Sandbox mode?

[spad30]

I have a question about the new sim. Hopefully I'm not re-posting or repeating anything. I've searched through and haven't found anything quite along the lines I'm looking for.

What I'm wondering is if the sim will have something similar to a sandbox mode. Let me explain what I mean by this. Lets say I have a route, with three yards, yard A on one end, yard B (local yard) in the middle and yard C on the other end. Before starting I populate the route and set up AI trains. Now I hop in a freight at yard A, heading to yard C. Along the way I make a set out of 2 engines and some cars at the local yard (yard B). I then continue my trip to yard C. Upon arrival I save it. At this point I want to man the 2 engines at the local yard and service the industries, so I hop in those engines. Once finished, I head back to the local yard and now have a pickup. I then hop in a freight at yard C and head to yard A, making a pickup at yard B, etc.

So in other words could you build activities on each other? Build on each other as far as how the world is populated and even build on time? Would you also have the ability to go in to the saved game and add more AI or make changes. Right now with saved games saved as an .sav and activities as .act its impossible to do this since there is no way to edit or change consists in an .sav. I never understood why a saved game couldn't be saved as an editable .act. Heck maybe there is a way to do it and I have missed something?

I hope this all makes sense???

On a more grand scale (I'm sure a lot of this has has been mentioned before) I think it would be nice to be able to have the ability to hop out of your consist and direct the other AI trains. Maybe not fully dispatch, just some way to pick where they meet, what track they take in the receiving yard, or possibly hold them out, etc. Then have the ability to hop in any of those consists. Hmmmm maybe the ability to populate a yard along with the engine facility. Hostle some engine consists together. Then take a yard job to the bowl, pull the receiving yard and build an outbound in the departure yard. Then hop back to the engine facility and grab your consist and take it to the departure yard. Heck, maybe even grab a bag of ice and some water on the way out ;) j/k. Man I miss those days sometimes. Or you could build your outbounds in the D yard and send them on their way as AI trains, the whole time having inbound AI trains. Hump operations would be nice though I'm not sure how this could work out. Retarders would be tough to simulate. Maybe if anything have a way to simulate something like a track skate that you could take on and off to keep the cars from rolling out the bottom. Then possibly give designated class tracks a bit more leeway on coupling forces since there would be no way to control the speed of the cars. As class track filled up the cars would wind up hitting progressively harder and harder since there would be no speed control.

I really am looking forward to the new sim. I keep thinking of everything that has been done with MSFS such as VATSIM and all the addons. Its come a long way since the first release way back when.

Well I better stop before I write a book. LOL Just a few thoughts.

Best regards,
James

[TrainMan_112]

I don't think there will be a "Sandbox" mode. As far as I know, there will only be activities and an Explore Mode, just like the old MSTS.

I could be wrong though. You'll have to wait and see what Rick says.

[SurvivorSean]

Actually it's probably hard to tell right now as I haven't heard anything pro or con on the possibility. I don't think the team is prepared to give too much information, and I imagine it would be an improvement at the very least.

A simplified form of sandbox mode does work in MSTS 1 but it's limited to the 24 hour clock. With the addition of MSTS Bin you could theoretically switch power (say if you had a loose consist with power and hooked up to it). But getting any form of interaction with the AI has been exhausted, and is not possible. If you were to run say a Port Ogden and Northern where you have continuous AI in the 24 hour period, you can at the very least run 24 hours of locals saving and continuing as you see fit. The issue of course and why the limit on 24 hours is you would have to start as early as possible 12:01 am lets say and once the clock goes past 11:59 pm all AI spawning stops and your on your own in a lonely world. I've also ran into issues at times with saved games reloading, but it's probably something I did wrong - who knows.

I've always loved the days when I belonged to a model railroad club. I left the club due to politics, and as the hayday of virtual railroads was apon us I decided I'd change from model railroading to virtual railroading. What I liked was having operations in these clubs were you started were you left off and was part of a system. Cars you set out one day on a local would be picked up again by another local eventually leading to a pickup by a manifest freight at a yard. Then that train would eventually head off into a staging yard that represented the offline world. The cycle would complete when the next train out of the staging yard returned, and the cars became either available, or assigned a new waybill.

RTS is my vision of expanding on what is the model railroads waybill generator. Most waybill programs always had the ability to assign areas offline (not on a layout) to make it look realistic, but was never necessary. With MSTS-X and WoR I can see having destinations anywhere mean something. So even if MSTS-X doesn't ship with sandbox mode, I'm sure one way or another through SimConnect one of us will come up with something. If someone beats me to it (perhaps Steve Davis) who is more experienced that is great. But as long as the potential is there I'll give it a shot. The problem with MSTS-1 is you were always limited to activities, and there was no real way to find out where cars were when you ended. I hope MSTS-X will change all that, and one of the add-ons will make it all possible.

Thanks

Sean

[NoMoreTrains]

If I'm reading this right, is the OP not referring to doing things in a similar manner as you can already do in Trainz/TRS?

[spad30]

Actually I've never tried Trainz so I have no clue there lol. :D I guess another way to put it would be along the lines of an operating session (like Sean mentioned) that you could pick up the next day but everything else in the previous session has been preserved the way it was left.

I think something along the lines of operating sessions would be great for multi player games. After several sessions you may need to manage your traffic by calling extras or light engine moves to unclog yards or balance power on the route, etc. It could lead to some interesting operational headaches!

Best Regards,
James