US Set available [Trains v0.87.4d released 27 April 2008]

Raichase · Post by **Raichase** » 14 Jul 2004 23:30

I read the readme, and print it out so I have a copy to refer to - but thats only 'cause I like everything to work propery...

...

Crahn · Post by **Crahn** » 15 Jul 2004 04:10

Heya, back again
I think i have discovered a couple more bugs in the set (im not sure).

The first new one has to do with the E8 diesel livery override for passenger cars. For the yellow override it works fine, but when the E8 changes livery to the Amtrak silver/blue/red, current E8's running do as well. This is great, however the passenger & mail coaches revert back to their original livery, ie: the brown or silver carriages. It seems that the Amtrak E8 doesn't have a livery override, as the coaches available in the new vehicles window also change livery to match the Amtrak colours. The problem is with the pre-amtrak livery coaches that are currently in service to the yellow E8's are not being overridden to look similar when the E8 heading the train changes livery from yellow to Amtrak. Screenie attached.

The second thing i noticed was regarding reliability after servicing. Usually (in ttdlx vanilla & the other graphic sets) reliability decreases normally until the train is 1 year older than its max. age (21/20 years old etc "... is getting very old & urgently needs replacing") then its reliability after servicing drops 1% every couple of seconds, hence the 'urgently needs replacing'. With the USSet I noticed that the instant that the engine hits its final year of service (from 19/20 to 20/20 years etc; "... is getting very old") its reliability diminishes as if it were 'urgently needing replacement'. This kinda makes the engine less useful in its final year, effectively making its life span 1 year lower than the 'advertised' lifespan, as you have to replace it as soon as you can after you get the 'its 20/20' message; unless, of course you can put up with traffic jams caused by the frequent breakdowns of the old, but not yet too old, loco. Not sure about most people, but I usually wait until i get the 21/20 message (urgently needs replacing) where the train actually does need replacing or it will hinder company performance before I replace my engines; and as force of habit i'll probably keep doing that, unwittingly causing myself major traffic & economic headaches. As far as i can tell it isn't specific to 1 train, as all the different engines I've checked since i noticed this have behaved in the same way.
Is this a bug?

I'm really enjoying this set, and am currently in 1972. Its great so far. Especially how each engine is useful in its own way.

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » 15 Jul 2004 08:52

Crahn wrote: The first new one has to do with the E8 diesel livery override for passenger cars. For the yellow override it works fine, but when the E8 changes livery to the Amtrak silver/blue/red, current E8's running do as well. [...] The problem is with the pre-amtrak livery coaches that are currently in service to the yellow E8's are not being overridden to look similar when the E8 heading the train changes livery from yellow to Amtrak. Screenie attached.

I was told to do that so it is intentional, but counterintuitive. I can change it so that it goes Yellow UP livery

Amfleet coaches if that's what people want, though.

Crahn wrote: The second thing i noticed was regarding reliability after servicing. Usually (in ttdlx vanilla & the other graphic sets) reliability decreases normally until the train is 1 year older than its max. age (21/20 years old etc "... is getting very old & urgently needs replacing") then its reliability after servicing drops 1% every couple of seconds, hence the 'urgently needs replacing'. With the USSet I noticed that the instant that the engine hits its final year of service (from 19/20 to 20/20 years etc; "... is getting very old") its reliability diminishes as if it were 'urgently needing replacement'. [...] As far as i can tell it isn't specific to 1 train, as all the different engines I've checked since i noticed this have behaved in the same way.
Is this a bug?

Erm... reliabilities are rather a problem in the US Set. A major problem is how vehicle availability and reliability are linked in the Patch: if a loco is unavailable for purchase then its reliability on already-running locos has to be low. And the problem with the US Set is that most vehicles need really short purchasing availabilities, but you can't really do this. So I've set the start and end years to be separated by only about one and a half vehicle lifespans (and there's also a huge amount of extra randomisation on top of that. Therefore, quite a lot of the locos will start to "die out" approximately at the end of their first lifespan, assuming tha you don't buy one immediately and that the randomisation ends up being short. It's a shame reliability and availability are so closely-knit in this way but that's the case at the moment, I'm afraid. You just have to replace locos lots in the US Set: whether they are 5, 10 or 20 years through their lives.

Crahn · Post by **Crahn** » 15 Jul 2004 10:39

Heya Oracle,
I don't think i explained one thing which mislead your reading. Sorry.

