Atomic Systems

Hey all.

Forgive me if this is common knowledge as i am very new to these parts and the whole Railworks thing. I have just about finished my first scenario and hope to release it soon. It has been written from the ground up 3 times already as i got stuck, broke the ai could not figure why T was blocking B while E was not even on the line so to speak. Frustrating times but feel i have learnt so much already. Probably my fault for picking a shunting story crossing main lines at Carlisle with its 3 main lines in with 1 out on 2 tracks. Talk about a bottleneck !

If i had known from the off (i'm sure its not written in the manual or maybe not true at all), that an ai Signalman/Dispatcher only exists in the editor, i had of saved myself many hours of fails. I set up the ai which ran fine, but came a point where my slow 08 needs the main line from Carlilse to Kingmoor. What baffled me was that trains stopped everywhere before i needed the line causing ai meltdown. I tried allsorts to make the ai move but they remained sat still. So i adjusted the time in one of the 08s' orders to last 50 mins. The ai ran superb, my 08 remained at a red light from the begining. It was not his time to move. I adjusted times and it ran fine.....

Well until another service needed to cross a mainline. He wanted my line after me, but i was a little late. This prevented all other traffic moving on that section until i had cleared, then he had cleared. Even though other trains had clear routes, they don't move until the stuck trains have moved over certain lines in the pre arranged sequence. As far as i can tell, in the editor you set up a sequence in which trains are allowed to access a certain piece of line. If many trains need one section of line, they will pass it in the seqence arranged and not becuase the route is clear. Therefore if it works in the editor, and the player can keep on time, everything will work in game. If the player is early, he will probably get a red light to wait at until his time to cross a path is ready if another train uses it. If he is late at a point which many ai trains will follow, every movement by an ai train effected by that location or locations stuck ai need to share with other trains halt. This is regardless of how clear a route is.

Basically, if your player crosses ai many times but remains on time, all will be fine. If hes late, it will be a mess. One way to counter this i believe is giving the player more time to complete tasks especially in shunting moves across busy lines at strategic times. If hes early, he will wait at red for his pre arranged slot to path across ai. The two things that has a huge effect on this are % and duration. These in effect tell the editor in the ai how long your going to be. It then sets up ai around you. If your on track A at 15:20 in the scenario, another train will not be allowed to be and will be re-routed or blocked. You now have to be clever in ai routing to insure the player can not break anything by being human.

Would love to hear what you guys think, am i right or way off. I just wish i known some of this before i started. I should also have a very busy main line crossing shunting scenario in Carlisle station with ai everywhere coming for your scrutiny very soon

steve

1) As you have correctly deduced, there is no dynamic dispatcher - you have to get the train passing order correct in the editor. (There is, I think, a workaround for this, but it really just takes advantage of a bug and is not very easy to set up.)

2) Try playing with the trains' priorities. If you set your shunter to low priority and the mainline trains to higher priorities, you will find that the shunter is kept waiting more realistically without having to get the timing perfectly right. You will still hold up other trains if you are late, of course.

3) Shunting movements should have low effort percentages, and mainline movements should have higher percentages, than the default 75%. This will also help with timings.

Well at least i'm on the right track Thanks for taking the time to confirm this.

If i understand it right, priority and effort % are used to assign a train to X piece of track at a said time when the dispatcher works it out. You can adjust this to guarantee train movements by adjusting duration in moves. So if the dispatcher gives the player a path to cross X at 7:30, another service leaving at 7:31 will not be allowed that block of track or it will become a blockage. If i delay the players movement with added duration on the previous task, so he arrives at that point 7:32, the other train will pass first. However if the player gets through his work faster and arrives at X early, he will just be greeted by a red light until the other service has gone through. I think i just confused myself

Well hopefully somone out there might enjoy my scenario when done, just need to go and finish it. I must have played it through about 12 times already

Cheers...

steve