Questions About Portals and TANE

[gisa]

Hi All,


I have a few questions about portals and was hoping some folks here could help answer them.

I'm looking to put some portals into a route I'm tinkering with, but it's been a long, long time since I've last used any in a route. Does the basic portal still cut it? Is there a better option out there? I ask because if I remember correctly, trains coming out used to come out pretty fast, making breaking and recognizing signals/switches an issue. I plan on them spitting out some relatively large (and heavy) trains, so in the past, I'd extend the "end" of my route to help compensate for the weight/"awakening" delay. With train lengths topping out between 2-4 km, that is a lot of extra baseboards I'll need to extend, so I am hoping to avoid this if there are better portals out there (or if there was a way to help the AI slow down/think immediately).

I do recall that there was an invisible AI brake car you could use to help trains stop fast, but I'd rather these trains use real breaking, if possible.

Thoughts and advice are always appreciated.

Gisa ^^

 

[cascaderailroad]

Maybe off topic: I remember sandwiching 50 "AI Brakes" between two boxcars, and adding it to a train, and it helped stop a sliding train, that tried to stop on a -1.75% grade ... I suppose that an alteration of an enginespec would do the same thing ?

 

[gisa]

I wouldn't say your reply is off topic. AI brakes can be useful but they can take away from the realism. At some point, I'd like to have trains coming out of portals and behaving like the real thing and there are some gradients in most routes (including my own).

I took a peek at iPortal and it looked neat for what it was, but for simply producing and sending out portals, I think I'll just use the trusty portal/portal basic and stick with a 4-5 km leeway before entering the route itself. That should be enough time for the AI to figure out what it is doing and get it's stuff in gear.

As you recommended, I could alter the engine spec but I'd like to release this route someday to the public and they shouldn't have to edit their locos to do that. Thanks for the recommendation though.

Gisa ^^