[pschlik]

I ran into some unexpected behavior when playing the 'Mid Train Helper' activity in the TrainSimulations SP Shasta Route. This activity involves the player coupling to an AI train and the AI train joining the player's service. When changing cabs to the locomotive previously controlled by the AI, I noticed some erroneous behaviors which suggested to me the parameters I set in the .eng file and referenced .inc files were being ignored.

For example, I have all my locomotives set up to produce brake pipe flow rates of 150 cfm, but this ex-AI locomotive was only managing 86 cfm. I do NOT have 'ORTSWheelSlipCausesThrottleDown' enabled, as 'ORTSSlipControlSystem' produces much more realistic results, yet this locomotive would throttle down when it wheel slipped. I tune locomotive brakes to apply and release very quickly, but they were sluggish when controlling from this locomotive. I added a custom 'EngineOperatingProcedures' too, and if that shows up I know things are working...except the operating procedure F1 menu is blank when driving from the ex-AI locomotive.

Thankfully tractive effort curves and engine characteristics didn't change, but it was still an undesired experience to have so many other things deviate from my design. When I load the same locomotive directly as a player train, everything is normal. If I don't change cabs to the AI locomotive, everything is normal. If I save and load the activity, everything is restored to normal (this in particular leads me to believe this is an initialization issue).


Looks to me like AI trains are ignoring or overriding some settings in .eng files, and when a player merges with the AI those settings are never re-initialized to use the actual intended values. Needs investigation, but I can't really look into this right now.

[roeter]

That's right, when first loaded as AI, certain engine parameters (in particular brake settings) as set in .eng or .inc are overruled. The problem described above happens all the time when running a timetable and pick up a train which had already ran as AI train. The easy way out is to save immediately after taking over the train or after coupling. When reloading from a save, the correct parameters are read as the train is now the player train.
I am not a physics or brake expert, so I never got round to looking into this or why this is done.

Regards,
Rob Roeterdink