NARS2 - the North American Railway Set [2.52 September 2021]

[Eddi]

Anyways, regearing allows locomotives to travel faster or slower at the expense of lowering or raising the TE.

sure, it's a nice idea on paper, but it doesn't play out very well.

[NekoMaster]

Anyways, regearing allows locomotives to travel faster or slower at the expense of lowering or raising the TE.

sure, it's a nice idea on paper, but it doesn't play out very well.

I use to use regearing to gear the freight locomotives to the slowest running wagon in the consist, so that I'd get more TE. Early diesel era I usually stuck with 60-70Mph with the F-units, SD's and GeeP's. Majour limiting factor was the hopper cars, limiting speed to 55 mph until the newer hopper comes out that can do 70MPH

As for passenger, if you play your cards right (connecting major cities and towns and leaving space between them), you could turn the F-units, E-units, ALco PA's and FA"s into express or in the case of the E-unit, at 117 Mph its almost American High speed.

Also regearing allows you to turn some of the general purpose/dual purpose heavy locomotives into medium speed passenger haulers. I've used the FM Trainmaster, GE Universal-B's, and the SD45's as heavy passenger commuter trains (80MPH is decently fast and these locmotives have the traction to speed up quickly)

Regearing done right can play into a players play style if they know how to use it right.

[Espee]

Anyways, regearing allows locomotives to travel faster or slower at the expense of lowering or raising the TE.

sure, it's a nice idea on paper, but it doesn't play out very well.

I use to use regearing to gear the freight locomotives to the slowest running wagon in the consist, so that I'd get more TE. Early diesel era I usually stuck with 60-70Mph with the F-units, SD's and GeeP's. Majour limiting factor was the hopper cars, limiting speed to 55 mph until the newer hopper comes out that can do 70MPH

As for passenger, if you play your cards right (connecting major cities and towns and leaving space between them), you could turn the F-units, E-units, ALco PA's and FA"s into express or in the case of the E-unit, at 117 Mph its almost American High speed.

Also regearing allows you to turn some of the general purpose/dual purpose heavy locomotives into medium speed passenger haulers. I've used the FM Trainmaster, GE Universal-B's, and the SD45's as heavy passenger commuter trains (80MPH is decently fast and these locmotives have the traction to speed up quickly)

Regearing done right can play into a players play style if they know how to use it right.

My rail network style is built extensively around regearing - to me, this is one of the major features that sets NARS head and shoulders above the rest, especially since I play mountainous terrain with the cargo weight multiplier set for 3x. As soon as F-units are available, I build 4-unit sets with 65:12 gearing for all my iron ore trains and expand them to 16 TL, giving me effectively 4800-ton trains due to the shorter ore jennies (coal trains work out to about 4,000 tons). Once the FM's are available, I can run goods/food trains into major cities on my "commute" (medium speed) passenger tracks @ 80 MPH. Running piggyback goods trains with U25B/U30Bs alongside double-decker passenger trains pulled by FMs on medium-speed lines, crossing over those coal and iron ore drags pulled by 65:12 geared EMDs is the type of kinetic eye candy you won't get in any other NewGRF set out there...

Landsborough Central - Diesel -1956-0422 - InfoA.png (773.1 KiB) Viewed 4562 times

FWIW, a link to my Landsborough Central thread in the Scenarios and Saved Games Forum: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=71256

[PikkaBird]

Five years from the last update, and here we are.

NARS 2.5 has been uploaded to Bananas. Good features added, bad features removed. This is a complete recode of the set and is incompatible with existing savegames using earlier versions.

Complaints go below. Have fun!

[kamnet]

Woohoo! I got to be #2!!!

Any documentation on what was added or removed?

[PikkaBird]

I was going to let you figure it out for yourself. But if you insist, here's a quick summary off the top of my head.

Gone: Regearing, HEP, complex running costs, generational vehicles, climate-dependent vehicles, hidden easter eggs, consist restrictions, maglevs, running sounds, 4x livery variations.
Added: Station refitting, wagon running costs, flippable locomotives, a few new locos (in addition to some parted-out generational vehicles).

All the costs have been recalculated and rebalanced, all the vehicles have been recoded (with completely different IDs, so it's not compatible with old versions unfortunately).

It's a much more "vanilla" set now, without all the quirks but still hopefully most of the gameplay and charm intact. It should be much easier to code addons for too: if people want to do that, I can provide some example code.

[Marshy]

Good to see an update Pikka , will have a play around this afternoon!

[NekoMaster]

Aw, it's going to kind of suck without the regearing and liveries. North America is one of the few countries I know where regearing is used extensively, allowing one locomotive to play multiple roles (heavy frieght or heavy commuter (SD45).... medium speed cargo or express passenger locomotive (GP40/F40)... general goods or heavy hauler (SD9))

Maybe someone could add regearing as an addon for those who like it and want it

[Lionic]

Woof! Thanks, Pikka, that's my first comment in your topic, but I've always been fan of your work!!

