Free Roam

[pilot37]

After years of making my own standard scenarios for personal use I have just for the first time (duh!) started messing around with Free Roam on WOSL, and very pleased that I have been able to do much more complex operations without hours of testing. With only a minimal amount of work I was up and running, getting coal and water on board and carrying out all sorts of work and then returning the loco to depot at the end. To do this up as a standard scenario takes time to set up / test and then there is no flexibility in how you go about your day.

This more than compensates for the odd 5 second experience of a passing AI loco in a standard scenario. I was planning next to get more strategic with Free Roam so that I could run an endless scenario changing locos, generate random tasks and so on. The first problem is corrupted saves now and then when all is lost (shame we can't multiple save).

Anyone got any general experience /advice on good free roam set up.

Thanks

[Ximmy]

Free roam and quick drive never hit the spot for me, not sure why. Looks like you are a flightsimmer like me. I am happy setting my own goals in flightsim but for trains i NEED to be told what to do. Strange eh? I really wish i could get into free roam or quick drive but i absolutely cant.

[stephenholmes]

Good morning
I enjoy the quick drive feature
So far though I have found West Coast over Shap to be the only quick drive route with ai traffic
Free roam can also be enjoyable if you just want to thrash your favourite loco without any rules or regime to adhere to
Ai traffic adds to the feeling you're not the only driver exploring the route and for me greatly enhances the immersion
Kind regards Stephen

[749006]

Free roam and quick drive never hit the spot for me, not sure why. Looks like you are a flightsimmer like me. I am happy setting my own goals in flightsim but for trains i NEED to be told what to do. Strange eh? I really wish i could get into free roam or quick drive but i absolutely cant.

Quick Drive is good if you want to learn the route.
Free Roam is ok but you need to keep an eye on those points.

[pilot37]

Free roam and quick drive never hit the spot for me, not sure why. Looks like you are a flightsimmer like me. I am happy setting my own goals in flightsim but for trains i NEED to be told what to do. Strange eh? I really wish i could get into free roam or quick drive but i absolutely cant.

Quick Drive is good if you want to learn the route.
Free Roam is ok but you need to keep an eye on those points.

Just my point.....I totally disregarded free roam with no other traffic and no auto points. But then yes I am a flight simmer and set my own goals in flight sim so why not in TS2014.

What I don't get is

Points set so that I can stick to a timetable or break an a-b record (but experience has taught me that this gets dull and shows off the weaker sound affects at speed on both steam and diesel).
Other trains passing (5 seconds of immersion)
Trains ahead so that I can chase yellows.

What I do get is

To set my own goals and carry our complex tasks without hours of messing around on the timetable screen avoiding AI clashes and incalculable journeys.
Longevity and variation in how the scenario is used.
There are plenty of smoking locos to pass by even if they are stationary and I can take over any one of them.
Stopping at a signal (rather than tab tab tab as a reaction to seeing a red) to check the route map and solve how to complete my next task.

Still new to this and I want to persevere so I wondered if there were any cool tricks to use when setting up free roam

[EngineerKenny123]

Well they say different strokes for different folks. For me, I also NEED to be told what to do in TS. I love scenarios that make me chase yellows. I have downloaded some great ones from the Workshop. And passing other AI gives me a thrill (sad, maybe, but true). I also am an avid Flight simmer, having done so since the late 1980's, with the original Microsoft FS. I have owned 9 of the 10 they made, and have owned FSX since very late in 2007. In FSX, I wouldn't dream of being told what to do, and have never even flown one "mission". SO why do I need to be told in TS? Maybe I'm just nuts! But I'm a happy nut! Here's to hoping that we all get the same fun out of TS that I am getting. I'm doing it every day, and since I got my first in January of this year, I have only taken one flight. Again, sad maybe, but true. Happy simming.
Engineerkenny123

[skiddaw]

Try adding moving AI traffic to a free roam scenario - it works. You can hop between the cabs of different locos in free roam even when the locos are moving . It opens up some interesting possibilities.

