Units acceleration is too slow

[One]

High speed trains (with max speed above 200 km/h) are almost useless in the game as they cost much but not actually run that fast as it takes almost the whole very big map for the train to finally achieve 300 km/h due to really poor acceleration.

Planes have the same problem. You will hardly need Concorde ever as it will never achive the max speed or achive it for the very short time while it need to go down already.

For a note: I play at lagest maps, build straight lines that have 300 km/h limit everywhere and use default train presets like TGV and others.

[Traibergen]

Yes I also hate that. ;)

[maculator]

I made a post about that too. It anoys me.
If we at least could buy the TGV and co. in seperate segments.
Since they need a really long track to go above the limits of "normal" trains I usually just use a high capacity wagons and 2 or 3 of the enignes wich can go 200km/h. The'yre cheaper to maintain and outpace the TGV in terms of acceleration and capacity.

[Miro277]

I'm using a set of two short TGV's together as they have a reasonable capacity and they are twice as powerful as the long TGV. Not ideal as they are expensive, but they look cool and are pretty fast on longer routes.

[Nicky]

Don't think about tha max speed as something achievable for a long perios of time. A train with 100kmph max spped will probabily average on 90. A train with 150 will average on 130. That is if you want the trains to have a decent load .....

[Diedel]

Originally posted by Nicky:

Don't think about tha max speed as something achievable for a long perios of time. A train with 100kmph max spped will probabily average on 90. A train with 150 will average on 130. That is if you want the trains to have a decent load .....

But that make dual loco trains with lower top speed far better on the routes, as they are cheapper and faster on average in the end, making most super high speed vehicles far harder to effectively use tha it maybe should be.

[uzurpatorex]

It is a balance issue known since Train Fever. Dev's did nothing in this regard, thus expect nothing to be done.

Same goes for insignificant impact of hills and weightless cargo.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by Diedel:

Originally posted by Nicky:

Don't think about tha max speed as something achievable for a long perios of time. A train with 100kmph max spped will probabily average on 90. A train with 150 will average on 130. That is if you want the trains to have a decent load .....

But that make dual loco trains with lower top speed far better on the routes, as they are cheapper and faster on average in the end, making most super high speed vehicles far harder to effectively use tha it maybe should be.

Not necessarily. Your revenue per-unit-per-km is based on a train's theoretical maximum speed. So even if it only ever gets up to 200 km/h, the TGV will make more per passenger per km than a slower train that travels at top speed for more of its route.

TGVs are for long (looong), flat, straight routes. They aren't for town-to-town service. Treat them more like airplanes.

[One]

Originally posted by uzurpatorex:

It is a balance issue known since Train Fever. Dev's did nothing in this regard, thus expect nothing to be done.

Same goes for insignificant impact of hills and weightless cargo.

I actually don't understand why it cannot be balanced. Make runing cost for fast trains higher so that it won't be profitable to use them if there are not enough load but let them to be really fast.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by One:

Originally posted by uzurpatorex:

It is a balance issue known since Train Fever. Dev's did nothing in this regard, thus expect nothing to be done.

Same goes for insignificant impact of hills and weightless cargo.

I actually don't understand why it cannot be balanced. Make runing cost for fast trains higher so that there won't be profitable to use them if there are no enough load but let them to be really fast.

The purchase costs and running costs for all vehicles are calculated based on the statistics (Power, Top Speed, Capacity) of that vehicle. So vehicles with more kW / horsepower / whatever are more expensive both to purchase and maintain—and, of course, you're going to want to make sure they're as fully-loaded as possible to account for that additional expense.

[uzurpatorex]

Running costs are taken out of thin air with no regard to anything other then wishful thinking. This is why best locomotives in this game are Alco Diesel, Atlantic and GP9.

This game struggles with the concept of "scale". Devs made an effort to simulate physics as much as possible, but forgot that it works only if you have a world of the same scale as the simulation.

Cities in TpF are ~2-4km apart. In reality they are 100-150km apart ( for a reasonable TGV service ). So in order to balance this, acceleration for _all_ vehicles should be uniformly raised by a factor of 20-30.

At the same time, realistic hills on trail routes are 5-50 km long, in TpF they are 200-300 metres long. So in order to balance that we would need stronger deacceleration on hills. I think 5-10 times stronger then it is now.

Moreover - realistic freight trains are 200-4000 tonnes, depending on time period. In TpF we get 200 tonnes tops.

