building on lake valley.

[agrimes]

Now that there are things on lake valley to build rail to, I have been building my network. As usual, I design for high-traffic, high user count, so lots of double tracking and good focus on throughput. Anyway, my biggest gripe with the map is that the map is severely vertically exaggerated to the point where I have to spend all day building immense ramp structures to change between elevations. I can't really aim these, so they come down where they come down and then I have Problem... many of the stations are designed with not just a group of tracks to connect, but tracks on different sides of a very large structure but not enough space to connect them before departing the station. The smellyter for example has an obnoxious little hill directly to the East of it so the tracks can't really converge until they reach a point where they can start going down hill. It looks like there's going to be a massive spaghetti junction just to the west of the sawmill, and it's already giving me a migraine, I was up at the smellyter to build out the line down through the iron mine so that I would have all my lines coming into the spaghetti junction laid out before really digging into the engineering there. Anyway... I still want my old map back. =|

[georg.w]

Hey, sounds like a challenge ;)

[bmolesy]

It does present a challenge getting to the top areas of the map. It's a real struggle to get up there using only 2% grades, and minimal bridges. I've gotten one path up, but trying to find another one still. Do like the challenge, though it is time consuming.

[agrimes]

I'm at 3% and using copious numbers of steel bridges...

[Zothen]

Im confused, but isnt that a typical you-problem? I mean, nothing of what you describe has anything to do with the map, but the way you want it to utilize?

[RayRR]

The problem is the map is too small. There is no where to create reasonable elevation. The map needs to be 3 times the size to make it look normal. Yes Trestles are a key part of narrow gauge, and western railroading. We are not given the tools, resources, and most importantly space. Railroads do not build all this track and trestles just to haul up one or two cars. I will not have a dozen tracks crisscrossing in the air in the middle part of the map. That strikes me as a cartoon. And in addition to the height spacing problem, there is horizontal spacing problems, things are too close. If you can carry it there, you don't need a train. If you can truck it there you don't need a train, and if it's close enough you can pipe it.

This is a closed loop layout. There is no mechanism for the outside world, also not realistic. There is no interchange capability. I can design one in using waybills, car cards , and or switch lists, and perhaps even setup JMRI operations module to simulate that. But no railroad is a closed system. Even narrow gauge had a way to move stuff outward, like dual gauge track or trans load facilities.

But the basic problem at hand right now is the map is way too small. and cramped.

[Zothen]

Ive connected ever industry on Lake Valley and honestly have no clue where your problems are actually? What am i missing? Imo this map is way more accessable than Pine Valley (looking at you funny coal mine@5°..).

(but comming from Arma with 400km2 maps I can agree that the maps are too small in general, but not for elevation, hehe)

[agrimes]

Pine valley has a pre-cut but snakey way to get to coal mine. I drove my line over the highlands and a huuuge bridge to get there. Anyway, that map is lost now because of the update and I refuse to rebuild from scratch at this point, at least not until out of early access.

[Zothen]

Glad that you found a solution that works for you

[WackyGunner]

Interesting. I def had to realign my building principles moving to the new map. Giving up on parallel tracks for now, allowing a heck more Big Air-bridges, less stringent terrain-following, and instead Im just spanning the gaps between the few critical points I need to work around. I do think it a drawback I sometimes need to favor the gaming solution over a more reallistic approach, but I guess that comes with the somewhat simplefied nature of this build/drive simulator. (And I very much appreciate simplefied on the driving part :P)

Horizontally I think the new map is "better" than Pine Valley because it exactly doesn't have those pre-cut pathways forced upon us. But, vertically turned out much more of a challenge than I expected; Down from the Ironmine was fairly easy, on my 2nd attempt I managed to get a clean 2% incline from the sawmill. But up from the ironmine, that was terrible! I spent 4 or 5 attempts and now have 4% incline and a horrible 85meter curve. It works, (for the Climax) but Im never gonna like the way it looks. :P

Now the problem I noticed with this map is that all my lines seem to converge on the sawmill and I ran out space there real fast. Solving the resulting spaghetti is a pretty fun challenge, but turns out the sawmill and her subsequent yard are just fauling up that whole area.

I think the combination of ironworks and coalmine is brilliant, really makes sense for train-loadouts. I will def keep them near eachother, in a future playthrough, though maybe in a different location. The sawmill might go to the other side of the lake and the smelter a bit, higher. Now that we have fast loc's the map does feel small, but is also heavily underutillized by myself and the default industry placement.

Replacing the industries will solve some of our "problems", that and pray for "terrain-cut" and "tree-gun"...

[agrimes]

right now I have a big lazy roundabout at my sawmill junction. =P

[RayRR]

I believe I did not make myself clear, let me try again.