EDIT. What is Cabbage Car? Some kind of joke?

[NekoMaster]

So checking out the new set heres some things I've figured out

Liked

- More electrics
- Hidden locomotives now appear on the list (RTL Turboliner, Aerotrain, etc)
- All wagons appear now (one or two where missing in older versions of NARS 2 playing with newer versions of OPenTTD)


Disliked

- Lack of regearing (this is a biggy since you could purpose locomotives. Like making a Alco FA-2 as a fast express locomotive before the F9 units come out)
- Removal of Generation's. THIS CUTS DOWN A GOOD AMOUNT OF NICE GENRATIONS! We're now just stuck with the basics from each series of locmotives
(You'll only get these once generational locmotives.... EMD E3, EMD FT Unit, EMD FP9, EMD GP9, EMD SD9, Alco C630, GE U25B, GE U30C. You will not get all the other generational stuff)
- No more cab-cars for Bi-Levels and cabbage doesnt provide push-pull service with obvious locomotives.


Suggestions (Most important to least important)

- GENERATIONS (at least add them as seperate entries since generational code is kind of complex from what I've gathered)
- Regearing

- Superliner Bi-Level and Octagon (Bombarider) Bi-Level could use tweeking (MAYBE)
* Bombardier should hold more and run faster... say 80 People at 144Km\h? (Actually IRL they're going 177 Km/h being pulled by GO Transit MP40-3CH's and hold 150+ people)
* Super Liner's are alright... though maybe they could use a slight boost in capacity? Say 55 or 60 people instead of 50 to make them a little more useful over signle level coaches

- Add more locomotives from NARS 2 forum (like packmans sprites, and maybe my Union Pacific GEN 2 Veranda Locomotive)
- Lists could use sorting (the old order used in NARS 2 was nice and organised)

[NekoMaster]

Woof! Thanks, Pikka, that's my first comment in your topic, but I've always been fan of your work!!

EDIT. What is Cabbage Car? Some kind of joke?

Cabbage is a portanmu of Cab car and Baggage. Cabbages can be used at the end of a train for push pull service and a realistic way to add mail to a traint o make it look like baggage in modern games.

[Lionic]

Woof! Thanks, Pikka, that's my first comment in your topic, but I've always been fan of your work!!

EDIT. What is Cabbage Car? Some kind of joke?

Cabbage is a portanmu of Cab car and Baggage. Cabbages can be used at the end of a train for push pull service and a realistic way to add mail to a traint o make it look like baggage in modern games.

Thank you, NekoMaster! Probably that's a stupid question for American railroad fans, but I live on the other side of the globe. Maybe there could be some add-ons with other people's stuff like for UKRS2?

[NekoMaster]

Woof! Thanks, Pikka, that's my first comment in your topic, but I've always been fan of your work!!

EDIT. What is Cabbage Car? Some kind of joke?

Cabbage is a portanmu of Cab car and Baggage. Cabbages can be used at the end of a train for push pull service and a realistic way to add mail to a traint o make it look like baggage in modern games.

Thank you, NekoMaster! Probably that's a stupid question for American railroad fans, but I live on the other side of the globe. Maybe there could be some add-ons with other people's stuff like for UKRS2?

Its fine, cab-end cars are rarely used in normal trains. They're more common on multiple units but thats only because you'll want a cab on each end so you dont have to turn it around

Pikkabird did mention that, the new update is ment to make it easier to code addon's for NARS 2.0

[Kaiser-NA]

I think one of the unintended consequences of getting rid of generational trains were the refitting of freight trains with an ETD. It seems as though the blinking light is now gone

[PikkaBird]

Its fine, cab-end cars are rarely used in normal trains. They're more common on multiple units but thats only because you'll want a cab on each end so you dont have to turn it around

The cab car end graphics should still be there on the bilevels, etc. They just don't "reverse" the consist any more.

I think one of the unintended consequences of getting rid of generational trains were the refitting of freight trains with an ETD. It seems as though the blinking light is now gone

Got screen shots? The later freight wagons should still show a FRED when they're the last vehicle in the train.

[Marshy]

I've been having a play and I can recall ETD's still being there.

[arikover]

The autorefit is really handy! Even if more vanilla, there is still a good number of trains to play with. By all means I find this update really cool! (miss the running sounds a little)

Having played with Cargodist, I find the capacities of some carriages too low to handle passenger traffic. Maybe I don't play right, but may I suggest higher capacities? For instance, I think the bi-level car should have a much higher capacity than the superliner. The early passenger car can't hold much passenger as well... Maybe some sort of parameter to double capacities could do the trick, like in Iron Horse. Just a thought.

[Roslav]

Does it have the same GrfID as previous version? Will I lost previous version (which I started to play recently) if I update?

[lugo]

This is a complete recode of the set and is incompatible with existing savegames using earlier versions.

[Eddi]

if you download this from the ingame download window, you do not lose your old version. the old version can still be used to continue your old games, but new games can be started with the new version.