Finished: 2-6-4T Suburban Tank (revamped, and double header)

[Gumboots]

The Schools having a Good fuel rating is me wanting to make it match real life to some extent. They were known for free steaming even on crappy coal. Don't read too much into the other performance stats at the moment though, because that early test version of the Schools is too grunty to be realistic. It needs the pulling power and free weight reduced a bit.

One thing affecting the fuel consumption on the Challenger, and especially on the Big boy, is their massive weight. I'm convinced this also affects their reliability, since neither last as well in use as their nominal rating would lead me to expect. They're effectively hauling a lot more load than the actual consist, so fuel consumption goes through the roof and they wear out faster. Frankly I never use them unless I have no choice.

If it was up to me I would knock the levels of the single Tank down to a little above what it had in 1.06. Tank locos seem a passenger, light freight loco to me. With a double I would see it being a medium duty loco. I think it is meant to be a European design?

Yep, Europe/UK is mainly where they were used, and this one isn't a UK type. There were some tanks that were medium to heavy freight (GWR in particular) but generally they were short haul mixed traffic or express AFAIK. Some were used in Australia for suburban runs where a tender was a nuisance (C30 class being the most obvious example).

The thing is that the niche for which tank engines were used doesn't really exist in RT3. In the game there are no advantages to not having a tender. This means the only reason for having a tank engine of any sort in the game is if somebody just wants to see a tank engine or two running around their tracks, maybe because they're playing a suburban scenario and they think tanks fit that or whatever.

[Gumboots]

Oh while I think of it, here's another thing to consider. Loads in the UK and Europe, and in many parts of the world for that matter, were generally lower than in the US and were generally hauled by smaller locomotives.

Since RT3 currently only has one set of cargo cars, what this means is that for any non-US locos to be useful they have to have their stats boosted to an unrealistic level. It simply doesn't make sense to compare US and non-US locos within RT3 directly on the basis of their actual tractive effort in real life, because if they were comparatively realistic in this sense you'd either have US locos that could pull full consists straight up mountains and/or non-US locos that were too weak to be much use.

What the game really needs, if you want the pulling power of locos to be somewhat in line with real life, are cargo consists that are matched to locos on a per country or per region basis.

[RulerofRails]

First, I noticed some of the Fuel economy ratings are wrong in Lirio's spreadsheet. So use a bit of caution when quoting it (I might do a little anyway).

The effect of free weight is interesting. A question in my mind is why the Kreigslok (a slow engine with poor acceleration) does so well even though it has a fairly high free weight (250, which is at least 100 more than the other locos in its fuel class) and low average speed. Could be just a circumstantial thing, with the terrain I am using. My suspicion is that the low top speed is preventing it from burning extra fuel. (An introduction in 1942 not long before the weight change must also be considered.)

My idea about what is happening with the heavy engines and lower fuel ratings is that the formulas the game uses aren't designed right. Massive numbers of any kind throw havoc at it, putting everything out of whack especially on the Expert level. My best argument for this is to notice the close grouping of those engines with Above Average fuel consumption . Once the level is knocked down to Average there is a much wider spread in terms of efficiency. Even with engines of quite differing stats. Down at Below Average there is an even wider gap in everything. High speeds mess some with the formula, but huge engine free weights basically break it. I figure the same thing with reliability. The take away from this is that the stats showing up in the game would have to appear "unrealistic" before any of these engines could be real alternatives for a game when there are other choices. Big Boy with Above Average fuel consumption and Very Good reliability.

Another thing against the mountain locos is the gentler terrain preferred by most players. At 4% these bad boys aren't even "up to steam." The reward for lower grade track is quite good, because even if using the true hill-climbers, stopping on a steep hill is a bad idea. Unless you double track which is too expensive on bad grades.

I know you seldom play a game with the Zephyr, but it's "designed for express." It has a Good fuel rating and Fast acceleration. One can use it quite hard, overloading it badly all the while paying much less fuel costs than an engine with lower fuel rating. If you are creative with routes (lower grades of max 4%) and double track on the busy grades, it's possible to use it for most runs even on a hilly map like Canyonlands. The cost of overload is considerably more for an Above Average rating than a Good rating. (After the 1950 weight increase, the Zephyr becomes weaker and slips back among the pack in terms of usefulness.) Look at what happens when the Northern and A1 are crippled as Lirio did. Ratings hurt quite a bit since the engines are now working slightly harder. There is no way you want an Average rating engine working really hard. A Below Average one is a nightmare. Look at the Pacific.

Do what you want with the Tank engine. I just wanted to show that the current stats mean that it's very competitive as a single especially with the cheap price. And the double compares badly against it economically on Expert. To "justify" a double I would think that the single should feel somewhat under-powered in the first place. My .

