Atomic Systems

maxcook wrote:I'm having problems driving the Class 42. The problem is with the DSD pedal - if I press the pedal down then the DSD alarm sounds, and the brakes release. However if I lift the DSD pedal then the alarm stops, but the brakes come on. So I either drive with the alarm sounding (and the blue warning light on), or I can't drive it all because the brakes are on.

Pressing Control+D has no effect.

I'm obviously doing something wrong - could some kind soul please tell me what.

When you first jump in the loco, the blue light should be illuminated with no sound. Class 42 dsd was continual press for it to not activate (don't ask me why) and thus the blue light should always be on. If you are getting the alarm sound constantly something has gone very wrong.

That's confusing, as supposedly

the manual wrote:Note: This is an early version of DSD and does not feature a warning alarm of any type, only
a visual reminder in form of the blue D warning light.

Fully agree it is very confusing.

I've solved my problem. Following the hint from Arnold Rimmer (thank you) I tried driving without using Raildriver, and lo and behold I got the blue light on + working brakes and no DSD alarm sound. As soon as I put the Raildriver back into use, the alarm sound started up again.

ttjph wrote:

kevrob2 wrote:These are really nice models. As many have said it'll be nice to at least get the western sound pack updated to use with this model, but the hymek needs work too. It's a pity the performances seem off. I ran all three locos on Glorious Devon flat out from Exeter with 12 Mk1s as supplied with the pack and got the following results:
Exminster: Hymek 5m 51s at 76.0 MPH, Warship 6m 32s at 70.3 MPH, Western 6m 30s at 69.5 MPH
Starcross: Hymek 83.1 MPH, Warship 77.8 MPH, Western 77.2 MPH
Dawlish: Hymek 84 MPH, Warship 81.1 MPH, Western 81.2 MPH
So it looks like the Warship just beats the Western and both are soundly beaten by the Hymek....

Oh dear, poor traction physics parameters strike again. As and when I buy the pack, I'll do some digging if no-one's beaten me to it; but I haven't fiddled with hydraulics before.

Can anyone also confirm whether they're afflicted by the apparent flat tractive effort 'curve' of, say, the Kuju V200? Not that I know whether there's a way to fix that (without going fully-scripted virtual throttle, at least).

Well, having been given this pack for Christmas Ithink I can now see roughly what's going on.

They're actually diesel-electrics, just hiding the amps in the HUD (this is a good thing). The 42 is scripted with a virtual throttle; the other two appear standard. The 35 has the correct engine power of 1700 hp; with the Western, someone forgot that it has two engines so it's set to 1350! I've changed the 35 to 1360 (80%) for power at the rail, and the 52 to 2000 (as much as seems to be estimated in Practice And Performance articles). The 42 has 2087.96 hp (exactly!), however, seems to settle around 56% actual throttle, suggesting that it puts down less than 1200 hp - rather on the low side? (I've only had a quick play, though, so will continue to investigate.) However, tractive effort looks to be in kN instead of klbf, so provided it doesn't slip it will start from rest like a hypercar - though this is probably mitigated by the engine response. The 35 and 52 also have falling TEvsThrottle curves, which may further reduce their performance as speed increases, explaining Kevrob's results.

Anyway, I can see myself mostly driving the 42 for the scripted performance (the gearchanges are nicely done, and the engine response is close to what I remember from driving D1013) - but can anyone tell me which way is which on the passenger/goods switch?

Actually the value for max power is in kW (despite what the dev docs and blueprint editor would leave you to believe!). It's also over specified to prevent the possibility of the script calling say 110% throttle which obviously isn't possible and would result in the engine under performing.

regards

Edward

metrobus wrote:Actually the value for max power is in kW (despite what the dev docs and blueprint editor would leave you to believe!). It's also over specified to prevent the possibility of the script calling say 110% throttle which obviously isn't possible and would result in the engine under performing.

You're absolutely right - and I'm disappointed that I'd never spotted that before! Bother, now I'm probably going to end up re-working a bunch of my other locos... Pretty much every diesel (and electric?) is massively over-powered, then, taking into account kW vs hp and power-at-rail vs rated power - I make it over 160% of what it should be! (Not sure I quite understand your point about over-specifying, though...)

Despite a rather weird collection of nominal values, I would also say that Bossman Games have got it just right on the Warship. Using a quick-drive out of Paddington, and reading the F5 HUD values along with the nominals from the various .bin and .dcsv files, I reckon this is what it puts to the rail: (The low initial tractive effort is probably due to some sort of brake interaction - I was holding it back on the brakes to give it more time to balance at low speeds, but this seemed to affect the virtual throttle.)

About 1600 hp once underway is 73% of rated power (assuming 2200 hp), which aligns pretty well with reports on the Western; and scaled by the virtual throttle setting it matches nicely with just under 2100 kW of MaxPower.

That means I should set the Hymek to about 1020 MaxPower, and the Western to around 1500 - so the original 1350 actually isn't far wrong!

Only thing is, I could only spot two gearchanges, which suggests it's actually a Class 43 with the Voith transmission...

Right, now I'm off to update the Western (and the Hymek) and do the same thing with that.

(edit) God, I love the sound on the Western though! Admittedly it's missing the turbo scream (without an AP pack), but the idle is wonderful...
(further edit) However, I now don't quite understand why KevRob found the Western to be slower than the Warship, as even the original 1350 kW is more than the Warship is putting down. Perhaps it's the 21" of vacuum causing the brakes to drag?