Bath - Templecombe issues

[USRailFan]

There definately seems to be something very wrong with the signalling/AI on the Bath – Templecombe route. Having now twice tried the scenario ‘Bath Time’ from the B5 scenario pack DLC, I both times got a ‘derailment due to AI collision’ – the culprit seemingly the “Black 5 44380 Stopping” AI service which is set to start near Wellow – it seems to either outright refuse to start moving at all, or to start moving, but quickly stop dead in its tracks, in both cases resulting in it being rammed in the rear by the following service “7F 53805 Freight” – which apparently starts moving as intended... This of course does make it impossible to complete the scenario properly.

[martw]

I've got the same trouble with a scenario from the 7F scenario pack: "Calm under pressure". In that scenario, an AI-service seems to be 'stuck' near a portal just west of Radstock, and is then being rammed in by another service. "Fortunately", exactly at the time when I halted at Radstock, so I could make a screenshot just before the collision.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/19 ... enpark.png
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/8159 ... enpark.png
Maybe the scenarios in these packs are out-of-date, after lots of updates from RailWorks itself?

Martijn

[alexnick]

I have found that recent RW updates have thrown the signalling on the Bath-Templecombe route. I wrote some scenarios for it pre version116, and then had to review them all after that update came out as the signalling handled AI traffic differently.

However, I thought RSC checked and updated all their own content with every core update. You could always raise the issue with them?

AN

[crumplezone]

Most of them were made nearly 2 years ago and memory serves I don't recall much fixes being applied to any of them in the past half a year or more so the likely case is they are now out of date or broke in some way after the many updates, the best thing to do is to bring it to light via the support email for RS.com and they will get around to fixing it at some point, they are however quite busy at the moment so a fix might not be for awhile.

[USRailFan]

Yes I have e-mailed them several times about signalling/AI issues with various scenarios on Bath - Templecombe. Maybe martw should send them his screenshots as well, to better illustrate what is going on?

EDIT: Sometimes it seems to be a bit of hit-and-miss with these things occuring though (i.e. if you restart the scenario and try it again, it suddenly works just fine) so I imagine it might not necessarily be an easy job for support....

[CaptScarlet]

For what it is worth you can in the interim fix these problems yourself in the editor -

eg:

Bath Time - move the service "Black 5 44380 Stopping" backwards clear of the points so that it is not straddling them and is on the correct track.

Calm under pressure - move the service "Black 5 double headed Express" ( west of Radstock ) backwards so it is behind the signal it is sitting on and the other thing I did was to un-group the commands for the AI service "7F 53806". The scenario then ran ok.

John

[rivimey]

For what it is worth you can in the interim fix these problems yourself in the editor -

John, could you send this advice to RS - there's nothing they like more than a bug with a ready-made fix!

Ruth

[Kromaatikse]

I've just checked "Calm Under Pressure" (I don't seem to have "Bath Time", so it must be third-party), and it gives me a bunch of errors when starting it. A few judicious edits later - all to correct problems of the form "stop at destination then identical Final Destination" - and it works just fine (although I think the stop at Shoscombe is about 1 minute too late, making it unreasonably hard to stop in time at Wellow).

But since this is an RSC produced scenario pack, I would have assumed it went through their testing process upon new core engine releases.

[CaptScarlet]

I did not get any errors on loading of Calm under Pressure either before, during or after editing it.

John

[USRailFan]

I've just checked "Calm Under Pressure" (I don't seem to have "Bath Time", so it must be third-party)

Define 'third party'? It is definately part of the B5 Scenario Pack DLC on my system.... It is also listed among the scenarios in the Steam page for the DLC: http://store.steampowered.com/app/24035 ... 234__103_6

[USRailFan]

For what it is worth you can in the interim fix these problems yourself in the editor -

John, could you send this advice to RS - there's nothing they like more than a bug with a ready-made fix!

Ruth

Agreed

[Kromaatikse]

Define 'third party'? It is definately part of the B5 Scenario Pack DLC on my system.... It is also listed among the scenarios in the Steam page for the DLC: http://store.steampowered.com/app/24035 ... 234__103_6

Okay, that's bizarre. I hadn't noticed for some reason that I'd never bought the Black 5 Scenario Pack. I had the 7F version...

Anyway, what that does allow me to say is that on a nice fresh Steam install of the Black 5 pack, the "Bath Time" scenario does indeed get terminated by an AI collision.

[USRailFan]

OK, so this does seem to be an inherent flaw then, not just a random "now and then" issue. Probably related to the changes made to the route some time ago?

[Kromaatikse]

Perhaps, but I have noticed a couple of step-changes in the pickiness of the dispatcher over time, as well. As a result, several techniques used widely in early scenarios are virtually guaranteed to cause failures today. The specific techniques I'm talking about:

- Queueing up more than one train in the same signal section. This was often desirable because there is limited space on the track runouts at the edges of the route. At other times it was down to pure laziness in not checking the signal spacing beforehand.

- "Stop At" (or "Go Via") followed by "Final Destination" in the same place. Some scenario writers (eg. AP) used this frequently to control the speed of a train accurately all the way to a portal, since you can't set a speed rating on a Final Destination instruction. Unfortunately, the latest dispatcher can't cope with routing back to the same place if the marker is not long enough to contain the entire train - which a portal certainly isn't. So it tries to start the train moving again and then route back, either by a reversing or otherwise circuitous route. This either fails explicitly (on unidirectional track) or ends up conflicting with another train, which usually causes a cascade failure because a train that can't route all the way to the destination will remain in place.

The Black 5 and 7F Scenario Packs are both old enough to have used both of the above techniques, initially without trouble.