[Gumboots]

First, I noticed some of the Fuel economy ratings are wrong in Lirio's spreadsheet. So use a bit of caution when quoting it (I might do a little anyway).

The effect of free weight is interesting. A question in my mind is why the Kreigslok (a slow engine with poor acceleration) does so well even though it has a fairly high free weight (250, which is at least 100 more than the other locos in its fuel class) and low average speed. Could be just a circumstantial thing, with the terrain I am using. My suspicion is that the low top speed is preventing it from burning extra fuel. (An introduction in 1942 not long before the weight change must also be considered.)

Yes I noticed Lirio's spreadsheet wasn't accurate. It shows even more when you start checking numbers in the hex against the spreadsheet. Its not just the named ratings that are off in places.

The "free weight" rating doesn't affect fuel consumption AFAIK. Free weight just influences how much load can be hauled before speed starts dropping. What I was talking about was the weight of the loco/tender combination, which is not directly related to the free weight rating. Actual weight (different setting in the hex) contributes to effective load, and that's what drives fuel consumption up and reliability down.

I think you're right about the Krieglok's speed and acceleration having an influence though. I find Kriegsloks to be the best choice for the Italy map. Nothing else gives so much bang for your buck.

The take away from this is that the stats showing up in the game would have to appear "unrealistic" before any of these engines could be real alternatives for a game when there are other choices. Big Boy with Above Average fuel consumption and Very Good reliability.

Yup, although IRL Big Boys did have very good reliability. So did a lot of other locos.

Do what you want with the Tank engine. I just wanted to show that the current stats mean that it's very competitive as a single especially with the cheap price. And the double compares badly against it economically on Expert. To "justify" a double I would think that the single should feel somewhat under-powered in the first place. My .

Yeah I was already thinking the double needed stats changed, but I still think it's better to keep it biased towards only heavy grades. IRL there was generally no need to double head on the flat anyway.

Maybe the stats for the single should be put back to default 1.06. I just checked Lirio's changes and, according to the spreadsheet at least, all she did with the 264T was give it a 60% increase in pulling power (from 5.0 to 8.0). That's a fair whack of an increase. Then she has gone and knocked the A1 Pacific back from 9 to 5.5, which makes no sense at all to me. There's no way an A1 should have 31% less pulling power than an average suburban tank loco.

[Gumboots]

Hey RoR, I was thinking about this double loco stats business some more. Since I've gone and coded the things, I might as well make them useful. Thoughts so far...

The main problem with them seems to be the much higher fuel cost. Taking the stats from your brief testing, I'm thinking that to maintain some sense of reality doubles are always going to provide speed averages that are not directly proportional to the increased fuel cost.

For example, if a loco with a top speed of 60 mph turns in 30 mph trip averages, you can't really expect a double to turn in 60 mph averages. It wouldn't happen like that. It may do 40 or 45 mph averages, depending on terrain and on the presence or absence of inline sheds and towers, but it wouldn't do 60. So the doubles are always going to be for situations where the increase in speed/turnover is worth the fuel cost penalty (express up grades, etc). In this respect they're much like bigger single locomotives.

It's going to look pretty weird if the visible stats are way out of line with the same stats for the single version. So what I'm pondering is if it'd make sense to fudge the weight stats for the doubles. This won't show up in the game, so won't look weird, but would give a way of hauling the fuel cost back to something useful. Would also help reliability and acceleration to some degree, and can be set to any value since it's not restricted to a limited range of integers.

[RulerofRails]

True to real life, extra speed for a train comes at a fairly large cost both for infrastructure and fuel. This is as it should be. In-line service is really bad for average speed, but at the end of the day, it's the most flexible arrangement. Would be interesting to compare the fuel costs for identical in-line versus service spurs.

I was thinking along the same lines (fudging the weights) for the possible re-balance, but didn't go so far as to mention it. Fudging the weights a lot would be the best way to still make things appear fairly reasonable in-game. The 8-car limit means that arguably the weights could be in a narrow range, as the heavy, strong engines (like Big Boy) would need possibly 32 cars before they would really start to be useful. Still, the reliability factor is a killer for any attempts at long trains that make use of those heavy engines.

One thing to remember is that the relative spreads on fuel and possibly other things like reliability are less on the easier difficulty levels. That been said, I would definitely support changes to be used with the Expert level as those who play on easier levels can always use the standard stats.

Some silly tests like seeing if the train uses more or less fuel when going up compared to down a hill should be done. My guess would be that the train uses a certain amount of fuel when it is trying to go faster (not at max speed) and then it uses less. I might try to do such a test, but it might be a week or two before I get around to it.

