It is why I hate patches, it breaks everything that was good and working or just ruins it for the those who bought it for 'simulator' use. Spirit of Steam is now u/s. Everything that was working well until the latest update is now defunct. Might not even have a steam train. Just have power and brake. So I think it is high time that we have the driver grades. So those who have no experience or ability to drive can use arcade mode. And those of us who get steam and were happy until the latest update (because it was real) can choose expert. I suppose you could have a medium level choice too for those with 'some understanding'. So if Train sim world can't adopt these modes then you will probably say goodbye to those with real railway and railroad experience. Just have some neat graphics and see the trains and just like in Trainz you can have your models and no need to think its real. Here is what I said in the latest SOS patch thread when another with experience mentioned it was now broken too: Yes, the ejectors for releasing the brake have now become to totally u/s. The vacuum brake is now broken. I could release the vacuum brake in 2 seconds when it should take around 20-40 seconds. I was playing before the patch and it was working as a real life vacuum and steam locomotive. DTG please reverse these physics changes Or.... Just have options: Novice driver/arcade style not real physics Medium level driver and in between Novice and expert. Expert driver. and real physics
I honestly have no idea what you're going on about. The locomotives, and in particular the brake systems, work exactly the same way in the new version of SoS as in the previous version. There are some bugfixes elsewhere in the route, and some differences in performance, no more than that. If you're having trouble releasing the brakes, just make sure the Small Ejector is fully open, the Large Ejector is closed, and the Brake Valve is fully closed. This will charge the brake pipe to 21" vacuum within a couple of minutes, just so long as no brake valves have been left open elsewhere in the train - and you'll know if you did that at any point. Any complaints about the brakes releasing too quickly probably relate to an unfitted train. Look for wagons painted grey rather than ochre - they have no driver-controlled brakes and no brake pipe. When the brake pipe ends at the rear buffers of the tender, it doesn't take long at all to fully charge it. Just beware that you won't have much brake force with which to bring the train to a stop.
As I said in your other post (please don't spam) - I have no idea what you're talking about, brake performance should be about right, maybe you're confusing that you have an unfitted freight train - in which case brakes will release as if you're a light loco, since there is NO vacuum pipe on the train?
It’s a simulator not an arcade game p.s I have real railway experience and this sim does not put me off
Large ejector should be open as well when releasing brakes. As, as the name suggest, it larger and sucks more air out of the pipes. Large one is only used during brake release, as it consumes more steam. The small ejector is kept open during run operation to compenasate for any leaks in the system.
This is true, but the small ejector is enough to pull the brakes off - just a bit on the slow side. Keeping it simple for the guy who clearly has no idea what he's doing.
I can't help but be mildly offended at the label "arcade" being applied to playing realistically - that is, the driver driving the train and letting the fireman do his job.
People throw the "arcade" label around to trigger people, walk on by folks and don't be caught in the trap. Until someone shows me otherwise, i'm not aware of any realism issues on the brakes, and just a bit of overpower on the throttle, beyond that, the simulation of the steam systems is fundamentally quite realistic and better than it was before. A ranty post without any detail isn't going to get any traction any time quickly. Matt.
Nice pun There’s no point of having arcade mode on the game if it’s too difficult there’s the DCC mode where you just accelerate/decelerate no matter the type of train and it’s on Trainz Simulator otherwise I found TSW to be quit realistic in terms of train physics
I'm honestly don't know what the OP talking about. The steam engines run quite well in TSW, it behave as it should. The only thing i want to change is the rate of the firing, the fireman is absolutely on steroids to constantly make the safety valves setting off when cruising on low cutoff settings. XD
Im ok with criticism of tsw about past releases in many terms, but you clearly moan about well simulated things while not understanding the basic working principles. Loco not moving?, broken brake pipe?, is it too much expected to have a basic interest in those things before opening a thread like yours? I really really hope dtg is keeping simulating the systems on a nice level like now, even with clearly overburdened players.
Hey Matt I'm so sorry! I honestly had no idea about unfitted trains! You're right it was the locomotive releasing. You totally got me. Where can I hide? I'm looking for the closest rock.... That is twice in a week now. My mistake!
Don’t really understand the steam stuff, But I do think that if/when the trains start getting more functions and more technical, maybe it would be good to have some options to turn off the really complex stuff for players that just want to drive a train and aren’t concerned about the simulation side of it (so things like setting up GSMR, Ebula, that kind of stuff). Otherwise I could imagine you’d have a situation where people that are playing more casually would be put off from playing because things are too complicated. And also having some good in-game tutorials on the more complex stuff wouldn’t go a miss.
Unfortunately with the way Simugraph etc is built, you can't just "switch stuff off" and go "simple controls" - it's something we've looked at to see how achievable it would be as we know there are some people who are turned off by the complexity, but, if we go anywhere down that route I am 110% clear to everyone in the team that it is not, ever, at the detriment of the current experience - just to be clear here. Currently we have no plans to do this however, though the desire for it is certainly understood, it's a matter of finding the right approach that works not just for players, but for our schedules too, and cannot impact the creation of the current detailed simulation trains. Matt.
I would really love to see a system similar to what smokebox has done in TSC. You basically tell the fireman how much steam he should generate (as a percentage, 0-100), and it is then the job of the fireman to adhere to this.
As I alluded to earlier, in this thread or another, if the physics could become more like the Bossman etc. locos in TSC then that would be a good step. After that we need more advanced information on the state of the fire, boiler water level and coal/fuel remaining in the tender (or bunker/side tanks), whether manual firing or automatic. We also need to see the exhaust change colour, thrashing that BMG Jub up towards Shap earlier, had a lovely dark grey billow out the exhaust, Greta would be having kittens. But when the coal burned through a bit, the shade gradually became lighter.
Currently I think the boiler physics are just a placeholder, which is why they aren't very good. A lot of improvements - including new HUD elements - will definitely come along with the manual firing update. The big question is when - and nobody knows the answer yet. As it stands, the damper and blower are automatically adjusted based on the current boiler pressure. With better boiler physics, and an auto-fireman responding to the same cues as recommended in "Little & Often", that should be enough for the boiler management to seem much more reasonable than it presently is.
I am not 100% sure, but for the brake van tour the brakes release very fast. Are the brake vans unfitted? I also have seen fast brake release in a train pulled by the 8F.. (Through Freight, departure 12:10) after a full stop vacuum brake pressure goes up to 18 very fast, then it slows down, but you barely feel the need to use the large elector. This is very different from the Jubilee, where the brakes release a lot slower if you have a train with 10 carriages than for the shorter trains with 5 carriages. I do not want to say it working completely wrong, but it may be worth an additional check.
The brake van tour is a relatively short train. You would expect its brakes to be relatively responsive, but slower than a light engine. The brake vans do have brake pipes, and there's even a gauge inside for the Guard to check what the Driver is doing with it. On unfitted trains, of course, this does nothing and the Guard must be ready to operate the handbrake, with its wheel prominently mounted in the middle of the cabin. The particular Through Freight train you mention is a typical fully-fitted train. When releasing the brakes, the air has to be pulled to the front of the train where the ejector can, well, eject it from the pipe. It takes time for air to move through the pipe, so a better vacuum will be drawn at the front of the train than at the rear to begin with. Take an external camera, look at the gauge in the brake van, and compare it to the reading on the HUD - you'll see that it takes a while to catch up. So this is behaving correctly. When the brake van gauge shows that the whole brake pipe has a good vacuum drawn in it, the train should move reasonably easily (it's not as heavy as the coal trains).
