Reliability / Servicing - how?

[Bloodnok]

In the 'build trains' dialog, where do you find the reliability figures? I don't seem to be able to find the reliability of a design without building one.

The base reliability obviously exists in much the same form as it did in Transport Tycoon - as a new design will come out with a poor initial reliability, but a year or so later, it's much better.

Once you have built your loco, what do you do to get it serviced? The depot seems to have vanished, but the reliability still tails off like it used to between servicing.

This means that in a few years, your loco has turned into an unreliable wreck, when it should have lasted 20-30 years.

What am I missing here? Seems like the gameplay is somehow unfinished in this area...

[Colonel Sheperd]

It's just if the train breaks down a lot replace it. If it isn't older than 5 years or so then take another type.

[Slace]

i just watch for a train to drop below 30% reliability and thne replace it

[ampz]

I replace any train below 50% if it is part of a network with more than three trains on. A single unreliable train affects the entire train network.

Dual engine trains are great for heavily trafficated routes. If one engine breaks down, the train will still keep moving but at a lower speed. Dual engine trains can also pull A LOT more vagons, decreasing the number of trains required to trafficate the route (but increasing required station length).

[Davie_UCF]

I do really think locomotives should last much longer than they do!

Really need to be able to service them somehow, or they should at least last A LOT longer!
Look at some real trains for example.. can keep running for over 40years...


Davie

[Horse]

we need a patch so we can maintance the vehilcles not trains only but also buses, trucks, ships and airplanes.

How better the maintence is how less breakdowns we have]
That is what we need.

[Hyronymus]

Yes, and I agree with Davie too. If your trains fall victim of poor reliabilty within 4-5 years then that's less than realistic. I hope that gets tweaked in a patch (official or non-official).

[babs]

Dual engine trains are great for heavily trafficated routes. If one engine breaks down, the train will still keep moving but at a lower speed. Dual engine trains can also pull A LOT more vagons, decreasing the number of trains required to trafficate the route (but increasing required station length).

I totally agree. Dual engine trains kick ass. But today i head a really inconvenient experience. I was a bit lazy on refreshing my trains. So one dual engine train had his reliabilty down to 6% (yeah the locomotives where 17 years old). So I tried to replace it. But one of the engines was broken down and I could not sell them or lift them of the track. But exactly after the one engine was fixed, the other broke down. And etc. So I sat there like fifteen minutes when I finally found a whole in the breakdowns.

Imagine wath would have happened if the reliability had dropped till 0%.

I hope they just fix this in a patch. In the mean time: Dont forget to replace your trains in time otherwise you'll have a slight problem.

[n0brain]

i thought the trains or other vehicles were serviced automatically without having to visit the depot...

Back in original/deluxe TT, the vehicles' reliability will suffer heavily if it wasn't sent to depot in regular basis (about once or twice a month).

So, I'm thinking in this way... without having to use the depot (whice leads to major headache... at least for me... i guess), vehicles have shorter life span.

It's the price i'm willing to pay.


BUT, I think i would be nice to have an option to completely turn off
breakdowns (yeah, call me cheap, but i used that option always when
i played TT ) and/or an option to use old (TT's) reliability/service
equation instead.

[Bloodnok]

I've been thinking about this.

IRL, companies send their trucks/buses/trams/trains/etc to depots to get them serviced. In general, they have a small number of large depots, and they schedule their vehicles to go there for service.

In TTD, you had the MagicDepot(tm) which took one square, yet held infinite amounts of stuff. Your vehicles went there every now and then. In TTD, not with any of the 3rd party patches applied, your vehicles (particularly trains) would go wandering off their route looking for a depot if they decided they wanted a service. This left them potentially stuck in awkward places, and lots of tricks were used to try and minimise this, including placing loads of depots everywhere (my normal way to attack this problem), using very clever and slightly non-obvious track layouts to force-service trains, or generally getting annoyed/frustrated with the game when trains get stuck, as I'm sure many people did. (The patches all have some way of attacking this problem too, but I'm looking at the original TTD here).