I had a thought that organized testing in such a fashion that others can see all the results in a table etc. with the option of studying the setup what was done in that test might be the way to go. Designing a few solid tests (such as what I tried to do) should probably be one of the first things before a major balance shake up. Once these "tests" are established. Any setting can be tried by anyone who cares to help out to come up with some more strategy about what settings will end up looking best. My .

[Gumboots]

Well you know what I'm like. I tend to do most maintenance on spurs, providing the trip is short enough to get there in one go. It does make a significant difference to average speeds compared to using inline facilities, and most of the time I can put up with the lesser flexibility.

OTOH, if you're comparing all trains with inline sheds, or all trains on spurs, my guess is that it won't make much difference to the relative performance of a particular loco. So if one loco was 10% faster than another when both are using inline sheds, it'll probably be much the same when both are using spurs (unless there are wild differences in acceleration rating). Could be interesting to test it though.

ETA: Just thought of something. With inline sheds, the faster train will be spending more time going at the same speed as the slower train, namely when both are stopped at the shed and speed is zero. So on second thought, I think the likely result is that using inline sheds will penalise the faster train more. It's still probably not going to make a huge difference to the relative performance of both locos. Maybe 1 or 2 mph off the average, at a guess.

I'm also guessing it'll make hardly any difference to fuel cost. I'm not sure how the game's algorithms for this stuff are coded, but offhand it seems to me that accelerating after a stop should use more fuel than constant cruising, but OTOH the game increases fuel usage with speed and you'll spend more time travelling slower. May pretty much balance out.

And I agree we'd need to nut out a solid range of logical tests before doing any major screwing around with stats. That includes cargo weights as well as loco stats. WP&P sent me his old spreadsheet that he was using to work out his proposed cargo cars. This was an extension of the ones he already has in the archives here, including doubles and triples. He's put a lot of thought into it and has some good ideas. For instance, he mostly gets rid of the default doubling of cargo weights every 50 years. What he does instead is introduce three more time periods (X, Y and Z) to go with the default A, B, C and D, and then stagger the weight increases so that different cargoes have their weight increased by different percentages at different times. This means you have to put more thought into when and where you upgrade locos, since it's dependent on the exact year and the exact cargo you want to haul. It's good stuff.

[Gumboots]

Redundant post deleted. See the next post.

[Gumboots]

Ok, they're done. I've sorted the .lco files so that fuel cost for the double header is reasonable in comparison to its performance.

I've included two versions each of the .lco files, for each locomotive. One version is balanced for the original 1.06 loco stats. The other version is balanced for Lirio's "1.06 Update Beta" pack.

This means you can pick whichever version of the loco stats you prefer. If you like original 1.06, use the files from the 106_loco_stats folder inside the zip. If you like Lirio's version, use the files from Lirio_Update_loco_stats inside the zip.

The same PK4 is used in PopTopExtraContent for either version of the stats.

Obviously you can also use these locomotives in 1.05 if you like. Fine by me. Go for it.

@Hawk: I've attached two separate zips: once for each locomotive. IMO they're done deals and ready for archiving. I'd suggest both go under "New Engines". The double is obviously a new engine. The single isn't really a "new engine" in some ways, but since the model has been completely rebuilt it's not really a reskin either. Skins for this version won't fit on the original 1.06 loco at all.

Not sure if you want the Blender file for this unit in the archives. It might be a handy modelling resource if anyone wants to get into it.

---

Edit by Hawk: Files removed from this post. They are now in the archives - http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3_extras/rrt ... p#gumboots

[Hawk]

Not sure if you want the Blender file for this unit in the archives. It might be a handy modelling resource if anyone wants to get into it.

I might just add it to both the zips.

[Gumboots]

Well it's bigger than the zips, and chances are most people will just want to play with trains instead of building them, but it's your call.

[Hawk]

The Blender zip I downloaded is just a tad bigger (330 KB) than the single zip (284 KB) and a tad smaller than the double zip (345 KB).
Adding it made the single zip 611 KB and the double zip 672 KB, but you're right. Most folks probably won't even want nor need it. I guess I'll offer it as a separate download.

[Hawk]

All 3 Suburban Tank files are now in the archives.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3_extras/rrt ... p#gumboots

[Gumboots]

You have a 404 on the link to the readme for the double header.

Current url is this:

Code: Select all

http://hawkdawg.com/txt/rt3/xtras/Gumboots/2-6-4T_Suburban_Tank_double_header.txt

This one works: http://hawkdawg.com/txt/rt3/xtras/Gumbo ... README.txt

[Hawk]

Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Lone Cat]

Which folder of the game should I place this blender file in?

[Gumboots]

None. The Blender file is not for use in RT3. It is for use in Blender. I made it available in case anyone wanted to use the existing Blender model as a basis for something else.