Enable spawning in career, or enable fees in sandbox

[Matt]

So I'm working on a little project to compare the costs of the different locos hauling various weights. I devised a fun little route from FF -> GF -> FF, you get to take the same route in both directions without throwing a switch, and get back to the spot you started. My goal was to use the fees of the career manager as the cost on my chart. I will use all the locos to haul 0, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500 and 2000 tons, up to every loco's max capacity.

My problem is in career mode I can't spawn the cars, making the whole process harder. A Boxcar with ISKAR Chems is exactly 50t so it's easy to make relatively short trains of the exact weight I want... And in sandbox, you don't have any fees on the career manager.

Can I allow spawning in career, or can I enable fees in sandbox?

[wellover-50]

If you have all the licenses you can re-configure all of the game setting, but i'm not sure if you can enable spawning in career mode as I have deleted my old saves so I can't test it for you

[maxine]

Originally posted by wellover-50:

If you have all the licenses you can re-configure all of the game setting, but i'm not sure if you can enable spawning in career mode as I have deleted my old saves so I can't test it for you

All licenses are no longer required to allow custom difficulties. You now only need Concurrent Jobs 1 and Train Length 1 to unlock custom difficulties in career.
In Sandbox custom difficulty was always unlocked from the beginning.

[Matt]

yeah I can edit the difficulty... But that doesn't let me turn on spawning in career, nor does that has an option to turn on the fees in sandbox. I COULD take the loco to the repair station after the trip... I haven't messed with sandbox much but I'll assume I can still service them in sandbox. But that will be significantly more work, I'm looking at over 40 trips to fill my chart (I'm including locomotive combos, I like running them back to back, so I am also wondering about running costs of sharing the load between two haha. Obviously only for the MU capable ones)

[ling.speed]

I think you can make a scenario in sandbox that will have your cargo and all the needed trains, then move it to career (you will need to edit session.info to change mode to career probably on top of moving and renaming folders) But after that it should function as career.

Thou if you try please test first with one loco spawned in sandbox and moved to career, im not sure if this method works still, would be a shame to set everyting up for naught.


I'd be quite interested in results. Or even trying the setup myself, especially in steamers which i'd expect (never tested) to blow everyting up to 1k tons). Speaking of steamers the load rating on 282 is kinda low due to traction, if one uses sand it should be same as DE6. Dont think it will make a difference with your cargo selection... maybe it could take even 1500t up that hill.

edit: yeah 1500t is up for 282 even thou the hill goes to 2.5% grade at the end.

ps: if that does not work, maybe changing route so it ends in a station that has direct entry to maintenance station to smooth out the operation in sandbox?
FF unfortuantely has its station facing south. There are more stations with turnaround track like GF so maybe something like CME-IME or MB-CME-MB

[Matt]

I have 3 trips done haha. I just move to the servicing area after, its not THAT long. I will post results here when I'm done but it might be a while haha.

As of now, I can tell you: 200t with one DE2 or 400t with two de2s costs the exact same thing (per ton. So 400t with 2 locos is exactly double the price of a single loco with 200t). I kinda expected expected as much, but I still wanted to test, that will probably mean I dont have to test all combinations for my 2-loco setups, I can take double the price of half the weight on a single one.

I can also tell you that two DE2s cost SLIGHTLY more than a single DH4 (3800 vs 3500 on that trip).

I will eventually post a table with all the numbers. It would be nice to collab on this, but I want the driving style to be consistent, depending on how aggressive people drive the costs may be different, so I figured if I drive all of it, with the same driving style for each trip, the data will be more meaningful as the point won't be the numbers themselves but rather the comparaison between them. If people want to help... I xan say I baby the locos in this test. Maybe if someone who likes driving like a madman (someone who drives like Hyce) could also do a similar test, as I know some locos are supposed to handle a crazy driver better than others

[DriftinCovet1987]

Originally posted by Matt:

I have 3 trips done haha. I just move to the servicing area after, its not THAT long. I will post results here when I'm done but it might be a while haha.

As of now, I can tell you: 200t with one DE2 or 400t with two de2s costs the exact same thing (per ton. So 400t with 2 locos is exactly double the price of a single loco with 200t). I kinda expected expected as much, but I still wanted to test, that will probably mean I dont have to test all combinations for my 2-loco setups, I can take double the price of half the weight on a single one.

I can also tell you that two DE2s cost SLIGHTLY more than a single DH4 (3800 vs 3500 on that trip).

I will eventually post a table with all the numbers. It would be nice to collab on this, but I want the driving style to be consistent, depending on how aggressive people drive the costs may be different, so I figured if I drive all of it, with the same driving style for each trip, the data will be more meaningful as the point won't be the numbers themselves but rather the comparaison between them. If people want to help... I xan say I baby the locos in this test. Maybe if someone who likes driving like a madman (someone who drives like Hyce) could also do a similar test, as I know some locos are supposed to handle a crazy driver better than others

I've already done something like this, in collaboration with Miragem: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3377654128&searchtext=running+cost

[Matt]

nice!

[ling.speed]

Nice, it will be cool to compare the two tables!

Are you going to be counting steamers from cold or heated up? I'd like to try them first. Also are you counting emissions?



ps: Actually counting steamer cost on such short route will be quite inaccurate, especially at low load. But if we were to try, since FF does not have coal service, knowleage that in 262 1 standard shovel is 144 coal should help, box is 600 coal. Water for 262 is ~1062.5 unit per bar (white or black).
Whats interesting in S060 one standard shovel is 27 coal only, and box takes 120.

ps3: Idea came that counting coal can be done by teleporting the loco after a run. CMS has chute very close but GF inst far and we land directly under water hose.
As for counting water we can use moment it starts dripping from the valve as a quite sensitive indicator, just need to be sure tank pressure is the same before and after run as water expands quite a bit with temp.