[Ximmy]

Free roam and quick drive never hit the spot for me, not sure why. Looks like you are a flightsimmer like me. I am happy setting my own goals in flightsim but for trains i NEED to be told what to do. Strange eh? I really wish i could get into free roam or quick drive but i absolutely cant.

Quick Drive is good if you want to learn the route.
Free Roam is ok but you need to keep an eye on those points.

I find one of the best things for route learning is to create some scenarios. I usually only ever do standard ones think ill go make a free roam see if that peaks my enjoyment.

[749006]

Free roam and quick drive never hit the spot for me, not sure why. Looks like you are a flightsimmer like me. I am happy setting my own goals in flightsim but for trains i NEED to be told what to do. Strange eh? I really wish i could get into free roam or quick drive but i absolutely cant.

Quick Drive is good if you want to learn the route.
Free Roam is ok but you need to keep an eye on those points.

I find one of the best things for route learning is to create some scenarios. I usually only ever do standard ones think ill go make a free roam see if that peaks my enjoyment.

A Quick Drive is a sort of scenario and don't have to bother with AI as it's already made for you.

[tnleeuw01]

A Quick Drive is a sort of scenario and don't have to bother with AI as it's already made for you.

Except I've yet to spot any AI traffic an a QD scenario

--Tim

[holzroller]

There is QD ai on the freeware Project Freiburg. Don't bother with QD too often though

[1S811985]

Anyone got any general experience /advice on good free roam set up.

Thanks

My experience mirrors yours. I pretty much ignored free-roam for a long time and spent many (all to often fruitless) hours attempting to set up, fiddle about with and test complex scenarios. Funny that you should mention WLOS here too, as it was on this route that I had my own damascene moment.

I'd spent weeks putting together a trip working from Dumfries to Newton Stewart via Kirkcudbright, scripting shunting movements at practically every siding along the way. It ended up with something like seven hundred separate instructions across three scenarios and required a spreadsheet to keep track of what was behind the loco at every point along the way. The testing was a nightmare, you name the dispatcher issue I encountered it, usually more than thrice. I got it all working eventually, taking about seven hours of gameplay, but I'd had to sacrifice several planned movements and by that time I was thoroughly sick of the whole thing anyway. Then I realised that I hadn't even seen most of the 12 (yes that's all, one dozen!) AI trains that were included. I shudder to think how many hours all of this had taken.

A few months later I sat down to try the scenario again but the fact that I knew every movement that I would have to make just drained the whole thing of any possible enjoyment. I was still up for a bit of trip work shunting however so I thought I'd give free-roam a try. I set up my starting train at Dumfries and placed stock along the line. Half an hours work. A week later (five or six hours of actual play) I finally tied my loco up for the day at Newton Stewart having thoroughly enjoyed possibly my most realistic feeling experience in Railworks to date. A couple of weeks later I played it again and while it still took about a week it was a completely different scenario as I changed all the drop offs and pick ups.

Now don't get me wrong, there's a place for traditional, scripted scenarios and I'm still making them, but for shunting I don't think I could go back from free-roam, such is the freedom that it provides. Another big bonus of long-play free-roam is that when you're using a kettle you get to live or die by your own boiler management skills, rather than having everything re-set when you split a long run across several scenarios.

As for set up advice I'd say that it's little different from any other scenario. Plan out what you want to do and position your stock accordingly. I either avoid mainlines altogether or treat them as a long branch. My most enjoyable free-roams have been on those little networks of hand-pointed track that you can find hidden away here and there on certain routes, the Falmouth docks, the NCB lines at Backworth on NER that kind of thing.

I've now taken to building little shunting puzzles into the placement of stock and using a set of dice to determine what I'm going to have to do and all within a time-limit approximating a standard working shift. Sounds mad I know, but instead of spending hour after hour putting together an AI packed forty minute scenario that's the same every time it runs I'm now spending those hours actually enjoying driving trains!

Cheers,

1S81