More-more over - locomotive/train weight ratio of freight is 1:10 to 1:30, in tpf we get 1:1.

Overall - it is a mess.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by uzurpatorex:

Running costs are taken out of thin air with no regard to anything other then wishful thinking. This is why best locomotives in this game are Alco Diesel, Atlantic and GP9.

Running costs are literally exactly 1/6 of the purchase price, which is derived from a formula based on the vehicle's statistics. That's hardly thin air.

That said, for locomotives (not multiple-unit vehicles), by far the dominant variable is Power. Higher Power = more or less proportionately higher cost. This is why the Mikado is so much more expensive than the Atlantic, despite being slower—it has a ton of power, which lets it pull much heavier loads and accelerate to top speed more quickly (it also has much more tractive effort, which helps it with slopes, but tractive effort isn't part of the cost formula).

I like the Atlantic, but my goodness that poor locomotive. Given its so-so power and poor tractive effort, slapping the monstrously heavy American passenger cars on it just seems sadistic.

Originally posted by uzurpatorex:

Cities in TpF are ~2-4km apart. In reality they are 100-150km apart ( for a reasonable TGV service ). So in order to balance this, acceleration for _all_ vehicles should be uniformly raised by a factor of 20-30.

Surely you don't really think that the acceleration for vehicles isn't already vastly scaled up, do you? Usually we have people complaining that the acceleration happens unrealistically quickly (because it does, but given the issue of scale, that's the point), rather than the opposite.

[uzurpatorex]

Originally posted by Landwalker04:

Running costs are literally exactly 1/6 of the purchase price, which is derived from a formula based on the vehicle's statistics. That's hardly thin air.

...and that formula was given to humankind on stone tablets on mount Zion? Or was it taken out of thin air?

That said, for locomotives (not multiple-unit vehicles), by far the dominant variable is Power. Higher Power = more or less proportionately higher cost. This is why the Mikado is so much more expensive than the Atlantic, despite being slower—it has a ton of power, which lets it pull much heavier loads (it also has much more tractive effort, which helps it with slopes, but tractive effort isn't part of the cost formula).

Except all of those stats are irrelevant because trains are light, acceleration is slow and track bends usually dominate anything else.

Anyhow - running costs are more related to maximum speed then to power.

Surely you don't really think that the acceleration for vehicles isn't already vastly scaled up, do you? Usually we have people complaining that the acceleration happens unrealistically quickly (because it does, but given the issue of scale, that's the point), rather than the opposite.

Irrelevant. It is still too slow. A real lfie TGV can reach its maximum speed in about 4-5 minutes. Usual service IRL is about 1-2 hours between stops. So ~10% of its trip time is spent accelerating/braking. The only scenario I got it to run TGV at 300 in TPF was europe 6. In that game a dead -straight 300km/h track was required and the trains could reach 300 in about 40% of its length for about 10-15% of its length. So 80-90% of time was spent accelerating/braking.

This alone makes anything that is faster then ~120km/h nigh useless in this game.

If I can get 5 atlantics with 160m of freight cars to have better frequency and similar trip time for less then a 2 big-boys with 320m of freight then the game has issues.

Same goes for passangers. 8 alcos with 160m of 80km/h cloister-something cars is more efficient then two Hiawathas with matching stock. Not even talking that alcos are MUCH cheaper.

[Paikia]

Originally posted by uzurpatorex:

This game struggles with the concept of "scale". Devs made an effort to simulate physics as much as possible, but forgot that it works only if you have a world of the same scale as the simulation.

Cities in TpF are ~2-4km apart. In reality they are 100-150km apart ( for a reasonable TGV service ). So in order to balance this, acceleration for _all_ vehicles should be uniformly raised by a factor of 20-30.

LOL

Exactly the point I was trying to make in a my post from a short while back, except I immediately got jumped by the fanboys and was declared "a complete moron" for daring to point out a problem in the game (god forbid!). I even mentioned specifically the TGV as an example (since it's the most obvious one).

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by uzurpatorex:

Anyhow - running costs are more related to maximum speed then to power.