I play with persistent engines turned on (i know its reccomended that it be disabled, but i regulate myself to build the newer engines & phase out the oldies); so as long as i am using an engine, its core reliability will not drop in the new vehicle window & when it services, the problem i noticed though doesn't have to do with the core reliability, its the actual engine reliability while its running around on the track. When it hits 20/20 years (etc) the reliability while its running around drops very fast, as if it were 21/20 & urgently needing replacing. When it goes to the depot its reliability still goes up to 91% like it always did (for example), but diminishes very fast, often hitting 51% or lower halfway into its journey or after about a month or 2, as you would expect a 21/20 "over the hill & urgently needs replacing" train to do.
From 1/20 thru to 19/20 years old the engine performs fine & normal, with reliability dropping slowly until the next service (usually dropping by around 15 - 20% in that 3 month span). In ttdlx & other sets the 20/20 trains also go down at the same rate. Then when they 'urgently need replacing' they can drop by around 70% in that 3 month span.

The problem is that they are dropping drastically like this between services 1 year earlier than they should be, while they should still have a little life in them.

I hope this explained the possible bug a little better than my previous attempt!

Post by **uzurpator** » 15 Jul 2004 11:39

The reliability thing - some USset locos have stronger/weaker reliability decay. If you hit the faster decaying loco then after it starts to age it will drop to 0% pretty fast.

As for E8. Is it possible to make amtrak trains have completely random liveries? THis would emulate cars inherited from private railroads that are not yet repainted/rebuilt to amfleet. It is afair "clown train" period which lasted 3 years from 1970 to 1973.

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » 15 Jul 2004 14:26

uzurpator wrote:As for E8. Is it possible to make amtrak trains have completely random liveries? THis would emulate cars inherited from private railroads that are not yet repainted/rebuilt to amfleet. It is afair "clown train" period which lasted 3 years from 1970 to 1973.

That suggestion is coming from Mr Identical Wagons

. I think you are meaning that suggestion in a way that some wagons slowly get repainted over time. That's not really possible.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 15 Jul 2004 15:28

Oracle wrote:I think you are meaning that suggestion in a way that some wagons slowly get repainted over time. That's not really possible.

You could do it with a random action 2, but the randomness being the year at which the wagon is repainted.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 15 Jul 2004 16:20

Here's why the E8 works the way it does, and why it should stay that way.
Amtrak arrives around 1970 or so. The last opportunity to buy a heavyweight car was in 1940. So any heavyweight cars still remaining are really really old. The first thing Amtrak did was to scrap them, especially considering that the passenger traffic had fallen off so, and they had more cars than they really needed (That situation reversed itself preety quick though.) Also, remember that the age of the cars affects your rating, less so with the Patch but still some. We want to remind you to dump them.

As far as Amtrak running clown-trains with everybody's liveries, that is somewhat true, but in the main it wouldn't show in TTD because the passenger liveries were mostly not all that different. Almost all the operating passenger trains at that time were the stainless-steel streamliners, and most of them were left in their natural silver color, with the road name and maybe a color stripe on them which were easily repainted as convenient. So the Amtrak trains weren't as multicolored as you'd think. They were diverse as to equipment, which can be replicated by mingling old stainless-steel cars with the newer Amfleet cars, but the liveries weren't really an issue.

We don't want to have passenger car appearances automatically updating themselves, except with actual matching liveries for name trains.

As Oracle explains, the reliability of US-set trains is an enormous problem, and the Patch simply doesn't support any way to do it right at this point. I have no explanation for the behavior you are observing with persistent-engines turned on, possibly Oracle or even Patchman can speak to that. Personally, I think they should be decoupled, so the availability of a locomotive has no impact whatsoever on its reliability, but that seems to be a problem to accomplish.

DanMacK · Post by **DanMacK** » 16 Jul 2004 11:08

Oracle, noticed something. Uzurpator's steel gondolas should be used up until about 1960-1965. The Coil Car shouldn't appear until then.

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » 16 Jul 2004 14:31

I was told that it should appear at the start but without its lid until 1955 or so. Is that wrong then?

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 16 Jul 2004 14:35

No, they had open coil cars earlier. The covered ones shouldn't appear until the 50s sometime, and they don't - in other words, the coil cars work correctly, both covered and uncovered.

troopper5 · Post by **troopper5** » 16 Jul 2004 15:34

This might have been asked before, but why there are trains that go about 140 km/h in year 1920?
I'm wondering this, but I'm not even sure that did this train exist in 1920 (K4 Pacific, Mountain etc.)

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 16 Jul 2004 15:53

The US is big, and passenger trains had to go fast. The Empire State Express supposedly reached 120 before WW1. The Pacific's cruising speed was 90mph easy.

