Posted 04 January 2018 - 07:58 PM
I say do away with the .con as a legacy file and adopt something along the lines of a block file that would have the information on what the consist is and what product it holds. It would hold information on the point of origin (if any) and destination (if any) of the block. Also, make activities legacy, too, and use a modified timetable mode (or even a modified explore in activity mode) to create work orders. This would free the game up from having set activities, and work orders could be made for different routes and passed around like activities are now. If you had some kind of randomizer to set blocks of active and passive stock out on the route (active being the ones you can attach to... passive being blocks of low-poly cars for looks), then a work order to work from, it would eliminate the job of creating an activity altogether.
You simply activate the randomizer and it chooses the stock based on the industry and whether it will go on the work order or not. It then puts together blocks of cars into trains with appropriate engines on the front and runs them according to a random schedule. You would have an infinite amount of activities. What this would do would eliminate the need for an activity editor. Instead, you would be adding an Activity Manager (or call it Dispatcher Mode) to the game. Blocks of cars are chosen based on destination. Engines are pulled from a pool similar to the pool in Timetable Mode. A block of cars can be anywhere from 1 to 100 (or more) cars. If you want the old activities, you just do that in MSTS legacy mode and keep in trucking.
This is forward-looking, while also keeping the legacy MSTS stuff. If you can blur the lines between Activity Mode and Timetable Mode and expand on the Dispatcher it would begin to give Open Rails a personality that it has lacked. So far, it has acted as an MSTS immulator. It can be much more with a few tweaks.
Edit: I've thought about this some more. I think instead of doing away with the .con file, it can be tweaked and another file type added to cover blocks of cars. .con files would put those blocks together to form consists, which would enable the game (in "explore in activity mode", or the creator of a timetable) to do it on the fly without actually putting together a consist in the consist editor.