Making freights heavier?

[WPandP]

I am wondering whether there is a way of making freight trains heavier overall, such that you really need to assign freight engines to pull them, and such that heavy freight engines like the Big Boy and the DD40AX are actually worth the trouble.

The only thing I can come up with is to decrease the pulling power of all engines, via event. What I would prefer is a way to modify hoppers, say, to weigh more than they do currently; and maybe increase boxcars a little less, and so on. Then, the really heavy cargoes like coal and iron would require the slower but heftier engines, while general merchandise can still utilize GP-7's or Mikados, and express would do best with the sprinters.

I think they minimized the differences in cargo weights to simplify gameplay. I don't even know if there is any difference between boxcars and hoppers, actually.

Another idea I had, which probably is nowhere near being possible, is for freight cars to come in blocks of 2 or 3 cars, whereas express is just 1 car per slot as it now is. This would make the freights heavier and a 7-icon train on the interface would display as a 14 to 21 car train on the main view. Bulk cargoes like coal and iron would be the ones that come in 3-car sets, while lighter loads like flatcars come in 2-car sets; as far as the game engine is concerned, though, it is just a single loaded car.

Okay, so I am dreaming. But does anyone else out there favor ratcheting down the pulling power overall? Any other suggestions?

[bombardiere]

Well, using the same principle to modify engines, it is possible to change weight of the cars. Type C (1900-50) car weight 40 and Type D (1950-) 80, with cargo I believe. I understand that all cargos are same weight, so variation could be done by giving slightly different weights for different cargoes, as you wrote. It might be interesting that coal wagon would be heavier than cattle wagon. But I not sure that it would have enough impact on the game making this work worthwhile.

Your post made me thinking if it would be possible to make double cars. I could try the same method I used for double GP. I probably will not work, but I could try.

[Orange46]

One thing that I have wanted in RT3 is more traffic. Whereas RT2 had plenty and resulted in traffic jams, it's difficult to do that in RT3. But, because of the lower traffic, longer appearing trains would not muck up most scenarios and would have great visual appeal, especially if it applied to only freight or bulk cargo.

[Gwizz]

I just assumed that a loaded coal car was a heavy car in RT3. I never checked.

In RT2 the locomotives go slower with a heavy load and a loaded coal car is a heavier cargo. If this is not true in RT3 then I have a delayed disappointnment. I seldom watched the trains run. I'll have to do this the next time I run RT3. But then I never took well to RT3. I enjoyied the RT2 game play much more.

Now, I doubt that RT3 locomotives can be made to adjust their speed when different tonage is pulled. But if the math was pulled into RT3 with the locomotive from RT2 then maybe only the car weight would need to be adjusted in RT3. In RT2 I use a different locomotive for frieght trains for then I do express trains.

I was told that a lot more was planned for RT3 but then the cuts came to get the game out the door quicker. So there may be more hidden things that could be pulled up and used. I wish I had this talent; but then I can't even figure out what is wrong with my two computer network.

[WPandP]

The default uniform weight of all cargo (40 tons, bumping up to 80 tons) should vary among cargo types. If it is possible to assign different weights to the individual cargo types, then I would suggest a range of modifiers from 0.75 to 1.25:

0.75 = Livestock, Cotton, Wool
0.90 = Goods, Produce, Meat, Cheese, Alcohol
1.00 = Paper, Lumber, Oil, Diesel, Milk, Clothing
1.10 = Logs, Steel, Aluminum, Grain, Corn, Rice, Sugar
1.25 = Coal, Iron, Bauxite

Thus, after 1950 each coal load would weigh 100 tons, while grain would weigh 88 tons, lumber 80 tons, produce 72 tons, and livestock 60 tons.

Such a range of weights would make a difference in the types of engines that make sense to a given railroad... one engine would not always be best in all geographic scenarios.

The real question is whether or not anything like this is even possible. For now, I am just content to ratchet down pulling power overall, to make gradients more challenging.