Bug with low speed start up

[darkSol]

1.0 has introduced some buggy behavior in the train physics that I've experienced repeatedly now in the about 2 hours that I've put in. It's a little hard to describe but essentially something is causing the train to "stick" when you try to get it moving, or creep ahead while loading.

I'm going to venture this has been introduced with the adjustment to the coupling up behavior, which to be honest never seemed to be an issue before, but has now made it near impossible to play the game.

In the first instance I was coupling up a train that was in 2 parts, I made the connection by backing up into the parked set of cars. After I removed the brake on the last car, I tried pulling ahead and it was as if I hit a brick wall, or as if all the brakes were on the rolling stock. I tried backing up and it was the same, the loco would start to move then just slam to a stop. I checked no brakes were left on, and they were not. It was only after I decoupled the link (I'm using the knuckles) that the whole train started to move. I was able to re-do the coupling and then it seemed to work just fine.

I then hauled these empties to my lumber mill and started to load up beams. After getting some of the cars loaded I began to notice some wierdness when I would pull forward to line up the next pair of cars. What it seemed to do was take up the coupler slack and then sort of snap to a hault as if some brakes were on (there were none on). Pulling ahead after this could potentially take up more slack and do the same, or, derail a car in the middle of my consist, which it proceeded to do 2 times before I saved and exited to come report this issue.

Now one other factor is that in the 2nd instance where I was doing the loading, I also had my train double headed, and was running the loco ui. One of the 2 engines was without steam though and would not have been adding any power. The 2 engines were Limas.

In the first instance it was just a single Shay, and I started out using the first person controls but after running into the issue, I switched to the UI controls and it was still messed up.

The consist was 4 of the coffin tankers and 20 odd stake flats. The heavier coffin tankers were at the front when I was loading, so this was not an issue where I was putting the heavy cars at the back or anything. This is behavior I've never seen prior to 1.0. However that said, I did not play at all with the build prior to 1.0, so maybe it's been present longer than just the 1.0 version, but I'm quite confident this is a bug introduced with the attempt to fix whatever issue you identified with the automatic coupling behavior.

Edit: After looking over the patch notes, I realized the bug fix that I was thinking of was for link and pin, not the knuckles, so unless it introduced issues that affect the knuckles, then this isn't the culprit. Maybe it is whatever was done to fix "easy derailment", but if so, it's doing the opposite. Not sure. I could test to see if it could be the coffin cars that are doing something dumb, I just purchased those and haven't used them before. The derailments were happening with the stake flats though.

[Qualified EIC]

I can confirm that there is an issue. It's very similar to something that I have experienced on the beta branch. It looks and feels like the cars are 'physics locking'. Unlike before, applying the throttle at a few percent does not keep things moving. I tried to move a 40 car cut of beams around one of my yards for a solid 20 minutes and could not get the train moving without exploding a car off the tracks or stopping the locomotive dead.

[Schlappspaten]

New map, Montezuma and 8 of the logging flats. Same behaviour. Looks at first sight like there were handbrakes applied. Once you get it moving it goes a lot easier. I stretched the train couplers and pushed through the slack but still the last of 8 cars can stop the whole movement. Breaking a train loose is a thing, but it is overdone here in my opinion.

[73McClure]

same here....

[DocRabbit]

Didn't really notice it in the Beta, but can definitely feel it in 1.0. Almost feels like the last car has 100% brake on. Being a solo player, I rarely run long trains of more than 10 cars, but it's even apparent on short consists. Hammering the gas will kick it out in most cases, but if creeping an unload makes it more difficult.

[zveroboy85]

Originally posted by Qualified EIC:

I can confirm that there is an issue. It's very similar to something that I have experienced on the beta branch. It looks and feels like the cars are 'physics locking'. Unlike before, applying the throttle at a few percent does not keep things moving. I tried to move a 40 car cut of beams around one of my yards for a solid 20 minutes and could not get the train moving without exploding a car off the tracks or stopping the locomotive dead.

You are right, there was the same issue on the Beta Branch when the wattercars came into service.

[Prism Gaming]

I can also confirm this issue on my saves too - even with the new big boi. The reveser can be set to 100 and I put the reg on 40 and the engine couldn't even pull slack on 6 log cars. The fix is to just decrease and increase reg again.

