AI Trains need a prod to make them run

Prior to the HF1 upgrade, I had built a TANE route with 12 entry portals, which produced a regular number of consists every 5 minutes. The route worked perfectly.

I've now been updating the route in HF1 added a new session and in Driver mode, the portals do their job as previously set. However, I've now noticed that each of the consists travel towards, but not at, the first driver command (station, track-mark, etc) then they stop. This applies to all 12 consists. The consists have not moved by themselves for up to 10 minutes or so.

The consists only start moving if I click on the leading loco.

I noticed that in some cases the consist may need to change tracks, but no activity occurs on the switch until I click on the consist itself. Once I click, a couple of seconds pass, then the switch changes to the selected direction and the train moves again.

It's as if the AI train is 'pausing' and not activating ahead to the required driver command.

I've checked all track for breaks, missing levers, etc, as well as driven the track manually without derailing. A database rebuild makes no improvement.

Has anyone seen this happen before? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers

Roy

EDIT: I finally did a full database repair and then opened my session in Driver mode. The same problem exists.

However after clicking all 12 consists to get them running, several completed the list of driver commands, then exited through a portal. Fresh consists continued to spawn, some needed a click, but the majority followed the driver commands. So although I haven't discovered what causes this, I'll continue to monitor any progress.

I have noticed this problem also and since it does not happen on the same AI every time, it is hard to figure out. My Session is entirely AI and a lot of them do not go till picked or are very slow to start. I have a Ship yard where they wait to be called in to unload. When they are called they blow there horn them proceed to the unload station. A lot of times the horn blows but they just sit there like they are trying to figure out what to do next. After a little while they will start to move. It seems sometimes if I click on them they will start up. Not sure if it is because I clicked on them or they where ready to move anyway. It is very annoying and I also would like to here from anyone who might have an answer.

I've noticed the same, but can't figure out what's causing it. I noticed too, and I reported this a few times before including as a bug, that the AI will just stop running. I found that if I pause the simulation, or exit, save, and then reload the session, the simulation will pickup and continue running as though nothing went wrong.

Weird... If can only pinpoint what's going on, we can report it and possibly there will be a fix, but until then we're SOL.

Thanks guys, I thought it was just me; or the early aging signs of dementia setting in.

It's a bit of a pain when you set up an automatic session following all the rules and it's supposed to work; but it doesn't. Like running a radio-controlled car with a dead battery.

I've even tried setting a string of 'via' trackmarks for it to follow. It will go past one then stop, give it a click and it goes past 2 or 3 then stops again. Other times, it just keeps going. It's quite a puzzle to know what's causing this. Prior to the HF1 upgrade, I didn't have this problem.

Let's hope someone has the answer.

Cheers,
Roy

I have also seen this on several of my routes. The solution I have found that seems to work in most cases is to delete and replace the first track mark in the AI instruction set. In some cases I have also replaced the switches between the AI consist and the first track mark. It is important to note that if you do replace the track mark even with the same name it is important to replace the existing track mark in the AI instruction set with the new track mark. I have seen this happen in the middle of a route after a session had been running awhile but in my case replacing the next track mark seems to fix the problem.

Not sure why this happens, or why this works, but it has solved my problem in most every case.

JCitron said:

I've noticed the same, but can't figure out what's causing it. I noticed too, and I reported this a few times before including as a bug, that the AI will just stop running. I found that if I pause the simulation, or exit, save, and then reload the session, the simulation will pickup and continue running as though nothing went wrong.

Weird... If can only pinpoint what's going on, we can report it and possibly there will be a fix, but until then we're SOL.

Click to expand...

Hey John,

I have submitted a report to see what may turn up on this matter

I've been racking my brains over this and I suddenly thought about something that I'm not familiar with.

First of all, I created a route in SP2 but I didn't commence any sessions at that stage.

I proceeded with the HF1 upgrade and everything appeared better, so I began to set up the first of several sessions. In doing so, I copy and pasted the contents of Central Portal Control and Schedule Library from an earlier SP2 Session (mainly to avoid the tedious data entry for 12 portals and 18 different track routes for the AI drivers) into the new session.

I deleted all trackmarks from the route and replaced them with new ones, then made the changes to Schedule Library.

I also replaced all consists in Central Portal Control and replaced them with more up to date models.

I'm now wondering whether the shorts-cuts I was attempting to achieve, may be causing these problems.

Have you had any experience with copy and paste rules within "Edit Sessions" ?

Cheers,
Roy

I have a large complicated automatic route that was built in Tane SP1, from TS12 and worked well. I transferred it to the earlier version of SP2 and worked well. In the latest version of SP2, the AI has gone completely mad and it is hopeless to try to run it. Drivers refuse to recognise trackmarks and will refuse to change switches.
Cheers,
Mike

Roy,

I made no changes like that other than upgrading T:ANE and the AI do that. Thanks for bug reporting that.

Mike,

I've seen that too, but found the track marks were attached to grass and wires rather than track. I bug reported that but it was too late to get it into the queue in time.

These were definitely on tracks John, as I said were working perfectly before the upgrade.
I will only use SP2 for routes specifically made for SP2HF1 and keep my legacy routes in SP1.
Cheers,
Mike

mikeaust said:

These were definitely on tracks John, as I said were working perfectly before the upgrade.
I will only use SP2 for routes specifically made for SP2HF1 and keep my legacy routes in SP1.
Cheers,
Mike

Click to expand...

It sounds like there's something else going on here as well. Maybe this has to do with the corrupted table thing that Tony mentioned before.