Since the rest of your issues are matters of opinion that I don't have any problem agreeing to disagree with, I'll address this demonstrably false factual claim instead. Let's go to the actual numbers:

Effect of Power

• 4-4-2 Hiawatha
  
  • Purchase Cost: $7,664,936
    
  • Running Cost: $1,277,489 / year
    
  • Power: 2,940 kW
    
  • Top Speed: 160 km/h
• Class PRR GG1
  
  • Purchase Cost: $8,994,568
    
  • Running Cost: $1,499,095 / year
    
  • Power: 3,450 kW
    
  • Top Speed: 160 km/h

Identical Top Speeds. The Class PRR GG1 has roughly 17.35% more power than the Hiawatha. Not coincidentally, it also has purchase and running costs that are 17.35% higher than those of the Hiawatha. The devs have even confirmed this relationship between power and cost—they are perfectly aligned, such that increasing one increases the other by exactly the same proportion, all else being equal.

Effect of Top Speed

• PLM 220
  
  • Purchase Cost: $1,087,883
    
  • Running Cost: $181,314 / year
    
  • Power: 450 kW
    
  • Top Speed: 60 km/h
• ALCO HH 600
  
  • Purchase Cost: $1,094,939
    
  • Running Cost: $182,490 / year
    
  • Power: 450 kW
    
  • Top Speed: 80 km/h

Identical Power. The ALCO HH 600 has 33% higher top speed than the PLM 220, and yet it only costs $7,056 more to purchase (and $1,176 more in annual running costs), a difference of about 0.65%.

It's worth remarking that the relationship between Top Speed and Cost is not perfectly aligned, the way that it is for Power. If you modify the game files to do some experiments on the effects of changing Top Speed, the results are actually very strange, where engines with very low or very high top speeds end up being more expensive than those with "normal" top speeds. It's quite odd, and I wish the devs would just publish their formula so that I could make sense of it.

Effect of Other Statistics

For normal locomotives, no other statistics (weight, tractive effort, length, lifespan) have any effect on either purchase cost or running cost. You can test this yourself (which is what I have done) by going into the game files and creating copies of a given locomotive, and having each copy deviate from the "baseline" in only one statistic.

For train carriages, the only relevant statistics are Top Speed and Capacity. I haven't done any file-modification experiments to test these, so I don't know what the particular relationship is. However, if you compare the Three-Axle Car (Capacity 14, Top Speed 100 km/h) with the USA Passenger Car (Capacity 14, Top Speed 50 km/h), it's clear that Top Speed for wagons has a much more pronounced effect on costs. Comparing the Bavarian Car (Capacity 8, Top Speed 50 km/h) with the USA Passenger Car shows that Capacity also still has a strong effect—in fact, one that is quite linear, just like the locomotive power effect.

For multiple-unit vehicles (like the Pioneer Zephyr), it's more complex. I'd have to do some file-modifying for a test to really get a good sense of what's going into it, but it's safe to assume it's a combination of Power, Top Speed, and Capacity. Since there aren't very many multiple-unit vehicles in the game to begin with, there's no way to do eyeball comparisons like there is for locomotives and carriages.

[uzurpatorex]

I'll address this demonstrably false factual claim instead.

You are almost correct and I am willing to concede the point.

Locomotives are just a category of vehicles, and you need to buy train cars as well - usually more of them then locomotives. As you noted yourself for train cars speed is a dominant factor. Which means that overall speed is more important, because you get more choice of locomotives then train cars. Especially for freight, where, for most of the game, you get _1_ choice and and a linear cost increase as capacity goes up.

Besides - I said _more_ related, not _only_ related.

That being said - both approaches are problematic, because in the sad reality we have, vehicle costs are loosely related to their ... weight. This is because if technology is equal, then locomotives of the same class will cost approximately the same when normalized for inflation. I made research on this when I was modding for Transport Tycoon.

For example - afair C&O h8 Allegheny cost approx 250k$ in 1940, in comparison modern 6 axle diesel will put you back about 3 to 4 M$. 250k$ in 1940 is about 3 million in 2015. Specific sums will vary, but it is in the same ballpark.

It is for the same reason why modern PC costs more or less the same then 286 in 1988.

What the game fails to take into account ( and all transport game so far, btw ) that the average rate paid for shipping 1 ton of stuff has remained _the same_ regardless of inflation, thus when inflation is corrected for, then getting stuff shipped is _cheaper_ now then in 1940.

This is the reason why having a railroad in 1850 was having a cash cow, and while now transport is more or less break even.

But I am rambling, am I not?

BTW - multiple units are composed of locomotives and cars, defined somewhere in the res folder ( I forgot where, the last mod I made for TF was 2 years ago ), so their running cost is most likely a sum of costs of all composited elements elements.

Those silver Alcos are available as a single and double and double has twice the cost of a single.