RulerofRails wrote:That's fine with me if Express locos are only good for 2%. There are many things that I gotta try to remember, such as: that good track laying and nice maps means 4% is an average sustained maximum on the latest maps anyway. A blanket pulling power increase could be a way for a scenario creator to adjust if they have a particularly hilly map. This will slightly affect the proposed class separations, but within reason we could plan to make sure things don't go messy that way.
I find that even on the PopTop maps you can usually get away with 4% grades or less, with some odd exceptions. The 2% thing was me looking at the way the default Stirling would go with the proposed express consist. It's good up to 2% but then starts dropping off fairly rapidly. I was wondering about boosting it, which wouldn't be hard to do, but then thought that the way it was would probably be sufficient to it useful without making it too strong. But we can tweak things as we go anyway, if tweaks turn out to make sense.
Interesting, so in this case you were unconcerned about the 20% extra revenue from the Ultra Cool rating? I would agree with this approach and say that rail is all about volume (see what I said later on Express volume). If I can haul 8 cars at speed instead of 4 at 20% extra I will take it. With some of these sensitive locos careful track laying and route setup is important. With skill you can vastly improve their usability.
Yup, volume and speed. This was usually hauling mixed consists too, just because of the current general weakness of pure express in terms of ROI. A Stirling just can't haul mixed, or not nearly enough of it, unless things are absolutely flat. I will sometimes use them on perfect 0% terrain, but find them useless anywhere else. They're just too weak unless you only run 2 or 3 cars.
I do wish that, in general, scenario creators would mix up the purchase prices instead of mainly leaving these at default. Purchase price is a big part of why the early engines can give far higher ROI than the latter ones.
I didn't think you could change loco prices individually. I thought you could only change category prices (steam, diesel, electric). Anyway, if the loco stats are set correctly to start with it shouldn't be necessary for scenario authors to change them.
I do agree that the game's passenger model is quite complex to understand. Half the problem is volume. Currently, on average, there isn't enough volume to keep an express train that services a couple of towns full. Some of the limitation may be in the routing mechanism. It seems a little sensitive to frequency of service (stops at stations). Luckily, Freighters will help keep the frequency higher even though they wont actually haul any passengers.
There is the possibility of recommending standardized events which will increase production and decrease price, especially near game start. Ideally, those events should be adjusted based on map size, city sizes, and city count. Said event could be setup simply so that express production will decrease based on the amount of express that you have already hauled. For example, 1% decrease for 5 cars of Express hauled, then another 1% for 15 cars of Express hauled etc.
That's not a bad idea. I had thought of standardised event packs, so to speak, but hadn't thought of boosting early pax and then decreasing it later to stop it being overwhelming. Could work well. I also agree with the comment about no ROI reason to use pure express. I'm wondering if we could change that, so that at least it becomes somewhat competitive with freight in terms of ROI. It just seems silly to have freight and express as consist options, and locos to go with them, if one of those options never makes enough to be worth using, with the result that nobody ever uses it. I wouldn't want it taking over the game, but it would be good to make it an extra interesting facet of the game.
I just thought about the double and triple cars, and I was thinking that it's possible to make passenger cars into cuts of several cars...
It's possible in the early eras, but they rapidly get too long to make useful doubles. Had a look at that already. The 100 unit limit on wheelbase to keep things looking decent works out to about 83 feet, and most pax cars in later years are just about there anyway. Even the English were running 60 foot cars back in the 1930's. So yeah, we could do double pax cars, but really only before 1900. I also concluded it wasn't a good idea.
PS. I got a bit of time to try some Express testing. What sort of parameters do you have in mind?
Umm, I should whip up some files for the new consist weights, just so we can test those properly. I'd only thought as far as that they should have reasonable fuel costs while hauling the new consists, and be able to haul a full consist at a decent speed on non-perfect terrain, and be able to make enough money to be worth using even if they aren't highly lucrative. IOW, they should behave like real express locos, as much as possible.
Speaking of fuel costs, I notice that for a D era freight Kriegslok your sheet says a fuel bill in the mid-60's. I've mainly used them on the Italy map (they don't seem to turn up much on other maps) but the fuel bills weren't that high. More like half that. This may be because random cargo availability meant they weren't running at full load all the time. Another possible factor is me tending to go heavy with servicing on spurs, so they may spend less time moving loaded. Could be a bit of both.
), but also it has MORE effect on speed reduction than consist weight. Go figure. 
I have to remember to think of multiplying by a decimal<1 as dividing by the inverse. Otherwise I forget. 