I have to state my experience on this. happening after the last upgrade. I run several trains (most passengers) on a fixed schedule on loops. Running from A to B, changing loco ends and returning. Nothing fancy perfected during early iterations of the game. Now something interesting happens: A train runs to a station and sits there not moving to the next drive "via trackmark" or industry station. But it does that while you are not looking, meaning you are on another far away place of the route. As soon as you move the camera-viewer to the place where the train is sitting, the horn sounds and sometimes the train starts the schedule! For no apparent reason, the train may sit there and you have to start it manually past the next trackmark and then the train goes again on the schedule. If you are not looking or on board of the train, it may do silly things by itself; Running backwards, not stopping at designated locations or more puzzling, changing driver! That's right, changing driver: A consist is named in this case by whatever you set at your schedule library. It goes up to the task and runs as intended. But you are running a freight manually somewhere far away. You go back to see what the other consists are doing, and discover a consist running somewhere away from his schedule. You check and see that this consist now have the name of another consist and is running the schedule of the other consist! Then naturally you go to the other consist and see what it is doing and it is not there. In one stance it was derailed or was stopped still with the same schedule than the other! In essence, I got two consist with the same name and schedule! To make it more complicated, you run the session again and discover that the silly things are now different that the last time, so it is not a bad trackmark or command, further, this time it may run well for a while and after time it will go back to the nonsense. Sometimes if you stay with a consist, it will perform and not go away from schedule, making very hard to ascertain at what point is the anomaly. All this makes no sense because I have never seen this behavior anywhere before. Possible causes? let you imagination away and think that somehow data from or inside of the local folder is leaking from one install to the other. In may case I had an interesting situation where I made changes in route surveyor, and saw those changes on another install on a different HDD installed on the same computer. Could not figure this one, but is possible that the code at the local folder in both HDD's was the same, and things got confused. I have disconnected the second HDD and I am running now to prove or disprove all this. But it takes time and may not be a real possibility in view of other people getting strange behaviors too. Surely we did not have so much problem with the old local folder data storage on TS12. Just in case anybody asks, all this happens on my route, not tested on built in ones. Sorry for the long replay, but I had to tell.

Thanks guys for your input. I appreciate it.

After weighing up all that has been said, I got to thinking more about the 'Copy & Paste' session rules I had used on setting up a new session. There were a number of items such as trackmarks, consists and station names which I had made changes to on the route and I made similar changes to the two Session Rules. I thought there could be something that I missed.

So I duplicated my new session with a new name, then deleted the rules 'Central Portal Control' and 'Schedule Library' from it then saved and exited the program.

Then on re-opening the new session, I installed new session rules 'Central Portal Control' and 'Schedule Library' and started from scratch, building up the driver commands and new consists to service 2 of my 13 portals. In starting Driver mode, both portals spawned consists and the AI drivers followed their instructions 'without a hitch' and exited through another portal. I repeated this over and over again without any stoppages at all. It worked perfectly.

All I can say is that there must have been some factor (which I'm still not sure of) in moving the 'rules' data from a previous route/session into a fresh session, by the 'copy & paste' method,.. which may of course, had something corrupt contained in it. This now reminds me that the asset <kuid2:185479:60001:2> EW-Time and weather change now shows up in HF1 as faulty. (It's obsolete and has a missing texture file). In SP2 it appeared okay.

We all try to take short-cuts to speed things up at times, but in the long run, it pays off to spend a little more time on the basics, so that you don't miss something critical.

I can now move on and get the other portals on my route up and running.

Cheers everyone,
Roy

Roy3b3 said:

All I can say is that there must have been some factor (which I'm still not sure of) in moving the 'rules' data from a previous route/session into a fresh session, by the 'copy & paste' method,.. which may of course, had something corrupt contained in it.

Click to expand...

I have had a lot of experience "copying and pasting" session rules between sessions and I can attest to the fact that not everything is copied correctly in the process. You really must go into each copied rule and check that all its parameters are correct. Certain things, such as the text labels applied to navigation points for example, do not copy.

I have came across one thing about trackmarks. If for some reason you move a trackmark it will not be picked up by locos. If it is replaced by a duplicate it works every time.
Cheers,
Mike

llebrez said:

I have to state my experience on this.......... Sorry for the long replay, but I had to tell.

Click to expand...

You have to put some paragraphs in your text! It's unreadable the way you have written it! Just friendly advice.

Mick

"Navigate to" fixes session issues?

One of my sessions pretty much would not run after the latest hotfix. I had used "Drive to" commands everywhere. After changing them all to "Navigate to" , and adding a few invisible signals where I was getting the "Line ahead is unsignalled" warning, the session runs 99% OK.

Or, I wonder if just re-doing the commands might be what fixed it?

Mick

actually the drive to commands work but the AI driver wont start on his own. so no overall fix yet. but the session works with the player selecting the main train once. so maybe a half fix. that is interesting. but our route has no signals at all. So maybe that invisible signal idea might help.

thanks for your post

Chris

In all previous versions had AI train had a slight pause when passing a trackmark and locking on to the next one. But now in the latest version the pause is at least three times as long. That is if you can get the AI to run at all.

Bill69

On my current creation I'm beginning to get the impression that trains only seem to stop when there is another train between it and its next destination when that destination is a station and not when it is a track mark irrespective of the command to get there or the number of signals it will have to pass. Once that first train has passed the relevant station, the stopped train moves on as previously instruction without any additional intervention.

Not the most elegant of solutions but I have found that routing trains via an addition track mark placed prior to the relevant station resolves the issue. Trains which are not programmed to stop at stations such as goods trains do not tend to stop for no apparent reason however they do tend to stop following trains which are programmed to stop at stations. Peter

I have designed a route and the train will only follow the commands too the first station and then stop , very frustrating have resigned route and changed type of loco still the same , I too cant figure what is gong on