The map needs to be extended in all direction probably 3 fold (speculation). Everything in the map expands proportionately. Nothing is added except basically distance.

I do not believe people understand the Physics of the game and I will explain later, but first.

1. If it takes you a couple of minutes from industry to the next, things are way too close, railroads would not be build for such short distances. EXCEPT in the hills etc for logging, and they would also be pulling up their track as they move around, and it would be very light weight stuff and would be shays, climax and other such locomotives. So the industries here are just too close. We should not be constrained as if we are building on a 4x8 layout.

For the Coal mine to the Iron works they would have built a conveyor, and the same for the iron ore and the smelter. The opening to the mine would have been up a ledge, cheaper in the short term and long term.

2. Trestles are expensive and difficult and time consuming, and built if needed, BUT there would not be 3, 4 or 5 crisscrossing our central valley. And it's the trestles in narrow gauge that I love.

3. They would have made extensive use of hugging the hillside, and for that they need distance.

4. Grades above 1% kill railroads. Those that go over 1 % become legendary branches that gave us the Allegheny and the Big Boys, and the next tier engines. Clearly not narrow gauge. Yes Narrow gauge have higher grades, but there is a practical and physical limit. And they are not hauling up 20 plus loaded trains at speed at 4%.

Now comes the physics problem that I only noticed a few days ago, and I was surprised.

The normal medium setting for Physics is for all actual weight it is 1/4 in the game. So all the layouts you see pulling all that tonnage at 4% are not pulling all that tonnage, and is not even close to be reasonably realistic. I always thought those were performance related settings based on processor and graphics, so medium to me was always a good starting point and adjust from their if FPS went down.

I myself was always amazed I could pull up the tonnage I did on 2% grades and not having more issues. If I do the hard setting which is 1/2 I am probably in big trouble forget about Realistic at FULL. So I need even more space to lower my grade to maintain the tonnage I can pull now which I feel is reasonable, at higher than 1%, just not 2%.

Just about everything in this game is an after thought by the dev's. Looking back at all the old posts, what we are going through has been repeated multiple times while they try to figure out what they are doing, or even want. Documentation was the weakest link. Normally I am one to read the documentation, and this key fact of tonnage I missed, of course the wiki is new.

I want reasonably realistic, not rivet counting. I want easy to couple, uncouple, load, unload from all views, I don't want to spend half my time in game going through these motions. But the "train handling" is where we want the realism and where the fun is also.
Can you manage the tonnage downhill or uphill. Do you have to double the hill, do we need helpers, etc. Big loads start slow, don't go up 4% grades, decent running time between the industries. distance to overcome the grade problem, decent spots for trestles without needing to cover the entire map with lots of trestles.

My need for a bigger map with same content is even greater now. Going to realistic tonnage and realistic train handling, is even greater. I need distance to lower the grade to more realistic levels from 2% and also add run time between flat industries.

One way to deal with tonnage is double heading and helper service. As a single player that is not possible here. I can do it on my own railroad by consisting and also holding two throttles even. Can't do that here. I only have one throttle here and it is very limited.

At least with today's update I can run again productively.

[Dat Zorro]

I really would be interested in seeing a map of this where the track layouts are built as realistically as possible.

[RayRR]

I tried the Hard setting where loads are valued at 1/2 of actual weight. I had issues getting up the 2% grade. I did not try the final leg to the smelter yet, but I am not optimistic. Getting up to the wheat farm and lugging up more than 2 cars is going to be a real problem using full actual tonnage at 2%.

So we are abused with all sort of nickel and dime stuff of realism that does not really matter, yet the weight is so minimized by default as to totally not reflect realism in train handling. So to do realistic train handling I need to rethink all my track grades, car counts, and methodologies. I wish the default of normal was actual weight, to me that would make sense. less than normal is easy, and more than normal is hard. If default was actual weight would have had to design my layout very differently, but realistic train handling.

Given all the trouble with each update, and play ability not improving makes me not want to make an investment in rebuilding from a brand new save.

I spent more time last night messing with loading and unloading than actually switching or running trains, and the UI makes it even harder.

I felt like I was fighting the game all night. Given that other options have presented themselves lately has really made this problem obvious to me. It feels like this game is not in EA but pre-development. I want to run trains, do switching, have fun. I don't want to be abused or fighting the game, I get enough of that during the day.

[Vulgaris Magistralis]

I definitely agree that we could use bigger maps. 3x3 or 4x4 of what is currently available, but only scale the maps up to that size and populate fauna as appropriate. And another way to gain height is to try to run switchbacks, but this will typically limit the length of your trains to 4-6 cars while also allowing for the steeper grades to be laid.

[Jeffy]

I find as true as all of that is that pine valley is even worse. Perhaps some more maps that a just a bit flatter. This may help beginners like myself.