And some details if one wants to include startup: Heating up the 282 to 14bar takes 750 coal and -4640 water (sic). Lubrication takes 0.5 per cup and 1 for lubricator (4 total).

Im gonna continue with more steamer runs later but so far S282 took only 5163.36$ to haul 1500t with sparks and all too!

[Matt]

@ling.speed

Shoot. I didn't realise FF doesn't have coal service... I think I'll follow your advice and I will teleport it at the end of the run... Its either that or start over...

My grid will be different. They did more analysis of the data, I plan on making a simple grid with a bunch of prices as reference with a bunch of different weights. Basically, the goal is just to have something visual to refer to before choosing what locomotives I use for a job, and this might alter my "regular" setup if I realise I can make something with the same capacity but cheaper to run. You guys can make your own analysis of the data if you want :)

The run isn't super long, but because it's a back and forth, it isn't THAT short, I will have so many runs to do, I can't get across the whole map. I like to do a back and forth because that assures me I'm climbing and descending equally.

The grid will look something like this (hopefully formatting doesn't get messed up upon posting this, I will post a google doc link probably once it's over)

Loco       0t    100t     200t         300t      400t          ...
DE2         ?       ?       1921.40     OVER    OVER          ...
DE2x2     ?       ?            ?               ?        3841.27      ...
DH4        ?       ?       2778.45         ?        3532.52     ...
...
S060
S060(warm)
S282
S282(warm)
Matt1 (DE6 + DH4)
Matt2 (DE6 + DE6 + DH4)

I might skip some tests, like I said 400t with 2 de2 costs the exact same as 200t with a single DE2, so I will assume a bunch of numbers, and test a few here and there to make sure this stays consistent. The two "Matt" locos are my preffered setup, like I said I like running two locos back to back for reasons that are obvious if you played more than 15 minutes, and I like having a DH4 in the mix to retain full remote control. The "Matt" Ones WILL be fitted with a temp control, wheelslip controller and amp limiters (NOT on the center DE6 on Matt2. This is will be my career setup, and I am not going to install gadgets in the DE6 I don't own)

I WILL do the steam ones too as well, warmed up AND not. When you spawn one, do they spawn warmed up or no? I never spawned one yet. I am not sure how I'll handle these, if they spawn warmed up, I'll have to make sure I shut it off and let it cool, teleport it for a refill, teleport it back to FF, then start it up again myself. I'll probably shunt it with a diesel one. I'm also not the greatest steam locomotive driver, I've watched enough Hyce videos to know what I'm doing... but I have very little experience actually driving these, so I might not get optimal results as far as energy economy goes. Still shoud give an idea, and I will get better over time. Since I don't fill the grid in order, my own skill improvement should be spread out a bet everywhere in the grid, so by averaging with the neighboring cells, that should give a decent idea

ps: don't expect my grid to be done quickly, I work full time and have a dog to take care of haha

[ling.speed]

Steamers spawn cold and need to be lubricated. Shutting them down is kind of a big deal. Just the internal volume of water in the boiler is 2-3 times what the water tank can hold. So shutting down costs A LOT of money, and tbh isnt that realistic anyways as they were often left warm overnight. Right now leaving them for extended period of time only drains the lubricator, no pressure drop, so leaving them permanently on isnt great either but still i think it makes most sense to run dozens of missions on one startup.

Of note is the electric system that drains quite noticable amount steam and can be left off during day missions. And in general unlike somewhat fixed costs of diesels, there is many ways to optimize resource usage on steamers. I picked the highest load they can take first
to minimize variability as there is only one way to get 1.5kt up, and over few runs it still produced quite sizable differences from 5955$ to 4608$. It will vary more with less tonnage. Thou half of that difference is due to different usage of brakes, which are (as always) the biggest money drain.

In fact since costs go down quite quickly the better (and faster) we are at the route, so good luck keeping it consistent over so many runs

Speaking of gadgets the steamers might need inclinometer or really flat starting point when reading water.

[code] and [/code] tags are great for doing tables
its fixed width font and wont delete          spaces           .

[Matt]

yeah I usually put an inclinometer and a distance tracker on my own locos, maybe for this test I'll add the inclinometer to the steam ones too.

The steam ones I will keep for last though. I might change my route and redo the few test I've made but still the steamers will be kept for the end, cause I'm really inexperienced with them, I only tried a S060 once, I haven't even gone trough the S282's tutorial yet haha

[WALTER TIGERTEC]

If you need to spawn in career mode, just copy the career savegame files into the place where the sandbox saves are stored. And load it.

I use persistent jobs and loco ownership mods, and needed to add wagons. This way i loaded my career savegame in the sandbox slot. Spawned all the wagons i wanted and put the savegame file back to the career folder.

[Matt]

I've already started over, I'm doing HB -> CMS -> HB.

This route brings me back directly to the service station where there is coal, water, and the regular service.

For the steam engines, I will NOT do a cold start run and a warmed up run for each weight, I will warm the loco up, refill the water and coal, then quickly shunt the loco to the cargo right at the Y that separates the yard and the service with a DE2 or DH4 I'll just delete after, take off, and refill everything as I come back. I will note the price for the initial refill once for each loco too so we have the price for the warm-up, and then the price for running it.

All this can be done in sandbox easily