What would you do? Options

[Frascati]

Hi

AG has a number of limitations. One is that it will sometimes tell you to pick up wagons but then not tell you what to do with them. On a straightforward pull from A to B that's simple... you end up with the string in tow, looking for a yard marshal to tell you where to put them... and he probably would... but luckily the activity ends before he has a chance.

But on a turn it's more problamatic... My situation is this. I'm in Klamath in the BN E Yard, about to set out on a turn to Crescent Lake (100 miles away) I have to pick up 3 empties in the yard with no destination set. So what should I do...

Do I drag them to Crescent Lake and back to Klamath (200 miles round trip) Or do I Assume I've just been asked to move them in the yard and shuffle them to the back of the cut they're in (having nowhere better to put them).

The above is a special case, but it highlights that in fact I could satisify ALL of the pickups en-route by simply picking them up and dropping them off somewhere nearby...

And on a turn, would I leave the outward pickups at Crescent Lake and the Inward at Klamath?

It's a bit much to expect AG to tell you this sort of stuff, and I guess I'm left to do whatever I want with them...

But a set of House rules would be good to keep me on the straight and narrow.

I propose the following... (The underlying pricipal is to minimise movement)

1) pickups at the beginning of a turn activity with no destination are assumed to be movements to the rear of the cut that they are currently in.

2) Outward pickups are left at a convenient track at the turn location for forwarding.

3) Inward pickups are brought home.

Nuff Said. Comments please...

[sgdavis]

I do like the idea of final destination track. One of the annoying aspects of AG is generating a long activity and having it end prematurely with only part of the work done. This happens because you gain credit for a setout as soon as the wagons arrive at the destination track (even if buried deep in the consist). MSTS does not remove that credit if you then subsequently go onto to move them, say to achieve another set out. I don't see a way around this.

You are right, but, if you use "assemble train then the activity WON'T end until YOU decide -- by assembling the train you trigger the ending (provided you've done all y our setouts and pickups correctly).  However I do think the "end track" is a great idea and will also help for those who don't really like switching activities and just want to run a train from one point to another, but see AI trains and cars in the spurs etc. unlike "Explore a Route".  So a future version of AG will have 3 boxes instead of 2: Source tracks, Industry/Work Tracks, and Destination Track(s).  I thank you for getting me to think of this.

The whole MSTS activity ending logic seems messed up to me. I've always believed that you should have the option to continue after completing an activity, If only to look around at the destination. Perhaps the MSTSBin people could look at this?

I think we'll have better luck fixing this in AG than in MSTS.  One reason MSTS does this is, with "scripted" activites, there won't be any more player path, or any more AI traffic, once you've finished the work that the activity author scripted.  If you REALLY want to "dream" about a better sim, for me it would be something more similar to Flight Simulator, where there would always be trains in the "world" and those would run based on prototypical schedules or at least something based on that but with randomization (since those schedules are a lot harder to get than airline schedules which are a matter of public record).  And appropriate cars should be on the spurs as you traverse the "world".  To do that a future MSTS would have to have a feature simliar to AG that allows route designers to designate what types of cars would be found on those spurs.

While we're about it perhaps they could have a look at raising the number of action events in the AE?

You'll get no argument from me there!  And the quantity of rolling stock also.  There's no reason for a limit, since the player can never "see" all the stock on a route.  So it should be permissible to fill every spur with cars and if the player never runs by/sees that spur then the computer never loads those shapes and no impact on memory or performance.  I really don't understand the limit of ~500 or so cars.  Just sloppy coding I think.

AG says little about the order of wagons when setout. In the past I've liked to 'rotate stock' to the rear of a setout.

Say I'm picking up 3 loaded cars out of a 7 car cut and dropping off 2 empties. I'll pull out all 7 and put the 2 empties behind the 4 cars I'm leaving in the siding. The thinking is that the loaded cars will need to be picked up later and may as well be at the front of the cut as a courtesy to the next engineer. He doesn't have to move the empties to get at his cars.

 

As pointed out elsewhere http://www.3dtrains.com/forums/index.php?showforum=15) this, whilst a complication, is a rather arbitrary one. You do what the customer (in this case the AG wants). If you take the basic philosophy behind AG is to give the player a number of tasks and to move away from the 'free form, do anything you like' activity, then AG is not pernickety enough.

I think you're right about this one.  Right now I'm not sure how to handle in AG but I'll keep thinking on it -- anything is possible.  Not all MSTS users are as interested in prototypical operations as you are, so I'll admit I had to make AG appealing to various levels of simmers.  Some don't want too much shuffling of cars.  I agree the empties or loads DELIVERED should go closest to the customers loading facility/dock.  Then again some think my program is TOO persnickity!

Thanks for the comments, please keep 'em coming, they are great food for thought!

Best,

Steve