[Eldorado.Railroad]

I noticed this some years back, but time and obligations rob me of so many things.

Basically in the HUD, the engine brake never goes to zero, no matter how long the AUTPILOT mode has been engaged. It is possible to manually set it to zero. The puzzling part is that the performance of the train seems unaffected by the engine brake not being zero value in AUTOPILOT mode. This is unlike the manual mode where having the engine brake enabled does affect performance.

If you feel you have the time to look into this I will test it when it has been fixed. My personal preference is to see this fix get into the Monogame version, which I always use because it performs so much better on this system than XNA.

Ciao,
Steve

[roeter]

Autopilot runs the train in AI mode. In AI mode, the train is controlled at train-level, and not at engine-level. At train-level, the engine brakes are not available. In fact, control at train-level is very basic, with control limited to throttle (0 - 100%) and brake (0 - 100%).
To change this to more detailed control at engine-level would require an almost complete rewrite of the AI physics.

Regards,
Rob Roeterdink

[Eldorado.Railroad]

roeter, on 06 April 2018 - 02:06 AM, said:

Autopilot runs the train in AI mode. In AI mode, the train is controlled at train-level, and not at engine-level. At train-level, the engine brakes are not available. In fact, control at train-level is very basic, with control limited to throttle (0 - 100%) and brake (0 - 100%).
To change this to more detailed control at engine-level would require an almost complete rewrite of the AI physics.

Rob,

Thanks for adding insight into this. I would think that engaging AUTOPILOT mode could just involve setting the value of the engine brake to zero, regardless if the AI code is meant to manipulate that value. The problem with leaving it alone (engine brake) is that exiting the AUTOPILOT mode returns the train to a bizarre state with the engine brake engaged. If the engine brake were set to zero, this would not happen. Surely, this does not involve a re-write of the AI code, it can be left as is. It is the responsibility of the AUTOPILOT mode code to set the engine brake to zero and forget about it.

Is that not logical?

Bedankt,
Steve

[Csantucci]

Both Rob and Steve are correct. And there is a further problem: when passing to autopilot mode with dynamic brakes set, the autopilot is not able to accelerate the train. So it is wise to reset both engine brake and dynamic brake before passing to autopilot mode, and it makes sense that this occurs automatically and that it is not the player that resets them before entering autopilot.
I have committed a correction for this with x.4104.

[Eldorado.Railroad]

Csantucci, on 06 April 2018 - 10:45 PM, said:

I have committed a correction for this with x.4104.

I can confirm that this is now fixed.
It was a rather simple change in the code with great effect.

Carlo, grazie mille!

Steve