same. That's why most of my precious playing time is spent on TVL, GWE, NTP and Clinchfield. I'd love to see some steam added to those routes.
Absolutely. One of the advantages of TSC is that I can chuck some older stock on a German run. Re SoS, will have to take a run over the route with a Class 40 or similar get a better view of what there is of the scenery.
IRL the route is Electrostar, Electrostar, 700, Electrostar, 700... It's hardly a hotbed of different classes I spent a couple of hours last year at Merstham and literally that's all their was on both the slow and fast lines
True, and I have been purchasing very little TSW content lately as I have hardly used it. But I was always going to purchase SOS as I want them to make more steam period content. I am sure there will be DLC but the amount of DLC and what it contains will be a deciding factor as to how much I invest in TSW in the future. If they could make a scenario editor more akin to the TSC one that would improve things greatly in my opinion.
