I think I was being a little sexist when I started with "Hi Gentlemen"
This is really the continuation of a thread I started a few days ago : http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 0#p1526211
I've made a new one, with a more encompassing title, so that anyone searching for information will, hopefully, find it more easily.
From my tests, I've determined that the 'water level' value is not required; if its function was to set the level of water in the boiler, this is accomplished by the 3rd value (water_mass).
The (now) 5th and 6th values are used to set the quantity of water and coal available for Loose Consist and AI locos when they are used to replace a Player loco. Player locos use the MaxTenderCoalMass and MaxTenderWaterMass further up the .eng file. I have no way of knowing how the values are used by actual AI locos!
The (now) 7th value sets the colour of the smoke, but is used with other parameters within the .eng file, and it's not possible to give a range of values. Two locos I tested had wildly differing ranges, so it's a case of trial and error to determine the value for the required colour of smoke.
The (now) 8th value is a mystery and I've not been able to determine its function; whatever values I've tried have no effect.
The last value, Coal Quality, has an effect on the Steam Gen Rate (as displayed by F5 x 3). Although the documentation states this value should be in the range 0 to 1, higher values are accepted and lead to a ridiculously high steam generation rate! On some locos the Smoke Quantity also has an effect on the Steam Gen rate.
This is a summary of my findings to date :
I apologise, in advance for any errors - I hope there aren't any
Any further contributions to help sorting out this part of MSTS, are welcomed
Cheers,
Ged
