Hello, I know it’s a little premature as it isn’t released yet but from the stream it appears the fireman in the steam locomotives is constantly ‘firing’ and trying to keep maximum boiler pressure. Unfortunately this meant every time the train coasted or was stationary the safety valves were blowing off. Not only is this unrealistic but incredibly irritating. Is there any chance the ai fireman could be set to aim for just below maximum boiler pressure so the safety valves are not constantly lifting? Otherwise I loved the route and the rolling stock. Very commendable.
I second this. Really hope someone from DTG addresses it soon. I can imagine it getting extremely grating after a while.
I think rather than the AI fireman always fireing. I dont think there is any fireing happening. The fire and water is constantly set therefore gaining when the regular is off and dampers open. Furthermore, because the water is set and not changing, injectors are not being used to also impact the boiler pressure and prevent the safety valves lifting. Will have to see what happens on the next stream if any fireing activities are going on or is it just "Set" and not active at all.
If that is the case then no better than early Trainz or the old Japanese console games, Kisha de Go (the steam edition of Densha de Go) or SL de Ikou, the one from Otaru to Niseko.
Hopefully it is just while they tinker with the fireman. With so much passion shown I would be suprised if they’d let something like this make it to the final version.
From what Matt was saying in the stream, there are plans to eventually make the fireman's movements changeable. For launch though this won't be the case as we'll have no control over what he does.
I don’t mind not having control- I just don’t want the boiler at maximum pressure everytime the regulator is closed. A real life fireman would face disciplinary actions for excessive noise and water wastage.
Very apparent watching the stream how intrusive the safety valve noise is. They had to turn the volume down and move the viewpoint to half way down the train to be tolerable. Would suggest as a temporary measure if release won’t be delayed and the AI fireman can’t be better tuned before then, the safety valve volume level is dialled right down or we get an option to mute it.
I'd even say temporarily use the "final fix" they used on the TSC auto-fireman after years of fiddling and just cap the boiler pressure at 1psi below the first safety. It gives you no real challenge having maximum pressure any time you want it but at least you don't go deaf!
Watching the stream closer I also noticed the safty valves dont actually lower the boiler pressure causing most of the contant lifting. Not sure if this is something simugraph can do in the future? TrainSim-Matt The problem with constant lifting can be solved by the above and also paired with keeping the pressure down by closing the dampers and opening the fire doors whilst stationary to prevent steaming/increasing pressure, which do irl. Maybe some post/pre release tweaking can resolve this.
Nice second stream, the route is beautiful. However the curse of the safety valves rears it’s head again! Once again they had to turn the game volume down to even hear themselves talk over the constant safety valves. Particularly irritating and noticeable when shuffling around the yard. Matt gave us a few methods of slowing the pressure build up which will help slightly but in real life this would be an extremely inefficient way to run a locomotive and does not stop the pressure building completely.
Yeah Matt seemed to rely on "once you get going you can manage the boiler better", which is totally true. I'll often add a bit of extra reverser if I need to bleed more pressure off. However that means yard shunting is going to be an audio nightmare with the safeties on constantly. They did show manual firing (open the firebox doors) and damper control so I don't know if we can get the fire down by not firing and keeping them shut, but not being able to use the injectors to get cold water in there is a big missing piece of the pressure control puzzle. Also running the fire down (assuming we can) only works if you reach the yard after a run, not if you start there with a fire set up for an express trip on the mainline