For locomotion, it was obviously decided that the TTD-style MagicDepot would be going away. I doubt we'll see it return. However - servicing NEEDS to return. Even RCT had servicing. Admittedly, it was only a bloke with a hammer, and he only worked in the station, but still...

The servicing interval concept from TTD is useful. Go this many game days before looking for a service. This controls the when of a service, so all that needs to be decided is the where. Without a depot, just where do you go looking for that service?

You could take the 'middle of nowhere' approach, same as placing trains, and say either "we'll stop the train wherever it is when the timer runs out and service it" or "the next time it stops for some other reason, we'll service it". Both could badly disrupt your running lines, and although I'd put up with this in order to get any servicing at all, I'd prefer to see something more respectful of running line throughput.

How about nominating certain stations as servicing points? Time spent in these stations not loading or unloading could be used for maintenance. Maybe even all stations of a certain size or over (i.e. not rural bus stops) should be capable of servicing by default?

[n0brain]

(this is just a ramdom thought... kinda joke...)

Maybe... well maybe...

we could extend vehicle's life-span to 5x-10x... and make the game say "Servicing..." instead of "Broke down"...

It can be done with very simple patching... I think....

[squishycube]

lol @ n0brain

But seriously, maybe the mechanic system used by RCT would be good for Loco too. In RCT you could set the service interval for every attraction, and then you had to hire mechanics, who serviced the attractions and repaired them if they broke down.

How this concept could be integrated into loco:

You have a mechanic, who is a dude with a car or maybe in later stages a helicopter. (where later is when you have enough money) He makes rounds along all stations he can reach, or you set a working area for him (again, like RCT).
Each time he visits a station, he takes a quick look at all trains currently there (maybe waiting a few minutes for trains to come by as to not skip that many trains.) This quick look increases the trains reliability, just like the depot visits of TTD. When you've got more money, you could make dedicated mechanics, who service just one station (not a special type of mechanic, just a mechanic with a very small working area)
And if a train breaks down, the mechanic will go to the station that train will go next as fast as possible and give that train a 'big maintenance' like the RCT mechanics visiting broken atractions.

The big downside of this is that it adds a very large portion of micro managment, which is obviously not what some players want. For those players I still think breakdowns should be entirely disbableable.

All in all: The RCT mechanics rock, and I would surely enjoy their presence in Loco.

Food for Thought CS?

[maartena]

This is my idea of servicing:


Stations that can be equiped with a "service tile" in the front of the station where the train stops. The train will actually stop BEFORE the service tile and starts unloading/reloading before going on its way. If a train requires service, it should be UNHOOKED from the carriages (while they are being unloaded/loaded), move forward to the service tile, get service, and then move backwards to the carriages to be hooked up again, after which it leaves to the next station.

A train that requires service should not be looking for the next station that has a service tile in front of it, yet should continue his route until it encounters a station with a service tile. If no stations on the route are equiped with a service tile the train will just continue to break down more and more and eventually break beyond repair.

The servicing should take long enough for there to be a small delay in the train leaving the station. If you have stations where you want the train to "wait for a full load", you could set a service tile as the last station tile there to make it more efficient - since the train is waiting there anyways.

A simple list:

1) Train arrives in station needing service.
2) Train parks at last station tile and starts unloading.
3) Engine unhooks from carriages, and moves one tile forward.
4) On the Service Tile it receives service, and then moves backwards.
5) Carriages are hooked up and train will leave the station, onwards to new adventures!

Either way, the train should be unhooked from its carriages when receiving service, in real life a locomotive would be placed into service without any carriages of course, and in TTDLX we were all amazed how all those carriages were able to fit in the depot! Then again, in real life train servicing takes longer then simply loading up the train, so they just use ANOTHER locomotive to pull the train, but trying to implement such a thing is going to be complicated and will take too much time.

