trees reduce emissions?

[dbwhip42]

Does "painting" trees help reduce emissions red area? Example, I paint trees along rail track to block sound/smoke from town.

(Sorry if this is a duplicate question but search returned beaucoup hits so...)

[Autocoach]

no. Only vehicles base emissions , number of vehicles and how well maintained they are will have an effect.

[dbwhip42]

Thanks. that certainly detracts from game play. Near as I can figure, there is only so much you can do with routing to minimize city emissions. For me it comes down to waiting for low emission technology to appear late game to really get the level down. Not much strategy there.

[Metacritical]

Originally posted by dbwhip42:

Thanks. that certainly detracts from game play. Near as I can figure, there is only so much you can do with routing to minimize city emissions. For me it comes down to waiting for low emission technology to appear late game to really get the level down. Not much strategy there.

or you can just ignore emissions as the negative effects are negligible

[dbwhip42]

Really? I will keep an eye on that. I thought (assumed) it was shutting down city growth if it got above mediocre. Good tip.

[Autocoach]

It is only one effect , the worst I have done is -80% on emissions in standard play but even with that you can get + plenty on the two connections and up to +100% on each freight . Up to you I guess, but I do recommend ignoring the steam tram coz it's terrible on emissions , stick to horses.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by dbwhip42:

Really? I will keep an eye on that. I thought (assumed) it was shutting down city growth if it got above mediocre. Good tip.

The term used is only a relative term. I think it uses mediocre for -20%. But -20% could be causing the town to shrink below it's base size or it could be having very little effect on the town size because of all the positive bonuses being applied to the town.
Example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548929662
I have a -30% effect from emissions. But my sum total of positive effects is +240%. 240 - 30 is still +210%. So the town is still much bigger than it's base size despite the emissions.

[dbwhip42]

Interesting...had not thought of them as cumulative...was thinking low values in any of the categories was a show stopper for growth.

Right now I am trying to figure out how to tell when train cars need to be replaced. Right now. when I get a "bad" train rating, I use the edit tool to replace the engine and hope that upgrades the rating. However, eventually both need replacing in which case I would use the "replace with" tool. But I have yet to see something that discriminates what is actually going bad, engine or cars.

[Metacritical]

Originally posted by dbwhip42:

Right now I am trying to figure out how to tell when train cars need to be replaced. Right now. when I get a "bad" train rating, I use the edit tool to replace the engine and hope that upgrades the rating. However, eventually both need replacing in which case I would use the "replace with" tool. But I have yet to see something that discriminates what is actually going bad, engine or cars.

if i have the money i upgrade to the newest vehicles, if i am at end game and there are no future updated vehicles i just turn up maintenance to very high and leave them alone.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by dbwhip42:

Right now I am trying to figure out how to tell when train cars need to be replaced. Right now. when I get a "bad" train rating, I use the edit tool to replace the engine and hope that upgrades the rating. However, eventually both need replacing in which case I would use the "replace with" tool. But I have yet to see something that discriminates what is actually going bad, engine or cars.

I'm glad you asked this. I went into the game to take a screenshot to show you how you can tell the increased emission level caused by the condition of the vehicle by just mousing over the emission stat in the vehicle details window.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548966625
What I ended up discovering is that the wagons don't increase their emissions. Either that or the total emissions from the entire train is not shown in the vehicle details window. Just replacing the locomotive got rid of all the increased emissions based on that details window.

All that aside, you are not meant to replace vehicles when their condition degrades over time. As Metacritical said, you can just raise the maintenance level (the intended manner in which to improve the condition of vehicles). You can just leave the maintenance on a high level to prevent the vehicle from ever degrading or you can save a lot of money and just temporarily raise maintenance until the vehicle is as good as new (which takes about 1 year, or fiscal cycle more or less) and then lower it back down to normal.

[dbwhip42]

More good input.
I have avoided increasing maintenance due to "start up" mentality, but game I am in now the money is there to do it.

and for clarity: my experience is that the first three or so engine edits will remove the bad rating but the fourth (these numbers are rough.) engine change does not clear the rating, I have to change the cars as well.

But as you and Meta say...the right answer is to upgrade the maintenance (and as a career maintainer..."but of course!!")