DanMacK · Post by **DanMacK** » 16 Jul 2004 21:47

krtaylor wrote:No, they had open coil cars earlier. The covered ones shouldn't appear until the 50s sometime, and they don't - in other words, the coil cars work correctly, both covered and uncovered.

Well, the actual "Cushioned Coil Car" that I drew is a newer car. Most of the steel was hauled in gons (2 coils each end, middle empty) or in bar, slab (on flats) or tube form (Tube gon). Covered gondolas were around before the cushioned cars, but the car I drew should be avail. from 1960 or so, with gondolas (I may do up a covered gon) and uzurpator's slab HD flat (That's what it looks like) (I may do up a covered gon) from 1920 to present (Just saw some straight gons w/coils in them today). Coil car should carry more steel than gondola tho, maybe 10-15T more.

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 17 Jul 2004 00:33

I don't know if this has been raised before, but there is an error in the readme regarding newgrf.cfg

The American Transition set currently supports six parameters:

* Parameter 0 (value 1) will deactivate the American grade crossings included with the set, in case you have another roadset installed.
* Parameter 1 (value 2) will deactivate the set in the temperate climate.
* Parameter 2 (value 4) will deactivate the set in the arctic climate.
* Parameter 3 (value will deactivate the set in the sub-tropical climate.
* Parameter 4 (value 16) will give consistent boxcars for the same cargo. Normally, American trains, even carrying the same cargo, will have wildly different styles and liveries of traincars, which in this set is provided by random graphics; this parameter disables the randomizing function, so the same car type and cargo will always have the same appearance, as in original TTD.
* Parameter 5 (value 32) will change the behaviour of the Acela Express and HSE 'Sunset' trains slightly so that the AI can use them more effectively.

These are not different parameters, they are different bits in the same parameter.

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » 17 Jul 2004 13:29

ChrisCF wrote:These are not different parameters, they are different bits in the same parameter.

You are right, but stop being picky

. Will be corrected in next release.

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 18 Jul 2004 02:47

You're the one that wanted bugs posted in this thread

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » 19 Jul 2004 20:59

OK, the next major release (version 0.82) is here. Some semi-source will probably appear later in the week for ChrisCF to give all the NFO coders something horrible to look at, but with a few comments this time.
It should support Alpha 30 from the off, too (or I would hope so, at least).

The changelog is:

Corrected positioning on various engines and carriages.
Updated graphics for Sharknose, SD70, H24-66, GP9u, covered hoppers and coal hopper.
Changed MP-54 and M-2 capacities to 40 passengers.
Corrected slight error with F7.
Added High Hood SD40-2 as random livery for SD40-2.
Enabled Budd M-2 Cosmopolitan for AI use.
Modified E60C and E60CP start dates slightly.
Disable set if newtrains or electrifiedrailway aren't on. Give warning messages if tracktypecostdiff, gradualloading, multihead or mammothtrains aren't on.
New parameter bit 6 (value 64) sets passenger/mail loading speeds to 10 per tick.
Altered Big Blow costs slightly.
Added Trailer-on-Flatcar (TOFC) as new goods van.
Added new version of E8 in UP livery with new armoured car override.
Added two new grain hoppers and removed one.
Added a freight livery of the GS-4 Daylight that appears when it is hauling freight (i.e. train is not solely transporting passengers, mail and/or valuables/gold/diamonds).
Added "articulated engine" callbacks for Alpha 30 and above so that all pieces of an articulated engine or steam locomotive (including tender if applicable) are automatically purchased with the first engine.
Altered AI ranks for electric locomotives (different under Alpha 30 and above to allow EP-2 'Bipolar' and EP-4 'Little Joe' usage).
Made all articulated locos no longer dual-headed in Alpha 30 and fixed problems associated with this.
Added new goods gondola.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 Jul 2004 21:03

Oracle wrote: [*] Added a freight livery of the GS-4 Daylight that appears when it is hauling freight (i.e. train is not solely transporting passengers, mail and/or valuables/gold/diamonds).

Actually I think it should allow food too, because the Daylight livery goes rather well with most of the reefer liveries (not the State of Maine though), and because in the Tropics I often mix food and passenger trains. Otherwise, OK.

Oracle wrote:[*] Added "articulated engine" callbacks for Alpha 30...

...except that a30 doesn't appear to be out yet.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 19 Jul 2004 21:53

Then your not looking in the right places.
Now, if only this damn file would download, i could try the new features out!

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