[Hyronymus]

Can't the list you mentioned be replaced by a simple time + money penalty?

EDIT: better suggestion here! Why not have the ability to set a service interval like in TTD. When the service interval has passed the vehicle 'takes a maintainance stop' at the first stop in its list. This stop is 'visualised' by a time and money penalty.

[Davie_UCF]

To make it more simple how about you can just click a button on a loco's dialog box to service it for a small price? Or set a time interval and it does it automaticly.. just takes the money out of your account but lists it on your budget as a loss in money you know?

Davie

[Steve]

Perhaps it'll be too easy to service them. Otherwise your train could run forever if you just kept servicing them. At least with the depot system they had to go out of their way.
Perhaps this is why CS changed it.
Maybe a way to reduce the relibility effects, not fix up the trains to normal health.

[spaceman-spiff]

I think Chris wanted us to always upgrade to newer vehicles, if you have to replace engines at regular basis and older ones become obsolete, then you 're always playing with recent ones

[Hyronymus]

Upgrading to newer vehicles is PITA. You have to wait for better stock for years. IS CS serious when he offers you the Vulcan bus in 1953 as the only bus? And why is there only 1 engine for a long time in the European climate?

[babs]

I think Chris wanted us to always upgrade to newer vehicles, if you have to replace engines at regular basis and older ones become obsolete, then you 're always playing with recent ones

I agree on this. A train now has to be replaced every 5-6 years. In the american scenario there are only ten trains, which means that on average a new model is introduced every 10 years.

Also in all the scenarios it sometime take a long time between new releases:
Examples:
*Alpine: The Re 4/4 I is introduced in 1948. THe next train is the RE 4/4 II in '64. 16 years later
*British: The stirling 8ft is available in 1900. The next train is the Fowler F4 in 1920. 20 years later
*American: The baldwin 2-8-0 is released in 1910. The next train, the pacific is introduced in 1935. 25 years later.

So I propose to lenghten the reliabilty by 3x. This means a train can serve for about 15-20 years which sounds more realistic.

[Bloodnok]

I think Chris wanted us to always upgrade to newer vehicles, if you have to replace engines at regular basis and older ones become obsolete, then you 're always playing with recent ones

The problem is, technology doesn't come along fast enough for there to be new tech by the time vehicles are uselessly unreliable.

One of the really cool things about Locomotion is stock cascading, and how easy it is.

You buy a new loco for your express passenger train. You take the old one and put it on your local passenger train. You take that loco and put it on a small goods train. The loco that was hauling that train gets sold/scrapped.

I used to do this in TTD too - including sending trains 'light loco' from depot to depot (sometimes building lines exclusively to do just that), and also hauling surplus stock across the map too. That needed enormous amounts of tedious micromanagement in TTD - though is a bit easier with TTDpatch's ability to specify a depot as a location to go to.

In Locomotion, you just drag a loco from one stopped train window to another. Simple.

Sadly, now it's far easier to manage the stock to do this (very prototypical) operation, the stock just doesn't last long enough for it to be useful.

If servicing was re-instated, I suspect a TTD like reliability curve would appear. This means that a new design would be initially unreliable, and improve with time (at services), a new vehicle of an established design would return to the same reliability each time it is serviced, an old vehicle of a current design has it's reliability drop much quicker after servicing, though servicing still improves the reliability temporarily, and a vehicle of a design with poor base reliability or which is no longer in the list does not have it's reliability improved much (or at all) by servicing.

This was a nice, well-balanced system which allowed a good usage period out of each vehicle before requiring that it was replaced, encouraged the early adoption of new designs, and would really benefit from the ability to cascade stock that Locomotion has...

I think Hyronymus has the best idea of how to handle servicing - just allow a train to be serviced next time it stops at a station when the time interval has expired. This would be the simplest way in terms of both implementation and gameplay. No micromanagement would be required, and the routing would be unaffected.