thecanadianrail wrote:i only get this problem when i put more than 20 freight cars on the track. after 20 every car slows the train down by 1-2 MPH untill you hit 5 MPH.
mabey someone should create a update so the AI drives at line speed nomater the train length or change the number of cars for the maximum train length to at least 50 cars. i guess RS.com really dosen't care about these american routes because in a eauropean route almost every train is about 20 cars long. no long-hauls except for north america and australia.
I just don't buy this theory that long AI trains cause creeping. Why? Simply because I have played scenarios, particularly on the Barstow-SanB route, that include v-e-r-y long AI trains which do anything but creep. In my scenario creation experience, creeping is more often the result of two or more trains, often including the player engine, interfering with each other's paths. And this is certainly not a case of the so-called dispatcher "forgetting" a train: it's a computer, not one of us mere humans, after all. When creeping occurs, I try adjusting departure times, inserting specific pathing instructions--sometimes using scenario-specific track markers, and juggling the classification of the trains in question: not all at the same time of course, since this has to be dealt with patiently and thoughtfully. As I work, I usually create numerous clones of the scenario I'm writing and I have at times discovered that a version that refuses to work due to stuttering on one particular day will work at a later time. This can easily become confusing, so I try to make copious notes as I work.
Let me provide an example. I'm currently developing a scenario for the RS Falmouth route that combines shunting in the yard and dock areas at Falmouth and features a good deal of AI traffic. Yesterday, I tried changing a couple of the player train's instructions and an AI passenger train that had previously run well began creeping. After about an hour of frustration, I realized that the amount of time the player train took to accomplish a series of interconnected tasks had changed, thus changing the time at which the player train and this AI passenger approached each other. It took several adjustments to the AI passenger's departure time, but the near meet finally ran smoothly again. By the way, interference between two trains often relates not to the actual time at which events occur as someone plays the scenario, but the times predicted for those actions that are visible in the timetable scenario editor. Although potentially frustrating for the scenario writer, this makes good programing sense because the program cannot predict the actual pace of play by a player, so it is set to predict times. Have you ever watched AI trains move, especially if they engage in drop-offs? They dash into place at the track speed limit, come to an abrupt halt, uncouple at the speed of light, and dash away again at the speed limit: I defy any human player to duplicate this behavior!
Tom Pallen
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 1:08 pm