[Lock]

Originally posted by Schlappspaten:

New map, Montezuma and 8 of the logging flats. Same behaviour. Looks at first sight like there were handbrakes applied. Once you get it moving it goes a lot easier. I stretched the train couplers and pushed through the slack but still the last of 8 cars can stop the whole movement. Breaking a train loose is a thing, but it is overdone here in my opinion.

Exactly the same for me.

[Suorsa]

Same here (with some other issues also).
Sometimes the stuck train comes loose when brakes are applied and released fully again.
A weird help for this seems also to move the camera on the last car of the train when starting up. This feels like it wasn't just the brakes causing the sticking.

[darkSol]

I think I've identified what the issue is and a work-around until the devs can address it. What seems to be happening is that the physics puts cars that aren't moving "to sleep", so that it's not doing unnecessary physics calculations. Something is causing random cars in the train to not wake up when they should, so they are kind of frozen like the brake is on 100%. Depending on the curves and stuff when you try to get the train moving with this bug, it's leading to string-line type derails and inability to get the train moving.

What I've found seems to avoid the derailments is to reverse the train first till you get the whole train to roll. Then brake it and pull ahead, you won't get the derailments and it works properly. Would like to see the devs respond in here that they are looking into the issue.

Edit: I've discovered that the reverse technique isn't foolproof either, you can pinch cars off the track pretty easily as well. This bug should be high priority, I hope the devs are paying attention. The game's not in a playable state with this behavior.

[Qualified EIC]

Originally posted by darkSol:

I think I've identified what the issue is and a work-around until the devs can address it. What seems to be happening is that the physics puts cars that aren't moving "to sleep"

Agreed, this seems to have been one of the steps taken to 'optimize' the game and improve performance. They have been changing couplings a lot in the last few builds, I suspect there is a deeper issue with getting the cars to 'wake up'. The latest build is the worst I have experienced in a long time. I can't even start a typical (for me anyways) train of 45 cars without something locking up and popping off the tracks. I've also noticed that you can't tap a car on a diverging track and push it without getting stopped as if you hit a concrete wall.

Edit: Agree with your edit darkSol, unplayable for me too.

[darkSol]

Just an additional update, I thought this issue might be limited to the knuckle couplers, but that's not the case. Happens with link and pin as well. I'd be interested if it's happening with all the rolling stock or if it's possibly just a specific type. I'm having the issue mainly with the stake flats, but the consist has coffin tankers in it as well. The stake flats being the lightest and in the middle of the train is where I'm seeing the derails occurring.

I'll also note that I tried re-railing the entire consist in case there was some sort of carry over from this save being pre 1.0 and the cars were originally already coupled up, or at least all of the stake flats had been. Re-railing everything did not change the behavior.

[Suorsa]

Not sure if this is part of the same problem, but when I let my train to make a gravity-stop uphill, it won't roll back down until applying and releasing brakes (or of course give a little nudge). This "automatic grade-brake" seems to affect single cars also. Something is not right with the physics (again).

[captainchaos29]

I had the same issue. Had a 20 car coal train I was loading. When i would try to move the train it would be stuck like the loco had no power. If i jammed the reverse back and forth it would start moving, but at least 3 times the rear half of the train would derail. At first i thought it was because it was parked on a switch, but even after moving off the switch, the issue happened. It's like the physics that allow the cars to move are delayed or stuck for some of the cars. Oddly, the only time i experienced this so far was at the coal mine with the bottom dump car (cant remember name). I've been able to move other trains without issue. Ow, and i was using the Unitah Beasty. ( LOVE THAT LOCO)
EDIT: Wanted to note that as i drove around my layout I noticed other parked trains had derailed themselves randomly. just about every single parked train had it's cars all over the place. This is kinda normal with big updates, but thought i would note it.

[ironavenger86]

Happening to me as well.

[darkSol]

I checked on the discord last night to see if the devs are aware of this issue, since there has been no response yet here in the forums. Looks like they are, someone posted that they were working on fixing it. It wasn't direct from a dev, so not perfect confirmation, but I didn't spend the effort to look into it any further. I'm not going to play the game till this is addressed. I would say this should have never slipped through testing, but as this is the RRO dev team, and considering they decided "let's not do a beta branch!" then no shock there would be a fundamental physics bug with a new update. Not exactly the first time is it?