Steam Double Headers with AI

I have recently discovered the joy of cab control steam double headers up steep grades. Maintaining steam in two locos and obeying the rules can keep me quite busy.

I would like to create a session with steam double headers driven by AI. Do I need to place a driver in each locomotive or does just one driver work? If I need two drivers, do they both need orders? I assume that the orders for both drivers need to be identical so I should avoid things like random waits.

Any other tips on how to do this?

Thanks!

If you create an AI for cab control for double heading steam locos are you not negating the whole experience of cab driving? As you say yourself, driving a double headed steam train in cab mode, switching from loco to loco, adjusting speed, altering the regulator, adjusting cut off, keeping up the water, keeping up the coal and the steam can keeps you quite busy, but isn't that what its all about? Double heading can be quite demanding but rewarding if you do it yourself. I do that much of the time as that was the way trains ran where I came from. I do not use either DCC or AI because it takes the skill out of it. Cant answer your question and perhaps shouldn't have wasted you time by replying to your post but if you have it in AI, you just sit there like a moron watching the monitor instead of actually having to think and drive them.
However AI is OK for diesels I suppose. They don't offer any challenges as does steam and in my opinion are for wimps who just want to sit comatose watching a monitor without interacting with it. Cheers

Thanks for your response. You are quite right that watching AI drive a steam doubleheader is nowhere near as fun or challenging as doing it yourself.

I was actually hoping to ramp up the challenge on myself. I want to design a session where I drive a steam doubleheader in cab control and, in addition to facing opposing traffic, I also have chasing traffic which I would like to be a steam doubleheader driven by AI. This way, if I fail to maintain boiler pressure and slow down, I have a steam doubleheader behind me that will potentially try to overtake me.

I tried searching the forums using both the forum search engine and Google to see if anyone had posted on this and could not find anything. I was hoping to see if others had experience with this and could tell me the best way to program the chasing AI traffic. I found several references on programming chasing AI traffic in general, but nothing on how to program a steam doubleheader.

I doubt this is new ground. However, if people are interested, I'll be happy to post my experiences as I try this.



Many thanks, Tom

Hi Frimbo

I occasionally enjoy running some of the US routes and often have multiple locos hauling trains. They only have one driver so I can't see why two steam locos should be any different.

nimec - as you don't use AI, I can't understand how you know that it requires no skill. Speaking as one of your "morons" I can assure you that getting AI to perform in a realistic manner requires as much if not more skill as driving a locomotive. Your sessions must be quite boring without any AI traffic to give them a bit of realism.

Regards

Brian

Frimbo said:

I would like to create a session with steam double headers driven by AI. Do I need to place a driver in each locomotive or does just one driver work? If I need two drivers, do they both need orders? I assume that the orders for both drivers need to be identical so I should avoid things like random waits.

Any other tips on how to do this?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Placing an A1 driver in the lead loco is all you need to do.

Nimec said:

I do not use either DCC or AI because it takes the skill out of it. Cant answer your question and perhaps shouldn't have wasted you time by replying to your post but if you have it in AI, you just sit there like a moron watching the monitor instead of actually having to think and drive them.
However AI is OK for diesels I suppose. They don't offer any challenges as does steam and in my opinion are for wimps who just want to sit comatose watching a monitor without interacting with it.

Click to expand...

It is good that people are different otherwise it would be a boring world, but just because somebody does not conform to your ideas does not give you the excuse to criticize. Different people enjoy different things. Accept that and you will be a much friendlier person.

I find being at the controls of a loco quite boring and it literally puts me to sleep.
I use trains in a dispatcher mode, controlling a number of trains and getting them to work together.
I have used double headers and find that you only need a single driver.
Cheers,
Mike

To get full performance in AI double heading it helps to match the enginespecs in each loco. It works without doing this, but speeds will suffer with some mismatched enginespecs.

Ingha

Hi ingha

That's because of the way that the program calculates the speed for the two locos. Common sense would be to limit the speed to the lowest of the two max-speed figures but someone came up with the idea of dividing the lowest speed by the fastest and multiplying the result by the line speed. Two locos with a max speed of 90 mph and 60 mph and a line speed of 60 mph will not go faster than 40 mph - (60/90)*60. It's completely illogical but that's the way it works.

Regards

Brian

Good gracious! Thank you for that explanation. It explains the vagaries of speed in my Lickey banking.

Regards, Ingha

I don't know that its been fixed, but I generally stay far away from AI Steam because the AI firemen can't fire a boiler worth a ****. Expect to hear "PFFFFFFFFT" as the safety valves will rarely close any time you're near it. There are things you can do to negate this (Short sessions help), but last I knew this problem still occurs. Drives me nuts....

Falcus

Falcus said:

I don't know that its been fixed, but I generally stay far away from AI Steam because the AI firemen can't fire a boiler worth a ****. Expect to hear "PFFFFFFFFT" as the safety valves will rarely close any time you're near it. There are things you can do to negate this (Short sessions help), but last I knew this problem still occurs. Drives me nuts....

Falcus

Click to expand...

My experience with this is that those locomotives that are known to have safety valve issues when driven in cab control will also have their safety valves routinely popping off when driven by AI.

However, I have had good luck with the excellent steam locomotives from TrainZItalia such as the Challenger and FEF. Ben Neal's locomotives also work well with AI as do the beautiful engines available at K&L Trainz.

Falcus said:

I don't know that its been fixed, but I generally stay far away from AI Steam because the AI firemen can't fire a boiler worth a ****. Expect to hear "PFFFFFFFFT" as the safety valves will rarely close any time you're near it. There are things you can do to negate this (Short sessions help), but last I knew this problem still occurs. Drives me nuts....

Falcus

Click to expand...

There's a relatively quick and easy way to fix the constant hisssssssssssssssing of the safety valves under AI/DCC, but you'll need to clone and then edit the e-spec (and then cloned and edit a loco, as well.)

You're basically have to dumb down the e-spec since you can't make the AI drivers smarter! (Unless you want to create a new e-spec, from scratch.)

Here's how to do it: In CM, created a cloned copy of the e-spec. Then change the name of it -- e.g., change the "username" in the config file to indicate its an e-spec made for AI/DCC. For example, change the name from "USRA Light Mikado" to "USRA Light Mikado AI/DCC".

Then lower the value of "max-fire-temperature" under the "steam" section until the safeties stop popping off. You may have to experiment a little -- you may have to lower it 100, 200, or more degrees, but doing so won't affect performance of the loco under AI/DCC -- Trainz only pays attention to the "motor" settings under AI/DCC even for steam locos in regards to pulling power, acceleration, top speed, etc.

If you try using that cloned e-spec in cab mode, it'll probably perform poorly -- but under Ai/DCC it'll work fine and the hissssssssssing of the safety values will stop. So, you'll next want to create a cloned version of the locomotive that uses this "special" AI/DCC version of the e-spec as well, and name that loco accordingly so you know it's set up to be used under AI/DCC control.